Most Exciting Weather Experiences
- Thread starter mhcasey
- Start date
staplegun
Well-Known Member
#1-
At night, thunderstorms all around, in an SH-3H (Navy ASW Helicopter - think Marine 1) at 150 feet over the South China Sea...
Collective pulled full up (that means full power/You want to climb; fixed-wing equivalent to "fire-wall power, point the nose at the sky") and still headed for the drink!
That's when I learned that Microbursts weren't just an academic exercise...LOL! Luckily we flew out of the side of it and started climbing...
It was a totally helpless feeling; I was doing everything I could to climb away from the water and was still descending...
#2-
Breaking out just at mins in a C-9B full of people at Nas Norfolk, Va. and landng with driving rain and a 25 knot 90 degree crosswind...
The rudder really does become ineffective with full reverse...
So, since the rudder wasn't keeping us on centerline and the crosswind was 25 kts, we started to weathervane and slide down the runway sideways at 120 knots or so. Luckily I remembered my training and went to idle reverse, thus regaining rudder effectiveness and also regaining my ability to track the centerline!
I'm sure there are more, but those are the 2 which stick in my mind...
Kevin
At night, thunderstorms all around, in an SH-3H (Navy ASW Helicopter - think Marine 1) at 150 feet over the South China Sea...
Collective pulled full up (that means full power/You want to climb; fixed-wing equivalent to "fire-wall power, point the nose at the sky") and still headed for the drink!
That's when I learned that Microbursts weren't just an academic exercise...LOL! Luckily we flew out of the side of it and started climbing...
It was a totally helpless feeling; I was doing everything I could to climb away from the water and was still descending...
#2-
Breaking out just at mins in a C-9B full of people at Nas Norfolk, Va. and landng with driving rain and a 25 knot 90 degree crosswind...
The rudder really does become ineffective with full reverse...
So, since the rudder wasn't keeping us on centerline and the crosswind was 25 kts, we started to weathervane and slide down the runway sideways at 120 knots or so. Luckily I remembered my training and went to idle reverse, thus regaining rudder effectiveness and also regaining my ability to track the centerline!
I'm sure there are more, but those are the 2 which stick in my mind...
Kevin
Was in a flight of two carrying slingloads in Iraq. I was the PIC of the number 2 bird, and was the Air Mission Commander.
The weather was severe clear. Out of absolutely no where, a duststorm envelopled us droppping the visability to nothing. I called an inflight break-up, and considered climbing per our inadvertant IMC procedure. Realizing there were no instrument approaches available anywhere, and that these storms have been known to last for days, and I was over flat terrain with no obstacles, I opted to slow it down and hunt for the ground.
I radioed the lead about the plan, but stopped short as I suddenly saw his rotor system below me through my chin-bubble. My sling load barely cleared his rotors. He had turned the wrong way in the break-up.
We both eventually found the ground and shut down to wait for the storm to pass. As night approached, and fearing being stuck out there for days, I made the decision to hover taxi back to a remote refueling point. I could see the lead at about two rotor disks, so we stuck with that distance in formation and made it back to safety at 20 knots and 20 feet.
The weather was severe clear. Out of absolutely no where, a duststorm envelopled us droppping the visability to nothing. I called an inflight break-up, and considered climbing per our inadvertant IMC procedure. Realizing there were no instrument approaches available anywhere, and that these storms have been known to last for days, and I was over flat terrain with no obstacles, I opted to slow it down and hunt for the ground.
I radioed the lead about the plan, but stopped short as I suddenly saw his rotor system below me through my chin-bubble. My sling load barely cleared his rotors. He had turned the wrong way in the break-up.
We both eventually found the ground and shut down to wait for the storm to pass. As night approached, and fearing being stuck out there for days, I made the decision to hover taxi back to a remote refueling point. I could see the lead at about two rotor disks, so we stuck with that distance in formation and made it back to safety at 20 knots and 20 feet.
moxiepilot
Well-Known Member
Front was moving faster than anticipated, bringing t-storms.
Went for 1 more landing runway 6/24 and it moved through.
Winds became 230 22 g 33, 210 v 080.
And it was getting dark.
