Deadly Thermals!!!!

A friend of mine passed me this article about the deadly thermal currents
over Nevada. What a hoot! I've been flying over deserts for 20 yrs. and
never realized how much danger I was in!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../MNJTS506U.DTL


Here's a sample :

"Shane Gorman took a tighter grip on the wheel of his Cessna 172 as the
single-engine airplane suddenly leaped straight up in the air, then shimmied
violently back and forth. At 8,000 feet, the lurches were gut-wrenching.

"Feel that?" he said, a slight smile on his lips. "That's the kind of wind
and thermal lifts we're dealing with out here. They're pretty tricky. You
never know what they're really going to do."

That's exactly the kind of weather condition that helped send hundreds of
airplanes crashing to earth in Nevada over the past 10 years and probably
played a part in the outright disappearance of more than 100 others here over
the past half-century.

It's the kind of dangerous conditions that those who have been searching for
adventurer Steve Fossett, whose plane disappeared Sept. 3, are afraid might
have killed him.

If the winds don't slap an airplane to the ground here, brutal thermal drafts
- hot air rising up off the desert floor - can blast a craft dozens of feet
up or down so fast that it goes spinning. Even the altitude is an enemy: Most
of Nevada is so high, at 5,000 feet, that the air-fuel mixture can become
thin enough to cut engine power if a pilot isn't paying attention.

And that's just the flying danger. ... "

I usually don't expect much from reporters, but this one is just over the
top.

John Galban======N4BQ (PA28-180)

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