Quote:
Originally Posted by dmcummins
Thanks everyone, primarily the plane will only be hauling my wife and I. But we want the ability to take friends on some short trips, and the son and his wife to the relatives 200 miles away for the day. The 500 mile trips would just be the wife and I on vacation. And since I can be at the airport in 5 min. there would be quite a lot of just me buzzing around. I do think that I will want to continue and get my IFR training, but that's still down the road.
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The trouble with Aviation is that 200 miles, at the 80 knot groundspeed of a 172 (I'm assuming some winds aloft), followed by a ground stop and a return, is enough time for weather to move in.
The vast majority of Aviation-related deaths are caused by VFR into IMC. I think Embry Riddle did a study that showed that the average duration before loss of control following inadvertent penetration of IMC (in the simulator) by VFR private pilots was like 90 seconds.
So what I'm saying is, the practicality of a VFR-only airplane for the mission you describe may limit you to high pressure days with a long and predictable weather window, with frequent weather checks to verify that you're still OK. EVERY pilot has had an episode where the ceiling was falling and he or she pressed on- and only the lucky ones are the ones who survived to tell about it.
On the other hand, getting your IFR ticket is a great idea that will slightly expand the mission capability of the airplane. I say slightly, because the ability to penetrate IMC and not die from an upset then introduces a whole myriad of new threats: icing, systems reliability and redundancy, convective turbulence, etc. The means of buying yourself time to get out of these situations requires very, very expensive capital equipment, and even the Ancient Pelicans here (you guys know who you are!) will concede that they give thunderstorms a very wide berth indeed. An IFR rating should increase your safety margin, even for VFR flying, and will dramatically expand knowledge and awareness of the weather, air traffic control procedures, precise navigation and situational awareness.
Sorry for the lecture but I'm basically sharing my own conclusions that led me to buy a Citabria for fun and fly commercial when I had to get somewhere. Hope this is food for your own thoughts on the subject.