SAS, you'd better take me through the scene again and consider the whole event as an exercise, and just to make it really clear, you could perhaps score the various segments of the flight on a 1 out of 10 basis. I need to see the "professional" marks for flying into the stratus vegatatious bit. You can score the post-CFIT as 10 out of 10 and I will be right up there with you. My point was how very different this thread would have been if the ground strike had turned fatal. The fact is, they were incredibly lucky to survive. It is rare to see an event like this i.e. night VFR, inadvertant IMC, ground strike, where all survived. I do not salute those who fly into the ground in IMC as it simply shows they did not know where they were at that time, and got into the situation by a lack of something. No additional points for guessing what was missing from the equation that caused the IMC bit.
For the record though, great end to a potential disaster.
WRL