David-aviator
Well Known Member
I commented to the controller coming into St. Louis Spirit, recreation flying today is kind of dumb to which he responded, dumb or interesting? Yea, some of each.
It's just that there are so few decent days to fly this time of the year, one tends to test the elements when he shouldn't.
The problem is this very deep low pressure system over the Rockies creating these tightly packed isobars across the mid west and that means wind from the south, lots of it, and low level turbulence, lots of it too. The chop at 140 knots was totally uncomfortable so it was slow up to the blue line and ride it out.
The missions was important I suppose, I needed a new can of mixed nuts from Sam's for our usual news watching happy hour around here. A couple friends from our informal geezer club provided transportation for lunch also.
The landing at KSUS was ok even with the ATIS wind gusting from 11 to 28 knots across the runway at 90 degrees, felt good about that, touching down on one wheel with the right wing quite low. No problem, lucked out one more time. With 5000'+ of runway, the machine can be finessed on with no concern about running out of concrete.
Two hours later coming into our 2100' x 25' tree lined strip with the same wind condition was another matter. It took quite a bit of attention just to keep the machine reasonably level on final at 70 knots and in the flare it almost pranged on as the turbulence did not let up one bit. As it turned out, the touch down was not all that bad with some deft stick movement the last second or so, but something was vibrating severely. I thought I blew a tire. As the beast slowed the vibration stopped completely and I thought wow, what was that all about? All was smooth and there was no flat tire.
After stowing the airplane in the hangar, I decided to take a walk out to the runway and see if there was anything to see. What I found was a bit disconcerting. The nose gear had gone into a wild side to side oscillation leaving rubber marks swerving left to right where it was doing this weird gyration. It was not a typical NG vibration, it was the NG pivoting from left to right about 30 degrees, the tire marks are very clear and it did this for maybe 6 cycles. I think what happened was the NG contacted the surface in a slight crab and the NG did not like that one bit. It was not the usual full aft stick landing due to the gusty conditions. Not a good situation. At Spirit it was a full aft stick landing but there was plenty of time and runway to work it on.
I will inspect the NG thoroughly and next time keep the hangar door closed when such a day presents itself. 2100' with trees is not enough runway with such wind conditions.
Live and learn, it goes on forever.
It's just that there are so few decent days to fly this time of the year, one tends to test the elements when he shouldn't.
The problem is this very deep low pressure system over the Rockies creating these tightly packed isobars across the mid west and that means wind from the south, lots of it, and low level turbulence, lots of it too. The chop at 140 knots was totally uncomfortable so it was slow up to the blue line and ride it out.
The missions was important I suppose, I needed a new can of mixed nuts from Sam's for our usual news watching happy hour around here. A couple friends from our informal geezer club provided transportation for lunch also.
The landing at KSUS was ok even with the ATIS wind gusting from 11 to 28 knots across the runway at 90 degrees, felt good about that, touching down on one wheel with the right wing quite low. No problem, lucked out one more time. With 5000'+ of runway, the machine can be finessed on with no concern about running out of concrete.
Two hours later coming into our 2100' x 25' tree lined strip with the same wind condition was another matter. It took quite a bit of attention just to keep the machine reasonably level on final at 70 knots and in the flare it almost pranged on as the turbulence did not let up one bit. As it turned out, the touch down was not all that bad with some deft stick movement the last second or so, but something was vibrating severely. I thought I blew a tire. As the beast slowed the vibration stopped completely and I thought wow, what was that all about? All was smooth and there was no flat tire.
After stowing the airplane in the hangar, I decided to take a walk out to the runway and see if there was anything to see. What I found was a bit disconcerting. The nose gear had gone into a wild side to side oscillation leaving rubber marks swerving left to right where it was doing this weird gyration. It was not a typical NG vibration, it was the NG pivoting from left to right about 30 degrees, the tire marks are very clear and it did this for maybe 6 cycles. I think what happened was the NG contacted the surface in a slight crab and the NG did not like that one bit. It was not the usual full aft stick landing due to the gusty conditions. Not a good situation. At Spirit it was a full aft stick landing but there was plenty of time and runway to work it on.
I will inspect the NG thoroughly and next time keep the hangar door closed when such a day presents itself. 2100' with trees is not enough runway with such wind conditions.
Live and learn, it goes on forever.