With reference to Mike Hart’s article, “Landing On The Shore” in the October 2020 issue, I, too, have utilized many remote mountain airstrips, including many in his native Idaho. I, too, enjoy the adventure of new challenges, but have some questions about his tradeoffs between legal versus safe. In a sidebar, he documents the legality of departing VFR with a mile visibility and a 400-foot ceiling, albeit with a few “holes,” but knowing of blue skies above. Flying at 400 feet over a gray ocean under a gray overcast is much like the “white-out” conditions encountered over snow on a cloudy day, or, for that matter, skiing in equivalent conditions.
I wrote you once before a few years ago about one of his articles in which he relished flying “on top” at night over the high mountains of central Idaho. Beautiful, I’m sure, but with no margin of safety in the event of an engine failure. (Unlike me, I guess he has not yet experienced one in the mountains.)
