Anybody Ever Had A White Knuckle, Hair Raising Moment????

Today was probably one day I won't forget for sometime. I am a pilot with the Ohio State Patrol. At the end of the shift, as I was flying back to OSU/Don Scott Field, there was a nasty thunderstorm cell that formed up over top of Delaware and followed me South. As I turned to my final approach sequence to the West, all the lightning and the rain started up and the winds shifted on me to where I was trying to land with the pouring rain and a 10 knot tailwind. It seemed like my airplane floated 3/4 of the way down the runway before I had no other choice but to force it down. It was a rough landing, but I'm here writing about it so I guess it was successful, but I don't think I've ever had so much sweat on my brow as I did tonight since I've been a pilot. Just curious if anybody else had any similar stories, not necessarily to do with flying.

First time I ever flew, I had the stall horn go off on me forty feet off the ground while crossing the threshold in a 15kt cross-wind. I was able to recover and make a somewhat-smooth landing. :laugh:

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Originally Posted by paintmered

First time I ever flew, I had the stall horn go off on me forty feet off the ground while crossing the threshold in a 15kt cross-wind. I was able to recover and make a somewhat-smooth landing. :laugh:

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Not much time to recover at forty feet is there????? :laugh:
The Patrol doesn't let us do any IFR work (yet), though most of us are IFR rated. Situations like today is were it would be useful to let file every now and then.

The pilot license is on the to-do list if I have the time and income after graduation. I can get it through the flying club on the base for essentially half price. I figure if I don't get it then, I'll never have the opportunity.

Always been a dream of mine.

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Originally Posted by paintmered

The pilot license is on the to-do list if I have the time and income after graduation. I can get it through the flying club on the base for essentially half price. I figure if I don't get it then, I'll never have the opportunity.

Always been a dream of mine.

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It's not cheap at all. If you have the chance and the funds, then by all means do it, especially if it is through a military aero club. They are by far the cheapest way to go.

I had to shell out about $3K for my Private ticket. With this job with the Patrol, I was in the right place at the right time and had enough seniority to get this position. Plus we do so much training in-house (ie: getting my instrument rating). On top of that we average between 800 - 1,000 flying hours a year. It's well worth it.

Just about any flight will make my hands sweaty and keep my chewing on my fingernails, but one NWA flight from Denver to Detroit in 2002 stands out. It was fairly uneventful until we passed over Milwaukee and Lake Michigan. The pilot got on the speaker and warned the passengers of what could be a bumpy few minutes and he told the flight attendants to take their seats. It wasn't a minute later that the plane was just tossed around unmercifully by what I have to say was violent turbulence. It was dropping and then getting pushed up sharply. I remember an overhead compartment flying open and a bag falling out. A lady was crying. It was ugly. The pilot got on during a brief lull and said he couldn't change altitudes because there was too much traffic above and below.

Needless to say, when the plane landed at DTW I was more relieved than at any other time. And, as an OSU fan, I had never been so happy to be in Michigan.

Back in the mid-70's, my father used to own a Rockwell Aero-Commander Turbo Jet. While flying from KY to FLA one trip, we crossed over the "wind tornados" (contrails?) that were generated from the path of a DC-10 that had been flying at an improper altitude at the time.

It felt as though we had flown into a brickwall and the impact disengaged our plane's auto pilot. Although I was sitting in the co-pilot's chair, being ten years old at the time, prevented me from doing much more than defecating in my Sears Toughskins. The pilot was a few feet from the cockpit at the time and had to lunge back into the cockpit as our plane began to twist, shake and lose altitude. He gained control of the aircraft after only a few seconds--but it seemed like an eternity.

I'll never forget the look on the faces of my family members who automatically assumed that I was to blame for the excitement...

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Originally Posted by Blimpie

"wind tornados" (contrails?)

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From your description, you may have hit "wake vortices." Essentially, these are swirling cones of air that trail off the wingtips. They are often invisible and can toss a plane around pretty good. Or worse. It is because of them that there is a short delay between each take-off and landing on a runway.

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Originally Posted by Redsland

From your description, you may have hit "wake vortices." Essentially, these are swirling cones of air that trail off the wingtips. They are often invisible and can toss a plane around pretty good. Or worse. It is because of them that there is a short delay between each take-off and landing on a runway.

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Thanks for the knowledge, Redsland. I knew that I was not remembering the proper terminology.... ;)

I got thinking more about my situation last night, you know how they say situations like this tend to move so fast that you don't remember a lot of things until later. The rain was beating against my windscreen so hard that I also couldn't see my approach lights to tell if I was too high or too low coming in and on the East end of runway 27R at KOSU, there's a row of trees that really disrupt the airflow and that made for an even tougher landing. It was also very tough to tell where the runway centerline was at that point in time.