Well...
My story of aeronautical adventure isn't one of low cloud bases or diminished visibility. I have never flown into a cloud or breeched minimas in those ways; I have been right up to the edge.
Until this day I was not really very keen on turbulence inflight, particularly on the commercial cross-country flights I was doing as part of my syllabus.
New Zealand, as you may be aware, lies astride the Pacific and Indo-australian plate tectonic plates with the Pacific plate pushing itself under the indo australian plate forcing it upwards to create the majestic mountain ranges and ridges you see in the postcards.
One such range is known as the Kaimai Range. The Kaimai Range stretches basically north-south, 40 miles east from my base which is auckland, roughly half way between Auckland and Tauranga. Under various names, the range extends from the northern tip of the Coromandel Peninsula at S36-30 to the Rotorua volcanic plateau at around S38, 90 NM in total with peaks reaching 3200 ft and averaging 1500 to 3000.
It's not a mountain range (although the area is designated as mountainous terrain and subject to higher terrain vertical seperation) . As you can imagine, when the the prevailing wind, a rip-snorting westerly, gets its thing on, you can really get blown about.
Well this one summer afternoon, my instructor and myself were on the final leg of a cross-country. The leg was from Tauranga-Auckland. The surface temperature was a stinking 30 degrees and the wind blowing directly up the face of the kaimais at 30 knots or more. About 10 miles downwind from the peaks it started, just a little bit at first but the bumps got bigger and bigger until we were getting thrown around all over the place. It was really quite bad.
It was quite a lot more intense than anything I'd been in before and I'd been up in +30 dual and solo but this was quite something else.
My instructor was fortunate in that he didnt have to hang on to the controls. He was able to brace himself against the sides of the footwell and window frame. My unfortunate self was stuck controlling it. Nothing was said, save a desperate-sounding 'keep your speed up' as we started to descend in the lee of the range. It was ok, we had a goodish height margin and there was plenty of time to turn-away to get into up-going air and the descent stabilised after a while anyway and became a climb.
Without being able to brace myself, the crazy osscilations jerked the plane I was wearing in such a way as I was almost not able to control it. I was wearing my seatbelt but I hit my head on the roof several times (no mean feat in a 172). I learnt that day what the padding on the top of your headset is for.
What shocked me was not so much the magnitude of the displacements but the speed at which they occured.
Morbid curiosity caused me to want to look towards the wingtips to check for flex but it seemed as if a moments inattention would cause me to lose control entirely.
This carried on for an indeterminable period of time. It's hard to know how llong for but eventually we came out in the relative calm upwind of the range which was quite relaxing.
Last edited by dudduddud; 28th Nov 2006 at 12:25.
Reason: wrong pic