We preformed many go arounds then diverted to a field with multiple runways as the t-storms got closer and closer and closer and lower.
Went for 1 more landing runway 6/24 and it moved through.
Winds became 230 22 g 33, 210 v 080.
And it was getting dark.
We preformed many go arounds then diverted to a field with multiple runways as the t-storms got closer and closer and closer and lower.
ljg
Well-Known Member
Holy Sh#T! See you around tonight.
TFaudree_ERAU
Mashin' dem buttons
Just this past Tuesday, I had a trip scheduled to Hot Springs, VA in the Cirrus that I fly for a Part 91 flight department. Hot Springs is the highest airport east of the Mississippi River, and it is perched at 3792 feet on a plateau of a mountain. The morning of departure, every airport in the western part of Virginia was down to between 1/4 and 1 mile visibility. Roanoke Regional was forecasting the weather to improve by our ETA, but HSP, without a TAF, was showing visibility around 1/4 to 1/2 mile and VV001. I told my passenger that the best I could do was to get him to Roanoke. We had already made alternative ground transportation arrangements in case we couldn't make it into HSP.
Enroute, the XM weather on the Avidyne kept me updated on the conditions at both Roanoke and Hot Springs. As the morning wore on, Roanoke was not getting any better. It was actually much worse than forecast. As I checked in with Roanoke Approach, I was told that there were already 4 aircraft holding for their turn to get in when the weather improved. On the other hand, Hot Springs was reporting weather almost good enough for a visual approach. I conferred with my passenger, and he had no desire to hold for 30+ minutes, so we decided to go to Hot Springs.
We shot the approach, which to my surprise was nearly down to minimums because of a broken cloud layer that was hanging out on the final approach course. It caught me by surprise because the AWOS was reporting a scattered layer at 3800 feet AGL at the airport. That just goes to show you how dynamic mountain weather can be.
It was a fairly straight forward decision, nothing scary and nothing overly complicated, but it just goes to show you that when dealing with frontal boundaries like we have been all week here in the mid-atlantic, things can change very quickly and the forecasts must all be taken with a grain of salt. In a case like this, experience is the only thing that can help you make the right decision. Always have an out when dealing with the weather. Had Roanoke and Hot Springs been socked in, we had the option of going over to Greenbrier Valley, which had been holding steady at 4 miles, light rain and broken clouds up around 1000 feet. To me, thats a much more reliable forecast than saying an airport, on a stationary front boundary, is going to improve from Low IFR to good VFR in a matter of a few hours.
Another factor to consider is fuel endurance. With only the pilot and passenger, the Cirrus can carry its full load of 92 gallons of low lead. Add an extra passenger, and its down to 60 gallons. Fill all the seats and its about 45 gallons. With 60 gallons, endurance is about 2 1/2 hours with reserves. The flight was 1 1/2 hours. That would have left us with about 30 minutes of holding before having to divert to our alternate. If this had been the case, I would have most certainly waited to see some sort of improvement in the weather at the destination before electing to depart. Otherwise, if time became a concern for my passenger, I would have offered to get him to the airport nearest his intended destination that had conditions comfortably above minimums.
I know this is long enough already, but one other story I just remembered.
I was doing an IPC (Instrument Proficiency Check) one afternoon with my instructor to take a break from my usual CFI lessons. I hadn't flown instruments since getting my rating over a year ago. We shot some approaches in the Daytona area, headed over to Orlando Executive, and then came back to New Smyrna to do an NDB hold and shoot the NDB approach and call it a day. When checking back in with Daytona, they informed us that there was a Level 3 cell forming about 10 miles south of the airport, moving north at a fairly good pace. I was under the foggles, so I took a peek at the cell, and asked the instructor to keep an eye on it and let me know if we needed to hold off on the approach or set down somewhere else to wait it out. Unfortunately, he had told me quite a few stories about flying cross countries in small aircraft and punching through storms to save time. I should have let that play a factor in my decision making as the PIC, but I didn't. Just before entering the hold, for some odd reason, the instructor requested an IFR clearance into the airport. We entered the hold, and just after getting established on the outbound leg, the cockpit went pitch black dark. We were inside the cell. In addition to the turbulence, he "failed" my attitude indicator. Honestly, I nearly lost the airplane. I remember hearing the engine RPM increasing and the altimeter winding down. The instructor never had to touch the controls, but it was an eye opener. We completed the turn in holding, proceeded outbound for the approach, picked up the airport and circled to land the opposite direction, all in driving rain and about 1 mile visibility. I remember looking down at the wheels on roll out and wondering how the hell they weren't hydroplaning. Water was nearly ankle deep on the runway, and it had only been raining for about 5 minutes. We parked it, tied it down and ran inside soaking wet.
