Would you attempt this flight today?
 

Just out of curiosity I thought I'd ask everyone's opinion on whether they would make the following flight at about 1400 today, considering the weather etc.

Aircraft is a standard non-turbo C182T (G1000 etc) flying from an airfield in southern Scotland to one in southern England...say Bournemouth or Southampton. Pilot and aircraft fully IFR equipped but without oxygen. Would be people do this and if so how would they do it?

I have already made up mind...just curious to see what other people would do...

Personally, no. Blowing a hoolie down here. Leastways, too much for me to pop up in a Turb. :hmm:

It seems doable as a low level VFR/IFR flight, down the east coast of the UK.

As an airways flight, the high altitude weather would be more challenging.

But the radar is fairly clean and there is no lightning activity.

Not a nice day though, and it would be a rough flight due to the strong winds blowing over hills etc. Check the sfc winds against the runways :) A Cessna is not good for too much crosswind.

As usual, IO puts it better! :)

I'd do it with an airways join at POL. E.g.

EGPH N0150F090 DCT TLA DCT DCS DCT POL P18 STAFA L10 HON DCT NEDEX SAM2A

Much more comfortable at FL90 than bouncing around at low level. Whether you go straight to 90 or pick an intermediate level through the wx in Scotland depends on what you find.

I think it depends very much on the experience, recency and licencing of the pilot, and the purpose of the flight. If the purpose was a fun day's flying, I certainly wouldn't.

G

Would you really go through POL?

I always tried to route away from there if possible. You would also be going against the North South flow of traffic. Usually the south bound would be NGL DCS Lakey,Man etc But at FL90 you would be a right pain in the bum so better to go outside and then come back in again to get round the outside of the Man arrivals. And North POL, TLA

Personally I would Route to NGY then pick up a service from Warton outside. Then rejoin and head down the east of wales on those airways running down towards Cardiff. Then once down south and past london then cut across.

As soon as you go near POL or HON you will get in everyones way and more than likely get vector'd all over the place that is you don't get a slot.

Also that way if you need to escape you have PIK, Blackpool, Liverpool, Man,BHX, Cardiff, Filton, Exeter.

And I wouldn't have a problem doing it.

Winds 260 at up to 55 knots much of the way down between FL50 and FL100, possibility of hitting the freezing level south of EGPH, and you'd have to request a non-standard IFR departure out of EGPH which they might not give you. A very long and very tiring and probably scary flight. Low level option not much better.
NS

I just flew the other way round (S>N) today and the wind from 5,000 feet up is westerly at 50/60kts and it's IMC all the way up to FL300 with freezing level around 5-6,000 feet. A bit lumpy at lower levels due to terrain but no cells or indeed any rain in the cloud, it's just grey and miserable and a day for an Airbus rather than a Cessna.

Interesting the FL is so low.

Think I'd give it a miss myself. Winds aloft are forecast to be rather strong (noted at one point forecast wind at 10000' is 270/70 :uhoh:), don't think it would be very clever in a little Cessna. Judging from the F215 I'd be worried about icing as well.

Crap forecast, crap actuals. I'd book a B&B for the night, get the train, or catch a lo-cost.

Smithy

The 1200 sounding shows IMC to about 200mb (about FL300) up north; slightly better in the south.

I would not fly at high altitude in this, unless de-iced.

Well, it's the "standard route", but that doesn't always count for as much as the sort of practical experience that you mention. I've only done it once or twice, and IIRC though filed via POL got routed painlessly via MCT.

The point is that I would do it at higher level, not lower level.

What concerns you about that? Mountain waves? (Just asking -- I'm a flatlander and mountains + wind scare me.)

So stay a little lower until you get to warmer air.

Why non-standard? I haven't flown it, but the SID looks like TLA at 6000.

My instinct would be that the low level option in the boundary layer would be much more tiring.

Very good point Genghis I would be getting payed to do this flight.

If it was for any other reason I would be getting a flight to Gatwick and taking the train.

From personal experience it can get a bit bumpy at low-level in a spamcan in the Central Belt near PH when the wind is >30Kt. At times rather uncomfortable near terrain, e.g. down the Borders. I'd be uncomfortable with the turbulence, there again that's personal.

The forecast looked not too bad earlier apart from the wind, but the actual looking out the window bears no resemblence.
I don't believe the freezing levels either. Very optimistic.
DO.

That too - forecast says max VSP 800fpm - but flying for hours in IMC being constantly thrown about is incredibly tiring, even with an autopilot.

Indeed, but unless you were lucky and hit a period when there was no-one else wanting to fly the TLA SID they'd be unlikely to accept someone climbing slowly at, what - 90 knots? - and clogging up the system. In still air you might struggle to meet the 7.4% procedure design gradient too, although I accept that on a day like today with a southwesterly hoolie you'd probably be going almost straight up so that wouldn't be an issue.

NS

Smithy you are going to have some fun up North especially when the winds from the South.

Washing Machine below 2000ft is proberly the best description of it.

I reckon you could do it, lowish, VFR, down the east coast but it isn't something that I'd do for fun. A fairground ride all the way...

Dunno exactly what bit of southern Scotland you mean or what the weather there is, but here (Fife) I'm sure nothing is flying except out of EDI. The weathercam at PMK shows just how horrible it is - the cloud on the hill is about 250m amsl - about 800'. Vis on the roads is awful as well and cars without lights merge into the murk.

