Bill, I flew in commercial on the evening of 11 may this year.. don't
know if you remember that evening but apparantly, a pretty nasty wind
had kicked up. We were a United 737 following an RJ that center kept
telling us we were overtaking and to slow down... (listening on
United's neat earphone thing) long story short, there were some dry
mouths on the freq that evening. I can't remember exactly what the
wind was but in excess of 45 kts directly across the runway coming
from around the hotels on the strip.. we were plenty fast and used a
lot of runway stopping.. One of those times that I was glad for the
double Tequla that I'd had while on layover in LA just prior.. neat
flight and I loved the landing... not so the RJ pilots I was listening
to tho...

Wayne Sagar
All Aviation FlightLine OnLine
http://aafo.com/


Yes, that night I recorded gusts up to 65 mph at my house. I'm behind
a little mountain and a vortex forms here that is nowhere else but
behind BIG HOTELS near McCarran. I know the drill. It gets goofy out
there.

I flew an RV-6 today. When I took off the winds were calm. When I
cam back I had to land on runway 12R at North Town with a damn wind
out of 180 at 25, gusting to 40. It's a typical thing here.

I got up at 06-hundred and launched at 07-hundred. I was back at
08:30 and had that problem. Now that's sort of unusual unless there
is some disturbance rolling through. Today there was.

Most of the time you can get away with flying until about noon. I
mean the bumps start and go all the way up to 10,000 msl by about 10
a.m., but you can stand it if you have to... until about noon.

I was going to fly down and see Pac today (one hour). But I wouldn't
have tried to get back home until about sundown. My friend who was
going with me had other things to do this afternoon, so I aborted
rather than fly past noon. I'd have been hot, ****ed, dehydrated,
beat to **** and ready to scream when I got back here at 14 hundred.
So, I aborted.

I wrote this to just give you a taste of how you have to evaluate it.

If I fly the P-210 in the summer, I file IFR and go to 20,000 (Flight
Level 200). In that thing it doesn't matter because you are above the
thermals all the way and you are cool. In the little stuff I fly,
it's just not worth going at all. But, then that's the way I look at
it. Everybody is different. Some people don't fly as much as I do
and the aren't worn out by turbulence. I'm just up for a smooth ride
anymore. Summer flying is ****ty unless you go early. You fight
thunderstorms or severe bumps if you go late.

In the winter, you fight the storms and the ice. There ain't no free
lunch.

BWB