Hi Nimbus,

"big sky theory" ? You lucky man. You should try flying round the north west of London, where thanks to our great country's aviation services (I laugh) you are funneled through a busy 8 mile gap between two control zones, below a ceiling of 2500'... with no radar services available to GA. Welcome to the small skies!!
OK on a reasonable VFR day (?) but try doing it IFR. Personally I don't do the lottery so doing this now and again makes up for my lack of gambling...
Still, GA don't pay for radar services (yet) in UK and I only pay 40% tax, so I shouldn't grumble.

Well it IS a big sky. Who the hell else is going to be stooging around Mid Wales airspace at a weekend at 5000ft without IFR seperation or Radar? I have taken far greater risks performing far more routine flying training functions.

As always, the simple answer is AIRMANSHIP. It makes all the difference to any flying activity.

Cheers,

WWW

WWW!
Big Sky?
Never thought I'd see you making that comment!
You may be doing it, but all it takes is just one more guy thinking the same and the risk goes up.
Personally, I see 'airmanship' and flying IMC with no plan as opposites! Make a position report over a beacon at the same time someone is talking to ATC, changing frequencies, etc, and who will hear it?
The 'see-and-avoid' can't work in a cloud, so everyone is flying blind!
Maybe I'm not a 'real' pilot! :)

NIMBUS
I want to point out just one or two problems with operating IMC in uncontrolled airspace in FAA jurisdiction. First, you may well be able to get up there but how do you get down? Unless you fly out of it at a level altitude you have to descend or climb. More often than not a climb will put you in controlled airspace for which you need a clearance and, in order to descend to a civil airdrome you must use an approach contained issued under Part 97, which puts you back in controlled airspace. The other option, descending without an approach procedure to a field somewhere brings me to number two. When the FAA hears of this brail approach method they would likely drop their "careless and reckless endangerment" trump card on your certificate. A bad thing. The above does not apply to military unless they want, so are not considerd here. Under very predictable and controlled conditions you would be in no more danger than with an IFR flight plan in controlled airspace but, do you have that control and predictiblity? not for my money.

Yeh. Some of us call it Russian roulette.
A few year's ago I bought a VFR only taildragger for a change. With it, I couldn't get there or I couldn't get back. That's British weather for you. Now I know why these a/c only do 50 hours pa, year in year out. IMC rating is essential if you want to get around and cannot justify several weeks of ground school and several £000s for an IR. Just wish ATC was more liberal with the RASs. My brain is too small to make an instant picture from a RIS.




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Y-B

Your NOT SEPARATED by anybody - make as much use of RIS/RAS as you can!!!!!

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Kit

Vlift,
I think we're in agreement, but I'm not sure?
My opinion is that operating in IMC without being on a filed flight plan is nuts.
The UK IMC rating is good for climbing through a thin layer to VFR on top, or for getting down through a thin layer to an approach in marginal VFR conditions. Any time you're in a cloud, you're both blind and invisible. Not being in contact with someone who can see you, and others, on radar
makes it a very risky proposition, which, for me, at any rate, is not worth it.
Yogi,
The IMC rating is cheaper, but using it to fly IMC comprimises safety. Its' tough, I know, to get the money for a full IFR ticket, but where should you put your priorities, safety or cost?

IMC flight without radar happens all the time in the UK without incident.

I have had much closer shaves performing procedural approaches under rubbish ATC instruction or rubbish pilot liason with ATC.

EVERYONE is trying to get established on the FAT to a runway. Hardly anyone is trying to GH in the middle of my random cloud...

And remember, uncontrolled IMC flight is PERFECTLY legal in the UK. I am NOT in the habit of wearing a stetson and six shooter.

