Were there any mountains or hills around? It could have been a mountain
wave. I had experienced the same exact thing in upstate NY/Massachusettes
border heading northbound with a wind coming from the northwest. Did you
start picking up speed afterward? After I had experienced the downdraft
where I had full power in to maintain 80kts and my altitude, I then needed
to keep a descending profile to again maintain the altitude with a
corresponding 135kt IAS.

Everyone I talked to that had experienced this said it was very weird the
first time they encountered it.

Marco Leon

"Bravo8500" wrote in message
oups.com...
I thought this was interesting so I'll share it. I hit some unusual
windshear I suppose last night going into St. Simmon's Island, GA
(BQK) in an A36 Bonanza. Here we were, me flying and the non-pilot
owner (my brother-in-law) in the right seat cruising at 3000 over the
top of a broken layer about 25 south of the localizer to runway 7,
about 9:30 EST. We were in moderate to occasionally severe turbulance
and I had been warned by the FSS briefer about a windshear at 1000 agl
- I think it was the fact that there was a 180 degree diff in wind
direction between the surface and 1000 agl that was causing it. Oh
yeah, a big fat low pressure was sitting right on top of BQK, more or
less, as I could determine from the duats graphical current analysis in
the motel room an hour later. The pressure had been dropping since
Atlanta and the altimeter was down to 29.68 I believe. Anyway, here we
are in flat out cruise, I look up and notice I'm only indicating 140
or so when I should see 165, and dropping a couple of knots per second.
As the airspeed goes through 110, I bring in full RPM and manifold and
we continue to lose airspeed down to 80 knots. I'm wondering what the
heck is going on, we're now in a climb attitude and get one blip of
the stall warning. By this time I've disengaged the ap and now am
allowing the airplane to drop to maintain around 80. I'm just about
to call ATC when we start picking up airspeed, slowly. Man, that was
weird.




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