Mud season is upon us, and depending on your region it might be mucky already. This is also LIFR (“Let’s Instead Fly Recliners”) time, when most of us sit around wishing it would clear up. Maybe we’ll work out the skills at the sim station to stay fresh, or repair the drone(s) we crashed the day after Christmas. That’s the first advantage for those of you with the currency, comfort, and equipment to launch on a day like this: Runways and airways all to yourselves. And the freezing levels have climbed, so you can stay below icy layers. Best of all, you get to log actual instrument time, plus approaches. The caveat? It’ll take some willingness to be creative to ensure the muck doesn’t make for a bad day.
Plan B, First
That’s foremost on your mind as you plan a trip in the comfy late-model Cessna 182 Skylane to Marion, Illinois. It’s about 3.5 hours from home in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. There, you’ll stop to visit relatives for a night before continuing on south for a spring-break trip. It’s a route you’ve flown in IMC a couple times, even down to minimums. But you were solo and topped off, so it almost qualified for round trip. That’s not the case today; it won’t even be a one-way non-stop to KMWA. With the family, golf clubs, and a few bags, you’re limited to well under five hours’ total endurance. And due to low-overcast conditions for most of the route, you want to increase the usual 1-hour reserve-including-alternate to 1.5 hours.
Yep, you’ve done this before. Maybe you can get halfway and stop in Lafayette, Indiana—tap, pinch, zoom, tap-tap—you’ve seen the RNAV/LPV approaches on both ends of the main runway, but those aren’t quite as low as the ILS 10, with the standard 200-1/2 minimums. Great, you will need that one. Now, just construct the enroute and approach plan, brief the full ILS procedure, brief the backups, pull up the alternates and … whoa, pause right there and zoom back out. This isn’t the final destination. Do you really want to take on the good chance of going missed, missed again, going to the alternate, disembarking everyone, redoing the plan, and maybe repeating all that at Marion? Not to mention you’ve already been preparing for an hour already.
So, regroup and check for breaks in the LIFR. Since those pink dots on the weather map show ceilings under 500 feet and/or visibility under 1 s.m., look for red or better yet, blue for Marginal VFR, which is at least 1,000-3. The best you can get without flying through Ohio and Kentucky (or crossing Lake Michigan) is actually just over the border in South Bend, Indiana. It’s not quite a third of the way, but KSBN is a big, comfy airport at 1,000-3. Since the Chicago area is the same, you can use Lansing (KIGQ) as your “official” alternate to comply with §91.169. Then, save Valparaiso as your “real” alternate, because the weather’s above approach minimums. It’s closer to South Bend, and there’s popcorn. So long as you’re willing to actually go to a filed alternate in the event of weather and lost comms, you can use this back-pocket method too at Marion. If you can’t get in there, its next-door neighbor Carbondale (KMDH) gets saved to your portable flight plan while Evansville is the filed alternate because it meets the 600-2 rule, just. Then, you grant yourself one approach at Marion; if you don’t land, divert.
In the Clouds
Almost time to start up. It’s 400-2 at KMOP, with an east wind at 5 knots. Weather’s right about approach minimums of 400-1-1/4 for the best runway, which is 27. You’d need another 200 feet higher for the LNAV-only approach to Runway 9, but only 1 mile visibility, which doesn’t help much today. So: Depart from Niner with clearance in hand. Put KMOP, GRUNI, and the RNAV 27 on standby in the navigator, and accept the tailwind in the event of needing an emergency return. It’ll take a few minutes to reach a cruising altitude of 6,000 feet and in the meantime you’re passing Alma just to the south, where the RNAV 9 to LPV minimums is also available.
Even when the clouds are at a steady 400 feet, visibility below 2 miles means there won’t be a discernible ceiling, especially post-rotation. Expect to see 0/0 after takeoff. Flight directors and autopilots are the best buddies at these times, but don’t just set and forget. Presetting the FD and ensuring a safe climb speed with corresponding attitude mean already knowing what those settings will give you. Not only will you get the performance you’re expecting, should an instrument fail after takeoff you have those speed/pitch-up numbers in your head and can keep things under control with your little backup screen. Same with the autopilot. There are minimum operating altitudes, so don’t be too eager to engage until reaching the required minimum. Yours isn’t all that fancy and is limited to 200 feet AGL, so the better you are at setting and using that flight director, the smoother it’ll go when you press the AP button.
