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Severe Turbulence

J

jmartin871

I'm New Here
I experienced a single jolt of severe turbulence in my RV-7 while crossing the Sierra's near Donner Pass. My head hit the canopy hard and things (like my iPad) flew around the cockpit. After I landed, I inspected the aircraft and found no damage,i.e., no rivets popped or rippled surface sheet metal.

Question: Would anyone suggest any specific areas to check further? Should I get a professional to look at it?

PS: It flew fine afterward. No obvious distortions in any surface.
 
Welcome to VAF!

First post ----- :D

Welcome aboard.

This is probably a good question to ask the good folks at the factory.
 
jmartin871 said:
I experienced a single jolt of severe turbulence in my RV-7 while crossing the Sierra's near Donner Pass. My head hit the canopy hard and things (like my iPad) flew around the cockpit. After I landed, I inspected the aircraft and found no damage,i.e., no rivets popped or rippled surface sheet metal.

Question: Would anyone suggest any specific areas to check further? Should I get a professional to look at it?

PS: It flew fine afterward. No obvious distortions in any surface.
Click to expand...

It doesn't take much negative g to push your head into the canopy if you don't have your straps cinched down. Very few of us fly around with the straps cinched tight on a cross-country. Personally, I wouldn't be concerned about one jolt that threw you out of the seat.
 
You can't make an uneducated statement like that wirejock. Could have been 2 G's or 6 G's. Your head will try to hit the canopy and your things will fly around either way.
 
R. Daniels said:
You can't make an uneducated statement like that wirejock. Could have been 2 G's or 6 G's. Your head will try to hit the canopy and your things will fly around either way.
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Remember, you are sitting still at +1 G. So a -1 jolt simply brings you to zero. So, a negative 1.5 G hit will read as -.5.

I hit a 3.7G positive hit once. Oh, that hurt! Pulled the data later to verify and sure enough, I didn't misread the G meter.
 
My educated rebuttal

R. Daniels said:
You can't make an uneducated statement like that wirejock. Could have been 2 G's or 6 G's. Your head will try to hit the canopy and your things will fly around either way.
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I've pulled, pushed, and experienced enough positive and negative g in my life to know the difference between 2 and 6 g - positive or negative. If the OP had a minus 3g or greater hit, while strapped into his airplane in typical cross country fashion, I assure you he'd have more damage than just a "hard" head hit and some things flying around the cockpit. Knocked unconscious would be more typical of that type of event.

Hey guys, I'm not saying he didn't experience a significant turbulence event. I just doubt it came close to approaching the limits of our fantastic airplanes. If you've ever experienced minus 3g or greater, and I have, you have some appreciation of the extreme nature of those conditions.
 
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If it wasn't a continuous sustained negative G load, I wouldn't worry too much about it. These RVs are incredibly strong airframes and can withstand a lot. If you're really concerned, you could pull some wing skins off and eddy-current test your spars but IMHO that would be overkill.
 
Neal@F14 said:
....If you're really concerned, you could pull some wing skins off and eddy-current test your spars but IMHO that would be overkill.
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I wouldn't do that on my plane. A good visual inspection ought to suffice, unless there's some new damage found.

Dave
 
I guess I should've used the words paranoidly concerned instead.:eek:
Unless your head broke the canopy and there were visibly signs of overstressing the airframe, it's probably fine. RV flyers encounter strong mountain turbulence every year while crossing the Rockies and these airplanes endure it just fine.
 
Randy, I think the response was sent to "wirejock", and not you.......

Originally Posted by R. Daniels
You can't make an uneducated statement like that wirejock. Could have been 2 G's or 6 G's. Your head will try to hit the canopy and your things will fly around either way.

Well, I can and I did make the statement but I assure you it wasn't an uneducated one. I've pulled, pushed, and experienced enough positive and negative g in my life to know the difference between 2 and 6 g - positive or negative. If the OP had a minus 3g or greater hit, while strapped into his airplane in typical cross country fashion, I assure you he'd have more damage than just a "hard" head hit and some things flying around the cockpit. Knocked unconscious would be more typical of that type of event.

Hey guys, I'm not saying he didn't experience a significant turbulence event. I just doubt it came close to approaching the limits of our fantastic airplanes. If you've ever experienced minus 3g or greater, and I have, you have some appreciation of the extreme nature of those conditions.
__________________
Randy
 
PCHunt said:
Randy, I think the response was sent to "wirejock", and not you.......

Originally Posted by R. Daniels
You can't make an uneducated statement like that wirejock. Could have been 2 G's or 6 G's. Your head will try to hit the canopy and your things will fly around either way.

