Another fascinating discussion, albeit with a tragic start.

Dato: And that is what happens in the early stages of your license. The complacency grows very quickly. The reason being your mindset : "I've laboured to get this license - it was a tough course - at times I didn't think I'd get it. That's all behind me now."

So wrong. It's actually all still to come. No flying course can prepare you for the myriad of scenarios you will face out there. No flying course can cope with all the different mindsets of students.

The answer is that all new pilots should spend a lot of flying time with experienced pilots. All new pilots should look for a crap day in the forecast (not hard) and book their best instructor. I am not saying we should teach people how to fly through cloud in a VFR machine. But we should teach that there are very real limits - and that will assist in dampening the complacency.

Maybe if a few instructors introduced some Check A "tricks" we could sort some of this mental problem without even going flying.

The society we have created has meant that complacency is now a big problem. The Health & Safety approach to life means that we all think we're safe if we just follow the signs. We all think we're safe if we buy the airbags. We go into a dangerous mindset "The sign says 30 - I'll be safe at 30 then."

Feel it. Keep flying it. Take your bloody eyes off the GPS and look out the window.

Pilots Attitude
 

all very good points raised on this thread.
There is another point I think worth mentioning -pilots attitude ( although, thankfully, not all)
As a busy Examiner and instructor I come across a large selection of students and PPL (H) holders, on a large variety of types .
one thing worries me greatly- some of these guys WILL JUST NOT BLOODY LISTEN!!!!!
I come into contact with a lot of guys with 50, 80, 150 hours TT and regardless of my many, many attempts to relate to/discuss accidents, safety training, advanced training, continued flight into deteriorating weather conditions, pre flight planning, etc
some of these guys STILL take horendious! chances and think they know it BLOODY ALL!!
whats the answer??
sorry for the rant!

This comment is not intended to make any judgement on the cause of the subject accident.

However a generic comment [prompted by comments on this this thread] on accidents from one who has spent a lifetime in aviation............all pilots [particularly those who will remain in the GA sector] should be compelled [not sure how!] to read and inwardly digest accident and incident reports both during their initial training and during their subsequent aviation pursuits.

Learning from the mistakes of others is of paramount importance, if only to ensure that 'those others' did not suffer in vain. The sad part about so many aircraft accidents is that they are carbon copies of countless countless previous accidents. Very very sad.

I repeat, that this comment is not intended to make any judgement on the cause of the subject accident.

H49

saftey publications like gasil are very good at informing crews of aircaft but infortunately the are sent only to the registerd owner of a aircraft not the crews of them [ unless they want to pay] it also misses out all the foregn registered aircraft in brittain
its a shame the gasil is not a free publication sent to any aircrew who wants it

Gasil is free on the web
http://www.caa.co.uk/application.asp...pe=sercat&id=7

TOT I could well have been one of them !:eek: At 100 hrs or so you can hovver beautifully, fly sideways, backwards, do great big flashy torque turns....pretty much everything your instructor can do ...whey hey !!!!! It is at about this stage that i became an instructor (FAA of course) and very quickly realized that a) handling the aircraft and being able to do aerobatics etc is NOT what safe flying is about ..in fact physical flying is probably only 10-20% of what makes a safe flight ...the rest is good decisions gained from experience , some may be personal and scary and some may be your last ever flight, but most will be handed down from the crusty old farts ( some of whom are on this site :ok:) offered up to those WHO WISH TO LISTEN...
When i instructed i realized i wasnt the only barely competent pilot with a vastly inflated idea of my own flying prowess.....MOST of my students started off all meek and wanting to learn and then in the space of a few hours developed into know alls. ( maybe its something about heli pilots in general !) Anyway the point is...there is no point in expecting people to look at the weather and say " ooh dear its not cavok 9999 all the way ...we had better stay at home and miss the party with all the booze, girls etc" :{
You will look at the weather and get the impression that , other than a little bit of weather around x it should be ok and then you will set off. That is how i do it i must admit !!! living in yorkshire, if you are not prepared to fly in bad weather you will fly 10 hrs a year. What would be helpful would be to get access to a better more detailed forecast and from that information plan the safest route. I have sometimes pushed all the way up to yorkshire in crap up the west ...when the east has been better...partly due to completely forgetting how to read a wxchart. SO how about better wx education and free route planning advice from pro forecaster to help keep us out of trouble.?? ( and solid state autopilot that will do 180 at push of button )

When I got my IR ticket some years ago, an American friend congratulated me on becoming a REAL pilot.

