Whats the worst fog you have seen?

[nomorecatering]

Talking it over with some guys today, it seems that viz of less than 200m is fairly rare. However I have driven through some fog on the Wollongong to Sydney freeway where the vis was 1 centreline stripe ahead of my car.

Anyone else had some ripper fog experience? Maybe the QF guys who go to Europe must have some stories.

[TOUCH-AND-GO]

Coming back from YLEG to YMEM we were flying vfr, we had a fast moving storm approaching west to east.
Unfortunately the storm got to the airport before we did. :} Bloody head wind..:ugh:
Anyway we had to request IFR into Essendon.
Cloud overcast 1000 ft Visibility 800 metres.
Though I've definitely seen worse.

[Desert Flower]

The YLEC ones were pretty good in days gone by. Used to stand by the fuel bowsers & couldn't see the other side of the apron. For those of you that have been to YLEC you'll know that isn't very far!

DF.

[captainng]

75 metres in jersey, channel islands.
couldnt count the fingers on your hand at arms length and it appeared dark even though it was the middle of the day lasted two days!!

[LeadSled]

Folks,
50-75M in Beijing, and it happens quite often.
Back in the days of the London peasoupers, I have personally experienced visibility down to less than 2M- less than the length of the bonnet of my then Ford Anglia.
Tootle pip!!

[RedhillPhil]

In 1972 during my railway traincrew days there was a fog covering north London including Finsbury Park railway station. Standing at one end of a coach it was only just possible to see the other end. A railway coach then was about 65' long. I've never ever seen such a thick fog before or since.

[gassed budgie]

of my then Ford Anglia

....you poor bastard.

[Dak Man]

21st Novemner 1989 when BA 747-100 G-AWNO missed the Penta hotel at Heathrow by a matter 12 feet after electing to execute a go around. I was working at LHR at the time, while walking around the airport perimeter that very day it was difficult to see cars on the road.

Almost a truly catastrophic day.

Sadly, Capt Stewart was scapegoated and later committed suicide.

A story worth reading.

http://www.pprune.org/aviation-history-nostalgia/350529-true-story-2.html#post4538047

[ShyTorque]

Leadsled,

Back in the days of the London peasoupers, I have personally experienced visibility down to less than 2M- less than the length of the bonnet of my then Ford Anglia.

If you'd owned a Mini you'd have had a metre beyond the end of your bonnet to play with.... Luxury ;)

[Checkboard]

Last year (perhaps the one before) I flew a Cat3b airbus to Glasgow, where they were holding due fog. With vis limits of 75m,75m,75m I felt pretty confident, and asked them what the visibility was.

50m came back the reply ... :bored:

It upgraded to 75m a bit later and I landed - but promptly got lost on the taxiway (and Glasgow is pretty simple!).

[DUXNUTZ]

Freezing fog.

[Lindstrim]

NZHN most days?

[18-Wheeler]

The worst I've ever seen was in early 1990 in Brisbane.
Was flying a Citation 2 down from Cairns to Brissy and back and was sitting on the ground in Brissy at about 1am I guess.
Forecast was for fog and oh yeah it came.
We were parked out at the GA apron and as I walked out from the big TNT shed towards the plane I could sense something moving behind me. I turned around and a huge bank of fog slowly rolled over the top of the shed like a crashing wave. I'm not sure how long it took because I was mesmerised by how it all looked, but not too long afterwards it was barely possible to see the glow of lights on those big light poles in the middle of the apron.
Mate of mine just managed to land on 14 before the fog got that far, and because he couldn't see where to go he had to wait about twenty minutes for a ground car to get out there to guide him back. Took about 45 minutes from landing on 14 to park the plane at GA.

[TWOTBAGS]

1996, Zurich, Serious Cat 3++ morning. The driver of the crew bus stopped (we thought) in the middle of nowhere and we were 30ft from the front of the plane and could not see it:eek:

Lets just say that we did not make our slot that day. I have never seen anything so dense ever since. (fog that is):E

[Ollie Onion]

Worst I ever saw was also in Zurich, we landed CAT III B with 75m all the way down the runway. We landed, exited the Runway, couldn't make out any of the taxiways so asked for the follow me car to come out........ he couldn't find us :) Sat there for around 15 minutes until we finally saw the follow me car and made our way to the stand.

Second worst was in Guernsey, I was down for 4 days of flying and had all 4 days cancelled due to 'sea fog', funny thing was the airport wind was gusting 20kts. The company tried to get me home by catching the ferry to Jersey, but they were cancelled due to the fog also. I thought I might try and get a round of golf in, but couldn't see the fairways from the tees, so all and all a bad week.

[LeadSled]

....you poor bastard.

