A C172 instructor reports flying non standard patterns while avoiding clouds on a MVFR day at iwa.

Attributes
ACN	1201836
Time
Date	201409
Local Time Of Day	0601-1200
Place
Locale Reference	IWA.Airport
State Reference	AZ
Environment
Flight Conditions	Marginal
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Skyhawk 172/Cutlass 172
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Landing
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Function	Instructor
Qualification	Flight Crew Flight Instructor Flight Crew Multiengine Flight Crew Commercial
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 210 Flight Crew Total 1268 Flight Crew Type 705

Narrative:

The metar was reporting MVFR conditions. Student who is rated in the airplane and I decided we would go up in the pattern to see if we could make it out to the practice area with being able to maintain basic VFR cloud clearances. We would not have been able to; but we were able to in the pattern; however we had to maneuver away from clouds making for some non standard patterns (a bit wider etc).

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A C172 instructor reports flying non standard patterns while avoiding clouds on a MVFR day at IWA.

Narrative: The METAR was reporting MVFR conditions. Student who is rated in the airplane and I decided we would go up in the pattern to see if we could make it out to the practice area with being able to maintain basic VFR cloud clearances. We would not have been able to; but we were able to in the pattern; however we had to maneuver away from clouds making for some non standard patterns (a bit wider etc).

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.