Originally Posted by
N9373M
There is nothing to be ashamed about - experience is what you get when you're looking for something else.
The good:
Had the situational awareness about the rising terrain
Aviate, Navigate, Communicate
Knew you had to get above the deck - I've lost friends scud running
The not so good
Weather Planning (did the TAF/Area forecast call for the ceilings?)
Having an out - was there a VFR divert field closer than home, or clear skies behind you? Did you have "get-home-itis"?
I don't think you had a panic attack - perhaps some vertigo. My first solo flight in IMC
after getting my IR scared the crap out of me.
Get some more instrument instruction (under the hood and in actual IMC) and you'll be fine. X-Plane and a simple yoke/throttle set up and you can fly from the safety of your man cave.
I appreciate all responses guys. To answer your two questions N937, to the first: I got a standard briefing from Lockheed Martin which did give me some airmet Ts for the route, but said that the route was VFR conditions. I checked the ceilings at my take-off airport as well as destination. I however did not check ceilings around airports inbetween my route. The weirdest part was when I finally got ahold of ATC, they said they did not see any of the weather/ceilings that I was reporting to them.
As far as the get-homeitis goes, yeah I guess I did have some of that. I knew I did not want to turn back all the way to my original airport because of fuel, and I know this may not make sense but my thinking at the time was I had about a 20 mile radius on the garmen i was using. All I saw on the GPS were uncontrolled airports near-by, and being so windy/mixed with the limited visibility I didn't feel comfortable with the workload to divert to an uncontrolled. So I made the decision to climb and followed my GPS to my home airport which has a tower and I felt comfortable with. Flawed logic I know, but at the time it made sense to me.