SF Bay Area to San Diego

Just completed the trip last night. The Gorman pass is actually pretty
short, about 5 mins of flight to the LA basin, or looks like just a
minute or two if I'm going to Palmsdale. A very easy pass at least for
day time VFR.

Now, the wind was really strong this Saturday. It's over 40kts at 9K.
There is a Sigmet (is that Sigmet T?) for strong and severe
turbulence at or below 17k. I got a lot of pilot reports of strong
turbulence near my route and down draft over 1500fpm and these were
from twins and commuters. Somehow I decided to go forward. I figure
I'll reduce the speed to 100mph and climb to 11.5k and prepare to ride
it out, not really sure a good decision or not. But by the time I
reached the pass from the north, the air was very smooth. But I was
still very nervous and figured the turbulence must be ahead at the
leer side. But it never happened. It was very smooth all along. Not
sure if this experience, which might make me bolder, is good or bad
to me for the future. Can anyone share your experience with turbulence
in mountain flying? What is really happening in a severe turbulence?

Jizhong

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 20:38:07 -0800, wrote:

Jim,

Thanks. I like simple rules. It's comfortable to hear about your rule.
So I should not do a night mountaineous flight with a single engine.
But I'm nore sure about the other two combination: SE at night or SE
over mountains. I'm also a little more reserved to do a night
mountaneously than yesterday. That's why I'm here hitting the
keyboard. Now, by the way, my proposed route is only a 10min flight
over a pass. Flat land both sides.

Jizhong
On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 11:43:03 -0800, Jim Weir wrote:

Single Engine
Night
Mountains


Pick any two.

Jim
(CFI from the mountains)



shared these priceless pearls of wisdom:

I'm thinking of a night flight. Will this be a
-foolish choice to cross the Gorman pass in the dark?
-
-Jizhong


Jim Weir (A&P/IA, CFI, & other good alphabet soup)
VP Eng RST Pres. Cyberchapter EAA Tech. Counselor
http://www.rst-engr.com