Well, I can and I did make the statement but I assure you it wasn't an uneducated one. I've pulled, pushed, and experienced enough positive and negative g in my life to know the difference between 2 and 6 g - positive or negative. If the OP had a minus 3g or greater hit, while strapped into his airplane in typical cross country fashion, I assure you he'd have more damage than just a "hard" head hit and some things flying around the cockpit. Knocked unconscious would be more typical of that type of event.

Hey guys, I'm not saying he didn't experience a significant turbulence event. I just doubt it came close to approaching the limits of our fantastic airplanes. If you've ever experienced minus 3g or greater, and I have, you have some appreciation of the extreme nature of those conditions.
__________________
Randy
Click to expand...

Whoops. Sorry for the testy reply . . . regardless of the intended recipient I was intemperate. My apologies Mr. Daniels.
 
Negative G

If you don't have a five point harness it won't take much negative to bounce off the canopy. Put in the fifth point and keep ALL the slack out of belts, it won't be uncomfortable on a long trip.
 
jmartin871 said:
I experienced a single jolt of severe turbulence in my RV-7 while crossing the Sierra's near Donner Pass. My head hit the canopy hard and things (like my iPad) flew around the cockpit. After I landed, I inspected the aircraft and found no damage,i.e., no rivets popped or rippled surface sheet metal.

Question: Would anyone suggest any specific areas to check further? Should I get a professional to look at it?

PS: It flew fine afterward. No obvious distortions in any surface.
Click to expand...

To get back to the question posed, there is no way to assess damage other than what you have done, unless you have a G meter record of the even. If G meter shows -8 G's, that would be a problem. You could sustain such a shock for 2 seconds and not realize it.
Airliners suffer hard shocks many times in their life, also an occasional hard landing. An inspection almost always gets the thing back in the air in no time.
 
Turbulence

Hello,
I fly low level surveillance flights weekly for my company and am always flying in turbulence. I totally agree with Neal's post. Unless you are in a sustained g loading period, I wouldn't worry about it . I'm flying cessnas that are not even rated at half the g loading capability of your RV and they take that kind of pounding daily. Hitting your head probably didn't help you much though. I've got an RV7A and by them being so light, they experience jolts easier than many other aircraft. If you're really concerned, look at your skins around rivets. They usually show signs of stress wrinkling if you've done any damage. Saw it on a plane that made the mistake of trying to fly through a big Midwest thunderstorm one time and they lived to tell about it. I'm pretty sure without looking though that your RV is fine. They are STRONG!!
Safe flying
Mike
RV7A flying since 9/2014
 
Sierra Turbulance

I fly over the Southern Sierra in my -8A on nearly every flight. Have had my head banged off the canopy numerous times. Except in one -1 1/2 g case, g load was between 0 and -1. Gets one's attention because the canopy thumpers are very quick, sudden events, different from the almost continuous banging one almost gets used to.

Even when I figured my 5-point harness was tight, the requirement - due to the quickness of the event - was to be "Really Tight".

I try to do +3 to +3 1/2 g acro on every flight. Figure if the wings can handle that on a regular basis, an occasional rapid -1 1/2 g excursion isn't going to hurt.
 
JOLTS

Decending in to Carson City just after passing over Lake Tahoe I experienced a 4.5+ and a 2.5- as registered on my G-meter. It was a hard hit but had my belt tight and and things secure. If I didn't have a G-meter I would have thought it was over 6+ G's.

Steve
 
is there an educational component here?

Holy heck! that's some G's, jeez.

so, are there big signs or anything.... warning that you are about to fly into this kind of stuff? ( nope!:rolleyes:)

If I am cruising along in my RV-9a, and then see this on my G-meter,
I've now exceeded both limits, (+4.4/-1.75 G) at least at that instant.
The meter doesn't know if I'm at gross, or lightly loaded.....does that affect the reading, or true stress on the airframe?

I see that instantaneous loading is different than sustained, but other than a visual inspection, how does a person, or mechanic, proceed with verifying airworthiness after an 'incident'????
 
I think with out a G meter reading it will be hard to tell the severity of the loads applied. Can you give us more details about the conditions. Clear air, wind conditions, were you over a ridge line or a valley. I fly over there occasionally and worry about how to avoid severe turbulence.

Brian
 
Going into Carson City

I was going over the last ridge EB into Carson City and started to hit moderate turbulence and then BANG it hit only once. I was going about 180 mph tas (to fast). I have heard a sharp jolt at high G's is easier on a plane than sustained G loads. Steve
 
IMHO, the standard mechanical G-meters don't properly record sharp jolts. I think they "over-report", i.e. read higher than the actual G.

They work on a principle of springs and weights. When you pull smoothly to a certain G setting, they work well. If you hit sharp turbulence, the weights move quickly, and actually overshoot their mark, due to the momentum of the weight inside the G meter.

On many occasions I have seen G-meters pegged out in both directions after a normal carrier landing........

JOMO.
 
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