Can YOU Survive VFR into IMC - Practical Flight Simulator Challenge

laughing on them whoa hey guys and welcome back to tropical always sunny Worcester Massachusetts I can't believe we're halfway through May and I haven't taken you guys flying yet this year but as you can see the weather it's been a real bear today what I'd like to do is show you guys a practical experiment you can do at home use a Microsoft Flight Simulator and that's not just for flight some enthusiasts but also VFR pilots like myself we're going to put my flying skills to the test and see if I can survive the worst case scenario VFR at IMC if you'd like to see the worst conditions I've ever flown in click here the worst conditions of VFR pilots rated for click here and the worst case scenario IMC and we'll see if I can survive and get my passengers home safely [Music] you [Music] all righty so here we are all firing up and ready to go up in the ramp at Worcester Regional and this is going to be I'm going to show you guys the worst conditions I've ever floated I was not recording at the time I really wish I was so this is an example of one time when I was really kind of scared to be flying and I actually called my flight instructor ahead of time I was just a few miles away who I was actually going to see for a lesson and I said is it really safe for me to be out here because I was looking out you know at the horizon and I could see the fog and the trees and the cloud layer was really low it was twenty five hundred feet in Worcester is elevations of thousands of only 1500 feet above my current elevation I usually go over there to 3,000 so I wasn't liking that and he said don't worry about it no seriously it's fine just go for it and this was one instance where I discovered that it's a really good idea to trust your instructor they've been flying a lot more than you have and they know a hell of a lot more than you so I went with it it was pleasantly surprised with how not terrible the collisions were let's take a look at what it looked like problem we're all set ready to go for takeoff there's your song requests codes clips they got three three for two straight out free drugs with chakra and as you guys can see I'm using one of my favorite tools here which is track IR it's you can see another video of mine but it's tracking this half of my head and that way I can see what I would see if I was lying and it makes it big slide simulator a lot more realistic just so much better so line up on the runway here and we should be good to go full power give the floor temperatures pressures stay in green a little bit of right rudder there's needs alive the winds are light I wasn't expecting any rain that day but as you can see the conditions are less than optimal and there's 50 nos birthday you I like that one knotch blast was to get off the ground a little bit faster in your climb and pitch pervy wide which is 76 not from the warrior and I know you guys aren't going to believe me but this is the first time I've flown a real scenario and flight simulator and probably over five years despite being a developer and having it installed in my computer yeah it's true maybe I'll share with you guys some day my I don't know to call it dark dark history with flight simulator is an interesting story that kind of turned me off to it and almost turned me off from real aviation but I think that's the story for another day as you guys can see where we're climbing up here approaching 600 feet above which is usually where I could declare clear abort and turn on course we're going to head down a sound bridge which is about heading two one zero so if you turn start our turn left left on course here but one thing that made this flight possible with the fact that Worcester is a thousand feet elevation where the clouds were 2,500 so if you have to say 500 people oh the cloud deck for VFR minimums that's only a thousand feet above the airport but it is 2,000 feet above the ground and I know a lot of people like Heather who you've seen my other videos to fly at airports that are underneath the class Bravo's like Boston International and they conduct all their flight training at 2,000 feet so this is not that unusual to that we've got that visibility though so quickly engage visibility that runway right there Emily tonight at Worcester is almost two miles long so visibility is supposably five miles so I can tell you that it was actually better than this or at least itself better than this when I actually went flying that day for sure I don't know if it's flight simulator or or what but but this does not feel great I probably would have turned around if it looked like this but you get the point this is still within VFR minimum and it's really not that bad I'm kind of climbing up as high as I can till I feel like that cloud deck is right above me it's really hard to judge that last 500 feet below the clouds and I've kind of until this I'll say it unofficially it was the only way to really know that height is to go up and find it and then descend back down to the insane space not that I condone that but it's certainly a way to do it if you're willing to do that so I don't see Southbridge on the horizon yet so I think what we'll do now is we'll switch over to Phase two I'll show you guys what it would look like if you just departed your home Airport and the weather immediately got down to the worst-case VFR scenario okay so we're back now in the worst case VFR scenario and I don't know about you guys but the first time that I loaded this this blew my mind this is what the FAA considers to be safe for a VFR pilot to fly on holy crap I can't I can't see anything and just so you guys know this is as far as I've gone with this before I loaded up like this