I should have punched that instructor for letting me get into that situation, unaware of how close the cell really was. On the other hand, I should have gotten on the radio and requested to head back west bound and hold or circle out there until the storm passed the airport. Thankfully, we landed in one piece and I added another chunk of experience to the logbook.
Enroute, the XM weather on the Avidyne kept me updated on the conditions at both Roanoke and Hot Springs. As the morning wore on, Roanoke was not getting any better. It was actually much worse than forecast. As I checked in with Roanoke Approach, I was told that there were already 4 aircraft holding for their turn to get in when the weather improved. On the other hand, Hot Springs was reporting weather almost good enough for a visual approach. I conferred with my passenger, and he had no desire to hold for 30+ minutes, so we decided to go to Hot Springs.
We shot the approach, which to my surprise was nearly down to minimums because of a broken cloud layer that was hanging out on the final approach course. It caught me by surprise because the AWOS was reporting a scattered layer at 3800 feet AGL at the airport. That just goes to show you how dynamic mountain weather can be.
It was a fairly straight forward decision, nothing scary and nothing overly complicated, but it just goes to show you that when dealing with frontal boundaries like we have been all week here in the mid-atlantic, things can change very quickly and the forecasts must all be taken with a grain of salt. In a case like this, experience is the only thing that can help you make the right decision. Always have an out when dealing with the weather. Had Roanoke and Hot Springs been socked in, we had the option of going over to Greenbrier Valley, which had been holding steady at 4 miles, light rain and broken clouds up around 1000 feet. To me, thats a much more reliable forecast than saying an airport, on a stationary front boundary, is going to improve from Low IFR to good VFR in a matter of a few hours.
Another factor to consider is fuel endurance. With only the pilot and passenger, the Cirrus can carry its full load of 92 gallons of low lead. Add an extra passenger, and its down to 60 gallons. Fill all the seats and its about 45 gallons. With 60 gallons, endurance is about 2 1/2 hours with reserves. The flight was 1 1/2 hours. That would have left us with about 30 minutes of holding before having to divert to our alternate. If this had been the case, I would have most certainly waited to see some sort of improvement in the weather at the destination before electing to depart. Otherwise, if time became a concern for my passenger, I would have offered to get him to the airport nearest his intended destination that had conditions comfortably above minimums.
I know this is long enough already, but one other story I just remembered.
I was doing an IPC (Instrument Proficiency Check) one afternoon with my instructor to take a break from my usual CFI lessons. I hadn't flown instruments since getting my rating over a year ago. We shot some approaches in the Daytona area, headed over to Orlando Executive, and then came back to New Smyrna to do an NDB hold and shoot the NDB approach and call it a day. When checking back in with Daytona, they informed us that there was a Level 3 cell forming about 10 miles south of the airport, moving north at a fairly good pace. I was under the foggles, so I took a peek at the cell, and asked the instructor to keep an eye on it and let me know if we needed to hold off on the approach or set down somewhere else to wait it out. Unfortunately, he had told me quite a few stories about flying cross countries in small aircraft and punching through storms to save time. I should have let that play a factor in my decision making as the PIC, but I didn't. Just before entering the hold, for some odd reason, the instructor requested an IFR clearance into the airport. We entered the hold, and just after getting established on the outbound leg, the cockpit went pitch black dark. We were inside the cell. In addition to the turbulence, he "failed" my attitude indicator. Honestly, I nearly lost the airplane. I remember hearing the engine RPM increasing and the altimeter winding down. The instructor never had to touch the controls, but it was an eye opener. We completed the turn in holding, proceeded outbound for the approach, picked up the airport and circled to land the opposite direction, all in driving rain and about 1 mile visibility. I remember looking down at the wheels on roll out and wondering how the hell they weren't hydroplaning. Water was nearly ankle deep on the runway, and it had only been raining for about 5 minutes. We parked it, tied it down and ran inside soaking wet.
