Departure Downdraft

摘要

Shortly after receiving my instrument rating, I had occasion to help ferry a Piper Archer a whole dozen miles. It was the dead of winter, dark, and snowing. The snow was dry and the temperature too low for it to stick to the Archer, itself cold-soaked. Even though I was as instrument-current as it gets, my comfort level was too low to tackle this. It promised to be a high-workload flight in conditions I had never experienced. I declined, and someone more comfortable with those conditions handled the flight uneventfully. That was the first time a daunting instrument departure overcame my concern with an approach at the other end. But not the last. These days, in fact, I'm usually a lot less concerned about an approach to minimums than I am a takeoff involving challenging weather.