situation just to make sure that I could record and everything and I blew my mind so I can only imagine what like it's going to be when it's worse than this I already can't see anything I don't even know if I'd be able to find a runway like this this is crazy and I'm going to treat this as realistically as possible for you guys as soon as we get into the really bad situation and I'm going to really play it like my life depends on it and like I'm going to try to keep everything as realistic as possible between going between gps's and and maps and charts and stuff because listen this is some some scary stuff is this happening in real life I can't imagine getting into the situation that's bad usually for me you can see some of my other videos it's usually like thunderstorms trying to cut you off and that's about as bad as it gets for me this is this is unbelievable Wow and this is I'm already descending down 2,000 feet that ground is probably about a thousand feet below me which is so scary alrighty so I guess we're going to take the plunge now and go for the really bad VFR to IMC conditions and I'm going to do my best to get us home because I don't I don't even what's that on the ground over there is that another airport yeah I guess no notes just the water tower and a highway okay well I know that highway goes so that's route 90 the Mass Pike in Massachusetts so I guess I'm going to start flying along that and we're going to see what happens when the conditions get worse all right here we go okay well there's definitely no seeing the ground anymore that's for sure or that highway that I just found all righty well I guess I'm going to do my best to hold 2,000 feet here because I I can see on my sectional chart that's pretty clear of everything the minimum safe altitude and I can see Southbridge on my GPS and that's where I was headed for you real-world pilot I'm going to watch my altitude there it's probably going to be kind of funny for real IFR pilots to watch me trying to handle this because I do not fly IFR I've never even been that close to IFR conditions as I just demonstrated if you guys know what special VFR in I've never even requesting special VFR which is when you have to depart an airport and head in the direction of better weather even if that Airport you depart from is technically IFR so for whatever godforsaken reason I got myself into this situation today and I'm still trying to get the Southbridge if you end up in this situation I would say my best advice that I've heard is to look down like directly down which I can do here with track IR because let's say the visibility right now is three-quarters of a mile what are you three quarters of a mile up in the sky that's like 3,800 feet so you'll pretty much always be able to see the ground if not in front of you which as you can see is totally hopeless I oh there's the hill okey-dokey I'm coming up on three Bravo's zero here I guess I'm going to see what it looks like and if it seems like I can see it well enough to come back around for landing I'll try it there and if not like obviously like flying in the real world I've given the situation some thought and if I can't do that I guess I'm going to do my best to get back to Worcester and use the ILS there even though I'm not rated for it okay well there's the taxiway there's the runway so this would be yep and they look at how the beacon is like totally obscured well well I guess I'm going to give this a shot it's probably not going to be that pretty I'm already descending below GPA the runways there are I don't remember runway 2-0 and I can't do reciprocals while I'm flying in this kind of situation well I remember it's kind of like two to one runway to zero it's runway to zero and zero - that's what it so if I get back there's like 35 degrees thanks the day are there but we play games and altitude okay so if I kind of head in that direction like the opposite direction then the winds are with me if I'm landing runway zero - so it should kind of be behind me at this point so I'm going to try to execute like a smooth 360 or 180 and try to keep my outfits you pretty constant in my speeds 109 I mean this is something you should be able to do from your VFR training because you are required to have a certain number of hours underneath the hood which just means like wearing a vision obscuring device while flying as a VFR pilot your instructor should kind of take you through these basic maneuvers so hopefully I can do this I'm only 300 feet off the ground right now or like I get a little bit no 500 feet of God so it doesn't feel great that's for sure but I'm doing a nice like standard rate a little bit more turn here and I'm going to come around to heading I guess I should go a little past it and then try to this is not going to go well I'm just telling you guys right now I guess I'm going to start slowing down and bringing the nose down until I kind of recognize features of the ground luckily this is the airport where I did a lot of my training so I should be able to recognize it or like the area at least like yep yep I recognize those fields or right off the end of the runway so my guess is that it's kind of going to be to the right here I'm still really fast 90 not before landing checklist fuel pump mixture master mags master switch is on both oh there it goes okay I guess I'm going to go around alrighty then do I try to come back around for a second time yeah I guess I will probably a dumb decision like this gets in like the pilot ethical junk that I hate and it's like never a good idea to be thinking about that while you're actually flying like if this is the real world right now I like I should not be flying right now I am not rated to this so if I manage to land down here at