"Of course", he said, "now that you're a REAL pilot, you can get into REAL trouble, REAL fast!"

With a properly equipped aircraft, the IR is a valuable addition to the skills required to keep in the air. It is not, however, the panacea it is often thought to be as a solution to all kinds of weather difficulties and is, as noted already, a perishable skill that needs to be kept sharp.

Without it, however, there is absolutely no point considering anything other than VMC and adhering to sound decision-making.

Not to be holier-than-thou, of course, I can remember some of my earlier days when that advice wasn't listened to either. There but for the grace of God.........

Better to be on the ground wishing you were flying than to be flying and wishing you were on the ground.

TOT - I hear you! The problem is that many students/owners own their own companies and up till they come across a helicopter, everything they touch has turned to gold, and it's hard for them to accept this with humility. Even then, their minds are far too often on the next business meeting than what they are doing in the air.

Phil

Sorry to go back a bit but I was taught to me that part of the bad weather traning is to show you how difficult it is to fly a none stabalised machine in IMC. I felt that having my instructor explain that to me and highlighting that a 180 turn is a last resort survival technique was a good lesson in knowing not to get yourself into that situation in the first place

The most difficult part of flying helicopters is knowing when to say no.

Paco has hit the nail on the head.

So you think that a high proportion of what we can call cfit , for want of a better name, comes from owners not with their mind on the job ? I am afraid i disagree. ( Although i accept their is a lot of truth in that statement )
I keep coming back to the weather , or to be more accurate our knowledge of the weather. I can fly to my house perfectly safely , i believe, if the cloud is 200 +ft off the deck . ( This is the hills to the south of me) If i telephone and get first hand report that there is that gap between ground and cloud i go....if i am told there is no gap i do not go. Obviously in this case i know the area but the more i think about this the more i think that accurate weather is the key, especially in the hills . Dont forget you can still have good vis below the low cloud. Being able to get inflight updates of local weather is also a bonus and one good reason to get a mobile phone working in your cockpit so you can speak to the landing site to check the actual. Have you ever been waiting at a site that is totally socked in , wishing you could contact the pilot who is enroute ???

C'mon Nigel
 

"I can fly to my house perfectly safely , i believe, if the cloud is 200 +ft off the deck ."

This is exactly where the problem lies - with cloud at 200 feet, and all you want to do is to go home - flying a helicopter there should be out of the question. Sorry Nigel, it sounds absurd to me. I'm not saying it can't be done, of course it can, but it is absurd.

tam

Nigel,

I think you have misunderstood the point; it is not a question of 'mind-on-the-job', more a mismatch between what has to be done and what can be done.

VFR flying is undertaken by utilising visual cues to keep the helicopter straight and level; when the visual cue environment declines (because of lack of light and light sources at night, or lack of visibility by day) it takes more processing power to assess the remaining visual cues.

As the proportion of processing biases towards assessing the (diminishing) cues, there is less-and-less available for flying (an unstable platform); this will eventually lead to loss of control.

There are other issues also concerned with reduced visibility; the visual cues can only be taken from the available cues within the helicopters Field of View (FOV), as visibility declines and the visual horizon moves closer (and therefore lower), it moves slowly, but inexorably, out of the helicopter's FOV. This is one of the reasons why a pilot descends - not because of cloud base.

There is an extremely good research paper about this issue which is about to be published by the CAA (don't know what the delay is).

...now I am in the middle of this period of high activity (=mess) and the telephone rings...

