Flight Lesson: Lost in space

Inland in South Florida during the winter months it’s common to get low fog early in the morning, but the sun usually burns off the moisture by 10 a.m. or so. This morning, however, there was no mention of fog from the weather briefer, and sure enough, he was right. There was nothing but clear VFR expected from takeoff to touchdown. Preflight completed, it was go-time.

It was a calm morning with none of the usual bumps. As I settled in during cruise, I could see a slight haze in the distance, but visibility must have been 8 to 10 miles. As I approached the lake, I looked for landmarks that I could reference on my VFR sectional to make sure I was on my intended route of flight. As I crossed the shore, I knew there would be no more landmarks over the lake, and so I focused on the compass and directional gyro to maintain my heading. After several minutes, my hands began to sweat. At first, I could not understand why, but then I realized I was slowly losing sight of the horizon. I wasn’t quite sure how this could happen and was stunned for several seconds. With a little fear and confusion and thinking about the clear weather I had behind me, I considered whether I should make the 180-degree turn. I didn’t know how I could have flown into a cloud and not noticed it. But there were no clouds in sight before this.

“Fly the airplane,” I heard my instructor say in my head. I concentrated on the instruments. I looked right and left and could see a little of the coastline of the lake, and then—just like that, it also was gone. My fears mounted, but I told myself: the engine is running fine, I have fuel, and it’s a calm day, so it should be relatively easy to keep the airplane upright.

I thought about all the training on the inner ear fooling pilots, so I said to myself, Keep the attitude indicator level no matter what you “feel.” I slowly looked left and right, trying to see the coastline, but none was visible. I could see the lake if I looked straight down, But looking straight ahead was another story. As I tried to make sense of what was going on, it dawned on me that the haze, the water, and the sky had blended into one uniform color; although I was in perfectly legal VFR weather I was also in actual instrument conditions.

It was simply unbelievable that the three distinct features were one gray visual curtain. I knew that my track over the lake was about 30 miles long and so I quickly began calculating how long it would take me to see the other side of the lake’s shoreline. I figured I could see land features 10 miles away. It took about 5 to 10 minutes, and the shore of the lake returned along with my normal heart rate. The flight continued in normal VFR weather, there and back. On the return trip, even though conditions would have been different, I added two extra minutes to my flight time to avoid flying over the lake. I now plan a little more conservatively, gladly going around any obstacle that could present expected or unexpected challenges.