Thunderstorms, how do you do it?

Stormscope/strike finder argument anybody? I like and use 'em.

Richard Collins has had some good discussion about what's better/not so good...perhaps google his articles.
 
Rule of thumb, if you can ground paint through it, you can fly through it. If you have no radar, you can gamble. NEXRAD is a gamble, so is a stormscope and ATC. Always remember, "one peek is worth a thousand sweeps of the needle" even with radar. Of course in a single or light twin, you may paint through something that spits you out at FL210 covered in ice, but you don't die too often. On the bright side the world is supposedly overpopulated and there aren't enough pilot jobs for all of us! :pirate:
 
The Air Force uses the following rule:

At or above FL230 - 20nm
Below FL230 - 10nm
Low Level/Tactical - 5nm
 
d_mckerrow06 said:
As a pilot of small general aviation aircraft I have always been told the 'stay 20 miles away' rule and adhere strictly to that. However, I'm aware that the airlines/corporate aviation tend to get a little closer, in some cases a lot closer. I'm just wondering what the usual process is when coming into an airport with scattered/isolated TS..
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It's actually as simple as not flying through the red stuff on the radar and praying. Yes, coming into the airport with TS on the track diminishes your options because eventually you're going to have to fly through the bad stuff. But if you're in a small GA there is absolutely no reason to be flying TS.
 
Interesting topic especially since East of the Mississippi has been getting pounded with storms the last couple weeks. I just finished a 4 day doing a lot of TS avoidance.

There definitely are differences whether you're talking en-route or terminal as well as International vs Domestic.

Just recently I did a leg late at night down to the west coast of Mexico. To start, even planning you only have satellite data to work with looking at cloud heights. But I try to get an idea what kind of storms we're dealing with using maps. Over Mexico in the afternoon, they're similar to Florida TS...Air warms, gets pushed up over the mountains and you get storms. I find usually these are more scattered in nature and are not like the megastorms reaching the stratosphere associated with coldfronts sweeping across the nation. En route these scattered storms can be navigated around, hopefully one isn't sitting on your runway (terminal).

One little thing that I just started doing more is during calm times I bring the radar to more distant range (150nm ahead). It's not the best but I tilt up a bit and if there is anything really big out 100nm ahead, it will most likely paint. At that point I can start planning earlier. Previously I kept the radar at it's more effective range 50-100nm, it was more effective but didn't give me a bigger picture of where I could deviate.
 
kellwolf said:
If you adhered to the 20 mile rule, you'd never get off the ground in Florida during the summer. :)
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No kidding! Though I did get a little to close to a cell coming out of Naples and got a nice little zinger in front of me and a good buzzng sound in the headset to remind me to steer clear.
 
H46Bubba said:
No kidding! Though I did get a little to close to a cell coming out of Naples and got a nice little zinger in front of me and a good buzzng sound in the headset to remind me to steer clear.
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I always liked having the airplanes with an ADF when I was in IMC. :) One night coming out of DAB, a buddy of mine and me were basically just following a King Air with WX radar back to ORL. "Jax Center? We want whatever he asks for."
 
H46Bubba said:
No kidding! Though I did get a little to close to a cell coming out of Naples and got a nice little zinger in front of me and a good buzzng sound in the headset to remind me to steer clear.
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Yeah if you hear crackling, poping and unusual static like sounds in your ANR headset you are too close. :D
 
we have an awesome weather radar on the T-1...we just use it to circumnavigate around the cells.
 
The heavy precip never really bothered me, but the clear air in the hook behind it's movement made me rethink Flying vs Bullriding for a living.
 
Just a matter of "Trial and Error" combined with what your mission is. If your mission is the transportation of boxes then all the comfort you have to worry about is your own, if it is the transportation of people then a lot of bouncing around is not ideal.

For a GA perspective you have to ask yourself 'what is flying THROUGH a thunderstorm?' Is there very often a totally inpenetrable line of thunderstorms across your route of flight often? I've not found that very often. I've flown GA aircraft through areas of thunderstorms, even where there was a "line" of thunderstorms that I had to cross. I've always managed to pick myself through. In that GA airplane I had a 496 with XM weather which helped alot, in my current plane I have actual radar.