Jim

I put that statement in really to make a point ....i agree that heading into unknown territory and unknown weather with 200ft is absurd.......but i bet you , if you were flying from a to b and there was a clear band of air under the cloud then you would take it ......flying low over a hill is not in itself dangerous or even illegal ....the danger is flying into worse weather that you have no knowledge of IMHO. I have flown up in hills for many years ( far less than many on this forum admittedly) and have never felt a worry about being low inall the 9999,s. I think visibility is a bigger issue and rightly or wrongly i would prefer to be low in clear air than higher and half in it. Everybody has their own point at which they call it a day and good quality info as to actual weather ,trend etc helps make the correct decision. I think to say that flying at 200ft over open hill is absurd misses the point and is actually incorrect .

JimL Would very much like to see that paper . The bit about going lower due to reduced vis is an interesting point . I think their is a difference between flying inlow vis and flying below low cloud and i know which i prefer.
( i know about cables etc but most of the recent accidents have been into the ground which indicates loss of control whilst IN cloud NOT under it) In order to gain any real benefit from this i think we need to put aside the idea that low flying is dangerous per se . It is not and i dont think it has been a factor in any recent accidents ?

Nigel
 

I may have misunderstood your meaning, "200 feet off the deck" says to me a coudbase of 200 feet with the hills rising into it and gaps where the hills are lower than the cloudbase. I think what you mean is 200 feet clearance above the hilltops which is quite different.

I think Shy Torque summed it up very well in his post above. Just say no in bad weather.

Nigelh - my comments were more in response to TOT's question as to why none of these people LISTEN!!

Phil

Sorry to say but Nigelh looks like a future statistic and lawbreaker!
H49

Helen49

Out of order!

NigelH has been flying for many years and nothing he has said should give you any basis for your comment. He's merely expressing an opinion, and offering his thoughts to what is clearly a thought provoking thread.

I've not been flying as long as NigelH in calendar terms, but have the benefit of several thousand hours flying for the queen at tax payers expense. I also have the benefit of having flown with Nigel on several occasions and nothing I've ever seen would give me cause for concern.

I'll stick my neck on the block and agree 100% with Nigel's view that flying low with good visibility with clear separation from cloud is far safer than flying at 500ft in the bottom of the scud in crappy vis. Flying below 500ft is not illegal (in the UK); neither it is unsafe as some seem to intimate, provided the visibility is good and the pilot suitably trained.

I'd far rather pilots understand that 500ft is not a 'hard deck', but there for the protection of the public, as and when they or their buildings/vehicles are around. If they are not around, as is very much the case in Nigel's home patch, the 500ft Rule can be a bit of an irrelavence.

NigelH - I'll fly in the back of the Squirrel with you at the controls anytime becuase I know you've got the experience and the forethought to consider the weather implications before they arise.

John Jackson

I think Nigel's point about visability vs low cloud is valid. The problem is that you rarely know what the weather is going to do, especially in the hills. Moreover, given the versitility of helicopters, there will always be missions where you will not know whether the weather is going to allow you to get to your destination VFR.

Nigel's local knowledge allows him to decide if he can get over the last hill before home. True, flying below a low (300' say) cloud base in 9999s is bound to be easier than if the cloud base is say 700' with 3000m vis. But local knowledge is just that. We all have it. But what I'm happy to do around my home base, doesn't mean to say I can safely fly in the same conditions somewhere new.

I would also be very careful assuming that flying low over a ridge line is "not in itself dangerous". There be dragons.

Thanks for that JJ:ok: Helen sadly came along with an inane, uneducated attack at a time when ,unbelievably for pprune ,the thread was not taken over by self righteous so called pilots who never fly in less than cavok etc etc
This is not about personalities and point scoring ...it is about addressing a REAL problem the helicopter community have. I do not believe you are going to stop people flying in bad weather...i do it all the time here..it is part of living in yorkshire !! I do firmly believe that it is in the training we give. I was lucky that i had a head start when i started flying in UK weather having done crop spraying which gives you an insight into safe low level flying. I also believe that most pilots who have developed their method for scud running have done it by trial and error...and they are the survivors. We need to impress upon pilots ( again IMHO) that in bad weather FORGET about 500ft and all that crap...all you HAVE to do is keep OUT of cloud. At the point where you are below the cloud you can decide whether to make that descent part of a precautionary landing or carry on at a speed where you can see obstacles AND stop if faced with cloud on the ground. IF you try to do as you have been taught...ie i MUST keep 500ft then you are likely to enter cloud and the rest is history. QUESTION. How many scud running flights have come to grief in last few years by flying into obstacles (i am not counting aerial work etc ) ??? How many have ended up in disorientation ???? We should teach students that staying clear of cloud is the only golden rule and if you go low you go SLOW.

