Africanlion,
The little debate above regarding the merits of flying in IMC with or without the benefit of a 3 axis autopilot is a bit of a red herring, because the added complication and expense of fitting such aids is probably beyond what you have in mind and might not be permissible in SA anyway. By not offering training for an instrument rating in aircraft below a maximum mass of 700 kg, the South Africans are making it clear that they don't expect anyone flying such light aircraft even to be contemplating it!
Benefit of hindsight and flying over 30 years and thousands of hours IMC with a full UK Instrument Rating, plus having flown in SA IMC without any kind of autopilot or stabilisation, allows me to have an opinion. Instrument flying without such aids is very hard work and makes you really tired very quickly, especially in strong turbulence such as is more common in cumulus clouds in hot countries.
This tiredness can kill you, because it becomes really difficult in quite a short time to maintain the full mental picture of the flight which you are making. So omissions and mistakes will soon happen without you noticing them.
Something else I'd like to add is the difference in IMC between the UK, or some of the relatively low-terrain European countries and parts of South Africa where some mountains reach up to above 10,000 ft. Even if you aren't planning to fly near the rugged terrain regions, but to remain over the Highveld, thunderstorms of truly monstrous scale often bubble up out of nowhere in a remarkably short time-scale from the middle of the day onwards.
It's really difficult for the meteorologists to predict the location and extent of such cumulonimbus activity, which often contains hail. It sometimes happens that these destructive "storm engines" are embedded inside other more benign layers of cloud, meaning that you've no chance of seeing them while in IMC without the benefit of on-board radar.
Similar storms occur over the American prairies and to get an idea of their violence, a military C130 Hercules (very strong airframe) once got spat out of a storm minus one or both wings. Vertical currents inside them can reach 1000s of feet per minute.
Last edited by Colibri49; 16th May 2017 at 11:50.