I'm sorry guys, but once again I am going to drag the thread back to practical reality. The original question was a simple one - for a freshly rated, but not yet really used it, IMC pilot, on a perfectly fine VFR day BELOW the clouds, when the said pilot is at (say) FL055 and is ABOVE the clouds, how do you get home?
And the answer is nothing to do with instrument approaches, and dangerous ducking-under manouevres, or SRA let-downs, or any of that stuff that implies doom and gloom and that this would be an unusually scary thing that you are about to do.
The answer is - fly to an easily identified waypoint, such as a nearby VOR. (Which you will have identified using the morse code ident, and checked the flags on the indicator, and all that good stuff, because you are a well trained and recently qualified pilot). Starting from that unimpeachable position fix, point the aircraft in the direction of low ground (which includes looking at obstacles, hills, and so on - see previous comment about well-trained pilot). And then simply descend through the clouds whilst maintaining the chosen outbound track.
The only thing you need to make a mental (or perhaps written) note of before you start down is the obstacle height - to which you will have added 1,000 feet.
If the weather is as expected, you will pop out into VMC, and fly home. If the weather is worse than expected, you will still be in the clouds when you reach the previously noted altitude. DO NOT DESCEND BELOW THIS ALTITUDE. Instead, climb back up to MSA, and revert to plan B (which probably involves diverting to an airport with an instrument approach).
But in the scenario originally described, where you are flying "on top" and there is good VMC underneath, this is the time-honoured and well proven way of getting from "up there" to "down there", and is pretty much foolproof. It must be, because I've managed it hundreds of times.
