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What do you find most challenging in IFR flying?

Thunderstorms, convective stuff and severe ice. In other words: weather.

EDLE, Netherlands

Convective weather.

Agreed to everything before but would add: Getting cover off plane and pre-flighting in the rain, and (worst part of all) loading and unloading wife and luggage still in the rain. Compared to that stress the actual flying is comparatively relaxing. Sliding canopies and rain don’t go well together.

Ted.P wrote:

Sliding canopies and rain don’t go well together.

That is where gullwing doors or high wing come in handy. This is one area where I get a little frustrated by DA40/42, although the canopy does not slide, it comes down to the same thing; the cockpit gets wet. It was never an issue until I got the IR

Last Edited by Aviathor at 22 Jan 13:59
LFPT, LFPN

Going from automatic to manual flight in very poor RVR/visibility.

London area

Staying on the ground is always the hardest part, especially when you are on a cross-country and want to get there or get home.

Convective wx remains the biggest issue for those stuck below say FL250.

I cancelled a flight EGKA-LDRI on Monday, 2 days ago, because the return wx for today looked too convective.

For a change it was the right decision:

Might have worked if one departed really early say 0400 UTC.

Interestingly, looking at windy.com on Monday, and also Tuesday, ECMWF showed this very well while NEMS & ICON didn’t. The UK MO MSLP charts also showed it well, as a pile of troughs all over Europe.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

convective weather in combination with terrain…

EBST

Peter wrote:

ECMWF showed this very well while NEMS & ICON didn’t.

I simply don’t trust NEMS or ICON, I’ve completely stopped checking these models. ECMWF usually gives the best forecasts although GFS is correct very often.

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

GFS long term & large scale for winds & pressure on 7 days horizon and ECMWF forecast of clouds & local terrain weather (but hugely overestimate UK winds) on 3 days horizon, TAF & METAR on the day or late night before

Touching the wood never got it very very wrong except few imaginary trips where I tried to guess what METAR would be from 2 days forecast before, find out it went hardcore low stratus or convective storm on the day, there are few hints in long-term forecast that fronts may suddenly appear but really not enough to take into account…

Last Edited by Ibra at 03 Jun 16:41
Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom
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