Nigel,

Well said. I think if I was still instructing, I would be inlcined to get students to practice forced landings for reasons other than the donk stopping. The height at which a flight should result in a forced landing (due low cloud) is a point for discussion, and would depend on a whole raft of factors (terrain, obstructions, aircraft type, laws, pilot experience to name a few) and therefore be determined on a case by case basis. I think however it would be difficult to justify continued flight where the 500' rule (and indeed the rest of the fifth rule) cannot be observed due to a lowering cloud base and if that were the case, it would be time to start selecting a field.

Know your limits
 

I mostly agree with Nigel, however, it appears that he has a lot of experience with flying in multiple roles which enables the motor skills of flying, navigating and communicating easier so concentration on wire spotting is improved. One would be concerened if a SFH pilot in a R22/R44 now thinks lets not worry about cloud base as long as I have decent vis lets go!

Of course, unfortunately, pilots have to experience bad weather, high ground, etc to find their limits - they can't all be taught as they are always changing with a gain of skills with experience of different conditions. An example - Immediatly post ppl I lifted from a private site with 400ft cloud base and 3-4k vis - I felt that was my limit and landed. Now with quite a few more hours and some bad weather experience those figures would be acceptable and the flight would have been conducted safely.

Also, I'd rather fly in lower than perfect wx with a 250hr pilot who has flown in good, bad & very bad weather/vis & worked out his limits than a 10000 hour pilot who has flown where cloud base is 25000ft with 10k+ vis most days.

As a fellow Yorkshire based pilot, Nigel's points re. weather and go/no go decisions are spot on. If you try and use your machine for transport, rather than flying the local area for pleasure only in good weather, you are faced with the same decisions as the pros. No more or less pressure to go or to press on, that's not where the problem lies so long as you have the balls to say no to your passengers. It is when most of your route looks OK for weather but one bit is uncertain. Of course you go, otherwise, as he says you'd hardly ever fly.

I was one of the many who tried to get back north from the Goodwood Festival of Speed last month and that day was a perfect example. Forecast good enough to go, but a bit of doubt about the return. Ended up routing via south coast and choosing the lowest ground to fly. Kent, Thames, Essex, north rather than South Downs and the Chilterns. In parts ended up doing 40kts to gently probe a way through. Low and slow is fine - you're not going to fly into cloud in good light if you are slow enough. When it got worse, we spent the night at a friend's house in Kent. Had I known it would be precisely those conditions then of course I wouldn't have gone that day. But, until weather forecasts are accurate and understandable (by heavens I try..), there will always be days like that.

To answer TOT's problem with cocky new PPL's, I think the answer is simple. An LPC check is not just to check physical flying ability. I always understood the examiner was asking him/herself 'would I let my partner and children fly with this pilot?' If there is any doubt about that, don't sign them off. Attitude is far more important than just aptitude on the controls.

As an R44 owner, I think the 44 has opened this risk up enormously in recent years. (down Nigel, non of your 44 jibes...!) Now the most popular type, many new PPLs are flying three people around not just one. Of course one accident or casualty is too many, but recent accidents show how many more passengers on non commercial/AOC flights are being put at risk. More seats, more miles flown, in private four seat machines than ever before.

Access to data has never been easier, but the presentation of Notams and weather is frankly diabolical. How on earth does a 80 hr PPL really work out what it's like 100 miles away?

