Crosswind

Thread title reminds me of a movie clip I saw the other day.....it's the "Airbus A-321 Extreme Crosswind" one.

link

So far no real close calls here....

 

Mark: That site is unbelievable! I could spend hours (probably did). The primary stuff is wrecks (of course) but the Japanese air show is not to be missed. Super flying and a pretty girl, too! How can you beat that?

 

It looks like the aircraft is in the middle of a Lomcevak, the entry for which is an outside snap roll. Down elevator, full right rudder, full right aileron , and full power.

 

The situation is arriving at our destination at the same time as a black, violent, and rain-filled cold front. We flew under a rapidly descending ceiling and over I-5 on our way to Enterprise airport near Redding , California. We had to fly over I-5 to miss the guy wires of three radio antenna towers located in the area but invisible at the time.
The wind was howling and the rain was heavy and the raindrops the size of golf balls. We approached the intersection where the highway went to Enterprise, I signalled for a right turn and did so . The wind carried us quickly to the airstrip and we crossed it diagonally going like a bat outahell. A flat sweeping turn to the left with almost full power swung us around to line up far to the right of the strip. Right wing down, lots of right rudder,forward stick, power high, and aim for the strip in a left drift. We made the end of the runway an impacted on the right wheel with a loud bang as the oleo bottomed out.....then did it again just for good measure. Almost full forward and right stick was required to keep the airplane on the ground but we were still being lifted by the gusts which had to have been way above thirty MPH. I was trying to taxi to the end of the strip to get into the lee of the hangar but the airplane was almost out of control. When I could see four guys running toward us I thought that we just might make it if they could grab us. They did, one guy drapped his body over the fuselage near the tail while the others hung on to the struts.
We chained the airplane down in the pouring rain and wind and went into the hangar office to calm down.
That landing elicited a yell out of my poor wife. It was the only time that she ever complained about my flying and she had a damn good reason to.

 

Sometime back in the early 70's I worked as a pilot in the rural south Georgia town of Albany. My wife and I had to change our internatinoal reservations on Delta, and had been given the run around on the telephone so a pilot buddy and myself decided to fly up to Atlanta one evening with our wives, have dinner, take care of the reservations changes, and return that evening. Hartsfield International was still a pretty busy place even back then and on that particular evening the weather began to deteriorate unexpectedly in the ATL area while we were enroute, with ceiling and visibility getting lower and lower as we made the relatively short flight. By the time we arrived in the terminal area, the weather was almost below minimums and getting worse. We had been in holding for a while so the controllers tried to get us in before they started diverting traffic, and squeezed us, in our little Piper Apache, in between a couple of airliners. From the outer marker inbound we keep getting instructions to increase speed, so we have to retract the gear and flaps, break out right over the inner marker and come across the numbers right at Vne - clean.

The next thing we hear from the tower is "Turn right at the next intersection, ground point nine" Hell - we don't even have the gear out yet! So - as we close the throttles, hold the aircraft just high enough to be out of ground effect, hit flap extention speed, then gear speed, we are still whistling down the runway - thank goodness for the 12,000 feet. Finally we put it on the ground, take an "aggie exit" just before they have to send the airliner behind us around.

As we taxi off the active, I become aware that my wife, sitting in the seat behind me, had a choke hold around my neck and is yelling something unrepeatable. Interesting approach and landing.

 

It's June 1999, and I'm flying the Baron back from the Isle of Man. After I left London, on my way to Iceland, the Sandel bulb decided to give up the ghost. No problem, I continued to fly the plane toward Rejvich (sp?), when I got there, it was 400 and 1, with a 40 kt cross wind. I'd been picking up a little ice without a DG. Started the approach, got confused on the altimeter setting (not in inches), but got down to what I thought was close to minimum, and broke out over the bay. Wind was blowing so hard, I was about 1/2 mile to the right of the airport. They wanted me to circle, but I was so screwed up, I landed on the straight in runway. Put the plane down on the far right, and slide all the way over to the left side. When I got the plane tied down, had serious thoughts about hiring a pilot to bring it home, and going back commerical. Didn't spent the next 3 days there waiting for a new bulb, picked up a hitchhiker (a ferry pilot, whose plane had broken) great time there, and he showed me a great route back, got picutres of Greenland, that I've gotten framed. Great trip.


Art

 

what the hell is a Sandel Bulb?

Glad you had a great trip though. Have you thought to scan any of those photos?

 

pretty impressive - OTOH I've bought airplanes for less than the cost of one of these.

 

That's it. The earlier units had a blub life of about 200 hours. When the bulb went out, you had no EFIS, it was dark. Still worked, but you couldn't see it. If tyou turned the auto pilot on, on NAV, everything would work, you just couldn't see what was happening. I didn't figure that out until after I'd shot the approach though.

Art