Very rarely have I found there were no holes at all.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
Just a matter of "Trial and Error" combined with what your mission is. If your mission is the transportation of boxes then all the comfort you have to worry about is your own, if it is the transportation of people then a lot of bouncing around is not ideal.
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I use the same techniques and avoid as much turbulence as I did now as I did flying pax.

It all goes back to my comfort and safety. If I take care of ME, I'll naturally take care of them.

...besides, who wants whitecaps on their coffee (OK, beside those that drive the Latte Liner, but that's a different type of foam cap)? :yup:

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I saw someone make a joke about turning down the gain earlier in this thread, but I just have to say...be careful! Keep the gain in its "auto" setting if it has one, in the manufacturer's recommended setting if you know that, or barring any of that, on "high." It's sometimes useful to turn down the gain briefly in order to de-clutter the screen to pick out some of the stronger cells, but make sure you put it right back. I've almost been bit by this after jumping into an airplane with the radar picking up almost nothing on a convective day. Only after scratching my head for a little while cursing at it did I realize that the guy before me had the gain turned way down. Seriously, what's the point of that? Turning it that far down can make a cell that would normally paint red show up as green (or worse yet, not at all), and well, that can be outright dangerous.

Beyond that, my radar usage is pretty standard. Tilt it up pretty strongly when you're down low, always look for shadowing, and be very wary of crescent-shaped cells on your display that show a strong reflectivity gradient (i.e. goes from green to yellow to red in a short distance). All of this can point toward radar attenuation and very strong cells.

I also have a list of aircraft in my head at my company that have radars I can really trust. On convective days I go out of my way to swap into one of those. The only bad part about knowing which radars you can trust vs. ones you can't comes from experience. I've learned the hard way more than once. Even if I think I'm getting a clear picture on the screen, I'll check with ATC to see if they show the same. Just keep in mind that ATC weather uplink isn't real-time, so what they see may be very different from what you see. Also, the resolution is much lower than what you may reasonably pick up on an aircraft-based radar. I'm not sure if ATC's uplink includes TDWR, but that can be very susceptible to attenuation.
 
Take heart, you can only be killed once. :bandit:

When I was a helicopter pilot, thunderstorms were easy. Fly around the shafts and land if it didn't look good. When I began flying a non-radar equipped fixed-wing trainer, it became a bit more complicated.

Obviously, Florida-style isolated thunderstorms are easy to avoid. Blue sky for miles around and a storm or two along your flight path. If you are IFR, be proactive with ATC. "XXX Center, how's everyone gettin' around that cell at 12 o'clock and about 20 miles?" Listen to the response, listen up for other PIREPS then make a command decision. Be willing to bet your life on the answer.

Embedded thunderstorms are a bigger problem. If you have radar, learn everything you can to learn to use it as effectively as possible.

Most companies fear lawsuits so they write their rules for the lowest common denominator. Professionals use 1.3 Vso for approach speed but Cessna has their C-152s at over 2.0. The reason is obvious.

By learning to maximize your use of a weather radar or storm scope, you are able to whittle down that huge liability buffer the manufacturer has built into the specs without compromising your own safety or the safety of the flight.

Your education as a pilot must be endless. Never ceasing. The day you stop learning more about flying is the day you should start thinking about quitting flying.

You are smart to ask about thunderstorms. Apply the knowledge you learn to your flying, but do it in steps to ensure you understand it correctly. We all make mistakes so be forgiving of yourself when you make yours.

Safe Flying!
 
best advice i ever got, especially when trying to penetrate what appears to be a solid line in a light GA plane: "Aim for the bright spots."

Came from a guy who had been instructing/flying for about 60 years, and wast exactly what you would call a wx sissy. His idea of a "bright spot" was a shade slightly lighter than pitch black, but it kept him alive, so i would tend to believe it.
 
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