Safe flying,

WWW

WWW,
I don't doubt its perfectly legal, but it can't be perfectly safe. I still don't understand how flying blind is a good idea!
Maybe in a very remote area, if I could be 100% certain that nobody else is around,(as opposed to knowing that hardly anyone could be in my way), then I'd feel safe. The fact it happens all the time means its only a matter of time

PS. What's 'GH' mean? (gaining height?, going home?) :)

GH - General Handling.

You still don't seem to have understood the basic UK concept, Nimbus. Put simply, you can have radar separation from other traffic in the UK by asking for it on the radio. You don't need a flight plan. But you will only receive avoidance vectors under a radar ADVISORY service if you are also flying under IFR. You will NOT receive radar vectors if you're flying VFR; you might receive radar information if you actually need it and request it, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, under VFR you are normally expected to conduct your flight in accordance with VFR and accept a non-radar flight information service!

I vehemently disagree with the ridiculous idea of flying in IMC without any radar service, unless in a controlled environment on a procedural clearance. That is positively inviting disaster ANYWHERE in the UK these days and is unbelievably poor airmanship!!

Whether a pilot has a IMC Rating or IR in the 'open FIR' has virtually no relevance. All the IR really provides for its huge expense over the cost of an IMC Rating is the ability to fly a suitably-equipped aircraft in airways and to fly down to lower minima on an instrument approach. Unlike in some other countries, you can NEVER fly VFR in an airway in the UK, you must have a full IR to do so. Hence in the UK there are a lot of off-airways GA flights operating in IMC with a perfectly adequate radar service.....and NO flight plan is needed!!!

On another, but related topic, I also think that to fly around under VFR 'practising IF in a Seneca with its screens up' is a hazard to other traffic UNLESS the 'additional observer', as required under air law when the field of view of the instructor is obstructed (as it will be in a Seneca 'with its screens up'), is actually carried. And how many cash-strapped UK training schools actually do this, I wonder??

[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 01 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by BEagle (edited 01 February 2001).]

Operating IMC with a RIS is safe beyond question in the UK.

I agree totally that IMC flight in uncontrolled airspace without procedural or radar separation is undesireable in the extreme. HOWEVER, on occasions and with lots of caveats and planning it can be done with a level of risk commensurate with other flying training activities.

As illustration. Its a miserable wet Saturday morning with a cloudbase of 1500ft. You have a student needing some IF GH and radio aids work. You pick an area with nice flat terrain handy for a forced landing with late cloud break. You have the area nicely defined by multiple cockpit navaids and groundstations. You ensure said area is not on a diect line between nearby aerodomes, has no airways above it and is in the middle of nowhere. You get a FIS from London and also broadcast on local frequencies where applicable, blind if necessary. You check the mil coordination service prior and also file a VFR flight plan defining your area, times and altitudes for the sortie. You plan two diversion aerodromes that have current weather allowing sensible minimas for instrumental approach. All this extra planning is done with Bloggs in tow as a useful training event in itself.

Having done all that the actual risk of mid air collision is low.

Compare that with the routine close shaves encountered in a busy little airfield on a sunny Saturday afternoon in the summer. Microlights, 5hrs a year PPL´s, solo students and matey boy in his Yak performing running breaks...

Compare that with the routine NDB approaches made by Bloggs with the screens up where you are number 2 with number 1 on a low approach and go around back to the beacon and number 3 is just calling localiser established. Your neck is doing a decent impression of Rod Hull and Emu whilst Bloggs drifts all over the FAT with wildly erratic speed and VSI indications missing checks and gear along the way.

Compare that with the PFL midweek into Farmer Palmers best flat field which attracts every other student in the county plus the local Mil helicopter squadron. You know the field, the one with the flock of birds on it nicking the new seed with the rising ground o the left and the woods to the right and those cables half a mile upwind. Then of course you are in the hangar queen with "the big mag drop" and the slightly over rich mixture for the go around.

