unusual visual upon breaking out

Jim Burns wrote:

A friend of mine, a many thousand hour ATP, CFII, freight runner that flies
a Beech 99 sent me the story below.... he makes some great points about
transitioning from the gauges to visual and not seeing what you expect to
see.

"I did the VOR 27 approach into Oshkosh Saturday am...not sure when I broke
out of the clouds, but was still over the frozen lake....the gray sky
against the gray ice gave no horizon whatsoever! I wasn't sure I was out of
the clouds in spite of the metar at OSH. I finally realized that I was
visual when I saw some ice fishing shantys on the lake.

Be careful out there doing an approach over ice covered lakes! The lack of
depth perception because of no horizon in low visibility could be the first
thing leading to a crash. It would have been very easy to try to go visual
and have flown right into the icey lake."



Instrument pilots in Alaska (and I presume northern Canada) are faced with this
a lot. What helps, though, is the far north is often in 24-hour darkness,
which eliminates any whiteout effect.