As far as being able to see useful stuff for identifying landmarks for navigation, five to seven miles is it. If you're flying a 172, that's three minutes to fly from where you are to where you couldn't see before. You have to have pretty good situational awareness.
A long time ago, I took a student pilot up for a ride when the visibility was 4 miles. I gave her the sectional and told her to keep track of where we were. Ten minutes after takeoff, she was lost.
Days like today, when it is murky and there is no visible horizon, it's also easy to develop an attack of vertigo. The key there is to ignore what your senses are telling you and fly by the gauges.
13 comments:
I was lucky to survive vertigo. My first and only attack was under the hood, in probably my first hour of hood time.
Without that experience, I'd never have known how overwhelming the experience is, of having your balance tell you something your instruments say is wrong. I stared at the artificial horizon as I pushed over and made it all green, and STILL felt like we were going nose up.
That looks like great vis to me.
Just the time when you should be glorying in a lovely green summer and...you have really, really concentrate.
Once upon a time, the day before I went off to college, I was the final check ride away from getting my Private rating. On that day, a Cessna 142 got in the way of a DC-3: there were some scratches on the DC3, pieces of tinfoil fluttering down from 142 and all the FAA guys were out looking fro the pieces...and no check pilot for me. *That* didn't put me off flying, but after I resumed at college, it became increasingly clear I didn't have the stuff to be a pilot. I was and am a) highly distractable and b) not an athelete (and pilots *are* atheletes, with the plane as their extended body). Flying isn't something you do any way but very, very well, so "fin" as the French say. A great experience. And the summer murk is just a case in point. You have to be utterly alert in the most boring of circumstances.
Insert obligatory murky navigation technique: IFR, "I follow roads".
In reality, these days I prefer to follow the magenta line.
I can just see Dorothy and the crew dancing down Magenta Brick Road. Come to think of it, that bunch would make a goody icon for my GPS...
I've flown in "4 in haze" it's flying in a milk bottle (full). I've also done the barely 3 and way less than
1000ft. I did a lot of training as a student and while waiting on my check ride (weather!) and muost of it was night, night under the hood and plain under the hood. USual trip like that was about 100 ft after breaking ground I'd get put on the hood and we'd do the days work being it partial panel, unusual attitudes, or even navigation in chop all designed to keep the work load up and even simulated emergencies and gauge failures (at least one real AH).
By time I got the ticket I was safe at night and had a standing chance of not killing myself if caught in
unexpccted IFR. It's not fun but keep you sharp.
On the other hand I've found by expecience that Severe clear (25+
miles vis) is hard to navigate as you can see everything. Like everything practice and experience.
Eck!
That'd be the usual vis here in Germany.
See http://www.savory.de/foxy2.jpg for a sample photo of my PA28 on a 'clear' day.
Looks nicer there, Stu. What does avgas cost in Germany?
AVGAS 100LL: 2,5305€/liter
JET A-1: 2,0736€
Aero-Oil Sorten:
S80, S100, AD80, AD100 10,60 €
Aero-Oil Multigrade 20W50 11,80 €
Turbo Oil 2380 27,40 €
Prices inclusive taxes.
OK, that roughly works out to $7.86 per gallon.
Thanks.
And what du you pay in USA?
$5.60/gallon. Within 50 miles of my home airport, it varies from $5.29 to $7.39.
(Of course, if you are unfortunate enough to have to refuel at Boston (KBOS) or JFK, you'd pay over $8/gallon.)
What Paul said.
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