No this is not a changing to a sports betting blog, still airplanes. Yesterday the weather was great and I went out for some training. I practiced power off approaches. In the movies when the engine quits a plane falls from the sky. Luckily the reality is better, a failed engine makes you a glider. Though engine failures are rare, pilots practice to glide the plane to a landing at a precise point. The easiest way to do this is at an airport which I did yesterday.
This morning the weather was bad so I decided not to fly. Around 1 I looked outside and saw blue skies. A check of the weather showed that the cold front had pushed through this morning and was sitting across the state around Orlando. Jacksonville was clear but St. Augustine was reporting low weather.
I decided to take a look. By the time I arrived the weather had improved and there was a cloud shelf starting just North of St. Augustine and continuing South where the weather was worse. Since I was visual I needed to stay either 500 feet below or 1000 feet above. The layer was thin so this was easy.
I had a nice flight looking at the edge of the weather system, flying over it and then back below.
Once below I decided to take a look at downtown St. Augustine and then head back home.
These decks while pretty and of not much consequence to instrument pilots, can pose a real danger to visual only pilots. Pilots can get trapped on top with no way down or the clouds can descend and trap a pilot between the sky and ground. Often looking up or down they see holes and think they can squeeze through. Many times these holes are too small to keep legal cloud separation and even worse too small to get above/below the deck without going into the clouds. These are names sucker holes.
Easy to avoid this by taking the visual requirements seriously and not flying over cloud decks.
This morning the weather was bad so I decided not to fly. Around 1 I looked outside and saw blue skies. A check of the weather showed that the cold front had pushed through this morning and was sitting across the state around Orlando. Jacksonville was clear but St. Augustine was reporting low weather.
I decided to take a look. By the time I arrived the weather had improved and there was a cloud shelf starting just North of St. Augustine and continuing South where the weather was worse. Since I was visual I needed to stay either 500 feet below or 1000 feet above. The layer was thin so this was easy.
I had a nice flight looking at the edge of the weather system, flying over it and then back below.
Once below I decided to take a look at downtown St. Augustine and then head back home.
These decks while pretty and of not much consequence to instrument pilots, can pose a real danger to visual only pilots. Pilots can get trapped on top with no way down or the clouds can descend and trap a pilot between the sky and ground. Often looking up or down they see holes and think they can squeeze through. Many times these holes are too small to keep legal cloud separation and even worse too small to get above/below the deck without going into the clouds. These are names sucker holes.
Easy to avoid this by taking the visual requirements seriously and not flying over cloud decks.
In my case the way home was quite clear so I had no issues today.
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