I was at the Minden that day. I was just pushing out my glider getting
ready to take-off when I heard about the accident. Another guy, Steve,
had just landed after flying the wave for a while and he said that it
was very smooth for a Minden wave, just a few little bumps during his
flight. Of course, he might have just gotten lucky, or was more
experienced with a wave. There was almost no wind at all on the
ground, but high above the wave was going strong.
I think the crash site was just a mile or so downwind from the edge of
the wave cloud.
Here is a report from The Record Courier:
http://www.recordcourier.com/article...AKING/41023001
They say the eyewitness heard high revving engine sound. Could it be
that pilot got into strong sink, pulled out the engine and tried to
get away from the sink as fast as he could, then hit strong turbulence
?
Limus
128LA
(James) wrote in message . com...
FWIW, I was on a Southwest Airlines flight from RNO to San Jose, CA on
the morning of this accident. We departed around 9:30AM about three
hours before the crash. At that time the surface winds were
relatively calm. Conditions were broken overcast with some small
lennies ahead of a cold front coming in from the west. The flight
took off to the south and we flew directly over Carson City. When we
were over Carson, we experienced a very brief but significant amount
of turbulence which apparently was from rotor. The right wing dropped
and it felt as though we weather-vaned into the wind. A few seconds
later the plane straightened out and we continued flying towards
Minden through some minor chop until we were above the lenies. The
captain kept the flight attendents seated until we were in the Central
Valley.
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