I am not a big believer in Unexpected IMC. In my 14 years of flying, I have never had an unintentional "VFR into IMC" experience
In that case I am in awe & really applaud your staunch Airmanship skills, that have so far helped you to elude bothersome situations up there & I'm in agreement about decision making skills being made a pivotal talking point to all newbie pilots. IMO it should have its own PPL exam to boot...I've been a right avid YouTube scholar when in need of answers to my aviation problems, so yes I have been watching several decision making videos in form of seminars/ webinars / tutorials courtesy of the FAA lot across the pond, gotta admire their thriving/insightful GA community which in comparison to ours is well advanced/ evolved
Scud running is not something to be taken lightly and certainly not to be taken lightly without solid IMC capable pilot and aircraft!
Never had the pleasure of Scud running so far...& I don't think I'd fancy it one bit without some form of proper instrumental rapport.
Are you saying that it was not NOTAM'd as active but a NOTAM came alive when you were already in the air?
what would have happened differently?
Yes I believe the NOTAM came alive in the air, on the actual paperwork prior to departure I don't think it flagged to be current/active & I guess form thereon, the ill-fated decision to pull out the tablet & using SD landed us in hot water....so in that sense things would have panned out differently indeed, for we wouldn't have realised that the air exercise NOTAM was active (Unless RT'd by London Info who sometimes tend to warn you regarding /P/D/R areas etc) & would have probably stayed high & comfortable crossing that particular area
AIAA are not the kind of area that are activated and deactivated by NOTAM. What exactly did the NOTAM say? Is it still there?
Sorry to have used loose language, I believe the NOTAM was in the actual area... which was an AIAA (on the half mill chart had the bordering to suggest that it was an AIAA etc).
I also want to apologise for referencing the wrong month in which this incident occured. Just had a look at my logbook last night & the actual specific date was 18th August 2013 as opposed to September 2013 (made a point of editing OP to reflect the right month). My memory is hazy so don't quote me on this but I think the NOTAM advised of some air exercises being conducted by the military in that area & a certain levels of altitude was cordoned off. In fact now that I have the date, is there any website where I'll be able to pull up historical NOTAM info archived, in order to find out just what exactly was going on that day? FWIW I departed at 10:50 local time that day & returned for 12:25pm.