And that's one of the dangers Sunny, you made it through that time. Next time will you say to yourself:

'I made it through last time, I'll give it a shot'

or will you say to yourself:

'That was **** last time, I'm not trying that again'

?

Every picture tells a story, and in the Courier Mail on-line there's a picture of the three ladies that were on board the last flight. What particularly caught my attention was the amount of luggage in the foreground, and I can see at least 12 items.

While I'm not aware of the load carrying ability of the aircraft, my immediate thought was W+B may have been a contributing factor.

The stories in the last couple of pages are exactly the info that is invaluable to come out of these events. The common and consistent cause of accidents is us particularly around the getthereitis and she'll be right mate..

Thanks renegade man sunfish and others for the stories

I think there is nothing better than us all detailing our brushes with these sorts of experiences. Hihosland, your story is incredible and one that I'm sure many have been through. Thanks for taking the time to write it and bare all (and especially note the emotion around what it's meant to you all these years later re family and the help you were given that day....congratulations, you did well getting on the radio and asking for help).

What's such an important factor in all of this are the human dynamics around management of passenger expectations and your reputation. Just like hihosland has pointed out, most of us are 'get the job done' 'always deliver' type of people. Our passengers know us this way too and the mix of this personality type, get-there-itis, bad weather and VFR-only capability is a recipe for disaster. I long ago learnt that taking family and friends on weekends away or to a wedding or must-get-there event is a distinct no no.

We all love flying, we all love to share flying with our family and friends, but within that love and passion we must be prepared to disappoint or have to cancel a trip and cause a whole lot of difficulty when we can't get people home. That's part of what comes with the territory; the ability to be real and genuine and keep yourself safe. As I've noted before, I think Des ended up under too much pressure to get back from Monto and probably did exactly what we've all done; pushed on when he should have just turned around and gone back.

When oh when will we tackle this human factors issue!!!??? So much work has been done on cockpit resource management in professional flying and getting pilots to check their "personal minimums" but teaching people about how to avoid high pressure/reputation loss/got-to-get-there situations is still (in my opinion) in its infancy and needs a whole lot more work.

Ren

flying-spike what happened to your post about getting caught out on a flight out of Cairns? It seems to have disappeared. It was a good story and may help some young student save their life. Please repost. We need all the stories we can get to get everyone sharing this stuff to stop these VFR into IMC accidents happening.

In 2005 CASA ran a safety workshop around the country that looked at the problem of VMC into IMC. One of the stats was that most of the accidents occurred in the second half of the journey. The other stat was that most of the pilots that did a PSL survived but the aircraft did not. The workshop was considered to be that good that the Canadians adopted the format and charged $400 to attend. The point being that work has been done in trying to educate pilots, (try and download 178seconds to live) but as others have stated the desire to get home can sometimes override sound decision making. Might be worth having a read of this .General Aviation Pilot Behaviours in the Face of Adverse Weather

I'll add another story.....had my PPL for all of about a month and took a shiny G1000 equipped C182 away for a week over the Xmas break with my fiancee..3rd leg was from Maroochydore to Young.

The weather was poor on the Sunshine coast, 1500-1800ft cloud base 5-6km of viz with localised heavy showers but the forecast was for clear conditions south of the the NSW border and west of the ranges. We set off and followed the beaches down the coast with occasional deviations to avoid the heaviest showers, by the time we past Coolangatta we were clear of the rain and the cloud had lifted - a thin layer of 2/8 at around 3000 and 3-4/8 at around 7000.

I spent the next few minutes on the radio confirming the weather on the western side of the ranges hadn't changed, requested flight following from the controller and somewhere around Tweed Heads changed course to track directly to Young and climb to 9000ft, confident that we would be well clear of cloud, maintain a clear view of the ground and that the cloud cover would continue to thin out as we progressed south.

The plan seemed to be good, we crossed the Border ranges to Kyogle without incident and it looked like we had made the right call. However somewhere between Mt Belmore the cloud started to fill in again, and the top of the upper cloud layer had risen up to 9000ft and it was becoming harder to stay clear of the upper cloud layer and maintain a clear view of the ground. So I decided to drop down to 5-6000 ft to get below the upper cloud layer whilst there were still larger openings in the upper cloud layer. So I found a nice big opening, advised the controller that I would be descending below cloud and made a descending turn at around 1500ft/min in clear air.