Gassed Budgie,
Maaate!!!, That was a top car ----- compared to what else was available.
I even had a new one, (1962) did something like 120,000 miles in it with no serious problems, pretty unusual for pommie cars of the day, where a de-coke and valve grind at 10,000 miles was common --- including with older side valve Fords.

Re, viz, Yes, several times I actually had to get my girlfriend of the time to walk along the gutter, with a hand on the mudguard, shouting steering instructions, to find a side street to get off the road before some clown rear-ended me. I retrofitted a new fangled thing called a windscreen washer, even in the lesser fogs, I would have half an inch deep buildup of solids at the end of the wiper sweep after the 20 or so miles from Biggin Hill to home --- and we breathed that sh1t in!!
To say that the peasoupers were bad for tour health would be an understatement, they used to be an "orrible yellow/green colour --- the colour of pea soup, hence the name.

Tootle pip!!

[kookaburra]

Launceston, about 30m
Fog was forming in all the low spots on the way to the airport about 4:30am.
Tried to get loaded and out asap.
It literally rolled over the airport as we started to taxi from CAVOK to nothing.
As we had already started to vacate the apron we continued to taxi out and could only just make out one centre line taxi way light before we could see the next shining through the fog.
Sat on the threshold for 15+min as the vis varied but never got above 200m til we taxied back in and shut down.
Of course the fog started to clear and a minute or two after shutdown.

[VH-XXX]

Coming in to land at Albury at 3am, we thought only half the runway lights were working... the other half were under fog! As we hurried to refuel there was a eerie moist feeling on the back of our necks as the fog continued to roll in over the airport. We got out of there as quick as we could!

[Valdiviano]

Launceston, 1982, about 0330, L188 with a crazy but very nice ex crop duster from NZ as the Cpt, airport closed due fog, FO (me) mind in neutral after a long night. Cpt asked tower for a start clearance and to have a look, we could barely see the taxi way lights, got clearance to line up and see how many lights we could see, about 30 / 40 mts was all, he asked tower for clearance to taxi along the rwy, they ok, taxied about 100 mts and on the brakes opened the throttles ( about 15 feet discs x 4) he did this about 4 times every 100 mts, asked for back track, rwy clear, quickly back track to threshold, asked me how many lights can you see, we agreed we had sufficient for a legal T O, we could see the fog rolling quickly in again, asked for a T O clearance, we got that, and left. I learned something that night.
I have a couple of other GREAT flight with him in the Electra as it was being retired in 1983. Dawn between Townsville and Cairns B050, coastal.
Hobart to Launceston special charter at 1600 also got a clearance B050, I remember telling him " You are nearly retired, I am just starting, we will be both OUT of a job" Got photos of the sheep running up the sides of the valley higher up than the Electra. The good old days. Survived that but resigned in 89.

[haughtney1]

H1 'twas maybe 13-14, duck shooting on the Waihou river...."quaaack" ...dad "**** that's close....get ready" me.. "huh?" dad "I said get ready...the duck is close"..... me "huh???" dad "oh for christs sake H1..there's a fecking duck getting close...can't you hear it?" me..."hear it? of course I can hear it..but as you are 4 feet away and I can barely see you...I reckon I'm gonna have to club it to death rather than shoot it..."
Was the thickest fog I have ever experienced...RVR me thinks was about 6 feet:uhoh:

[Dog One]

Over the years, every now and then, YMLT would have fog for 36 hrs straight. Nothing get in and the odd departure tongue in cheek viz wise. Every thing diverted to YDPO except the 727 and DC9's which went to HB. On one occasion saw Ipec's entire fleet plus Bristol Frighteners, DC3's and sundry GA types parked waiting for fuel and freight. YDPO and YWYY can often go out with sea fog.

[John Eacott]

North Sea, sometime in 1973 operating Sea Kings with 824NAS off Ark Royal (the big one with F4Ks and Bucc's), we ran into a bit of fog which hung around for 10 days out of our 14 day exercise and grounded everyone and everything: except us!

We'd developed a 'fog approach' which was yet to be used in anger, so yours truly was left out when the fog rolled in and cut vis to some horrid number such that we only got visual with the water at about 80 - 100' on descent to the 40' auto hover. Cunning plan was a self radar intercept to a mile astern the Ark, descend from 200' transit height to 70' with manual cyclic and fly up the ship's wake at about 20kts closing.

Good idea, but where's the ship's wake? Blind arc in the radar (behind the main gearbox) put us on doppler plot so the looker gave us a quarter mile count, ship still not visible, one driver with head out of the sliding window looking for the wake, suddenly there's the very distinctive back end of the boat looking as if it was quite a distance away. Then it was a hundred feet away as we realised that the image of the round down was actually the boat deck, and the round down was looming above us: talk about slowing down in a hurry!