Compare that with cruising along on an IMC training flight (say Welshpool to Filton as I remember) at flight level enormous under positive radar control - maybee even an IFR flight plan - but in a Warrior. Whoops! Its all gone quiet, so its drift down time into the Brecon Beacons with an 800ft cloudbase and hill fog expected. Pass me the superman outfit will you - or perhaps you are going to use The Force today.

My basic point is that the comparable risk of a well planned uncontrolled non radar IMC sortie is equal to or less than other routine flying training sortie.

As I stated before - airmanship makes all the difference. Its all very well saying don´t do it sit at home but if thats the job and thats the equipment and the CAA says its legal then sometimes sitting on the ground drinking another coffee is not a viable option. If you want to keep your job. Or pay your rent.

Thats my tuppence ha´penny on a fogged in no-fly day.

Safe flying,

WWW

Flying in IMC without a radar service is stupid in the extreme. For a flight instructor to advocate such a criminally insane practice is beyond belief!

Rolling circle, we may have disagreed in the past, but I'm 100% with you on this! For a well known flight instructor to advocate such dangerous practice is thoroughly reprehensible.
WWW - YOU ARE WRONG!!

Thanks BEagle,
Now I know what GH is!
I get the picture on the IMC/IFR scene in the UK! I see the IFR/Flight Plan route as the only safe way to do it. Lose the radios and at least ATC know what you'll do!
WWW,
I still don't like the idea! In very, very, specialized instances, it may be 'safe', but in general the idea scares me! I would imagine that many people abuse it, however, and see it as a cheap IR rating.

Nimbus
It isn't the F.P. that is needed if you are IFR outside C.A.S., this will not protect you at all, what you do need is RADAR COVER which in some parts of the UK is fairly good outside C.A.S. and non existent in others.

I'm sure I posted this message yesterday but it hasn't showed up. PPRuNe was all different with a new layout and presentation and then now it's back to normal. What's going on with my broswer?

Anyway, back to my point. BEagle - The whole point about screens is that they shouldn't obstruct the instructors view. If they do then they shouldn't be approved. No one sits in the back of your IR test so the CAA must think that it's perfectly legal not to carry someone else.

I don´t advocate it. I don´t like doing it. As I stated, it is extremely undesireable.

I´m just being open and honest. I´m lucky that I´ll never be in a position where I have to do that sort of training again.

It was, and is, legal though. The best thing that could happen is that it is made illegal. That way there would be no pressure to do it and no need for people to exercise so much planning and caution over doing so.

If its mid air collisions that you are worried about then far more would be achieved by shipping military fast jet training over to Canada.

How many pilots killed over the last 10 years?

I remember the turbine sections embedded not 100yds from the primary school in Carno...

Or you could ban all light aicraft from being below 1000ft agl in Mid Wales, Northumbria and half of Scotland. I am even handed on that approach.

Cheers,

WWW

[This message has been edited by Wee Weasley Welshman (edited 02 February 2001).]

foxmoth,
In areas of poor, or no, radar cover, a flight plan is your only protection. ATC will have cleared a block of airspace when they gave the clearance. If you lose communications, they already know what you are going to do, and won't vector other traffic into your path.
Thats why I don't like the IMC rated pilot bouncing along on his own!

Nimbus - in the UK it is IMPOSSIBLE for ATC to 'clear a block of airspace when they gave you the clearance' in the open Class G FIR - because it's UNCONTROLLED. Hence the UK's FIS/RIS/RAS system of ATSORA - Air Traffic Services Outside Regulate Airspace.

Its a nice theory to never be IMC without a radar service, but it happens all the time when operating out of airfields outside of CAS with no radar. The one best hope for anyone in the LAM-BPK-BKY-BNN area, Luton, now provides no radar service outside of CAS (or shouldn't, I'm glad to say a couple of controllers still do when not busy..).
If ws only went VFR until a radar service is provided not much would fly !!
The only time it would be provided is if we as operators are prepared to pay for it - the new commercialised NATS will have no interest unless £££ are supplied by someone.... :))