I should have punched that instructor for letting me get into that situation, unaware of how close the cell really was. On the other hand, I should have gotten on the radio and requested to head back west bound and hold or circle out there until the storm passed the airport. Thankfully, we landed in one piece and I added another chunk of experience to the logbook.
IFly85
Well-Known Member
One night, me and Higney85 were flying a 310 back home from southern Il. We knew there were some storms in our area but judging by what we saw they should be out of our way for our flight home. We were in and out of IMC coming back and we started seeing lightening from left and started picking it up on the strike finder. Didn't think too much of it at the time because it still was off in the distance a little bit. Flying along a little bit further we started hitting up and downdrafts. At one point if I remember correctly we hit about 1000 fpm up and changing controls and power settings wasn't doing anything. Decided it was about time to see if center could see anything and called them up asking for them to have a look at the weather, well they come back saying they didn't see anything. Which seemed very odd to us. A few minutes later we asked them to look again adn they came back saying they forgot to turn the weather up and that we were just on the southern trailing edge of a level 2. Luckily we were far enough south that a slight deviation took us out and we got home safely.
tonyw
Well-Known Member
I was flying back from RDG to GAI. There were some clouds off to the west so I radioed flight watch to check and see what was up. They told me there was some light precip, but nothing that should affect me.
Since GAI is in the ADIZ, we've got to call for a squawk. I get my squawk over EMI. And per ADIZ procedure, we call our airport in sight.
I called GAI in sight, and the winds were no more than 10 knots. By the time I was at the point where we start our entry into the downwind, the winds were gusting to 40 knots and swirling.
I called ATC back and they diverted me to MTN. On the way over there, I get bounced around hard enough to bang my knee into the yoke and hit my head on the ceiling, and I was strapped in. I'm trying to fly my assigned altitude and ATC is actually patient with me. They told me to try to maintain x feet, we know you're getting tossed around there.
I land at MTN, and not more than ten minutes after I taxi and tie down, it's pouring. And a crew from a bizjet that helped me tie down told me they were getting tossed around pretty good, so they didn't even want to think about what it was like for me.
Moral of the story: it can look just fine and things can change very quickly. Be on your toes.
Since GAI is in the ADIZ, we've got to call for a squawk. I get my squawk over EMI. And per ADIZ procedure, we call our airport in sight.
I called GAI in sight, and the winds were no more than 10 knots. By the time I was at the point where we start our entry into the downwind, the winds were gusting to 40 knots and swirling.
I called ATC back and they diverted me to MTN. On the way over there, I get bounced around hard enough to bang my knee into the yoke and hit my head on the ceiling, and I was strapped in. I'm trying to fly my assigned altitude and ATC is actually patient with me. They told me to try to maintain x feet, we know you're getting tossed around there.
I land at MTN, and not more than ten minutes after I taxi and tie down, it's pouring. And a crew from a bizjet that helped me tie down told me they were getting tossed around pretty good, so they didn't even want to think about what it was like for me.
Moral of the story: it can look just fine and things can change very quickly. Be on your toes.
flyover
New Member
Fly the line long enough and it's likely a pilot's "most interesting" weather stories will involve trying to land in a thunderstorm.
Bottom line to any newbies reading this: Just don't do it. Ever. There's plenty of other interesting weather to enjoy.
Av8trix
Well-Known Member
Some of the lessons I taught myself.
Taking off in BHM, not long after frontal passage (as I remember), departing 18. Tower's calling wind calm on the surface. What I didn't realize, but should have, was that there was a good deal of shear that night between gnd and winds at 3k. Took off, fully loaded, climbing toward some good sized hills, and all of a sudden I had something like 20kt tailwind pushing me towards the hills. My climb went to crap, and I was already at Vx. I had to turn, then let ATC know I couldn't clear the mountain just then. Another minute turned away from the hill and I was kosher, but it was an eye opener to see a familiar climb out look severely wrong all of a sudden. Moral: if departing towards obstacles, consider your low level winds aloft too.
