Flying in rough weather

[bookworm]

I've left clouds that were spitting lightning 4 times. I swear none of them were doing so when I went in to them.

One was a "there's nothing showing on the stormscope" moment, which taught me about the failure modes of stormscopes. Two were a naive lack of awareness that it's really much better to go around them even if it's quite a long way.

I'll never forget that sky. Beautiful.

Only a glider pilot could say that. It's like a pyromaniac calling hell beautiful.

[Upsidedown19]

IR

Lots of talk of glider pilots flying around in cloud. I wonder if they all have instrument ratings? Come to think of it I don't think that I have ever heard a glider pilot announce that they are at xxxx ft and climbing at position XXX but perhaps gliders only very rarely enter cloud. I dunno!

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Glider pilots should not venture into clouds full stop as far as I am concerned

Ah, but, the gliders will tell us, us non-gliders are supposed to understand what does and doesn't make good gliding conditions, and thus what does and doesn't make good gliding days, and in particular what does and doesn't make a good gliding cloud, and then avoid such clouds in case there are gliders inside them.

I can do some of that! - if I see an isolated cumulous cloud with a number of gliders circling round underneath it then I'm not going to fly through it "just because I can".

But that's about the limit of my relevant understanding I'm afraid.

[ChrisJ800]

Back in the days when I glided in the UK (eighties), we called in on the glider air frequency when we were entering a Cu. And we had to wear a parachute in case of a midair. No training needed, just keep the T&S on rate 1 and monitor airspeed. Most gliders have speed limiting airbrakes if you start getting out of control. In my limited cloud experience the lift often smoothed off inside the cloud. As the best days for this were when there was scattered Cu, say 2/8 or 3/8. there should be no reason for a VFR power pilot to penetrate or be near the cloud and we would never cloud fly in the IFR corridors or controlled airspace.

[RatherBeFlying]

On one glider flight, we lined up nicely with the updraft front feeding an oncoming CB and had a lovely time swanning back and forth. We left in time to get the bird safely tucked in the hangar before the gusts and rain got to our field

I know of one glider that was written off by an instructor and candidate who landed in the rain and abandoned the glider which then got blown on its back

Had they stayed in it on the ground and worked the controls as did I42, the glider would likely be still flying.

I have tie downs in the back of my glider.

Getting into wave exposes you to going through rotor. I had to give up as my tummie butterflies got fidgety

[mary meagher]

I did try flying a glider in cloud once only! And announced my intention on the cloud flying glider frequency as required, sure enough there was another glider in the cloud, and we told each other how high in the cloud, so all well.

EXCEPT I had CFE (field elevation) instead of AMSL (sea level) set on the alt! so my proper calls may have been quite incorrect! so this old woman chickened out from flying gliders in cloud, and most glider pilots who do so are fully qualified commercial pilots of vast experience, and I believe in Europe this is not permitted anyhow, only in the UK. Most glider pilots would not get worried by occasional penetration on the underside of a nice cu, but these days I don't even like to do that, keeping enough space under the cloud to be able to spot cross country gliders dolphining toward me...

Got the IR in Texas but don't use that any more either.....

[Sir Niall Dementia]

Flying through the ITCZ we often find ourselves paralleling storm fronts, then turning towards them as we try to find gaps on the radar. My last lightning strike came from a Cb 40nm away. I've never yet been told to maintain heading when I've asked to deviate for weather, ATC in Europe are superb at sorting out the mess around big Cbs.


I once sat next to a PPL mate in an AA5 as he doggedly headed along the downwind side of a Cb, when I queried it he didn't want to go up-wind due to controlled airspace (Luton) We got caught in the gust front and the turbulence was pretty rough. Little AA5 handled it well, my mate was a tad surprised, and I learned a big lesson about some PPL holders being intimidated by controlled airspace.


I've flown through some mighty rough weather over the years, but the biggest lesson was actually in tightening my straps; flying a helicopter into EGLW one night I flew under a Cb, the turbulence was so bad I hit my head on the overhead panel (cutting it open on the fuel pump switches) and lost my headset just as I was about to change frequency. Landed 5 min later covered in blood and for some reason my customers took one look at me and decided to go by car!


SND

[pulse1]

In my gliding days I played around with a small CB once. I was delivering an Olympia 463 by aerotow from Dunstable back to Cranfield late one afternoon. I released within safe gliding distance from Cranfield in the middle of lots of heavy showers. Once on the ground I knew that I would have to wait for the tug pilot to return to Dunstable and then drive up to Cranfield to help me put the glider away. So, I decided to use the time to do some soaring around the edge of small CBs.

