Thanks everyone. I have my PPL checkride scheduled for this week. After that I intend to fly a lot across the country and wanted to know how best to deal with my occasional inadvertent flight into clouds that could happen at any time. I should just stick to VFR for the time being.
The way to handle an inadvertent VFR flight into instrument conditions is to call ATC for help
immediately. If you're getting flight following, talk to that controller. If you're not already in contact with ATC, dial up 121.5 and announce your location, altitude and problem -- you'll have plenty of help very fast.
What you
don't do is try to weasel your way out of it by acting like you're IFR-qualified when you're not -- confess your situation and tell them truthfully what your and your plane's capabilities and limitations are. The FAA is not going to go after your ticket if you just plain made a mistake but admitted that up front and were straight with those trying to help you -- that's where remedial training or counseling come in (probably good things if you got yourself into that situation inadvertently so you can avoid doing it again). OTOH, if this become an "occasional" event rather than a one-time goof, they are going to find other, more painful ways to get your attention.
That said, this is one of those things where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You really
shouldn't be having "occasional" entries into instrument conditions -- this should be a very rare or even nonexistent situation for a competent VFR pilot. How do you avoid that problem? Get all the weather knowledge you can so you make good go/no-go decisions. Start with the FAA's Aviation Weather (you can download it to your iPad iBooks
here) and
Aviation Weather Services. Visit Scott Dennstaed's
aviation weather training web site and consider getting some of his CD's or signing up for his courses. Read Robert Buck's book Weather Flying. Study the weather reports, forecasts, and charts regularly, even on days even when you don't intend to fly, so you start to get a feel for reading and interpreting weather information.
This will also help you immensely when you start your instrument training later on. As an active instrument instructor, I can tell you that weather is usually the weakest area I see on pilots starting instrument training. At the same time, I know from sitting in on a lot of IR practical test orals that it is heavily emphasized on the test. And after over 40 years of instrument flying, I can also say it's awfully important to staying alive once you do start flying IFR.