B47 I totally agree with all. By the way i would not make a joke about the R44. I was so impressed with the one i went in i bought one for my keeper!!
But on serious side ...how do you get your weather ...avbrief..metoffice...they are all pretty poor and do not give any indication about local wx where there are no airports. As for notams ...is there an easy way of trawling through those ? A friend of mine has his telephone ( sat and mobile) plumbed into his machine and when confronted with deteriorating wx he calls his mate who is an expert and he guides him around it. Now if we could all have that :ok:
One thing that troubles me is that for all this talk about how to train pilots better , will anything actually be done or will we just keep to the same methods. As we basically live in a country with crap weather...then crap weather should form a large part of out training, which it doesnt. ( i am sure that some schools do take their students up in bad weather but not all and it is not,asi am aware even a requirement)

I recall a thread a few years ago similar to this. I put up a post then stating that the CAA would not prosecute for a visibility related infringement of the old rule 5. The gent who told me that has now long gone but hopefully the policy survives.

Do not crash to avoid prosecution. If you need to fly lower, slower, or land, do it. Dont let the law cloud (ha, ha) your judgement if up against it. Flying in cloud is really crap. Been there, done that, didn't like it.

EGNH (nearest report) TAFs in my experience are a guide only for Lancashire's hill country. If you fly long enough in Lancashire you WILL end up in weather totally different to the forecast. I have now done all of the following. Landed, turned round and gone home, gone up, gone down. In fact everything except crashing. Going up tends to make it worse. Favourite is any hint of poor vis do a 180 and go home. Oh and I'd rather not be in a Robbie either if it gets thick.

I dont yet have thousands of hours but have more than a thousand flights in Lancashire.

I would expect the same applies over quite a lot of the UK.

Here is a simple rule - if you can't accurately assess the weather en route - drive instead of fly. There is plenty of met info available on the internet and other sources - the only thing preventing you from interpreting it is laziness. There are so many good books on met available - it is not rocket science or a black art.

If you think that a metman from many miles away will be able to give you a spot-on local forecast for a remote area then you are deluding yourself. You probably know your local area and micro-climates better than most if you fly in it regularly - apply this knowledge to a sound knowledge of met principles and you are more likely to make an accurate assessment.

As far as met is concerned, knowledge is not only power but safety!

Launching on a telephone report of 200' above a saddle is OK as long as you have sensible alternatives so that when you get there and the cloudbase has lowered (as it can do quickly in hills) you are prepared to cancel your trip and go home. If you decide to press on because you have an appointment to make and you got through OK last time - then you are well on your way to becoming a statistic.

Flying at < 500ft


At those hieghts in the event of an engine failure would you have sufficient time to turn into wind and succesfully enter an auto. ?

Yes.
This bit added to make up 10 characters.

As Gaseous said...YES , there is time ...but if there isnt well do your landing downwind. This is the same mindset as having to stay 500 ft to be legal....engine failure is not something that needs to be in your mind when your only priority is staying clear of cloud. Get your instructor/whoever to do some low level autos right down even to 100ft ( you can go right down to 20ft if youlike )and you will see there is no problem. ( finding a nice perfect spot may be tricky tho !!)

As a premeditated exercise you might get round 180 degrees from below 500' and make a safe EOL (if there is a suitable landing area). However, in the real case where it takes a second or two to recognise the failure and react you are poorly placed.

As to downwind EOLs .. in 5-10 kts maybe but in 20 - 30 kts fat chance especially as it will be something you have never seen before.

You need to practise LL autos and EOLs a lot to have any chance of surviving and your choice of landing areas is very limited - don't kid yourselves that this is a realistic risk to take when deciding to press on in poor wx.

"Flying at < 500ft At those hieghts in the event of an engine failure would you have sufficient time to turn into wind and succesfully enter an auto. ?"

That wouldn't enter my mind for even the slightest consideration if forced down low through stress of weather to remain visual with terrain. After >10,000 engine operating hours and never having one spit the dummy, I would be far more concerned at executing my best option plan to remain visual below 500ft rather than decisions being influenced to keep as much height below me in the (very unlikely) event of engine failure.

