Perfection in Turbulence

Developing perfection in turbulence is impossible. I'll spend some time stabilizing the plane in perfect straight and level flight, and because of convective turbulence from the heat, and wind turbulence, the air changes, and the plane is no longer stable. This requires me to give much more concentration than in smooth air.

Today I took off in a 15 knot crosswind. As soon as the wheels lifted off the ground, the plane "weathervaned" into the wind about 45 degrees. I was kind of surprising, I've never taken off in such a high crosswind before. Basically, the plane turned sideways by itself.

I tracked to TYGAR intersection over Tygart Lake, and climbed high to 6500 feet in an attempt to avoid convective turbulence. Convective turbulence results from the sun heating the earth, and then the earth giving off radiation and heating the air around it. So the higher you go, the less effective the heat it is. Think of a fire, and how the air above the fire is kind of wavy. The earth does the same thing on a much larger scale.

Unfortunately, we still had to deal with wind turbulence up there. It was difficult to perfect maneuvers in these conditions, but I was able to stay within 100 feet of altitude and 10 degrees of heading. When flying in this type of turbulence, I'm on edge the whole time. The plane constantly jerks left and right, drops, and banks. I have to immediately correct for these sudden changes. I like to relate flying in turbulence to riding a mechanical bull.

I did slow flight, stalls, and steep turns with all my instruments, then I did compass turns and timed turns with my attitude and heading indicators failed. Once again, these maneuvers required a much higher degree of concentration than usual, thanks to unrelenting winds aloft.

I flew visual for the 10 miles back to the airport. It was nice to be able to enjoy the view again a little bit, even if the plane is bouncing me around. I chose to do a no flaps landing, thanks to the 15 knot crosswinds. I came in fast, mainly because with a crosswind faster is better. Thankfully I have a 7000 foot long runway which gives me plenty of time to let my speed bleed off before I touch down.

When taxiing back to the school, we got to watch someone else take off in their Cessna and weathervane into the wind. It was pretty cool to watch. Here's a video from YouTube, watch how the plane weathervanes and flies sideways immediately after takeoff.



Next lesson is my stage check, and hopefully I can knock it out either Sunday or Monday.