Dan Hall wrote: > Actually I got up to over 12,000 and was climbing at over 1000 FPM however; > at the time I was being sucked up into a building thunderstorm (!) and made > an 'executive decision' to turn 180 degrees and RUN AWAY (Monty Python > style).
Those Western updrafts (and downdrafts) are powerful. On my trip across Wyoming, I got under a cloud street, the kind the sailplane pilots love with cloud after cloud lined up and an updraft under each of them. I had to REALLY reduce power to stay down to 12,500'. Due to the turbulence, I couldn't waste energy by diving at high speed. I was keeping my speed low to reduce the g-load from the turbulence. That made for an interesting time for between a half-hour and an hour. Like Langewiesche says in Stick and Rudder, "Engines are puny!" Ed
