IFR to Charlotte in a Mooney

Mortimer Schnerd, RN wrote:
wrote:
Be careful about waiving wake turbulence delays at an airport like
this. There are some fine people that should still be with us but are
now six feet under because of this. Saving a few minutes is not worth
rolling upside down and dying in a fiery crash. Have you seen the
videos of visible wake vortices and how long they can persist?
Getting off early before the airliner's rotation point is one thing,
but unless you can outclimb it, you're still going to have to go
through the wake at some point if it hasn't dissipated.


Not necessarily. I waived wake turbulence on an almost daily basis back when I
was flying cancelled checks. Wake turbulence forms from the point of takeoff
and goes down and away from the heavier aircraft. It also drifts with the wind,
just as an aircraft will. So how did I waive and avoid with such great success?

I popped off the ground way before the airliner did and turned away anywhere
from 45 to 90 degrees from the runway heading as soon as my gear was up,
depending on my clearance. In other words, I outran it.

I flew the same route every day. I already had my clearance given to me by
Clearance Delivery and it most defintely did not include anything like "hold
runway heading until at 1100 feet".... something that would put in the danger
zone.


If you hit a
bad wake at 200-300 feet it's not much better than hitting it twenty
feet off the deck -- your odds of survival are not good. The, "rotate
quick before the point where they did" plan only works if you can then
make an immediate upwind turn to get out of the flight path.
Operationally you can't always do this.


You'll know after talking with Clearance Delivery. You'd make the request to
waive later to the tower... if it were appropriate. I'm not suggesting it
always would. I'm just saying it often is.


Watch out for wake from departures on a close parallel too. I got hit
by an F-16's wake as I departed 4L at SSC right after it took off on
4R and it rolled me 60 degrees in about an 1/8 of a second.


Heh.... I once got a healthy scare at altitude following a C-47 a good mile
ahead of me. I can't say with absolute confidence that it was the guilty party
but it was the only exciting rolling turbulence I hit in a 200 mile leg. I was
in a Cherokee Six out over the water coming back from the Bahamas in excellent
VFR weather in the cool of the early morning.



One minor nit to quibble about/correct...
The wake turbulence actually begins where the large aircraft rotates,
not where it takes off. For some aircraft this makes little/no
difference, but for a large and heavy aircraft, it can make a
significant difference.
Mike

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