dublinpilot wrote:
I don’t think that’s ridiculous at all. For a VFR pilot, vis below 10km isn’t good.
The 10 km viz requirement is not ridiculous for a solo cross-country, but a 2500 feet cloudbase is. For a local flight you wouldn’t need 10 km.
2500 ft cloudbase would be an unnecessary requirement in a region where the ground stays below 100 ft AMSL for about 100 NM and where even the highest man-made obstacles around do not exceed 1200ft…And these are very few.
Agreed. It very much depends on the area.
Here there are obstacles up to 1200ft within a few km of or airport, and mountains up to 3500ft within a few km.
I don’t think a solo student should be sent off planning to fly lower than 2000ft, as they really then need to start to worry about obstacle clearance, and really a solo student has enough on their mind without that being an issue.
So should 2000ft be set as the minimum? Maybe. But remember the student is likely to be gone for 3-4 hours. They’ve to do a minimum of 150nm with two intermediate landings. In most training aircraft that’s about 90 minutes of flying plus most stops end up taking at least an hour (between approach, circuit, taxing, parking, any paperwork they might need, paying landing fees, preflight again, startup, taxiing, engine checks and departure).
That’s plenty of time for the weather to change, so have a 500ft margin isn’t a lot of extra margin, and certainly not excessive in my opinion.
Most of us here are experienced pilots, flying routes we’ve flown before in aircraft we’re very familiar with and using multiple GPS systems. It’s easy for us to forget how difficult it is for a solo student, trying to follow a map, operate the radio, second guessing their own navigation, work out off track distances all in an aeroplane that they are only learning how to fly. Weather is a distraction that they don’t really need until they are more experienced.
MedEwok wrote:
2500 ft cloudbase would be an unnecessary requirement in a region where the ground stays below 100 ft AMSL for about 100 NM
That’s why these limits are based on height, not altitude. So usually you have 2000ft GND as reference (or 2500, depends on the operations manual of your flight school. You can look it up there.)
dublinpilot wrote:
That’s plenty of time for the weather to change, so have a 500ft margin isn’t a lot of extra margin, and certainly not excessive in my opinion.
That is why the limits usually are based on forecasts. At least our flight school has defined it that way.
I know every fresh PPL pilot is legal to fly VFR in 500 ft GND/1,5 km vis, but when he does, he is responsible for the actions, and not his instructor who would surely get blamed a lot (especially by the pilot community) if he’d send a student on a cross country into adverse weather and that student would get involved into a weather-related accident.
I’m honest mh I don’t know the limits set by our club, if we have written limits at all. Usually my instructors seem to decide on a case-by-case basis. Today would have been ok for circuit training but not x-country, for example.
Well, of course it depends a bit on your performance, experience, fitness… But usually all students (should) have access to the operations management manual and operations manual (Flugschulhandbuch, Ausbildungshandbuch) and there you can look up these values.
dublinpilot wrote:
Here there are obstacles up to 1200ft within a few km of or airport, and mountains up to 3500ft within a few km.I don’t think a solo student should be sent off planning to fly lower than 2000ft, as they really then need to start to worry about obstacle clearance, and really a solo student has enough on their mind without that being an issue.
Well, I assumed that the 2500 ft minimum was AGL. If it was really MSL then it could just as well be ridiculously low as in a case with 3500 ft MSL mountains very close by.
Seems like a good decision to me to cancel the flight after reading the above METAR
February seems to dislike my PPL training:got the third lesson in a row cancelled today, this time due to 20 kt crosswinds at the destination aerodrome. Max. demonstrated crosswind for the Aquila is 15 kt. And my skills probably are insufficient for anything more than half that :(
Update on my progress: Had a total of six lessons cancelled over the last month, still waiting for that second solo cross-country. Nevertheless I am happy about last friday, when my instructor sent me up for solo circuits in pretty strong wind (for me that is), something like 19G30. The wind was perfectly on the runway though, except for some gusts from the north (= right for our RWY26). I performed rather well and this gave me some confidence in my ability to land on windy days. I still need more crosswind practice though, the wind always seems to come from straight ahead (I guess the runway heading was well chosen when building the aerodrome…)