Summer thunderstorm flying, picking my way around cells in the SE- nothing too challenging, but some of the cells were really kicking. I was trying to do a little needle threading, and scooted thru a hole a little too close to one of the real big ones. I was still comfortably in the clear. Took a lightning strike. The static wicks did their job, but I fried my radar (at the beginning of my trip, meh), and popped a handful of circuit breakers. Got a little exciting for a couple of minutes
Moral: if you've got the wiggle room, give those big'uns as wide a berth as you practically can. Also, lightning is perfectly happy to travel sideways out of a cloud, and smite thee from further than you think.
Landing in PDK, after flying the route for over a year, and feelin pretty confident with myself, I had been racing some severe cells that were fairly widespread around the area. ATC was working with me, getting me as direct as they could thru the ATL area, since it looked like I was going to arrive PDK no more than a minute or two ahead of the storms. Stupid. That should have been the first alarm, But I was still under the bases, and thinking If I could stay under, I'd avoid the worst. Well, I recieved one of the worst beatings I've ever had, if you can imagine the feeling of going over huge pothole that feel like they'll drop an axle off your car, well that's about what I got. I could see the swirls in the cloud deck above me. By that time, I was thinking that going forward was going to be just as bad as going back out of it, so I went ahead and landed. Soon as I parked and chocked, the heavens opened up, the wind started moving airplanes around on the ramp, and I thought to myself: "That was a damn stupid thing to do" Moral: Just because you've got a little experience with pulling it out of your *** doesn't mean you can (or should) always do that. I got lucky. I will *never* land in a thunderstorm like that again. Hell. ATL wasn't launching. That should have been a clue. I should have held, or diverted.
Last leg home one night, coming thru the backside of a mushed out cold front, moderate precip, continuous mod to severe-ish turbulence, crappy ride all around. Was getting pretty harshly beat up. I was trying to thread it between two larger areas, and trying to get it thru the soft spot. All of a sudden, the severe beating stopped. Smooth air.. smooth as silk, and the sound of the rain stopped. This in and of itself was disorienting, and after just a moment I got busy looking at the other side of the cockpit at the engine gauges, making sure the sudden silence wasn't something engine related, when the guy flying with me goes "OH ****" as he looks at my side of the a/c. Looking over, I see the airspeed go from about 10-15 kt below Va, blow past the green arc, and head smoothly and swiftly into the yellow, and continue to climb. I'm thinking oh **** too, cause whatever the hell we're in, we're gonna be out the other side here shortly and I don't want to rip the wings off coming out the other side into sev. turbulence. Got the fuel pumps on, and throttles to idle, and barely caught the speed before it went past the yellow arc. Started to move to get the a/p off, and then we were back out the other side, thankfully, just dropping into the green arc again. The whole experience probably lasted 10-15 seconds or so. The next Nexrad update showed me that my soft spot had become a "cell". I probably had gotten into the core/vault/WER updraft of that rapidly exploding cell. On board radar didn't show anything, cause it wasn't raining there. Nexrad data was old. I should have been quicker with getting the a/p off. What had happened of course was that I got into a super updraft, started to climb, and the a/p did what it knew to do: put the nose down. The faster and stronger the updraft got, the further down it put the nose, and the more ludicrous my speed got. Moral: Respect how quickly the weather can change- I probably shouldn't have been out that night anyway, and know that sometimes a "soft spot" may actually be very very hard. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0450/11/1/pdf/i1520-0450-11-1-236.pdf
http://weather.cod.edu/sirvatka/es115/unit1/lemontechnique.pdf
-Couple of links about WER BWER vaults, etc. More to be found on google, it's worth reading about, since it can be very deceptive.
Oh, and be wary of a/p in conditions like that.
That's about all I feel like typing up for right now, but I've got more Most of the times that I scared the **** out of myself, it was weather related. Some of those times were just challenging, but perfectly safe, and a handfull were stupid as hell. Every time it happened though I looked back and tried to learn from it.
