ATIS was reporting 6 miles visibility. I thought, that's twice as much as VFR minimums. How bad could it be??? Well, before we even got off the ground, my instructor said he only wanted to show me this once, and added that it "gets scary" in these conditions. Still, I doubted it could really be so bad. I mean, it's VFR, no???
Man was I wrong. We leveled off at 3,000'MSL, and the windshield may as well have been painted white. There was absolutely no horizon. There were clouds and thick haze BELOW us. I couldn't see anything. Worse yet, I felt like I had little control over the airplane. The right wing kept dropping for no apparent reason, even though I thought I was holding the yoke neutral. Durring turns, major overbanking. I started to feel slighly dissoriented. I focused on the attitude indicator and tried to make corrections. Nothing felt right. It was erie...
So that was that. If my insturctor hadn't been on board, I would have probably died. What really shocked me though, was that we were still VFR. If that is VFR flight, IFR must be really tricky. It just goes to show that 6 miles really isn't anything once you're in the air. After this flight, I still cannot believe that 3 miles visibility is legal for VFR. More importantly, I walked away knowing just how easy it could be to become highly dissoriented with restricted visibility...
Man was I wrong. We leveled off at 3,000'MSL, and the windshield may as well have been painted white. There was absolutely no horizon. There were clouds and thick haze BELOW us. I couldn't see anything. Worse yet, I felt like I had little control over the airplane. The right wing kept dropping for no apparent reason, even though I thought I was holding the yoke neutral. Durring turns, major overbanking. I started to feel slighly dissoriented. I focused on the attitude indicator and tried to make corrections. Nothing felt right. It was erie...
So that was that. If my insturctor hadn't been on board, I would have probably died. What really shocked me though, was that we were still VFR. If that is VFR flight, IFR must be really tricky. It just goes to show that 6 miles really isn't anything once you're in the air. After this flight, I still cannot believe that 3 miles visibility is legal for VFR. More importantly, I walked away knowing just how easy it could be to become highly dissoriented with restricted visibility...
