Ten years ago I was flying a non pilot owner to Malaga in his almost new Seneca Five. I was cruising along in the Madrid area at FL120 and faced with two large cells a distance apart took the clear air in between.
the aircraft was on auto and the air smooth.
It was weird as in front of my eyes the IAS dropped in seconds from 160 IAS to 60 KTS IAS. The auto would not hold altitude, I pushed the nose over disconnected and added power to no avail
I sat there watching the VSI showing a fast rate of descent and the aircraft dropped like an elevator from FL120 to FL090.
The controls frankly felt as if I had flown into a vacuum and were ineffective.
strangely the whole thing was not scary but sedate and I just sat there waiting for everything to come alive again which it did.
It was then just a matter of apologising to ATC and explaining and climbing back to FL120.
I had never experienced this before and must have been a good 10 K in clear air between the cells. Temperature at MADRID WAS 44 deg C
To add a bit more to this flight I was single pilot and we routed to Malaga from the UK VIA a refuel stop in San Sebastian going to San Sebastian I felt really ill. We landed and i told the owner I could not go on as it was not safe. He recognised dehydration and made me drink what felt like a gallon of water. It was like magic as I came back to normal within minutes.
Past Madrid still drinking water I was bursting and was even thinking of dangling it out of the pilot side window but managed to find an empty oil bottle so a number of lessons here }} not just the earth bound Seneca
Pace
Last edited by Pace; 4th Jul 2015 at 16:36.