PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Plane missing en route YCAB?
View Single Post
Old 4th Oct 2012, 22:48
  #140 (permalink)  
Sunfish
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: moon
Posts: 3,564
Received 90 Likes on 33 Posts
Been almost caught myself and I didn't even realise the danger I was in until a few days later.

"Get home itis" heading back to Melbourne from Swan Hill. Just North of Bendigo the ceiling started to descend towards 1000AGL. I had the brilliant idea of pushing on and decided to head for Bacchus Marsh, overflying Daylesford.

As I approached Daylesford, I could see the ceiling over the mountains ahead dropped to a little over 500AGL by my estimate.

"Thats OK" I said to myself, "I'll just squeeze under and then fly down the Lerderderg Gorge" to Bacchus Marsh, then an easy coastal back to YMMB".

.....And I did exactly that....

..and found myself over tiger country, the gorge is very rough....with a very very low ceiling that was descending, not rising.

The next Ten minutes were exciting, and nowhere to go except forward. Luckily I just had room enough to descend a little faster than the cloud.

I should have either returned to Bendigo or gone further West to Ballarat and either landed or followed the freeway down.

Lesson : Unless you can actually see your destination, don't try and squeeze through.
Sunfish is offline