Flying in a valley, (often the Great Glen), below 2000’ cloudbase, I’ve flown through rain showers, where I can see it’s clear beyond. It has happened that the rain intensified for a short distance, giving virtually no forward vision.
Illegal therefore. And risky. But not the conditions to try an emergency landing. And quicker through it than turning back.
On one occasion with poor visibility, I saw, to my left, the orange scimitar on the tailfin of a Jaguar before I saw its strobe. It’s buddy passed below to my right. 
Maoraigh wrote:
Jaguar
Hopefully the aircraft, and you weren’t flying so low it was a Jaguar car :-)
Maoraigh wrote:
Flying in a valley, (often the Great Glen), below 2000’ cloudbase, I’ve flown through rain showers, where I can see it’s clear beyond. It has happened that the rain intensified for a short distance, giving virtually no forward vision.
Illegal therefore. And risky. But not the conditions to try an emergency landing. And quicker through it than turning back.
On one occasion with poor visibility, I saw, to my left, the orange scimitar on the tailfin of a Jaguar before I saw its strobe. It’s buddy passed below to my right.
I went for it this weekend, I was not flying that low to see Jaguars but I was able to see wind farms flashes, take-off and landing were ideal but the en-route rain was quit interesting
The last 25% en-route proportion went from: cavok, vfr on top, vfr between layers, vfr decent in the hole, hole close up, 180 degrees back, low visibility in rain, quick imc, climb back to previous altitude, long time full imc, ask atc for weather updates (confirmed destination is really ok), 180 degrees forward, long wait of keep wing level in rain/imc to destination to get ahead of it, then climb on top of it, then bellow is clear, then land and park in ideal conditions, then the min-storm I was flying in hits 10 min after my landing and a full sun comes out 5 min later
PS: all en-route airports were VFR with cloud-base 3000 ft, so it was just a matter of timing/luck as weather was dynamic and rain downpours were very localised
My way out was to continue flying further than destination to get ahead of it (flying back was not a good idea as atc hinted), the other way out was to go for a let-down on destination (and set 7700) but I was not comfortable going down with too much wind…
Got some pictures from my wife’s phone,
Will you fly VFR into this one? I would guess no (at that time Southend METAR/TAF were good but windy and real-time rain apps disagree)
This one seems OK-ish
This is where I think to turn back
This when I actually turn back
This is when you land (ahead of it)
The apron on the day (15 min after landing)
The apron next day
This is a video when mini showers hits (10 min after my landing)
It’s like a fly in the dining room. It looks bad at table height. Get low. If there’s plenty of clear space between the chair/table legs, buzz about.
Maoraigh wrote:
It’s like a fly in the dining room. It looks bad at table height. Get low. If there’s plenty of clear space between the chair/table legs, buzz about.
I like the comparison, I just underestimated how much you should get low to get a comfortable flight in aluminium coloured ones, if half of cloud base is higher than MSA then it feels very OK-ish
- Top higher than 1/2 cloud-base is just bumpy flight in the convective/imc bit and no pax is happy
- Lower than that is rather a smooth vfr with vertical visibility is better than forward one and pax are happy
Ibra wrote:
- Top higher than 1/2 cloud-base is just bumpy flight in the convective/imc bit and no pax is happy
- Lower than that is rather a smooth vfr with vertical visibility is better than forward one and pax are happy
That’s interesting, I’d never heard it put that way. I don’t fly in weather anything like that shown in your post so I find the photos somewhat terrifying, assuming VFR. The only one familiar to me is the “this is when you land (ahead of it)” photo!
While overcast cloud-base was foretasted to 4000ft en-route, I find it much hard work to keep VFR (in-sight of the surface/avoid clouds) while in reduced visibility, 1.5km visibility while “VFR legal” means you can’t fly above 3000ft (can’t keep the surface ahead in sight), you can’t fly or navigate without glancing instruments from time to time and you should budget a lot of fuel for long left/right detours…
Actually, it is much easier to fly plain IMC above 4000ft (which I can do in the UK but not in France) than trying to maintain a difficult VMC en-route at mid-level (worst thing IMHO is to go for easy VMC at low levels, I had a steep learning experience with that last year where I should have simply divert and land…)
On the ground, I had in mind that I can fly IMC as backup emergency for VFR, but in the air I just feel not ready for it after too many detours and discovering it was too much windy for a let-down (= lack of planing)