Overall thoughts on Wx? You will never know all that you need to know. When you think you've got it's number, that stuff will up and change on you. The only thing you can do is respect it, always always always give yourself more than one "out" if at all possible, and be prepared to admit to yourself that sometimes... you just shouldn't push your luck, and it's time to turn around and go back- or not launch at all.
-A-
Taking off in BHM, not long after frontal passage (as I remember), departing 18. Tower's calling wind calm on the surface. What I didn't realize, but should have, was that there was a good deal of shear that night between gnd and winds at 3k. Took off, fully loaded, climbing toward some good sized hills, and all of a sudden I had something like 20kt tailwind pushing me towards the hills. My climb went to crap, and I was already at Vx. I had to turn, then let ATC know I couldn't clear the mountain just then. Another minute turned away from the hill and I was kosher, but it was an eye opener to see a familiar climb out look severely wrong all of a sudden. Moral: if departing towards obstacles, consider your low level winds aloft too.
Summer thunderstorm flying, picking my way around cells in the SE- nothing too challenging, but some of the cells were really kicking. I was trying to do a little needle threading, and scooted thru a hole a little too close to one of the real big ones. I was still comfortably in the clear. Took a lightning strike. The static wicks did their job, but I fried my radar (at the beginning of my trip, meh), and popped a handful of circuit breakers. Got a little exciting for a couple of minutes
Moral: if you've got the wiggle room, give those big'uns as wide a berth as you practically can. Also, lightning is perfectly happy to travel sideways out of a cloud, and smite thee from further than you think.Landing in PDK, after flying the route for over a year, and feelin pretty confident with myself, I had been racing some severe cells that were fairly widespread around the area. ATC was working with me, getting me as direct as they could thru the ATL area, since it looked like I was going to arrive PDK no more than a minute or two ahead of the storms. Stupid. That should have been the first alarm, But I was still under the bases, and thinking If I could stay under, I'd avoid the worst. Well, I recieved one of the worst beatings I've ever had, if you can imagine the feeling of going over huge pothole that feel like they'll drop an axle off your car, well that's about what I got. I could see the swirls in the cloud deck above me. By that time, I was thinking that going forward was going to be just as bad as going back out of it, so I went ahead and landed. Soon as I parked and chocked, the heavens opened up, the wind started moving airplanes around on the ramp, and I thought to myself: "That was a damn stupid thing to do" Moral: Just because you've got a little experience with pulling it out of your *** doesn't mean you can (or should) always do that. I got lucky. I will *never* land in a thunderstorm like that again. Hell. ATL wasn't launching. That should have been a clue. I should have held, or diverted.
Last leg home one night, coming thru the backside of a mushed out cold front, moderate precip, continuous mod to severe-ish turbulence, crappy ride all around. Was getting pretty harshly beat up. I was trying to thread it between two larger areas, and trying to get it thru the soft spot. All of a sudden, the severe beating stopped. Smooth air.. smooth as silk, and the sound of the rain stopped. This in and of itself was disorienting, and after just a moment I got busy looking at the other side of the cockpit at the engine gauges, making sure the sudden silence wasn't something engine related, when the guy flying with me goes "OH ****" as he looks at my side of the a/c. Looking over, I see the airspeed go from about 10-15 kt below Va, blow past the green arc, and head smoothly and swiftly into the yellow, and continue to climb. I'm thinking oh **** too, cause whatever the hell we're in, we're gonna be out the other side here shortly and I don't want to rip the wings off coming out the other side into sev. turbulence. Got the fuel pumps on, and throttles to idle, and barely caught the speed before it went past the yellow arc. Started to move to get the a/p off, and then we were back out the other side, thankfully, just dropping into the green arc again. The whole experience probably lasted 10-15 seconds or so. The next Nexrad update showed me that my soft spot had become a "cell". I probably had gotten into the core/vault/WER updraft of that rapidly exploding cell. On board radar didn't show anything, cause it wasn't raining there. Nexrad data was old. I should have been quicker with getting the a/p off. What had happened of course was that I got into a super updraft, started to climb, and the a/p did what it knew to do: put the nose down. The faster and stronger the updraft got, the further down it put the nose, and the more ludicrous my speed got. Moral: Respect how quickly the weather can change- I probably shouldn't have been out that night anyway, and know that sometimes a "soft spot" may actually be very very hard. http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0450/11/1/pdf/i1520-0450-11-1-236.pdf
http://weather.cod.edu/sirvatka/es115/unit1/lemontechnique.pdf
-Couple of links about WER BWER vaults, etc. More to be found on google, it's worth reading about, since it can be very deceptive.
