S

svanarts

Well Known Member
Just looking at todays front page from DR... what I wouldn't give to have some of those wonderful OSH rains showers. The two years I've gone I couldn't help thinking...one good hail storm would wipe out the aircraft insurance industry.

Have fun at OSH!

Enduring day umpteen of 105+ temps here in central California.
 
Ugh, was looking forward to taking the hopefully-completed-soon RV out there next year, now you've got me scared!

Seems like weather often causes problems at OSH -- isn't it a total mess if there is rain or cloud at the end of the show? Surely most people are not IFR capable there.
 
Yep that's me, Mr. Not-IFR-Capable. :) And yes I do worry. Last year there was a tornado warning on the first day! My buddy and I had rented a house and stayed out on the front port half the night looking for tornados in the dark! :eek: Kinda silly but it gave us something to do with our nervous energy. The next day some planes that were not secured very well were blown around and dammaged due to microburst activity on the field. We were very glad we hadn't camped! We saw tons of sleeping bags laid out to dry the next day by their (I suspect) very sleep-deprived owners.

I'm really starting to miss Oshkosh now! :)
 
Last edited:
hail protection

Does anyone have any clever ideas for hail protection when the aircraft is parked outside?
 
I was there too.....

Last year there was a tornado warning on the first day!
Click to expand...

Huddled under the wing of a C-310 while the lightning was putting on a real show was certainly not the best place to be but I was wondering about the odds of our plane getting hit with the 10000 other planes on the field. I was also worried about the high winds with planes anchored in soggy ground. I wasn?t worried about hail though.

Casual weather observation: I lived most of my like in Jacksonville Florida (home of the ordinance) and arguable the thunderstorm/lightning capital of the world. Now I live in Northern California.

The thunderstorms in Florida would sometimes be so nasty that the street lights would turn on it got so dark. These storms would have serious lightning, it would rain so hard you couldn?t see across the street, the winds would often be gale force. Hail was an oddity though. Sometimes years could go by and I would never see any hail. If it did hail, it was small and the quantity was light.

In Northern California, thunderstorms are rare and they are really, really wimpy by comparison to Florida storms. What's weird is there is always hail associated them.The quantity of hail is sometimes amazing.

Can anyone explain why this is? I assume that humidity plays a large part.
 
I grew up just up the coast from Jax in Brunswick, GA and come to think of it I can only remember a few times when it hailed. Both times they were golf ball sized. I now live just down the Central Valley from you in Modesto and luckly most of our hail has all be small. Half-penney sized at best. Better still my plane is hangared.

I'm really intrigued by the padded plane covers mentioned earlier. I wonder how heavy/bulky those things are.
 
McFly said:
Can anyone explain why this is? I assume that humidity plays a large part.
Click to expand...

Maybe a moutain uplift effect? We got hail fairly often in SW Virginia when I lived there. Then again, golf-ball sized hail seems to be reported often in tornado alley storms. Definitely no mountains in most of those states.
 
I believe it has to do with how many trips up/down the water molecules takes before it overcomes the churning to drop on your head or plane. While I will agree that TRWs are violent in FL, I use to live in Panama City, the actual height of a TCU is not as great as on the plains. From Tx all the way up to Manitoba I have seen these beasties tower well above 50 kft due the uplifting heat and frontal passage. Now in FL you would be in the mid 30kft range. So I believe the more you churn those babies skyward, the bigger the fallout. The plains sure does churn with extreme heat and blasting uplifting cold fronts.

JMHO

:D
 
Last edited:
svanarts said:
Snip.. Last year there was a tornado warning on the first day!
Click to expand...

Wow - memories - the night my tent was blown flat, everything inside soaked clear through, watching my cell phone lightup like a christmas tree as it floated around in the bottom of the tent which was now a swimming pool, and "sleeping" all night completely soaked to the bone. Spent the next morning at the laundomat drying everything I owned.

Would I do it all over again? You're **** right I would!! I'm so glad Doug is finding a hotspot to post his days events.
 
The first year I went (2003) we camped and there was a big gullywasher on the second night. I'm a creature of comfort so I brought a queen-sized air mattress. When the rains came down and the floods came up and ran through my tent I grabbed everything and started stacking it up on the airmattress. I and all my belongs stayed high and dry. My friends on the other hand hadn't even staked their tents down. They had to catch their tents before they could crawl inside them. 45 minutes later they crawled out looking like drowned rats. They went on to spend a miserable night. :(

That's why we rented the house in 2005. When I go back next year, I will probably be tent camping again. I really miss that whole miserable experience. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.