Even before I started taking flying lessons, I was exposed to aviation. Without a formal frame of reference, I absorbed what little I could from other pilots’ stories, reading about flying in books and magazines like this one and, tragically, learning how some of them came to grief. That usually involved poor weather. It took a while, but I was determined to get my private certificate, and then the instrument rating. Both were licenses to learn and, like so many others, I occasionally got in a little bit over my head during my “education.”
One of the earliest things I learned about flying was that poor weather and personal airplanes don’t always get along. Of course, there’s weather no airplane should fly in, but locating the dividing line often wasn’t easy. It still isn’t, but I long ago learned to err on the side of caution, even if it meant delaying or outright canceling a long-planned trip.
