Now really. There's no reason to have an instrument rating to be able to carry passengers. That's just silly. So, if I own a Piper J3 Cub, I can't take anyone else up with me? If you aren't instrument qualified, you don't fly into IFR weather. That's all.
I know how easily you can get disoriented in zero visibility conditions. When I was going for my private, my instructor took the controls and told me to close my eyes. He then threw the airplane all over the place and then asked me what attitude the airplane was in. I said we were in a left hand turn. I could feel it. He said ,"Open your eyes." We were flying straight and level. Not even the slightest bank.
Worst conditions I ever went through was on a flight from North Carolina to my field in Miami. Tamiami Airport. Orlando vectored me through absolutely zero conditions. At one point the controller said, "You have helicoptor traffic at your eleven o'clock!" I saw the faint, red, blinking light go by through the greyness. I couldn't even see my wingtips. I was really glad to get out of it, finally.
The trick is believing what your instruments are telling you. Completely ignore what you body is saying. He may have made that mistake.

It's a small world. I work right across the street from Tamiami Airport.

Yeah, that was a long time ago. Kermit Weeks still had his museum there.

Me and three other airplanes (good friends at the same field and nearby hangars) were going to fly to Arcadia today but scrubbed the flight because of weather ceilings were too low. Socked in at our field while destination was VFR. Then our field was marginal VFR but fields enroute were below minimums and destination field was VFR. Then our field was VFR, enroute was IFR and destination was marginal VFR.

Just too risky. Even when we could have departed our field we couldn’t depend on adequate conditions enroute and arrival. It was all just too close. We joked about not doing a Kobe Bryant flight.

Here's what I don't get - in an airplane maybe you see something dicey. Maybe you're really on the fence on whether to fly into it. Maybe suddenly you realize you never should have gone this far, but the mere act of turning around combined with quickly evolving conditions puts you in over your head.

But with a helicopter? That you can literally "stop", and turn around with zero turning radius? Seems to me it would be easier to avoid IMC with a helicopter than an airplane (assuming you're flying VFR and the IMC is ahead of you).

I'm not referring specifically to the Kobe incident here, just remarking in general...

Crazy how you felt that. I bet that really solidified your trust in your instruments! One funny regards being disoriented a guy told me many decades ago, weirdly enough he used to fly helis. He says, when you're in the shower, close your eyes and do a couple of turns on the spot. Now imagine exactly where you are facing and open your eyes. You should be able to get it bang on, you got the water flow, light direction, noise cues and a small area you have been in thousands of times. How close are you?

By the way, he didn't join me for this non vfr test

My instructor has made it very clear that the aircraft instruments don’t know if the plane is in a cloud, in the dark, or in bright cloudless skies. One of things he has taught me is if I ever find myself in IMC is to turn on the autopilot and let it fly the plane. The pilot just uses the heading bug or the GPS to go to safety and let the autopilot fly the plane. It doesn’t get confused. Just make easy course changes so there are no extreme attitude changes which could upset things. Call ATC and inform them and let them put you in the system and they will assist you finding VMC conditions. With autopilot and ATC you are essentially flying IFR. The autopilot will outfly a person.

When I was a kid I rode rollercoasters a LOT (lived right next to some and had cheap season passes most years).

Rode them so much I'd try to "enhance" the experience - sometimes by standing up the whole ride (on the older seats with simple "bars" rather than over the shoulder restraints, I'd intentionally set the "lock up" for a huge fat person so my skinny body could do this, amazing I never got busted for that!). Another thing I'd sometimes do is ride with my eyes closed, just to intentionally disorient myself a bit.

I recall a few times doing that, opening my eyes mid ride, and not being where I expected to be - on coasters I'd ridden hundreds of times...

Funny, at that age (around 12) I'd already been "under the hood" in some Cessnas (for the uninitiated that's a sort of helmet/mask that lets you see the instruments but not outside) and experienced spatial disorientation, but it's literally only today that I'm wondering if the same thing was going on with the rollercoasters...