Oh, and be wary of a/p in conditions like that.
That's about all I feel like typing up for right now, but I've got more
Most of the times that I scared the **** out of myself, it was weather related. Some of those times were just challenging, but perfectly safe, and a handfull were stupid as hell. Every time it happened though I looked back and tried to learn from it. Overall thoughts on Wx? You will never know all that you need to know. When you think you've got it's number, that stuff will up and change on you. The only thing you can do is respect it, always always always give yourself more than one "out" if at all possible, and be prepared to admit to yourself that sometimes... you just shouldn't push your luck, and it's time to turn around and go back- or not launch at all.
-A-
B767Driver
New Member
I only saw this once and it caught me completely off guard. It was a layer of ground fog only ten feet tall or so. Flying a Baron on a crystal clear night into Green Bay. On a 5 mile straight in final...it was clear and a million with no hint of fog...looking right at the runway. As I got into the flare...it basically went to zero visibility...couldn't see anything. It took me forever to taxi into the ramp area. I could look straight up and see the top of the fog layer just above my head...but nothing vertically.
It was 2 a.m. and the airport is surrounded by fields. I just don't see this anymore as I fly into major international airports that are surrounded by more concrete than most cities. There just isn't the moisture to cause this occurrence.
It was interesting to me to be able to look straight down thru the fog with no hint of its prescence until entering the layer just feet above touchdown.
JDE
Well-Known Member
I've only got a couple (good thing). The latest one was a couple of months ago in the Excel. We were flying at FL270 (no RVSM LOA yet) in a cloud layer on our way to TPA. ATC told us there was a cell at 12 o'clock over the Seminole VOR. We obviously had the radar on, but we were not painting anything. We start picking up a little turbulence as we get closer, and shortly thereafter, request a deviation, even though we don't see any precip. Right around SZW we get severe turbulence and knocked around a lot. We lost a hydraulic pump (that came back on in the descent), we had Master Warning lights flashing, but before we could tell what it was, the problem had fixed itself. Broke an cabin light bulb, may have been a passengers head, and the passenger oxygen selector knob came off and we still haven't found it. The auto pilot also failed, which required us to pull the circuit breaker to reset. Shortly after we flew out of the cloud layer and all was well. We're assuming we had flown through the top of a cell.
The next one, I'm certainly not proud of, but at least it was a good lesson. Our pax showed up as a small cell was approaching. We jumped in the airplane (Conquest) and as we're starting the engines, we start seeing a few rain drops. The wind is out of the west, so we opt to depart the south runway, heading away from the cell. We had to back taxi and by the time we had got to the end of the runway, the wind was starting to shift...we had a direct crosswind to a quartering tailwind. Bring the power up and start the takeoff roll and now it starts raining a lot. We can barely see where we're going. We get off the ground and head towards the blue sky, clearing the trees with plenty of room. It basically was a non-event, but moral of the story: we should have waited 10 minutes and the cell would have been gone and we would have had nothing to worry about.
The next one, I'm certainly not proud of, but at least it was a good lesson. Our pax showed up as a small cell was approaching. We jumped in the airplane (Conquest) and as we're starting the engines, we start seeing a few rain drops. The wind is out of the west, so we opt to depart the south runway, heading away from the cell. We had to back taxi and by the time we had got to the end of the runway, the wind was starting to shift...we had a direct crosswind to a quartering tailwind. Bring the power up and start the takeoff roll and now it starts raining a lot. We can barely see where we're going. We get off the ground and head towards the blue sky, clearing the trees with plenty of room. It basically was a non-event, but moral of the story: we should have waited 10 minutes and the cell would have been gone and we would have had nothing to worry about.