That’s Handy
The refueling plan at South Bend was a good one. You departed still feeling fresh after an easy, mostly visual approach to 9R since it’s still 200-1 at Marion. You’ve got the bandwidth for the next busy leg. And this is ILS country: Flat terrain, long runways, and excellent radar, all backed up with precision RNAV approaches too, for those who prefer the satellites. It was a super-smooth ride and will be so for the next leg at 8,000 feet, with no chance of icing. Thirty minutes out you review both the ILS and RNAV procedures for Runway 20 and plan a nearly straight-in approach to 8,000 feet of asphalt with lead-in lights. But after you’ve requested that, you update the weather, and the east winds have trended to the southeast and are past 10 knots—and past what you’ve done before. Runway 2 does have LPV minimums, 666-3/4, with a PAPI and runway end identifier lights. The GPS gets a quick reload; ATC gets advised. You actually request the hold-in-lieu-of-procedure turn at ANUKE because it’s a quicker approach coming from the north. And with the missed approach a straight-out climb, it won’t be so busy if you must head back up.
The autopilot 200-foot limit applies on the approach too, but you’ve got another standard procedure for LIFR days. When it’s 200 feet, the “disconnect” and “decision” are often at the same time. But this is lots of workload; you’re transitioning to hand-flying while figuring out now whether to go visual heads-up to land or stay on the instruments and start the missed. Since you’re calling out the altitudes every 100 feet anyway toward DA, you prefer to press the AP disengage at 300 feet/100 to go, allowing for a few seconds to hand-fly, then concentrate on the DA. Heck, you’ve done that a lot farther out to keep proficient. It does help when you can catch out of the corner of your scan the “approaching waypoint” alert on the navigator, which is also a good cue to start thinking ahead and disconnecting the AP. If handled smoothly, there shouldn’t be much to do on the flight controls until you continue for landing or go missed.
Speaking of missed, you didn’t see a key NOTAM for Runway 2: “RWY END ID LGT U/S.” By the time you wondered where the flashing lights were, you’d disconnected the autopilot. Then you saw the PAPI in the mist, which showed you on path—and, dimly, the runway lights. This was more than enough to continue for landing (your briefing did include a review of §91.175), but it sparked enough hesitation to result in a pretty long landing, even for having some flaps. You were glad to have the extra length plus a pre-prepared ultimate-abort point (the second turnoff on the right), which you just made. If you had doubts, it’d mean sticking to the briefing and starting a smooth missed approach. If so, that shouldn’t be a big deal, much less an unusual operation. This landing had some flaws, though, and will require a good debrief. That’s thinking like a LIFR pilot.
The Takeaway
For those who’d like to gain experience and confidence in low, or just lower, clouds, don’t be a stick in the mud. It takes a lot more than simply stepping down your personal minimums. Preparing for any flight takes planning, system knowledge, and a well-defined game plan with contingency plans that especially account for you, the human factor. Make those elements part of a normal routine and you’ll make the most of your rating while knowing when it’s best to stay in the recliner and plan that next trip.
Very good steps through the IFR scenario. Lots going on single pilot!
And if a scenario like this is a bit daunting, grab an instrument instructor and fly it with a mentor to help build your confidence. This is why I try to get my instrument rating trainees up in some “real” weather (like below VFR but above published mins — alternate mins is a good guide for training mins) during the training program.
With 40+ years of flying now behind me amounting to over 15K hours mostly in Scheduled airline operations I can contest that this detailed description of the preflight decision making steps is invaluable. The lesson here? Even with the benefit of a fully involved dispatch to lay out the details to consider, never neglect to appreciate the value in understanding the logic and importance (Risk/Reward) of each option and its viability in different scenarios. In a word, Professionalism.