End result was a rethink of a few details in the procedure and we then flew day and night for more than a week in <100ft fog.

(The approach was refined by the quarterdeck sentry chucking smoke floats overboard every few minutes to give us a 'flare path', plus streaming the splash target at a quarter mile, plus turning on the ships formation fog light. Oh, that's right they couldn't the switch for the fog light so they parked a flight deck tug on the round down with the headlamps on full beam!!)

[criticalmass]

25 metre visibility on the old Princes Highway just north of the lookouts at Sublime Point (north of Wollongong)...I was driving at about 40mph and had to open the driver's door and look at the white lines going past me to make sure I was still on the road!

That was fine until some maniac came up behind me at twice my speed and overtook me! I pulled off the road into a gravel side-road that led to a communications site and waited until dawn before resuming my journey.

[ChrisJ800]

Having lived and flown half my life in oz and half in the uk, british fog is way more dense and clammy than anything we get here.

[Checkboard]

taxied about 100 mts and on the brakes opened the throttles ( about 15 feet discs x 4) he did this about 4 times every 100 mts, asked for back track, rwy clear, quickly back track to threshold, asked me how many lights can you see, we agreed we had sufficient for a legal T O,

A Caravelle III crashed near Zurich in 1963 doing that. :uhoh:

The aircraft's brakes overheated due to the application of full engine power during taxiing. This caused the aluminium wheels to burst, one of them on the runway prior to departure. Upon retraction of the landing gear, the hydraulic lines in the gear bay were damaged. This was caused either by the wheels that had exploded, or the bursting of the other wheel rims during the climb. Subsequently, spilled hydraulic fluid ignited when it came in contact with the overheated landing gear rims. The fire damaged the gear bay, followed by the wing. Finally losing its hydraulic pressure, the aircraft became impossible to control.
Swissair Flight 306 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_306)

[flywatcher]

From the book "Dick Richey - the Flying Fisherman".

The technique of “fog hopping” was developed many years ago. While this may sound quite suicidal, in reality on the relatively long beaches on the north coast of Tasmania, a Super Cub with beach landing wheels and a pilot with an intimate knowledge of the topography of the coastline can fly home quite safely if he happens to get stranded on a fog bound beach.To set things in motion, the aircraft is pointed in the direction of Devonport, there being little or no wind in most fogs, and taxied along the beach at a speed that will allow it to stop within the visible distance. If the fog only allows a visibility of 50 metres, a speed of about 10 kilometres per hour is enough, if the fog lifts a little, the throttle is opened a little, the tail comes up, speed goes up to about 50 kilometres per hour, a slight further improvement in visibility and we are airborne at 40 knots, about 80 kilometres per hour at a height of ten feet. If visibility drops again, slow a little, wheels back on the beach, until conditions improve, then back into the air, sometimes up to 50 feet and 85 knots, 170 kilometres per hour, then back to sea level as visibility gets worse.The headlands are the only problem, it pays to know when one will appear and if visibility is really bad, it may be necessary to stop and wait till it improves. If visibility is reasonable, say, more than a couple of hundred yards, follow the headland round to the next beach, keeping close to it to keep the waters edge in sight as glassy water in fog can be tricky and height above it is easier to judge if you can see the shoreline.After some taxing, some flying, some half and half, it is quite possible to arrive at Devonport. However, if the fog is that thick, the airport is invariably closed. It is best to taxi the last five kilometres to the airport boundary along the beach so the Flight Service Officers on duty can’t hear the sound of the engine, you are required to report if you are flying in the vicinity of the airport, but if you are taxying along the beach then, of course, you are not flying, but it is still best not to bother them. On arrival, the engine is shut down until after five o’clock in the afternoon and the Flight Service Officers go home. After they have gone, the weary pilot fires up the engine, takes off and hops over the sand dune and onto the fog shrouded airstrip and puts his aircraft back into the hangar. Just another day at the office to a working fish spotter.

[VH-XXX]

Where I come from it's called "Mist" and not fog and a foggy day is referred to as "VFR coastal."

[Desert Flower]

british fog is way more dense and clammy than anything we get here.

As is some of the food apparently! ;)

DF.

[Neptunus Rex]

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.Charles Dickens - Bleak House

[Keg]

I've stood and watched Rex SAABs depart Wagga when I'd lost sight of them between the terminal and leaving the apron. Less than 100m vis. Of course, I wasn't on the threshold to see how far they could actually see. :rolleyes: :ugh:

[Clare Prop]

I'm with captainng here...the "40 knot fog" a sea fog rolling over the runway in Jersey, landing just as it rolled over the far threshold and in nil vis as I taxiied clear of the runway...:eek: another 20 seconds and I would have had to divert to England, 40minutes away as the fog was going to roll over France after it had covered up the Channel Islands! :eek::eek: