quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
Currency is very important, as all aviation skills are perishable. Three weeks out of the cockpit, and I feel it, and it shows.

The broader and greater the individual experience base, the greater the pool to draw from so far as addressing an abnormal or emergency situation, or making judgement and calls in general. The same is true of training; the more extensive the training background, the deeper the pool for selecting correct choices and outcomes. Neither experience nor training is immunity by any means, but they do increase one's ability to address a problem, fly the airplane, and make correct decisions regarding weather, navigation, go/no-go, emergencies, mechanical irregularities, and so on.

You're absolutely right about thunderstorms. They ought be avoided at all costs. In a former life, one of my jobs was atmospheric research; specifically thunderstorm penetration. My assignment was flying a turbojet airplane into thunderstorms, equipped with sensors and test gear, for research purposes. My feeling on that today is that I never want to go near or into another thunderstorm for the remainder of my natural life, however long that may be. There are forces inside, and outside, that far exceed any aircraft's capability, or a pilot's ability to cope. I have been rolled over, stalled, slammed, beaten up, iced, lightning-struck, and hurt in them, and there are things inside that are far worse than what I encountered. Bad ju-ju. We did get some very valuable data, though.

The greater the problem or the more challenging the conditions, the more important it is to stay within limitations and to follow procedures. Most of them are written with extensive research, testing, and effort, and many are crafted in blood from mistakes and fatalities that went before. I always try to learn from the lessons of others, than to forge my own.

When Hurricane Hunters ride into a hurricane, is that type of storm a different animal than a thunderstorm ? If not, is the Hurricane Hunter a different kind of plane designed to handle a bad thunrderstorm ? Forgive me in advance, I'm not an aviation person. Your experience described is fascinating.

Very different. Hurricanes do contain thunderstorms, but a hurricane is not a thunderstorm. When traveling through a hurricane, there are numerous hazards, but remember that airborne in high winds, the airplane is moving with the wind. Routinely in high altitude flights, aircraft operate in the jet stream with 100-200 knot winds.

A thunderstorm is vertical wind, with a lot of wind shear...changes in direction, severe turbulence, hail, severe icing, lightning, and sometimes extremely violent conditions that can break an aircraft apart. Thunderstorms can be extremely dangerous in, above, below, and adjacent to, including many miles from the thunderstorm.

Hurricane data penetrations are generally done in a C-130 these days. Tropical weather and hurricane/cyclones do contain and spawn considerable convective activity (thunderstorms), but these are cells that occur within or around the hurricane; the entire storm is not like that. Hurricanes are large low-pressure systems with high water content, and are chiefly characterized by rotation and wind associated as air moves from high pressure to the low pressure center of the storm. It rotates due to coriolis forice, which is the influence of the earth's rotation on the storm as air rises in the low pressure. At the surface, where everyone thinks of a hurricane, the wind velocity is high and the objects affected are stationary. As a result, the wind's full force comes to bear on those objects. Buildings, fences, poles, trees, etc. In flight, the aircraft is not stationary, but flying in a fluid medium, so the effect of a hurricane on an aircraft in flight is not the same, and except for thunderstorms or shear zones, the severe conditions aren't there. Rough, yes. And there are extreme and severe areas; in a thunderstorm, it's very common to have severe or extreme conditions, meaning that the aircraft is not always under control, or may not be under control at all, and the shears in a thunderstorm can tear an airplane apart in flight. It can separate wings, break up the fuselage, and make control difficult or impossible. Add to that rapid, severe icing, and hail that can destroy an aircraft very rapidly, lightning that can burn holes through aircraft (I've had that happen a number of times), and other hazards, thunderstorms are best avoided in flight operations. My own experience in and around them serves largely to convince me to stay away.