All was fine until I lost sight of the airfield in heavy rain. Even then I thought that, as long as I could see the M1 below me and what was to eventually become Milton Keynes I would be OK. Cowardice and common sense then prevailed and I decided to stay over the airfield which was normally closed at this time. I flew over the airfield boundary at 3000' and suddenly felt as if something had picked the tail up and although the nose was well down I was losing speed rapidly. In the time it took me to cross to the middle of the airfield I lost nearly 3000' and was just able to turn into wind and land on the grass.

As I crossed the main runway a RN Heron which had just landed went underneath me. I expect that he was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. He dropped someone off and took off again.

[Mechta]

Whenever the subject of lightning and composite aircraft is raised, Like ChrisJ1800, I refer people to the AAIB report on the Dunstable ASK21.

The things which stuick in my mind from this report are:

• Although forecast, the lightning strike which destroyed the glider was the first to be seen or heard by the witnesses that day.
• There are two types of lightning, positive and negatively charged. The one in this case was the more damaging positive type.
• Light aircraft and gliders tend not to have the metal mesh built into the layup that larger aircraft have for lightning protection.
• Composite aircraft without metal mesh in the lay up are little more than capacitors waiting to be (over) charged.

It is to the AAIB's credit that they took on this accident investigation, rather than leaving it to the less well resourced BGA as they were entitled to do, and investigated they it as thoroughly as they did.


Ann Welch, in The Story of Gliding, recounted the case of some pre-war German pilots who entered a Cu-Nim with the intention of setting height gain records. Several of their gliders broke up, and the ones who took to their parachutes were later found dead as skeletons with their flesh stripped off them by the hail, possibly having been up and down in the cu-nim for a considerable time.

When learning to hang glide, one thing that was always imipressed on me was 'It's always better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than vice versa'.

[cats_five]

And a woman paraglider who was very, very lucky:


Amazing escape of paraglider sucked 32,000ft into storm | Daily Mail Online
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Paraglider survives at 32,000ft

[India Four Two]

I've finally tracked down the cover page of an issue of the SAC's "free flight" magazine, which I vividly remembered when reading this thread:



The caption reads:

In 1992, the Cowley Summer Camp was marked by very unstable weather conditions
which caused cu nims to grow rapidly over the mountains and drop a lot of hail over the prairies as they
drifted east. They were spectacular to watch, as were the evening lightshows. Thankfully all of them missed the airfield.

The glider in the foreground - an ASW-12 - was the last launched, and the pilot spent a long time flying in rough lift on the edges of the storm, before landing at Pincher Creek airfield, south of Cowley. The pilot's name was Richard, which inspired this piece of doggerel, paraphrased from memory:

"See Dick get into his glider,
see Dick launch,
see Dick release from tow,
see Dick fly into a thunderstorm,
what a Dick!"

To be fair, he did NOT fly into the Cb.

Here's another picture of (I think) the same storm:



The reason I remembered this so vividly was I was next in line to fly the 1-26 with the Sport Canopy. That would have been an interesting flight, sitting in an open cockpit.

However, the Field Manager wisely decided to shut down the operation, so we were reduced to listening to Dick giving a running commentary on his progress.

Back issues of "free flight" can be found here:

http://www.sac.ca/website/index.php/...ght-magazine-2

[irish seaplane]

Bookworm - were you in the twin com in those conditions you described? I've given myself a fright in a CB in the twinky, and the only way to get down was gear down and power to idle. Frightened myself silly in the process. I find it a bit giddy in IMC, any thoughts.

Very shy of medium/long legs in cloud ever since.

Irish

[bookworm]

Bookworm - were you in the twin com in those conditions you described? I've given myself a fright in a CB in the twinky, and the only way to get down was gear down and power to idle. Frightened myself silly in the process. I find it a bit giddy in IMC, any thoughts.

In two of them, yes, though the turbulence was not so bad, and I just slowed a bit. I was probably lucky. The first two were in a Mooney 201, which if anything was more difficult than the TC.

[Capn Bug Smasher]

Several of their gliders broke up, and the ones who took to their parachutes were later found dead as skeletons with their flesh stripped off them by the hail, possibly having been up and down in the cu-nim for a considerable time.

I remember a wonderfully quaint and rambling semi-autobiography from the fifties that, for precisely this reason, advised against the ripcord until you had tumbled out of the CB and were in sight of the ground below.

Short shrift I suppose if you didn't get visual until it was too late (or ever.)

The author also advised the carriage of a suitable scraping tool to chip a spyhole in the ice that inevitably formed INSIDE the canopy when cloud soaring.

[Pace]

I can well remember ferrying an ex Indian registered Citation back from New Delhi after multiple delays we took off at night in the monsoon season.
There were multiple lightning flashes to the point that you could almost navigate around the buildups visually.
limited to below RVSM airspace we were flying at FL280 with the most spectacular firework display I have ever seen after weaving all over the place to find a way through we landed in Karachi in Pakistan and landed eventually in Dubai at 0300 the next morning.

