VFR "picking his way thru" heavy cells with XM Radio weather

Larry Dighera wrote:
My understanding of what occurred is that the line of CBs was moving
north toward the intended airport of arrival while the C-712 pilot was
moving east toward the airport. Without knowledge of the locations of
the cells, I agree, it's difficult to know just how much danger the
pilot was in, but when he turned south to wait out the weather it
would seem that he'd have to have gone right through them. But who
knows?


This guy sounded pretty relaxed, which is not the way you sound when you're
trying to cheat VFR around thunderstorms. Also his PIREP indicated he was in
solid VFR if he was to be believed. I think I heard him say he was not IFR
qualified. If that was the case, he's either the biggest moron on the planet or
he was doing exactly what he said he was doing.

"Extreme precipitation"? If he'd gone through any I doubt he'd be a chatty chap
for quite a while. He'd be too busy changing his shorts.

I believe I'd let this one go.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com

Darwin has a new recruit to watch.

Ron Lee

Robert M. Gary wrote:

In the SW summer TS's are frequent but usually easily
circumnavigatable VFR. I would never attempt to try IFR in that type
of weather, if you get in IMC you're probably going into a TS. VFR is
the way to go.


Nope, we've got the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry all over the
NE. It's not isolated, you could really get yourself "painted"
into a corner.

On 2007-06-04, Jay Honeck wrote:
While what you say is true, it really depends on the type of
thunderstorms Peter is describing. (And I don't mean to imply that
his observations were inaccurate in any way.)

Yes, there are thunderstorms, then there are THUNDERSTORMS, even amongst
the isolated cell variety. When I lived in Houston, if we didn't fly
when there were thunderstorms, we probably wouldn't fly all summer. But
these were airmass storms, usually very small (in both the size over the
ground they covered, and vertical development). Much like the popcorn
storms Jay was talking about.

However, I was flying in Nevada a couple of years ago when there were
isolated thunderstorms. It was severe clear VFR (visibility must have
exceeded 50 miles) and very smooth flying high up (and to get in the
nice cool air, it was worth spending the 40 or so minutes it took the
TriPacer to climb up high!) Every so often I saw a distant thunderstorm.
They were fairly small... but had a distinctly more 'evil' look than the
ones in Houston.

I was passing one probably at a range of around 20 miles, judging by
landmarks. The ride very quickly went from smooth to almost smashing my
head on the roof rough. It was like a giant with a rolled up newspaper,
battering the TriPacer about. Although I didn't really want to arrive in
darkness at my refuelling stop (night flying in unfamiliar mountainous
terrain is NOT my idea of fun) I decided that flying perpendicular to my
intended course to fly away from the storm as fast as possible was the
best course of action. I flew for a good ten miles before the ride
became even remotely comfortable. I hate to think what the ride would be
like only 10 miles from that storm!

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Peter R. writes:

It still made me
sweat from the comfort of my office chair to imagine that this pilot was
flying through the weather line using up to 8 minute old data ...

Don't worry: He'll end up dead soon enough, and then he won't be making
anyone sweat any more. Plus he'll have his posthumous 15 minutes of fame on
CNN.

Marco Leon writes:

The more I fly, the more I believe that the body of pilots that regularly do
things that most will consider "stupid pilot tricks" is larger than what
many people think.

I think that body of pilots is quite large. It has to be, in order to explain
the relatively poor safety statistics of GA. Add poor maintenance to that,
and GA becomes pratically dangerous. And it doesn't have to be.

The odds are that this guy will get away with this
multiple times before he gets bit. Of course there's also a small chance
that he may never get bit hard enough to scare or kill himself.

Hopefully he will remove himself from the gene pool before producing another
pilot.

Jay Honeck writes:

I don't know any VFR pilots who would voluntarily fly into clouds.
I'm sure they exist, but I think modern flight instructors have very
thoroughly indoctrinated their students with the dangers of instrument
flight without proper instruction.

Then why is this a leading cause of death among private pilots?

Dylan Smith writes:

Yes, there are thunderstorms, then there are THUNDERSTORMS, even amongst
the isolated cell variety.

A storm that produces thunder necessarily contains lightning, and a storm that
is producing lightning necessarily contains large masses of swiftly-moving air
that generate the charge differentials necessary for lightning. Large masses
of swiftly-moving air are dangerous, so it follows that all thunderstorms must
be avoided.

Peter R. writes:

Not only do I have the tail-id but I also have the exact exchange, thanks to
LiveATC.net's 40-day archive. However, Larry, I am not going to be the one to
report anyone, since IMO this is quite a gray area. I personally have a very
different take on reporting pilots to the FAA.

You'd prefer that he die in a thunderstorm instead?

For education purposes, though, I thought it might be beneficial to retrieve
and edit the archive files into a short clip (and also removing the majority
of the tail ID so the resulting clip cannot be used against the pilot) with
the relevant content. When I have the clip, I will post it to a file sharing
site and the link to this thread.

You seem very worried about protecting the pilot--but you're not protecting
him in the right way.

Dan Luke writes:

Deciding to rat out another pilot to the FSDO requires much more egregious
conduct than this as a rationale, and much stronger evidence, too.

"Ratting" is more important than safety to you?