And as for my thoughts on scud running, if you've been caught out in bad weather with no landing options, rather than going lower and lower and risk hitting something, there comes a point where I say bugger this and climb up into it, to a height where I know I'm not going to hit anything. It's a horrible choice but I'd rather be in the gloop at a safe height in a VFR helicopter, rather than risk flying into the ground or an unseen obstacle, burning up fuel with nowhere else to go.

On those few ocassions where I have screwed up, even descending through 10,000ft of cloud in a VFR helicopter is possible if you know exactly where you are, and you can end up over water where more often than not you have a couple of hundred feet of cloud base to play with, then fly back towards the coast visually.

I don't advocate flying in cloud in VFR helicopters, and I don't advocate scud running and flying into something either. But being human, sometimes you do screw up, and having an otherwise undesireable Plan B to fall back on can be lifesaving.

Note: said VFR helicopter above was at least equipped with an attitude reference.

Nigel
 

"We need to impress upon pilots ( again IMHO) that in bad weather FORGET about 500ft and all that crap...all you HAVE to do is keep OUT of cloud."

I'm afraid I just don't see it your way. This is not the message we should be teaching pilots at any level. I believe you are in the dangerous position of believing that what works for you should work for everyone else. That is not and will never be the case.

A VFR flight is a VFR flight. VFR with an unplanned IMC excursion is inexcusable, the flight should have been terminated way before that point - this is what we should be emphasising - IMO.

These rules were not written overnight, they are the result of a long learning process which is continually changing. They are there to protect us from ourselves and whilst I agree there could be room for manoeuvre for those experienced pilots, the rules are there for everyone and should apply to everyone, otherwise we need to appoint someone as the line drawer. Where do we draw the line? Who draws the line?

Sorry Nigel, pilots grow older and more experienced through nurture and supervision, not through a blatant disregard for rules that don't suit them. IMHO, your emphasis is not in the best interests of the helicopter community as a whole, and that is the emphasis that the rulemakers are interested in.

We can't enforce experience and judgement, those have to be developed individually, this is where interpretation of weather reports either works or does not work. If interpreting the ample weather info in the UK is too difficult, cancel the flight, in the meantime, pilots need a set of rules to which they must adhere.

You make some valid points but I just don't share your outlook.

tam

I agree with Nigel for VFR - "We need to impress upon pilots ( again IMHO) that in bad weather FORGET about 500ft and all that crap...all you HAVE to do is keep OUT of cloud."

I also believe the extra 5 hours added to the PPL(H) course for 'instrument appreciation' is a contributory factor to accidents like these. (Of which there seems to be an increase since it was introduced)

Now that is something worth getting concerned about - has the instrument appreciation course resulted in an unpredicted increase in inexperienced pilots thinking they now have another credible option if they fly into smeg - only to end up as a statistic - with a whole bucket load of other pilots having narrow escapes and increased laundry bill?

hihover wrote: " A VFR flight is a VFR flight. VFR with an unplanned IMC excursion is inexcusable, the flight should have been terminated way before that point - this is what we should be emphasising - IMO."

And until there is proof of a technical failure - and I sincerely doubt that there was - the underlined statement is 100% correct. There is no interpretation required here, even a complete numpty on weather interpretation/assessment can be expected to determine existing conditions reasonably accurately in terms of horizontal visibility and cloud base, and be able to do so fairly accurately.

In a number of incidents I suspect that there has been insufficient planning prior to flight. Known circumstances in this case indicate to me that any planning that might have taken place prior to flight was limited and insufficient even at a basic level.

It is a common mistake to assume that following the M6 north from the Garstang area, will lead to a sometimes passable gap in bad weather. It points to the right direction but inevitably leads you higher and higher. The bad weather route is some distance away to the east.

What we apparently have here is a complete and utter lack of Captaincy and an utter disregard for established protocols and procedures. The aircraft should have been landed well before as stated instead of pressonitis taking control.

JMO

Best Wishes

While there have been some good points made here about the absolute importance of remaining VMC in poor weather and going lower and slower to ensure this, some comments do worry me.

