[BJBBB]

I have no doubt that any amount of alcohol within 24h of doing a hop in the soup is playing with fire. But absolute abstention? I dunno.

As for flying in IMC, modern avionics makes that stuff much easier. Getting an instrument rating has become more of an effort in mastering procedural complexity than any relevant flying skill. I did my rating almost 40 years ago. It took a different mind-set with basic steam-punk instruments.

Nephew got his rating about three years ago and has about 700 hours, with about 150 on the gauges, but all done with the modern stuff that does the situational awareness thinking for you. We were shooting an RNAV in the soup last winter in my old bird with mostly old stuff in the panel. He never got stabilized and I had to take the bird and took a missed approach.

His comment was that it should be illegal to fly in IMC with that "old shit". Whatever. Never bothered me any. And I have a few beers per week, but never within 48h of screeching "clear prop".

I'll tell what should be illegal: my wife's pork tacos without beer.