Weather and Webcam

Live feed, if you look tomorrow (Friday) it will be different - nicer I suspect.

Think you would have to be south of Yorkshire for the weather to be OK, it's the first time I've seen an amended 215 (e.g. weather is very unstable), and whilst the weather is better the wind isn't for GA.

As you may have guessed I made my mind up not to do this flight before I posted the thread, reason being that the freezing level was not really compatible with an airways flight and the low level option is just a bit too complicated plus as many have said would have made for a rather bumpy flight. I'm sitting in a service station right now near Carlisle and the cloud is very low indeed, something that one should tend to avoid when flying a single in IMC if possible.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts though...and do keep them coming. :ok:

But would you be "constantly thrown about"? In my experience, you get above the boundary layer and it's smooth enough. I accept that terrain can change that.

Well, how do you normally depart southbound IFR from PH? Why would that be difficult today?

I just wanted to say that as someone currently studying the Met paper for my PPL training and just having started cross-country navigation as well, this thread has been really interesting to see the thought processes involved in actually analysing it all. Thanks all!

I think bookworm's plan may have worked provided the freezing levels in the south of the country really were as high as forecast. Still would have been quite a bumpy flight though I think.

Temperature prediction is, in my experience, pretty good.

The 1200Z Obs seem to be missing, but the soundings seem to show the freezing level above FL100 over England:

Herstmonceux
00Z 04 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 670 hPa (1.2 degC at 700 hPa)
00Z 05 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 670 hPa (2.4 degC at 700 hPa)

Nottingham
00Z 04 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 680 hPa (0.8 degC at 700 hPa)
00Z 05 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 690 hPa (1.4 degC at 700 hPa)

Albermarle
00Z 04 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 770 hPa (2.2 degC at 850 hPa)
12Z 04 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 740 hPa (5.0 degC at 810 hPa)
00Z 05 Nov 2010 sub-zero above 780 hPa (4.4 degC at 850 hPa)

There's a difference between trusting freezing level forecasts where the minimum level is dictated by terrain, and trusting them where the minimum level is dictated by airspace or ATC needs. In this case, if the freezing levels had been lower than anticipated, you might have had to go below controlled airspace or abort the flight.

I'm not suggesting that this would have been a pleasant flight, and whether I would have attempted it depends on the circumstances and alternatives. But you did ask "how", and I still believe it would have been better at FL90 than at low level.

It was the situation over the southern uplands and lake district I was thinking of, and from experience of upper winds way less than 55kts. In any case the forecast had 800fpm mountain wave in it.

There are very few light single IFR airways departures out of Edinburgh. I don't have an IR only an IMC but any IFR departures I've done have been VFR to West Linton then climbing IFR to Talla.

NS

I would have been flying out of Perth so usual procedure for me is to call Scottish Control directly and join controlled airspace on track GRICE, from Edinburgh not sure what they would do with you...not that it really matters if you were going to fly IFR outside of controlled airspace until POL.

Following bookworm's plan I just would have stayed below class A airspace, getting whatever zone transits necessary and then done my own thing until POL.

The postings here highlight different attitudes to flying in IMC for long periods.

I know pilots who do it happily, so long as they are below the freezing level, even though they have no radar, and perhaps only a stormscope to indicate hazardous conditions ahead. This is not unreasonable in pure safety terms, because if you stay below Va, there should not be anything there that would cause a structural failure of the airframe.

I would not usually be so happy doing it (stormscope only) because it is only in a fairly narrow range of weather that you can be sure that nothing nasty is going to be hiding in there. Especially in southern Europe... also flying below the 0C level stops most IFR flight in the winter.

So I tend to use my IR mostly to climb to VMC on top, and the satellite IR images are priceless for this.

If one is going to penetrate something nasty, it is better to do so at a low level (and definitely below the freezing level).

I tend to find the freezing level forecast to be fairly reliable.

How easy is to get the Eurocontrol computer to accept a flight plan that is only partially in the airways system?

Edited to add, I just worked it out...

In the UK, it's just a question of using DCTs outside airways, because the distance limit on DCTs in the lower airspace is quite long. In other states, it's sometimes much harder, of course.

It is easy to file a Eurocontrol flight plan at some low level (e.g. 2400ft).

The computer doesn't check a string of DCTs, except for the MAX-DCT value which in the UK is 100nm below FL100, I think.

The problem is that it is worthless. London Control will wash its hands of it within 100ms of you pressing the Send button :) It will be ignored by all enroute units, and (apart from telling people where to look for wreckage) is worth no more than just flying non-radio all the way, "VFR", having made a phone call to the destination to make sure it is open, etc. (although if you file a flight plan to a destination which is closed, due to wx or a crash or needing PPR/PNR, etc, they will invariably not return a message saying you cannot go there :) ).

The grey area is filing IFR flight plans at some "not quite obviously airways" level e.g. FL060. This can break down (in terms of acceptance by enroute IFR ATC) for various reasons too, starting with the departure airport giving you a squawk which belongs to their allocated squawk range and not one they got from Control. I thus never file IFR below FL100 and preferably FL140 because that's where the routes get better.

I've got some www notes on this stuff.

I've never had a problem filing the sort of FPL I described in post #5, and getting the airways clearance at the joining point.