Within a few minutes of starting the descent, the folly of my decisions started to become painfully apparent. There were no longer two layers of cloud - it was solid murk all the way down. The hole through which I was descending that had been a good 4 miles across at the start of the descent closed up on me - the blue sky overhead went first, then the ground began to disappear too.

I pressed on with the descent, searching for the clear air that I had seen only a few minutes ago as we climbed up through it - as we passed through 5000ft the controller started to ask for assurances that I was in clear air and had a good view of the ground and that I was well below LSALT. The controller's intervention forced me to get my head back inside the cockpit and re-assess the situation....I was deep inside the Gibraltar Range at 4,000ft, no horizontal visibility and occasional glimpses of tree covered slopes if I looked down past the gear.....****! How had my day turned to custard in just a few minutes?

I set the GPS display to colour code the terrain by relative height...any terrain close to my altitude turned red, clear air turned black...there was a lot of red. I used the autopilot to maintain wings-level, best angle of climb and altered course with the heading bug to follow the black bits of the GPS display out to the south east towards Grafton.

Reasonable visibility returned as we left the range and we were able to breathe again and confirm that we were no longer in any immediate danger.

Many valuable lessons learnt that day.....I have been quite happy to go a long way to avoid revisiting those lessons ever since.

vme
Interesting, the lat long on my charts unless I have done this wrong is about 1.5 - 2.0 NM SW on Manumbar or less (too lazy to measure it.

I wonder what is correct? If you flew the YCAB - YMTO track today would you be in the TRA or not? :confused:

Someone in the know might want to get the Notam guys to check this out.

My post
 

Unfortunately I deleted it by mistake so I will rewrite it:
I put myself (and my pax) in a similar situation flying from Mt. Isa to Cairns for a Dire Straits concert. We just managed to squeeze under the overcast and above the ridges north of Cairns. It was typical S.E. stream weather and not unlike weather near the Sunshine Coast earlier this week. We were in heavy rain and I will say no more than 500" above the ridge. I was fortunate in that I new exactly where I was and I was hearing VFR arrivals into Cairns from the north. I gave myself the proverbial kick in @rse when we landed.
My previous brush with that sort of Wx was south of Cairns on my first solo nav. The plan was a departure to the north then via Biboohra to Mt. Garnet then Innisfail coastal back to Cairns. Turning east after Mt. Garnet I was faced with a wall of grey with fractocumulus and heavy showers. I turned back and landed at Mt.Garnet and re-planned on the reciprocal flight plan.
It is very easy to put yourself in that sort of situation, very important to have an exit strategy but that should never include going into IMC especially in a day VFR aircraft.
In an effort to check my spelling I came across this. Revisiting this may help others understand what they are approaching and why they should avoid it.
Forms

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../220px-Ns1.jpg http://bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.2...gnify-clip.png
A nimbostratus cloud in the background with a stratus fractus in the middle of the upper half of the image.


Fractus are accessory clouds, named for the type of cloud from which they were sheared. The two principal forms are cumulus fractus (formerly, fractocumulus) and stratus fractus (formerly, fractostratus). Fractus clouds may develop into cumulus if the ground heats enough to start convection. Stratus fractus is distinguishable from cumulus fractus by its smaller vertical extent, darker color, and by the greater dispersion of its particles.
Cumulus fractus clouds actually look like ragged cumulus clouds.[1] They may originate from dissipated cumulus clouds, appearing in this case as white ragged clouds located at significant distances from each other. Cumulus fractus in particular form on the leading and trailing edges of summer storms in warm and humid conditions.[2] Observing fractus gives an indication of wind movements under the parent cloud.
Masses of multiple fractus clouds, located under a main cloud, are called pannus.
Fractonimbus are a form of stratus fractus, developing under precipitation clouds due to turbulent air movement. They are dark-gray and ragged in appearance. Fractonimbus exist only under precipitation clouds (such as nimbostratus, altostratus or cumulonimbus), and don't produce precipitation themselves. Fractonimbus may eventually merge completely with overlying nimbostratus clouds.
Significance in thunderstorms

