Previous contenders include “talking on the radio” and “getting
lost.”
You may also realise that I seemed to have fended off these demons.
By my own admission, my radio work is OK and I managed to recover from being at
least temporarily disoriented in the practice area last lesson. So now my
psyche has moved on to its next big thing. Weather.
Now being afraid of the weather upsets me just a little. One of the
things I love about my adopted land is the weather. We get lots of it. Big
weather and my home has a panoramic view of it. I love watching the clouds roll
in, the squall lines hit, the snow fall and the wind whip up the water. All of
this is beautiful when viewed from a balcony with either a glass of wine or mug
of tea in hand, I suspect though, that the view from an aeroplane is not quite
so rosy.
So weather scares me, there are some truly horrifying statistics
about how long your average PPL can expect to survive if they accidentally
wander into IMC. Let’s just say we are talking minutes here.
Bizarrely enough, I’m reasonably confident that if I ever did fly
into some unexpected cloud or crud I at least have a plan. My concerns actually
stem from a fear of over-reacting.
I’m fairly certain that if I found myself in cloud or reduced visibility
that my plan would work. It’s pretty much threefold:
1)
Climb – impacting the sky tends to hurt less than impacting the
ground. Ok so I might bust someone’s airspace but again an airspace violation
stings less than a crash. Actually busting someone’s airspace might have
unintended but good consequences, I’ll probably get someone’s attention on the
radar screen.
2)
Communicate – talk to someone, anyone. It could be the nearest
tower facility; luckily the plethora of controlled airspace around the practice
area means I have plenty to choose from and doing #1 should help me get in
range. It could be Flight Services (this reminds me – need to add the
frequencies to my kneeboard). It could even be another plane on the practice
area frequency; they at least might be able to tell me what the weather is
doing in the locality.
3)
Ask for help – Unlike some people I have absolutely no problem
doing this. I know that ATC will be able to tell me a heading to stick to and
get me to somewhere with a runway. Even if I get totally confused and disoriented,
they’ll be able to talk me into the approach and I’ll land it from there.
Worst case scenario involves a precautionary landing in a field
somewhere and I’ve practiced enough of those to have a fair idea of what I’m
doing , Claremont and the local vicinity has many fields to pick from as well.
That paragraph above though is the one that causes me the most
anxiety. When does it become so bad that you need to find a field? Although I appreciate
that bringing it down in a field is preferable to impacting into the side of a
building somewhere, I still can’t help but feel that it would be an interesting
phone call to say the least. “Hey Bob, I’m in a field somewhere!”
What if I do that and the cloud was only a transient fixture and
flying 2 minutes north would see me in clear air? How the hell do you explain
that? Is that why so many pilots press on for “just a few more minutes” and end
up a smoking crater?
Non pilots do not realise just how tricky it is to keep straight
and level with no visual reference outside. Your senses lie to you. I’ve
experienced it personally twice now. Once as a passenger; on the flight back
from Las Vegas, it was night I couldn’t see out of the window and I swear we
were in a gentle right hand bank the entire flight. Once as a pilot, we were
doing recovery from unusual attitudes. My senses swore that we were nose up
when in reality I was in a descending turn.
Like with everything experience is the best teacher, maybe I need
to be with Bob in some marginal conditions to figure out where my own limits
lie.
I just don’t want to be the idiot student who put it in a field
because of a solitary cloud.
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