Originally Posted by gertrude the wombat
Here's the right question:
If you were thinking of going flying on a day when icky weather was forecast, or continuing flying when it becomes apparent that the weather is worse than forecast, will you have a better chance of staying on the ground, or getting yourself down soonest, and thus surviving, if:
(1) you've had no intstrument training and know that if you enter IMC you'll die
(2) you did some unofficial training a while back which you aren't entitled to use and haven't kept current but nonetheless think you can probably survive if you carry on into IMC?
Really it's the choice of question which seems to separate all the opinions on this thread - and it always seems to polarise opinion!
For what it's worth, I'd suggest you need the attitude of gertrude's question (clear VMC, or don't go), and the training of Baby Bear's (any training may help when it all goes wrong).. some may manage that mindset, some may take a little IR as allowing 2) above. That said, a complete lack of training, official or otherwise seems not to preclude some people from bashing into solid IMC (and let's differentiate that from a lack of VMC), then the side of the hill etc.
I do think that there may be a little oversimplification going on - if we ignore some of the outliers, I would suggest for most people we do not deliberately set off in marginal conditions; equally, some of us fly further than 20 miles down the road, and the weather does not always obey the guessers predictions.