If you are airborne and unsure if you can safely land and get secured consider staying up and going around storm [if possible] or even running storm front to another site to be secure. Better to be at 10000' or 50km away than trying to land in a gust front. Tom
--- On Mon, 31/1/11, Texler, Michael <[email protected]> wrote: From: Texler, Michael <[email protected]> Subject: [Aus-soaring] Beverley Storm, take home messages To: "Discussion of issues relating to Soaring in Australia." <[email protected]> Received: Monday, 31 January, 2011, 1:04 PM In all my years of gliding since 1987 I have never experienced anything like that! I was the Level 2 rostered on for that day at BSS. Thankfully, everyone on field and in the air kept a level head and made sensible decisions. I believe that having the morning briefing helped. I had flown earlier in the day with students and could see the sky darkening to the north. A call come over the radio from a glider airborne to the north at 9,000' the storm was 60km away. Initial impressions was that its groundspeed was 28 km/h. So there was time, so it seemed. Nevertheless, I advised people to start packing club a/c away by landing long on RWY 34. From my days sailing boats, I had seen such conditions develop and had been out on the water when a 60 knotter storm has hit. I launched about 40 mins before it hit, in the belief that the storm was not moving too rapidly towards us. On tow, you could see it approaching very rapidly with raised dust in the gust front that stretched to the horizon, so I bunged off early at 2000' AGL and landed long too, the air was quite bouyant. You could've ridden the gust front to Albany! Fortunately all club a/c were hangared 15-20min before it hit (not much time really). Members cars were placed undercover too. The wind was furious around the 70+ knot mark (125km/h +). Day went to night with the dust. It was noisy and a little bit scary. Big gum trees were bending over. The windsock pole snapped! The bad weather lasted 15-20 minutes, then afterwards all was still. Some members ended up looking like b&w minstrels from the dust. The trip back to Perth was eventful with powerlines down and trees across roads everywhere. Very fortunate that no-one was hurt or worse. Some take home messages: * BoM had forecast CB for later in the day, regard such a forecast seriously. The RASP and temp trace also indicated that such an event would occur (but not the severity though). * In the morning briefing the likelihood of later storms was covered, and advice given that only doing extended local soaring would be a sensible choice. * Also given that a fire ban with extreme to catastrophic conditions was in place, so again, no paddock retrieves (including trailer retrieves) were possible until the fireban was lifted. * Being outlanded with an approaching thunderstorm is not an attractive proposition, so don't tempt fate, remain within local soaring distance. * Looking back, the storm approached much more rapidly than people realised, if in doubt about an approaching storm, get a/c and people safe sooner rather than later. We packed things away with not much time to spare. * Given the ferocity of the wind, any a/c tied down outside in the open would have easily been blown over, even despite being pugged down (the pegs would have ripped out of the ropes would've broken). If a pilot was sitting in an a/c on the ground attempting to control the a/c in such conditions, serious injury or death would've been a likely result. Other feedback and experiences welcome. _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
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