Ok, I am sure this has been asked before so I appologize in advance but I cannot find the answer anywhere....

Here is the scenerio...I am flying at about 5000 feet (or so says my altimeter) and I run into very thick cloud...I am approaching my detination and I am doing a VFR landing.
I know that the elevation of the airport is roughly 3000 ft above sea level...
I begin my decent but of course I am totally blinded by the clouds...and I do not know how low the clouds are...

Is there a way to find out exactly how close to the ground you are?? Taking the ground elevation above sea level out of the equation...is there a way to have your altimeter read exactly how high you are and not how high above sea level?

Thanks in advance! 

This is an example of why there is such a thing as an IFR rating.  lol

Keep in mind, that your altitude is decided by sea level pressure.  That's why you've gotta adjust your altimeter setting to the number assigned by ATC. 

Won't help you in the case of mountains though.  That's why I'm usually well above FL200.  lol

The radar altimeter just tells you what your height is vertically above the terrain. It is independent of barometric pressure...because it uses radar!

The yellow tab is your 'decision height' - typically this might be 500 ft. If you can't see the ground by then you abort and divert. If you work for a commercial airline, they will tell you what your official 'company' decision height is and you set it accordingly.

The radar altimeter only works over a very limited range a thousand feet or so, so it's only of value in the latter stages of the approach, not while flying around. And remember, because the radar altimeter only looks downwards vertically, it won't stop you flying into a mountain!



PS

This reminds me of when I was living in Bradford (UK) for a year and working on course work into the late evening. I set my airband to Leeds/Bradford Approach and used to listen to the radar assisted let-downs.

Bradford can be a murky old place in the Winter and I doubt there could have been ILS in place then. ATC used to have phrases like 'you are 6 miles from touchdown - heading should be X, height should be Y' as they descended. Then in the last stage, they used to say 'CHECK YOUR DECISION HEIGHT' because it's always the Captain's responsibility, not ATC. They are only there to ASSIST.

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Good Advice!

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Yes, there are rules for VFR flight, Cherokee.....the most fundamental one being that you don't fly into clouds! You're supposed to keep a minimum horizontal and vertical distance from clouds for VFR; the separation requirements vary with the type of airspace you're in.

Check out this link for the basic VFR requirements:
    http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfrhtml_00/Title_14/14cfr91_00.html
(it's in 91.155)

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you should tell that to my instructor:) in my last lesson, he had me flying into clouds, using the instruments, and giving me a brief intro to a real ILS(although we never used it for obvious reasons) and listening to local radio:). that was the most fun i had in my three lessons, although nothing compairs to the thrill of the first lesson.
as for actual height and not hitting the mountains, there is a pretty new system, that basically warns you of terrain that is in front of you it works alot like the radar altimeter, i dont know if there is an accurate model of it for flight sim i will have a look around see what there is.

As long as he files as IFR or a "local" he's fine, legally and morally. I used to prefer to take my students into "actual" conditions. It's better for real world training, building confidence and gets the student away from the hood(aka cranial torture device) for a little bit. But, definitely file!   

can't help it

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that would be your detonation then LOL

AJ