In rainstorms, scud often form in the updraft area where the air has been cooled by precipitation from the downdraft, thus condensation occurs below the ambient cloud deck. If scud are rising and moving towards the main updraft, sometimes marked by a rain-free base (RFB) or wall cloud, then the thunderstorm is still developing. Scud are common and are usually insignificant. However, scud precede wall clouds, which often form from rising scud.
In addition to forming in inflow, fractus also form in outflow. Scud are very common on the leading edge of a thunderstorm where warm, moist air is lifted by the gust front. Scud are usually found under shelf clouds.[3]

Jabawocky - Tempo Restricted Area
 

I agree Jabawocky. I measured this on Google Earth and got 1.3 nm SW of YMUB. I think the lat/long is more or less correct as it shows a cleared area 300m SE from the crash site as detailed on the map on the CourierMail's website where I presume a chopper could land. It also agrees with the initial information at the first press conference after finding the crash site on Wednesday when it was stated that it is located 14km NW from the Borumba Dam wall.

some interesting stories. but i noticed a lack of the 4 words that could save ones lives...."precautionary search and landings"

Hi Brian

Can you please clarify this:

I'm not sure what you're saying exactly. I've been following the Norfolk thread and the overarching theme seems to be that the PIC was under all sorts of pressures (commercial, employment, potentially not wanting to look unsure....) but at the end of day he was the PIC and shouldn't have let the no-alternative/Norfolk-or-bust situation to have occurred. But you're also saying the human factors issue in that situation was squashed? It would seem the "PIC is PIC and needs to behave like a PIC" concept got away from James there in conducting that flight but the operator and regulator aren't going to acknowledge the unreasonable levels of pressure the PIC was under either.

One of the key points I'm trying to raise awareness of is that we (PICs) can get ourselves into a 'corner' with ourselves, our passengers and others who see us as so very capable way before we've even taken off and made our way to the "VFR into IMC corner" that this accident and the stories many are writing on here involves.

(PS - those two stories of yours are examples of people that were millimetres away from fatal crashes, thanks for sharing)

Ren

Thanks flying-spike, Dire Straits indeed. I was coming into Cairns from the north one day a long time ago on a special VFR clearance when I realised I'd strayed off the runway centre line and was heading for that big hill on the western side of the field that had suddenly loomed out of the mist. It wasn't overly serious and I corrected pretty quickly but it was just another example of marginal Wx conditions creating risk for the VFR pilot.

A reminder about fractus is always a good thing too. You see that stuff going past and you're very much in the wrong place at the wrong time...

I'm not surprised that you are confused by Brians post as it was a cheap shot at me.Any attempt to link the Norfolk thread with this tragedy is pathetic.

Mmmm....You're right Brian....extremely difficult. But we all need to talk about it. The cost to everyone when one of these accidents happens is so enormous. That they're so unnecessary is what's so galling and utterly tragic too.

(Thanks for your story too Miraz....glad you're still here to be able to tell us all about the G1000's blaring red screens after you'd dipped your toe into hell for a moment!)

Not sure if this might be a factor, AIRAC H27/12 effective next month has a correction for YMUB re name and location indicating its currently depicted wrong on the charts? As already mentioned, the NOTAM gets it wrong in terms of the restricted areas location referenced back to YMUB as far as its true bearing and distance.

It is not correct on the Bundy VNC, I found this out about last Sunday as I flew over it.

OzRunways is a marvellous thing. So I compared this to the ERC/WAC and sure enough the VNC was wrong.

With all due respect to all here and the deceased, can we please stop referring to Australian terrain as " tiger country". The fact is that every coutntry around us contains Pilots who operate every day at low level among terrain that makes ours look like a billiard table, and whom dream of our relatively benign weather.

Jabawocky - Markis10 re Ymub
 

The Brisbane/Sunshine Coast VTC does have an ala named Manumbar Homestead in the correct place. The ala marked on the Bundaberg VNC would appear to be the Sawmill/logging camp of the same name but you are right - there is no evidence of any ala there.

But about 7 nm to the SE, there is the above mentioned airstrip, a one-way airstrip of about 700m in length and clearly visible on the VTC, Google Maps or Google Earth and about 1.3nm from the crash site.

My, Oh, My....
Its all relative.. Just a figure of speech..Or are you an elitist?
No doubt there are Demure and Mundane areas in PNG and in the Himalayas as well....

What do we call your Location - 'ever spinning within the wheel' ?