Post by dazaxiii on Nov 15, 2012 5:51:09 GMT -5
Fortunately I'm not working today so when I woke up and saw this out of the window it was time to fire up the flight sim and head for Birmingham EGBB which is about ten miles away from where I live. That’s a genuine photo from my house.
So just a short flight to go and have a play in the bad weather which is always fun but this was quite possibly the worst visibility I’ve ever flown in. Obviously dispatch was shouting at me to divert but as both me and my passengers are made of electrical signals rather than flesh and blood I’ve never diverted yet and I didn’t intend to start today. With wind calm and no turbulence the approach wasn’t too much of an issue so I let the auto pilot set it up for me then took over manually with about three miles to run. I was still quite a way off seeing the runway at that point though as I'd been informed that visibility was 0.06 miles.
Or to put that another way, just over 360ft and if he’d have had weather like that for the 100m olympic final, Usain Bolt would have barely been able to see the finish line.
Following the ILS I got the call of “minimums” and looked up to see absolutely nothing, just solid grey. Hey, it’s not the real world is it and I’ve only got 10 minutes left on the clock to get parked before I’m hit with a time penalty so I pressed on. 50 feet, 40 feet, 30 feet and I was beginning to think I might have to throw this one away and accept the penalty anyway but at last I got see something.
In fact the white line out of the side window caught my attention before the runway ahead and as it was coming closer I realised I was drifting left slightly so before the tarmac underneath me turned into grass I planted the plane down quickly. 612fpm worth of quickly but at least we were down.
After a taxi to the gate and an unload there was a ten point loss for a pax com hard landing (whingers) but I’ll happily accept that for the trade off in enjoyment of that approach. I do like a bit of rough weather once in a while just to test myself. ;D
And lastly here’s a quick view from the gate after parking and then the same thing literally a second later after I turned the weather off just to see the comparison. Apparently all those aircraft are there in the first pic too.
So just a short flight to go and have a play in the bad weather which is always fun but this was quite possibly the worst visibility I’ve ever flown in. Obviously dispatch was shouting at me to divert but as both me and my passengers are made of electrical signals rather than flesh and blood I’ve never diverted yet and I didn’t intend to start today. With wind calm and no turbulence the approach wasn’t too much of an issue so I let the auto pilot set it up for me then took over manually with about three miles to run. I was still quite a way off seeing the runway at that point though as I'd been informed that visibility was 0.06 miles.
Or to put that another way, just over 360ft and if he’d have had weather like that for the 100m olympic final, Usain Bolt would have barely been able to see the finish line.
Following the ILS I got the call of “minimums” and looked up to see absolutely nothing, just solid grey. Hey, it’s not the real world is it and I’ve only got 10 minutes left on the clock to get parked before I’m hit with a time penalty so I pressed on. 50 feet, 40 feet, 30 feet and I was beginning to think I might have to throw this one away and accept the penalty anyway but at last I got see something.
In fact the white line out of the side window caught my attention before the runway ahead and as it was coming closer I realised I was drifting left slightly so before the tarmac underneath me turned into grass I planted the plane down quickly. 612fpm worth of quickly but at least we were down.
After a taxi to the gate and an unload there was a ten point loss for a pax com hard landing (whingers) but I’ll happily accept that for the trade off in enjoyment of that approach. I do like a bit of rough weather once in a while just to test myself. ;D
And lastly here’s a quick view from the gate after parking and then the same thing literally a second later after I turned the weather off just to see the comparison. Apparently all those aircraft are there in the first pic too.