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ATC guides VFR Cherokee in IMC through storm into Austin
The pilot of a Piper Cherokee 140 (N141SW) is safely on the ground after relying on air traffic controllers to guide him to Austin's international airport through severe weather. Matt Cartwright said he was flying from New Orleans toward the Austin area when he notified controllers just before 12 p.m. that he could not see a landing point. Other arrivals were held up for 30 minutes... (abclocal.go.com) 更多...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
Just a good decision to ask for an assist when unsure, whatever the reasson. It saves lives in the air and un the ground.
Everybody is a monday morning quarterback and has all the answers. Like the Indian expression goes, till you walked a mile in someone else's moccasins, don't comment on their path. On a simple ferry flight from Tampa into Jacksonville, two things went wrong that were unpredictable and thats what training is for.
Three quarters of the way there we had a unique and unpredictable weather scenario. A late day sundown temperature inversion like flying in dust, nothing in the briefings, not too common, and visibility went dark grey. To add to the fun two loose screws our mechanic had not properly tightened loosed even further. They were the screws that affixed the bus bar for the electronics. Just never tightened right and vibration did the rest. Everything went dead.
I am in the soup, nothing is working, and I had to call for help on my portable (I am a big fan of redundancy and love my portable radios and even had a backup antenna and cable installed). Worked perfect and back to primary instruments.
I had been on with Jacksonville, flight following, stated my situation, they could still tag or follow me, and happy to lend assistance even with the transponder failing. Very professional, I had to do a procedural 2 min turn to keep me tracked, I received headings, speed and altitude changes, and as he said slow descents, slow turns, and finally saw the rabbit. I thanked the controllers, luckily it was a slow period and they appreciated the chance to practice a blind approach.
When something is written for an experience that has a happy ending we praise those who helped us and maybe some of what he had to say is really extra praise for the controllers and the system that gets misinterpreted as arrogance or bravado. The bad endings don't matter as usually someone else is telling the story.
Those are the shoes you don't want to wear.... happy ending is a lesson in learning, the other kind is failure...
Three quarters of the way there we had a unique and unpredictable weather scenario. A late day sundown temperature inversion like flying in dust, nothing in the briefings, not too common, and visibility went dark grey. To add to the fun two loose screws our mechanic had not properly tightened loosed even further. They were the screws that affixed the bus bar for the electronics. Just never tightened right and vibration did the rest. Everything went dead.
I am in the soup, nothing is working, and I had to call for help on my portable (I am a big fan of redundancy and love my portable radios and even had a backup antenna and cable installed). Worked perfect and back to primary instruments.
I had been on with Jacksonville, flight following, stated my situation, they could still tag or follow me, and happy to lend assistance even with the transponder failing. Very professional, I had to do a procedural 2 min turn to keep me tracked, I received headings, speed and altitude changes, and as he said slow descents, slow turns, and finally saw the rabbit. I thanked the controllers, luckily it was a slow period and they appreciated the chance to practice a blind approach.
When something is written for an experience that has a happy ending we praise those who helped us and maybe some of what he had to say is really extra praise for the controllers and the system that gets misinterpreted as arrogance or bravado. The bad endings don't matter as usually someone else is telling the story.
Those are the shoes you don't want to wear.... happy ending is a lesson in learning, the other kind is failure...
I live near Lakeway airport and near the landing path to runway 34. When I heard a single engine airplane flying low near us, I told my wife that flying in the weather that we were having (thunderstorms in icy conditions) was the definition of insanity. I'm a low time PPL ASEL and you couldn't pay me enough to fly in that, even if it were legal. Kudos to ATC for helping out and I'm so glad that things worked out. The forecast was pretty ominous, so this must've been a case of get-home-itis...
A look at any weather map for Sunday in Texas would have shown that there was a slow moving front crossing the area of this person's flight path. An easy way to determine that would just to look at the temperature at any of the airports along the path. There was a good 30 degree temperature drop once the front passed. KCLL would have been a good one to look at. Several GA planes in Texas have gone down in fronts in the last couple of years. If he was trying to fly in behind the front, then he should have headed north as an alternate, but he asked for alternates (Lockhart) That were south of Austin. If he had waited a couple more hours to leave Baton Rouge, it would have been all VFR with pretty flying weather.
On top of all that, regardless of what he told the press, he was probably griping under his breath because the vectored him into KAUS instead of KEDC where he was planning to go.
LOL, preacher!!
Well, there isn't a PAR procedure at KEDC...oh, not at KAUS either, but at least there are Localizers depicted on the 'scope, for lateral guidance. So an ASR approach improvised?
Luckily this non-instrument rated pilot wasn't encountering very rough and windy weather, with the chances of vertigo being the result.
Well, there isn't a PAR procedure at KEDC...oh, not at KAUS either, but at least there are Localizers depicted on the 'scope, for lateral guidance. So an ASR approach improvised?
Luckily this non-instrument rated pilot wasn't encountering very rough and windy weather, with the chances of vertigo being the result.
Well, taking it to the letter, whether you call it that or not is pretty much what they did, bringing him out at about 300'. Don't know if that was his DH or not but I think the story said that is where he broke out. As he was not instrument rated, it really didn't matter; they got him down. One good thing, if there was one, he was at KAUS. They should have held him on the ground after landing and then turned him loose in one of the crew lounges so he could have personally met those big iron guys that he delayed. Pilots will help anyone as most folks would, but you just don't have that feel good about it when you get an ignorant/arrogant a** like this guy. We may have all misinterpreted his response but I don't think so.