Here's my story of flying into bad weather.
On the day in question, I was a very low hours pilot with a microlight. A very experienced microlighting mate had dropped his aircraft over at Enstone for a throttle cable warranty job and I had said I would fly him over to collect it.
I'd arranged to collect him from Sarfend, where he is normally hangared.
The sky was a beautiful blue, but there was low lying mist. As I DI my aircraft, I got two telephone calls. The first was from a friend who was on his from Essex to Wales, to collect his rally car after a service. He was on the M4. The TAFs to the west had forecast CBs, which I had expected to fly around. He was calling as he knew I was flying that way and he could not believe how torential the rain was. The second call was from my pax, who was waiting at Delta, who told me how beautiful Sarfend was that morning.
Tyres all kicked, I took off. I couldn't see a bloody thing and flew a circuit back in.
I called my pax and said I would have a smoke and let the mist burn off. 45 minutes later I was airbourne. I flew to Southend at 800ft as there was cloud above that and mist below it. Although only 10 miles, I had put Southend in the GPS and doubt I would have found it if I had not been following Mr Garmin's line. The first I saw of Southend was the perimeter fence, at which point ATC saw me and said to come straight in, clearing me in the process.
I told my friend that it was not flying weather and we should hang around for an hour and let the mist burn off. This we did and then we set off for Enstone, with blue skies above us.
The mist had now gone but the cloud had got thicker. It had been 1500ft at Southend, but by the time we approached The Triangle of Death, it was down to 800ft. I wasn't happy, but I chugged on, as my much more experienced friend wasn't saying anything about the weather.
As we neared the extended centreline for Stapleford, my mate asked "Are you happy flying in this?"
Saying nothing, I did a 180.
I got myself in trouble by thinking my experienced mate would say something first. He sat there thinking I had balls of steel and the navigation skills of a flying god.
We were above terrain and visual with it, but since then I never fly into poor viz. I've done 200 hours since then and it still scares me.