Southbridge I can kind of get in the ground hit the ground be happy that I'm safe and then kind of decide what to do later but if I don't do that and I have to like go back to Worcester or something I have to tell people like I have to get on the radio and I have to tell the controlling authority that I am stuck flying what I shouldn't be and that's that's highly recommended that you take that approach it's just I'm sure they want paperwork that goes with it like I'm sure it can't be good for like what you're probably going to get like a license suspension or something like this is not good not to mention what I'm doing right now it's totally flying by when there could be somebody else on an IFR approach here like not seeing me because them in the clouds and one thing I forgot to do actually that would really matter in the real world I guess I should do it here is to turn off the strobe light if you leave your strobe lights on I want to play intelligent a placard if you leave your strobe lights on in like a cloud it's making like blind and disoriented so I just turn them off okay we're back up to TPA and roughly a beam the airport and I always know that's my GPS I can't but I like it's great than those trees really like an engine failure would be oh there's the runway okay like so I try to have to now just flaps and color here real fast and please the winds are working with me here Phyllis Phyllis well Oh well I made it on the ground okay well I prove I can do that I'm not done yet so I would let you guys I'm not done I want to I'm going to get back up in the air and I'm going to see what would happen if I decide to go back to Worcester and do an ILS landing because I've like I've tried I've used the localizer before obviously and like done as much of like an Institute approach as you can or anything with your instructor but I want to see what that looks and feels like if this was like the high-pressure situation that it is so I'm just going to pop back up same condition then we're going to try heading back over the Wooster I'll see you guys there I'll spare you guys 30 minutes of me wandering around the fog trying various circle tool and techniques and discovering that the glide slope needle on my localizer was inoperative in this aircraft interestingly enough the runway to nine glide slope antennas are inoperative at Worcester right now which through some unexpected realism into the scenario eventually after flying for almost an hour total I was starting to get really irritated and losing faith in myself then something interesting happened I had all these plans and the high hopes for you guys and I was going to like execute a perfect ILS approach and everything was going to go well and none of those things happened at least I have plenty of fuel that's all I can say I should have the runway and I so it sort of slapped me on them whoa full power okay I am going to be fascinating to watch that later because I don't even know how that happened okay all right we're good now I just got to get my move it out together Wow real that's another story for later - is the only time back when I used to play flight simulator like a lot for training the one time that I died like completely without expecting to it's a really really good lesson that I should do a video on that at some point for you guys after some more circling in the clouds I eventually popped out in a location close enough to the runway to make an attempt at landing inside the white arc both the aiming point bars this would be like a like an emergency landing that practice before powers all the way out one two three notches of flaps and I probably have 5000 feet to go on the turn way it's really long there's that heavy crosswinds that I'm fighting to but at least I got the runway of sight now over the top of it 60 knots not the prettiest landing put them on the ground back home and I can take a deep breath Wow well that was like a lot worse than I was expecting it to be cheese well now we know I had I had so many high hopes I was going to use like the ILS system with the localizer but it's it's it's been off in my airplane and I know that it's in off at the airport right now so I guess it's kind of realistic but I had all these high hopes of how well that was going to go and I think I just proved to you that it did not so I hope that's a lesson that everybody watching and myself included wow I I wish I had more to say to you guys but I don't if you wanted me a favor and make up for what I just showed you in the comments section why don't you tell me what you guys have read or heard are the best the best suggestions from surviving VFR to IMC I just survived it twice in flight simulator but it wasn't pretty and I think that I can attribute that to how unprepared I was for this I like the GPS was giving me problems I didn't know where I was I didn't have my charts open so it's a really realistic situation for if you just got completely sidetracked and like ended up someplace in a situation where you were not expecting to be in which is what I hope to convey to you guys so there you have it I guess until next time squawk VFR and have fun [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Friendly Skies Film

Views: 296,210

Rating: 4.637455 out of 5

Keywords: flying lesson, flight training, piper warrior, cessna, vfr, aviation, flying, private pilot, Pilot, gopro, Flight, Cockpit Audio, hd, ATC Audio, atc, friendly skies film, nick cyganski, cyganski, N8027F, shareaviation, mraviation101, flightchops, mzeroa, steveo1kinevo, film, graphics, 3d, cgi, film effects, KORH, worcester, recording, high defintion, professional, vfr to imc, fsx, p3d, flight simulator

Id: 5cNi6p9jfHc

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2017