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

Mxsmanic wrote in
news
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.



oow wow! You da google meister!

Bwahwahwhawhhwhhawhahwhhhwhahwhahwhahwh!

Bertie

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
....
... 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

No one has mentioned the phenomena where hail is thrown out of the top or
side of the really big CB and may be tossed for miles, and its really not
that uncommon.

--
Jim Carter
Rogers, Arkansas

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 20:26:59 -0500, "Jim Carter"
wrote in
:

No one has mentioned the phenomena where hail is thrown out of the top or
side of the really big CB and may be tossed for miles, and its really not
that uncommon.


I mentioned that I was trained to skirt CBs by 20 miles. Of course,
that is the reason.

It's often difficult to maintain good situational awareness of the
buildups if you are in VMC under a cell's base, or the buildups begin
to merge.




http://www.weather.com/encyclopedia/thunder/hail.html
Hail
Hail is precipitation in the form of a chunk of ice that can fall
from a cumulonimbus cloud. Usually associated with multicell,
supercell and cold front induced squall line thunderstorms, most
hail falls from the central region of a cloud in a severe storm.

Hail begins as tiny ice pellets that collide with water droplets.
The optimum freezing level for the formation of hail is from 8,000
to 10,000 feet.

The water droplets attach themselves to the ice pellets and begin
to freeze as strong updraft winds toss the pellets and droplets
back up into the colder regions of the upper levels of the cloud.
As the attached droplets freeze, the pellets become larger.

Both gravity and downdraft thunderstorm winds pull the pellets
back down, where they encounter more droplets that attach and
freeze as the pellets are thrown, once again, back up through the
cloud.

Hailstones
The more times a hailstone is tossed up and down through the
cloud, the larger the hailstone will be. Hailstones the size of
softballs had many more trips up and down through the cloud than
pea-sized hailstones.

Large hailstones are an indication of powerful updraft and
downdraft winds within a thunderstorm. This is why large hail is
associated with severe thunderstorms.

To create pea-size hail (about 1/2 inch in diameter) winds within
the thunderstorm updraft will generally be around 20 miles per
hour. Quarter size hail (3/4 of an inch in diameter) requires
updrafts of about 40 miles per hour.

Golf ball size hail (1 3/4 inches in diameter) needs updrafts of
around 55 miles per hour and softball size hail, approximately 100
miles per hour! ...

"Jim Carter" wrote in message
t...
"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
...
... 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

No one has mentioned the phenomena where hail is thrown out of the top or
side of the really big CB and may be tossed for miles, and its really not
that uncommon.

A good case for a lightning detector.

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?

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

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?


It isn't. Old age is.


Fjukkwit


Bertie

Mxsmanic,

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


Care to back that up with statistics? Hint: google Nall report, then
show us.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

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.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

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.

How would you know, moron. You don't fly.


As the Italian lady said to the pope after his latest dissertation on birth
control..

You no playa da game, you no makea da rules.



Bertie

On Jun 4, 11:21 am, "Peter R." wrote:
I was listening to LiveATC.net's feed of Syracuse, NY, yesterday (Sunday)
during the approach of a large thunderstorm line that was moving towards the
airport from the south. At one point a VFR a Cessna 172, approaching the
airport from the west, checked in stating his intention to land at SYR.

As the C172 progressed, the controller called the pilot to report that the
aircraft was eight miles from and heading directly towards a line of extreme
weather. The pilot responded in a somewhat unappreciative tone that he was
"painting" it. The controller responded with a rather surprised, "Roger."

Moments later the controller again called to warn the pilot of extreme
weather at his twelve o'clock. The pilot then replied in what sounded like an
annoyed tone that he was "picking our way through the weather using our XM."
Again, the controller replied with a surprised "Roger."

With a quiet moment on the frequency, the controller called the pilot a third
time to ask him to explain what XM meant. The pilot described the concept of
XM NEXRAD on his Garmin 396, but then added that the refresh rate allowed him
to see heavy weather on the 398 from 2 to 8 minutes old.

When I heard that the refresh rate was up to 8 minutes old, I cringed to
think that this pilot (this one didn't sound like an experienced freight dog
to me, but maybe I was wrong) was picking his way through a field of
thunderstorms on a day where returns went from light to extreme in less than
ten minutes.

Granted that the pilot was VFR so presumably he was seeing and avoiding using
the outside picture primarily. But this day it was a typical northeast US
hazy and humid day with visibility around the 6 to 8 mile range, so having
the Garmin 396 for strategic avoidance was a good thing. 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 (not even
considering the NEXRAD delay before the picture is uplinked to the XM
satellites) and declining the more real-time weather guidance offered by ATC
(SYR approach has excellent weather radar).

Eventually a thunderstorm cell erupted right over the airport, resulting in
numerous wind shear alerts and at least one microburst alert, so the pilot
called approach to state his intention of diverting southeast towards an
airport 50 nm south of SYR to wait out the weather.

--
Peter

Hello:

Eventually we are going to see/read about a pretty "fantastic"
accident with this kind of flying. I've done a reasonable amount of
"line" running in everything from Boeings to TriChamps (although the
latter is much more entertaining since the speed of advance of the
thurderstoms and airplane are closley matched!) with a fairly wide
range of equipment (Radar to STorm Scopes to the XM). MOST of it was
perfectly safe, there were one or two times a few years ago that I had
some "unpleasantries" occur that were fortunatly learning lessons...

But just from the blow by blow you give this pilot strikes me as not
being very clear about what he/she was doing. As you make clear, the
big deal with the XM is the delay...and in a cell/cells where
"training" is taking place that delay can be deadly.

What is fairly scary (at least to me) is that the pilot did not seem
to understand the limitations of his equipment and/or the advantages/
limitations of the ATC radar. If Syracuse has an ASR11/12 then they
have pretty good wx information. It isnt Nexrad but it is certianly
better and more real time then what the XM is showing. Visually you
can spot the "training" and this guy was VFR so that showed some
smarts...but it is not a far leap to when someone is doing this IFR
and finds that the "red" has moved to right where they are...and the
airplane they are flying is now testing the limits of structural
integrity.

the problem with all this new instrumentation is the same as pilots
found when they moved from the classic 737 into the EFIS versions (or
into complete EFIS airplanes)...the training was not up to the
standards of the equipment and people got into severe trouble.

I think that your instincts are pretty good here.

Robert