Ken had a rough time on his trip home today, all went well until about hour 3 of 4 when weather came in early and he was getting 1200 up then 1200 down for an hour and trapped under the class B shelf of Vegas. Never trust a weather man ;) Always have a backup plan and some extra gas-- I would've only had 2 gallons left getting home today (though I shoulda made it with more, but unpredicted headwinds). good thing I carried an extra 5 "just in case." It let me hit 4 new airports on the way home-- fog still hadn't cleared as predicted back at the coast. Little squeaky there. Ken was hitting airports too on his way home-- Two in DEATH VALLEY!!! But, the weatherman called it wrong for him too ... NEVER trust them!!
Ken flew most of the way up to Whitney with me and kept tabs on the flight by radio and making sure I wasn't getting hypoxic. We recorded the climb performance at every 1000' so that in the "future" we'll be able to estimate time to climb a lot better than we did. I initially estimated 2+ hours at 5.5 gph burn rate = 12 gallons. In actuality it was about 50+ minutes at over 4gph. At 17,000 I was only climbing at 40 feet per minute (whether there was sink? hard to say). I tried to use some HG techniques to help the climb up, so ...
When the climb was 100 feet per minute, each 1000 feet took 10 long minutes. I kinda wonder now why I didn't climb on up to 17,999 but it was very cold and my hands ached. I didn't think my body was cold, until partway into the descent when I kinda huddled up over the bar and shivered the rest of the way down.
Thank you Ken & Janet & David (@wambleska) and everybody.
Wow that sounded a bit rough for ken hes a great pilot though.here in montana were the weather can change unusally fast i never trust them 60 degrees yesterday tonight 6 to 10 inches of snow and high winds. Glad you all got home safe . My thoughts are with are friends in oz just awefull. Fly safe everyone careful of the weather its been freakie .
Comments
Ken had a rough time on his trip home today, all went well until about hour 3 of 4 when weather came in early and he was getting 1200 up then 1200 down for an hour and trapped under the class B shelf of Vegas. Never trust a weather man ;) Always have a backup plan and some extra gas-- I would've only had 2 gallons left getting home today (though I shoulda made it with more, but unpredicted headwinds). good thing I carried an extra 5 "just in case." It let me hit 4 new airports on the way home-- fog still hadn't cleared as predicted back at the coast. Little squeaky there. Ken was hitting airports too on his way home-- Two in DEATH VALLEY!!! But, the weatherman called it wrong for him too ... NEVER trust them!!
Ken flew most of the way up to Whitney with me and kept tabs on the flight by radio and making sure I wasn't getting hypoxic. We recorded the climb performance at every 1000' so that in the "future" we'll be able to estimate time to climb a lot better than we did. I initially estimated 2+ hours at 5.5 gph burn rate = 12 gallons. In actuality it was about 50+ minutes at over 4gph. At 17,000 I was only climbing at 40 feet per minute (whether there was sink? hard to say). I tried to use some HG techniques to help the climb up, so ...
When the climb was 100 feet per minute, each 1000 feet took 10 long minutes. I kinda wonder now why I didn't climb on up to 17,999 but it was very cold and my hands ached. I didn't think my body was cold, until partway into the descent when I kinda huddled up over the bar and shivered the rest of the way down.
Thank you Ken & Janet & David (@wambleska) and everybody.
Wow that sounded a bit rough for ken hes a great pilot though.here in montana were the weather can change unusally fast i never trust them 60 degrees yesterday tonight 6 to 10 inches of snow and high winds. Glad you all got home safe . My thoughts are with are friends in oz just awefull.
Fly safe everyone careful of the weather its been freakie .
Our thoughts are with our friends in Oz too. Well put David.