Aircraft: AS Piper Arrow - Turbo
Flight plan: YESP - YNRV - YABA. (VFR On Top)
This flight was intentionally flying in weather I’d never take my real plane in. MSFS was just absolutely amazing during this flight.The transition of weather from highish clouds to IFR was so seamless and believable. At one point I could see rain almost surrounding me and see the direction of the wind based on it. Just perfect. I wish I recovered the whole flight.
Weather was fine at YESP with broken clouds. I decided to do VFR On Top for as long as possible. After climbing to 8,500 feet I was able to navigate easily because I was almost traveling coastal.
At about 30nm from YNRV ithe clouds looked like there were getting heavy along my route with some a couple of TCUs starting to form. So I descended to 3,500 to get below the cloud layer and start thinking about good and silly decisions I could make. I press on (bordering on silly given the lack of diversion options if I continued).
It seemed visibility was reducing the further I went and there were few airfields around so I decided to follow the coast more so if I had to I could land on a beach. Obviously, in real life, we would have landed at an earlier airfield already or at worst, turned around to get to safety. But, this is a sim. Let’s keep going…
I was now at 1,500 feet to stay under the clouds, visibility was OK at that hight but I was surrounded on three sides by rain. It is stupid for a VFR only pilot to keep going, but I guess I’m not that bright…
There was no way I was going to reach YABA and if diverted to YJGP I would by flying over a lot of bushland with many trees so even though I had a rain free passage there I decided to go to YRAA instead because I could remain coastal almost all the way there with nice sandy beaches along the way, it was a similar distance away and only 12 minutes in time. If I ended up in rain going to YJGP I may have had to try landing on a country road…
I’m now at 1,000 feet and descending, 8 minutes out from YRAA. At 500 feet, Not too long later, I can see the town I am going to and it looked pretty clear at that altitude. Onward like an idiot I press!
I have reached the town at 500 feet. The airfield is 3nm away but I can’t see it. All of a sudden, I’m IFR. I can see a road but nothing else and I’m at 300 to 400 feet. I try tracking back towards the coast where just 2 minutes ago I could see OK. Nope, it looks like the weather had deteriorated more.
After some insanely risky low level IFR I am back at 1,000 feet and searching for somewhere to land. I can’t see anything at all except rain. I have about 1 hour of fuel left so I could got to another field but would it be better? If it was just as bad and low fuel, eek.
The land in the area has very mild hills, I am in sight of ground and tree tops at about 200 AMSL. Above 300 AMSL I can barely even see the trees.
Knowing the land has not big hills nearby, the plan is to keep low and see if I can find the runway. I’m leaning forwards and recognize this road fork. I think the runway is at about 350 degrees of my position.
I think this is it. I had overflown this area before and it seemed wide and flat. It would do, I hope there are no farm animals on it! I don’t want to risk losing it again so I commit to landing.
I survived!
