Flock1,
Thank you, your post has taught me something.
I had a similar experience riding RH in a PA28 from Swansea to Hawarden via Brecon town last month.
The P1 for the outward journey was a recently qualified PPL (I'm only 210 hrs) and we had forecast BKN clouds between 3000 - 4000 (as I recall). We would be passing under N864 Airway North of Brecon with a base of FL65 at our crossing point and the plan was to go up at 5000 to (a) keep 1000' vertical separation from the cloud (b) observe quadrantal rules and (c) keep out of the airway. Needless to say, as we approached the crossing point the clouds starting going up and getting denser. The P1 begged my (limited) advice and looking ahead it appeared to be developing into overcast. We decided to climb slolwly and push on a little but as feared it became overcast (sorry, neither of us is IMC or IR rated) and we were nudging the base of the airway so I recommended a 180 and look for a suitable place to descend and see if we could go under the clouds. We turned left through 120 and found a very large clearing that allowed us to descend but we were coming close to D203 - however, the lake to its SW was visible so we used that as a ground reference.
We resumed track and continued on our journey. Ten minutes later the overcast cloud dissipated greatly into SCT Cu between 3500 - 5000 and the rest of our journey was totally uneventful, except for......well......that's another story.
However, to the point. Reading back through this I checked the charts to confirm the Airway and Danger Area numbers and noted the Airways limit as being FL65+ / FL105+ (see Note 7) which on checking referred to the AIP, which I then had a look at. It seems that between 0700 - 2000 the Airway base limit is the upper figure published not the lower one so we could have quite legally gone up to 9000, which would have taken us over the top of the cloud and still kept out of the airway.
This was something we should both have picked up on during the Flight Planning stage and I rap myself severely over the knuckles for not having done so.
Again, my thanks, it just goes to prove that we do learn from others experience, albeit in this case in a round-about way.
Best Regards,
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