I had one of those "I learnt about flying from that" experiences this morning... Please note this is posted as a confession as honest as I can make it, with the intention of hopefully helping other pilots with my level of (in)experience avoid finding themselves in a similar position! I accept full responsibility for what happened... Background: I'm a 100hr PPL, just starting to feel 'comfortable' with the whole flying thing. This is, of course, dangerous...
Awoke to find a gorgeous CAVOK day, no wind at ground level. The aim was to go looking for a prominent landmark in the mountains about 20 minutes flying time from where I'm based. Appearances can be deceptive however. The area forecast said the wind at 2000' was a 20kt westerly. At 5000' it was 30kt. Alarm bells should have been ringing by now but no, I told myself it wouldn't be too bad. I think I saw the 'CAVOK' bit on the forecast, rejoiced and didn't look at much more in any detail. So I also missed the whopping great SIGMET for severe turbulence, didn't I!!!
We went flying. It went fine until we got to the foot of the mountains and a few bumps appeared. "She'll be right", I thought, and pressed on.
We got very very close to the goal when I made my only good decision on this flight - this was not becoming fun; time to get out of there. This was sadly followed by one of my poorer decisions: Rather than turning right and staying over relatively high ground, thus avoiding much of the weird stuff you get from wind near cliffs, I went LEFT. Which put me over a valley. And needing to pass over a ridge to get home. A few seconds later we copped a significant DROP and, as my pax were crawling down from the ceiling, I decided to climb as much as I could to get out of there. Full power, hold best rate of climb airspeed and look in horror at the VSI reading more than 1000fpm DOWN. OK, now I was getting very very worried, and that ridge was looking awfully close (we were well clear but it appeared closer than it was). Finally got the aircraft up to a relatively safe level, still a little bumpy until we cleared the ranges completely. Got back to the airfield and at least landed nicely, so got some brownie points back from the pax for that.
Not one of my better efforts all round. A few glaring errors:
1) Read the forecast PROPERLY!!! Wind can do funny things to aeroplanes.... wind over hills is NOT good! SIGMETs are there for a reason and I'm still at a loss to describe how I managed to miss something so vital (and obvious!).
2) Continuing on. Perhaps the biggest one, the 'press-on-itis' thing. I should have turned around well before I did. Even better, canned it on the basis of the forecast!
3) Turning out over the valley. Why I did that I'm also not sure.
4) Going in so close to terrain on a day with strong winds predicted. Of course it's going to be bumpy; I KNEW that. But went and did it anyway. I was at least 1000' clear of it at all times but it didn't feel like it sometimes!
And finally, bad mistake to take people who have not flown in a lightie into this sort of environment. I'm dirty at myself for that - especially given the people I had on board who are somewhat special to me.
I got away with it this time. The bag of luck is a little less full. I will learn from this one!!
Any comments welcome... what else vital did I miss???
GW