On another occasion I was flying a Seneca twin to Shannon i experienced a lightning strike and severe turbulence by going for a hole which ended up as not being a hole at 12K
Everything went black then severe turbulence which knocked the autopilot out.
The radios went to a mass of crackle and then the blinding flash with a lightning bolt hitting the left wing two feet from my seat between the engine and fuselage.

Apart from everyone sporting Afro hair do s after the strike no harm was done
I was vectored onto the ILS into Dublin for a landing to sit it out.
strange thing was lighting chased us all the way down the approach to the point that I was convinced the aircraft was setting them off

that was a long time ago in my more bravado days now I avoid the things like the plague if for no other reason than to give the PAX as smooth a flight as possible and without Afro hairstyles

last september coming out of Italy there was a solid wall of CBS running right along the southern Alps this called for a request for a heading along the wall and a climb to FL360 to get over the top and radar and visual cues to find the most docile section to cross. The italian controllers were going mad over a refusal to turn back on track but better that than entering the wrong area.

Its only when you have the aircraft ability to fly high level that you think about the poor sods battling through and around weather way down in pistons and turboprops and take my word for it there are many who do and that brings back many memories only one I have painted above

Pace

[Sir Niall Dementia]

Pace;


Ever get the feeling that after all these years and all this learning we're getting too damn old for days like that?


Oddly the most frightening thing I have ever met from unforecast bad weather was unforecast heavy icing. KingAir 200, Prague to a business airfield close to London, single pilot I picked up so much ice in the climb that there was only about 15kt between cruise IAS and stall. Freezing level about 8 000' and mountains below so no chance to descend and the poor aeroplane wouldn't climb any more. Every gust set the stall warning off, I was petrified for 300nm.


A few years ago a couple of the GemStone guys did the same thing in a 748 over the Alps. The AAIB serious incident report is really scary.


SND

[thing]

there should be no reason for a VFR power pilot to penetrate or be near the cloud

What about an IFR pilot?

[Pace]

Thing

It depends how big and how active the CB Is as to how close you will get
You only have to listen to ATC over London to realise what a headache CBs are to ATC when aurcraft are all not being where ATC want them to be asking for 20 degrees left or right and being asked when they can turn back to XYZ?
20 miles ?? Rarely unless it was a very large solid cell

You will avoid even towering cumulus as you don't want PAX jumping off their seats and as SND said there is icing to consider
But CBs and icing whether in CBS or not are probably the two most weather related items to avoid

But how close ? It's a judgement thing last summer there was a huge cell over France trying to keep as close to a desired track and getting closer to the cell meant turbulence so you would naturally give such a cell a wider birth the turbulence itself warning you that you were getting too close to an angry Bull )
Other cells and you may pass very close in smooth air or cut corners by chopping through a benign edge.

In an ideal world all CBs would be 40 miles apart so you could pass 20 miles between them )) but sadly the real world is rarely like that ((
If your flying for fun and you open the curtains and the weather looks **** close them and stay in bed always fly in your limits and the aircrafts limits
Aircraft limits ? A piston single at 10k at probably the worst icing level minimum performance and little or no de icing anti ice capability ? Stay at home or avoid like mad ))
Pace

[thing]

Sorry Pace, bit of mind drift on my part. I was talking about your common or garden Cu, not Cb.

I've heard glider pilots talk about cloud climbs (done them myself, although I wouldn't now unless I was getting some kind of service from an ATC unit) and there seems to be a general opinion that any power stuff will be clear of cloud which isn't true. If I'm IFR I don't route around Cu if I'm climbing or descending, there wouldn't be much point being IFR would there.

Having said that I will always be on top of them if possible.

[Pace]

Thing

Ok I suppose I was making an argument that this 20 mile distance to a CB is a load of rubbish! That is categorising a CB as one thing which it isn't anymore than I would keep my distance far greater from a bad tempered giant bull than a baby bull.
It is important to be able to read a storm cell understand its dynamics and use your eyes as well as radar. Is it a large isolated cell or a tightly packed line of cells
Are they embedded or completely visible?
Are you flying in daylight or pitch darkness? etc
Watch your speed with any Cumulus clouds as piling into a piece of towering cumulus can make you loose your false teeth
And watch icing.
the worst turbulence I ever experienced was in forecast severe turbulence between FL200 and FL300 over the Alps and in clear air.
Going into Nice in the descent I warned the PAX and pulled the speed right back! The air was as smooth as silk to touchdown and the PAX departed with me with a red embarrassed face.
Departing empty on a more northerly SID and climbing through 20K all hell let loose with 45 degree wing drops cupboards flying open, everything fly everywhere.
i asked for an immediate climb to FL320 was amazed to see a solid 2000 fpm plus all the way through FL300 and smooth air
With this jet mid 20s you never saw more than 1000 fpm
Not a CB in sight


Pace