Whenever I do my BFR I get a little IFR practice under the hood or with the foggles on. During it the instructor will tell me to close my eyes, lean my head to the left, and look away. He will then fly the aircraft into alot of weird paces then tell me to recover from the unusal attitude. Most of the time i felt like we were going into a left hand spiral dive. But sometimes we were ended up straight and level. One or more times, when I was allowed to look at the instruments, I corrected the aircraft according to the instruments...but something was still wrong. For example, although the attitude indicator was straight and level, we were gaining airspeed and losing altitude. Turned out the instructor also messed with the instruments to make sure I could recognize the problem and correct it immediately.

It's all good training for the real thing. You may even get instrument conditions when it's VFR. This happened to me once on a solo night flight along the Chicago lakeshore. I was heading north with the dazzling city lights to my left, then turned around to go back the way I came. This had me headed out to Lake Michigan in the dark where even though it was a clear night, there was no horizon and the black sky blended in with the black water. I felt like I was floating in space, like flying an X-Wing. I luckily remembered to check my instruments until I was spatially oriented again (lit up Chicago skyline to the right, all is level!) and i was fine. But spatial disorientation is that easy to get. at that point I had been flying like over 8 years.

The day Kobe died, I ironically was had a flight scheduled in Chicago and was watching the weather incessantly all morning. The TAFs showed MVFR and so did the MOS. I really wanted to go but as they say it's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground. The clouds were low enough that even flying at pattern altitude I would be right at VFR cloud clearance minimum and I didn't like that. Sure enough, the ceiling dropped even more and i scrubbed the flight. then i found out about Kobe's death a few hours later. Kind of sobering.

BTW, if you get caught in IMC, you don't need autopilot to get you out. What if you don't have autopilot? well, then just bring a duck and a cat, and you will be just fine!

v6,
boNes

Seems like many had to scrub flying into Arcadia yesterday.

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Old Farts...

This is just a quick note to all of you sending me emails and text, apologizing for not getting to Arcadia today. Many offered to make good on your commitment for pizza costs, etc. As our, “Clown Prince”, Dennis DiDonna demonstrates by kissing the ground after landing, it was no picnic getting to X06. When I went to bed last night, the weather forecast was calling for VFR, pretty much across the board in South Florida. By this morning, it was a mixed bag of “scud” in many areas... including Arcadia. When all was said and done, about 35 aircraft arrived, out the 85 I had in my RSVP list. We did our best to polish off the 30 pizzas we had ordered. The food trucks were very understanding of our weather issues and light turnout.


https://www.oldfartsfly.com/

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I would guess that the food trucks were more understanding after the Kobe Bryant crash.

My instructor, (back in the dark ages, 1971) made me do quite a bit more instrument flight than required for the unusual attitudes recovery thing. I did a 45 min cross country all under the hood once, his idea. A REALLY bumpy summer afternoon, it was good training. I was tense as heck, then he finally let me take the hood off as we began our descent to land. Without a doubt, all that extra instrument training saved my, and my two passengers lives once. I got caught in really bad thunderstorms one not so sunny FL afternoon. I flew actual IFR for at least 30 minutes under ATC control. I probably had about 70-80 hours total time then...

That was the day I decided I'd rather be an old pilot than a bold pilot.

Wow. That is amazing and great that it turned out OK for you. That would be one of my worst nightmares...

Pilot licensed to fly on instruments but not the firm he worked for:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51332546

I saw the same thing this morning https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/us/kobe-bryant-crash-flight-certification.html

https://www.latimes.com/california/...emorial-set-for-feb-24-at-staples-center

I hope they have enough room for everyone in that staples center.

Not likely, my guess is that it will be spilling over into the streets for miles around.


Wheels

staples center: capacity 20,000.

Will it be like the funeral of a President where people just file in and walk by the closed casket?

That is a good question NoFlyBoy.
I was thinking more along the lines of there being big screens around the city and a just select few in the Staples Center but your idea could be another way they could go.


Wheels

That's the logical way to do it and best way for crowd control. If not, how they decide who gets in and who doesn't? Pass out tickets to the first 20,000 people that show up at Staples Center and the rest that didn't get a ticket may not be happy.

All very valid points. We will find out more as the date gets closer.


Wheels