Interesing thread.
I had a hairy experience last summer. Routing west to east along the south coast from Bembridge, IOW, I'd been up at 3000 feet plus but was progressively pushed down by cloud over the coast, which seemed to bubble up from nowhere.
I pushed on for a few minutes and decided to throw it away just east of Shoreham. I was down to 1,000 feet and the ground rises to the north and east of Brighton towards the south Downs, blocking any escape. A lot of other people had the same idea so Shoreham was suddenly very busy. I found myself orbiting over Brighton, at 700 feet, with the cloud lowering all the time. Don't mind admitting I was absolutely sh
tting myself by this point. I'm low hours PPL, VFR only, so no escape route by climbing through the cloud.
20 minutes after I'd landed there was torrential rain, and solid cloud at 200/300 feet.
I got away with it, but the situation was entirely my own fault for pressing on too far in deteriorating WX. The weather had been forecast to worseon, but much later that day, so I hadn't expected such a sudden deterioration. My take away from this experience was turn back when you still have options, rather than waiting until it's (almost) too late.
I've definitely been reminded of that incident by the chopper crash at Vauxhall - he was probably pushed down to the same height I was.
Last edited by taxistaxing; 18th Jan 2013 at 19:21.