Anyone actually take off or land during a thunderstorm?

[Eagle]

I was vectored into a building Tstorm west of HBG pa a few years back when we had our Cherokee. everything was a washy brown, pouring rain, I was headed up with the VSI pegged, pulled the power and point the acft down, did little to help. (Mrs. E was crying, I was pissed) popped out the other side about 2000ft higher than where we went in (not that we could tell when we went in. as it was solid IMC) Was talking to Dulles, told him what was happening I was less than friendly.. So what did he say? 68W, roger contact Harrisburg approach 132.2..

Called Hbg his first question was…. What are you doing up there you are supposed to be at 5000ft.

Me Yeah no kidding your brother at Dulles sent us into the weather…


As soon as we had ground contact, I cancled, HBG was like don’t woory you don’t need to cancel you can stay with us. Umm no thanks ATC has not been our friend today. Switching to 1200…

Finished the last 100 miles or so at 1000 AGL.

I have also landed at Youngstown Ohio, Summer 2002, coming back from Fargo via Travers city. Detroit lost our tile.. We are over the lake and getting.. You are who? Going where?? Umm hello we have an IFR on file thank you… look it up please…… anyway we got vectors around a HUGELY nasty black cloud, after landing in Youngstown, We had just got out of the airplane, as lightning struck midway on the runway…

We elected to spend the night in Ohio that night.

Getting a strikefinder is on my list of things for the airplane…

 

[ready2fly]

[ QUOTE ]
Whenever I fly in or out of Florida, there's always some pilot asking ATC "Uhh, we're IMC, what do you show ahead of us?"

[/ QUOTE ]
I've done this.

Is it best to call the nearest FSS or Flight Watch on 122.0?

 

[MikeD]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Whenever I fly in or out of Florida, there's always some pilot asking ATC "Uhh, we're IMC, what do you show ahead of us?"

[/ QUOTE ]
I've done this.

Is it best to call the nearest FSS or Flight Watch on 122.0?

[/ QUOTE ]

Flight Watch. That's the purpose of the universal 122.0 freq. Saves from having to find the nearest FSS freq, and plus, that's the reason for Flight Watch's existance anyway.

 

[C650CPT]

... Never Again ...

We were inbound for home station, me the new guy sitting in the right seat. Wx radar shows red about 3-5 miles beyond the airport ... moving towards the airport. We, and I say we because I was culpable by agreeing to continue, push on figuring that we can BEAT the Wx in. We did beat the Wx, ie: the rain, but we DIDN'T beat the gust front that radar doesn't show. It was absoulutely the scariest moment I have ever had in an airplane. I just remember yelling for power and finally "helping" the other pilot by pushing his hands up on the power levers. We landed with about 65 -75 % torque and had the shortest ground roll I have ever had in any airplane. It rained so hard as we taxied in that we sat, very quietly, in the plane for about 20 minutes after shutdown.

Morale of the Story: If you are raceing Wx for the runway, back off and let the Wx win.

 

[seagull]

Actually, ATC radar is not as incapable as you've been led to believe. It doesn't show up the lighter stuff, but on the other hand, it doesn't attenuate, so it is very valuable in that they can see the entire area of weather. If they are not painting it, it's because they have that feature turned off. Ask them to turn it on for you to display stuff level 3 and above.

Our aircraft based (x band, except for UAL, who uses C band, or used to, anyway, I think they've finally joined the rest of the industry on that) is much better at defining the outer edges of the weather, where ATC radar is a lot more vague in that regard.

 

[ready2fly]

[ QUOTE ]
If they are not painting it, it's because they have that feature turned off. Ask them to turn it on for you to display stuff level 3 and above.


[/ QUOTE ]
Cool. Thanks seagull. This is how I was taught to do it.

Problem is, the one time I did ask Tampa Approach to "turn it on", they didn't and then proceeded to vector me in a C150 directly under a substantial cell. Not fun.