GulliBell, you've obviously got loads of experience but there is no way non IR pilots, especially those with far fewer hours than you, should be encouraged to do as you promote:

"there comes a point where I say bugger this and climb up into it, to a height where I know I'm not going to hit anything. It's a horrible choice but I'd rather be in the gloop at a safe height in a VFR helicopter, rather than risk flying into the ground or an unseen obstacle, burning up fuel with nowhere else to go."

I do appreciate you said earlier that this applied to when you could not land, perhaps being over forest/ mountainous terrain etc, but the decision to carry on in poor weather must take where to land in hurry into account. Flying VFR you just should not get yourself into a situation where you cannot land if it deteriorates further. That must always be an option. Frankly it should always be there for engine failure anyway, if you are not going to endanger life, assuming you have pax, though do agree it's a relatively minimal risk.

It really must be understood that going IMC puts a whole new complexion on the flight. An intended IFR flight is planned knowing that you have known diversion (if not always accurate destination) weather and diversion fuel, all charts, approach plates, MSA, en route weather, freezing level, fully serviceable IFR aircraft etc. The chances are few if any of that will be known as you suddenly decide on impulse to climb into IMC.

In a VFR machine, pilot stress loads are going to be pretty high going IMC and even assuming that control is no problem (which it may well be sooner or later) trying to work out where you are going to let down safely is going to be a major challenge and require a level of discipline that may well not exist. If the weather is bad enough to make you think about punching up, it's likely to be bad enough that letting down is hardly going to have you VMC at 1000ft.

There is a world of difference to being IFR in IMC and committed to being so until you can safely get VMC, and to being VFR when you can put it on the ground literally the minute to wish to.

You need to practise LL autos and EOLs a lot to have any chance of surviving and your choice of landing areas is very limited - don't kid yourselves that this is a realistic risk to take when deciding to press on in poor wx.
crab...i agree but once you have set down the route to get out of the weather low level i do not believe that 1% of your brain should be worrying about engine failure !!!!
A VFR flight is a VFR flight. VFR with an unplanned IMC excursion is inexcusable, the flight should have been terminated way before that point - this is what we should be emphasising - IMO.
hihover..that is fine but we live in the real world where people will set off in a hope of finding a clear route.....rightly or wrongly. Also ( not trying to be a smart ass but..) if the rules set out are so well thought out and for our benefit do you believe that they are working ???? It is pointless saying thou shalt not....when you know people like us WILL !!!!!
DONT make the mistake that i am advocating pressing on etc i am purely stating what i believe you should do if you decide to push it "a little" with the knowledge that you "may" have to put down at short notice. As i said before i hardly know of ANY accidents from flying too low and bumping into something ...but know of dozens where they were obviously too high and "in it". If you do not lose reference i would suggest you are very much less likely to crash, hence go as low as you need to and this can form part of your long landing approach and keep it dead slow.

As for punching up .....well if i were a better pilot and had 100,s hours instrument then i agree but for me i think it would be a death sentence and would rather put it down on a hill or into trees and write it off if there were no other way out. However you always have a chance if you are daft enough to get into that position ....i know 2 people at least who have hovvered 5ft above a tree top and the other a rock outcrop, they have waited for 45 min in the hovver and then a break came ....PHEW :ok:

Johe02, I am suprised that you think since the addition of the insturment flying section of the PPL(H) that accidents have increased. Surely the limited IF on the PPL course must demonstrate how different a skill IF is compared to VFR flight and how critical it is to stay out of cloud. Or is it that a little knowledge is dangerous?

IMHO, SPIFR in IMC is the hardest of all skills and 5hrs IF appreciation doesn't even begin to prepare a pilot for the work load of the initial disorientation of inadvertent IMC, let alone trying to form a plan to get yourself home!

Couldn't agree more with hihover, a VFR flight is just that, stay out of cloud at all costs unless you are rated and current. There are enough sources of met information in the UK and although forecasts can be wrong this is not an excuse to fly below VFR limits, but if in doubt slow down and fly lower or turn back or land or end up another statistic, your choice.

MS

Surely the limited IF on the PPL course must demonstrate how different a skill IF is compared to VFR flight and how critical it is to stay out of cloud

I totally agree, i found the 5 hours a massive deterent to going IMC.