Discuss the problems and solutions to all of the situations that Pilot X finds himself in.
#1547236
Was once hand flying an IMC hold on the Finningley NDB when the the hail started and the RoD flipped to about 600fpm with everything firewalled, the yoke hauled back and the C150 icing up and rattling like a... well, like a C150 in a CB. Told ATC in no uncertain terms that I was shoving off until the big scary black thing had gone away.
Pete L liked this
By Thumper
#1549888
When I was converting to a Tiger Moth up at Cambridge, my hero instructor thought we'd get another circuit in despite my concerns and the warnings of TS activity approaching the field over the radio....

suffice to say downwind for the final circuit it hit the airfield and i really thought it was game over. I remember being really angry with the instructor and resigning myself to us stacking it on finals/round out. Tigers have very light wing loading and the stick was being chucked around stop to stop multiple times just to stay the right way up.

I never flew with him again after that.
User avatar
By Adrian
#1555296
My experience was a bit like the video over Kent. I was flying solo, IFR from Troyes to Lyon, 4 years ago yesterday. The wifi in the terminal was down, and I had left my mobile phone in Oxford earlier in the day, so I couldn't check the weather myself. However, I got a briefing from the Meteo France office on the airfield about half an hour before takeoff. The forecaster's weather radar was unavailable, but she said that there would be no storms on my route - just some rain for the first half of the flight. She was wrong!

I took off, straight into cloud and climbed to FL90 in steady rain. It then got very dark and the rain became extremely heavy. There were very strong up and down drafts, but fortunately only moderate turbulence. It became darker still, the rain became even heavier - by far the heaviest I've ever experienced in flight - and there was a bolt of lightning just in front and to the left of me. I heard the thunder clearly. The radio was unreadable with static, but I figured it was better to bust an IFR clearance than continue into a possibly worsening storm - so I turned back, announcing blindly that I was returning to Troyes. As I came out of the heaviest rain I could hear the controller again (he was quite unconcerned about me turning round).

Fortunately the clouds broke close to Troyes airport and I could cancel IFR and land.

I stayed overnight in Troyes, and from the hotel could download a weather radar image for the time of my flight. I had flown on a track of 190 degrees from the red dot - not something I would have tried if I'd seen the radar before departure!

Image

At the time I was as current as I have ever been, and possibly as competent at IFR as I will ever be. It was a most unpleasant experience, and I'm not sure I'd manage it as well today. Fortunately access to real time weather information while travelling has improved greatly in the last 4 years, so I probably wouldn't fly into that kind of weather by mistake again.

In the US, of course, the controller would have seen the precipitation on his radar and helped me to avoid it. Why can't they do that in Europe?
User avatar
By PeteSpencer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1561206
CessnaAL25 wrote:My old flying instructor of around 30,000 at 80 odd years old used to love taking me up in them and CBs "lets go on an adventure" he would say.... i used to cr*p it every time but he loved it!!! :shock:


I had one of those at Ipswich (RIP Ipswich) during my PPL training who took me up into known icing in a PA38 to demonstrate ice build up on the windscreen and leading edge of the fuel caps.

He demonstrated it all right and the School proprietor went ape sh it when we landed with 1/4 inch of ice on the leading edge of the wings.

Peter
#1564059
CessnaAL25 wrote:My old flying instructor of around 30,000 at 80 odd years old used to love taking me up in them and CBs "lets go on an adventure" he would say.... i used to cr*p it every time but he loved it!!! :shock:


Would he fly in these ?
ConcordeBA liked this
#1662104
A few years back we waited on the ground at lelystad watching the weather radar showing strong CBS rolling in from the North Sea near Rotterdam, after a couple of hours there appeared to be a gap that would allow us through to Biggin, Big mistake! So we climbed
To 2000ft and headed south, getting near to Rotterdam with very big nearly green looking towering cumulus all around the little Europa we were in started to go up at a phenomenal
Rate, nose was lowered and power increased but the ground was getting further away,
For what seemed like a eternity but probably only 30 seconds we were in a 168kts VNE dive
But still going up at over a 1000 ft/min,
Suddenly like a hand of god it let go of us and we recovered to level flight, It took a lot longer for the both of us to get over that experience and now give C/Bs a very wide berth,
Obviously it was a massive updraft but could have just as easily have been a down draft that no way out aircraft could have out climbed it, So big lesson learnt!
#1671758
Ive had a few incidents in Thunderstorms.

Struck twice in one month once in an Aztec over DTY and once in a C421 over COA. That was the month I decided I didnt want to work in GA anymore. The 421 was holed in the screen right in front of my face although it didnt come through it needed a new screen on arrival at Brussels. The chairman of the company was flying the aircraft at the time and when i looked over at him he had sweat droplets the size of 5p pieces all over his face , that frightened me even more as I thought he was having a heart attack, he never spoke for the rest of the flight. The turbulence was phenomenal. The weather radar was U/S.

Had a double strike going into LHR one evening both hit the nosecone which I had never experienced before, the bang was the loudest noise Ive ever heard in an aircraft, the passengers were white on disembarcation and I didnt look much better!

Scariest was going into Manchester with a large CB painting on the weather radar to the north of the runway. I elected to go VFR to get in quickly. Just as I was about to touchdown the visibillity went to zero and I do mean zero. I was in a massive thunderstorm, I remember thinking do I go around or do I land and just try and keep straight. Of course by the time I had thought about it we touched down and I had autobrake set max so the aircraft just stopped thankfully in a straight line with full reverse thrust and by the time i had got to taxi speed i had sufficient visibility to taxi. Neither myself of the FO spoke till we got on stand. Ive only experienced a thunderstorm like that once since and that was while driving on an autobahn in Germany and that was even more scarier!
ConcordeBA liked this
#1673057
PeteSpencer wrote:
CessnaAL25 wrote:My old flying instructor of around 30,000 at 80 odd years old used to love taking me up in them and CBs "lets go on an adventure" he would say.... i used to cr*p it every time but he loved it!!! :shock:


I had one of those at Ipswich (RIP Ipswich) during my PPL training who took me up into known icing in a PA38 to demonstrate ice build up on the windscreen and leading edge of the fuel caps.

He demonstrated it all right and the School proprietor went ape sh it when we landed with 1/4 inch of ice on the leading edge of the wings.

Peter


Peter do you remember ex spitfire pilot Mike Edwards at Lonmet