Wake turbulence is scary

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Oracle427
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Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oracle427 »

Heavy, clean and slow. The formula for intense wake turbulence. Thankfully I only had 2 of these today.

So I went up for a short flight today in a 182 to pay a visit to my tailwheel instructor. Winds were calm and he was flying a Stearman ahead of me in the pattern.

He landed ahead of me on the grass off the right side of the runway about 30 seconds before me. As I leveled off over the threshold I suddenly experienced a sudden and steady uncommanded roll to the left to about 20 degrees of bank. I quickly corrected with coordinated input but I was now drifting off to the side of the runway so I immediately applied full power and began retracting flaps for the go around. Yikes!

As I climbed up in the pattern I checked the sock and saw it was dead calm. My first thought in the heat of the moment was that the aircraft was stalling and dropping a wing. However, that would be uncharacteristic for the aircraft and then the light bulb went off. I realized I had just experienced wake turbulence for the first time. After I landed I walked over to thank my instructor for the free lesson. :)

In this case, I only caught the outer edge of the vortex as it was probably displaced off to my right. It also got me thinking about how intense it would have been had the aircraft been heavier. One of the pilots on the field commented that biplanes with their draggy thick wings and no flaps make a lot of wake turbulence. As a result they can be worse than most other light aircraft of similar weight.
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Oliver Branaschky
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oliver Branaschky »

Thanks for sharing your experience. Germany's accident investigation board (BFU) have just recently released a safety video on that topic. It's in German, but you'll get the point: http://www.bfu-web.de/DE/Service/V180-V ... _node.html


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Oliver

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Oracle427
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oracle427 »

Thanks for the link. That was about the same roll rate, but I must have just clipped the edge of the vortex with my right wingtip.
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Oliver Branaschky
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oliver Branaschky »

Guess you were lucky then.


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Nick - A2A
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Nick - A2A »

Interesting topic. "Yikes" indeed Oracle! Glad the encounter had a safe outcome. :) Looking at the video that Oliver posted shows just how quickly such a situation can develop, especially with such a large biplane as the An-2. Sadly I believe 3 of the 4 occupants in that case were killed.

For anyone interested, there's a little more reading on some research into wake turbulence relating to the incident here: http://www.dglr.de/publikationen/2014/340177.pdf.

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Lewis - A2A
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Lewis - A2A »

Thanks for the post Oracle, sounds like an exciting incident indeed, though exciting is only the word you would use to describe it well after the event. Glad you handled it well and are still here to post about it.

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Oracle427
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oracle427 »

Thanks for that Nick.I was wondering what details they were sharing in the video. My situation was nowhere near that critical,but it was a reminder of just how quickly things can go south at low altitudes.
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Nick - A2A
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Nick - A2A »

On the subject of wake turbulence, I suspect many of you will already have watched this video from the 'FlightChops' channel but this thread seems like a good place to post it anyway. It shows another low altitude wake turbulence encounter which must have been rather frightening. (In a 172 this time.) This one had a safe outcome.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuGFIXxkyLU[/youtube]

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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by T6flyer »

On the way into Prestwick once on a flight from Sleap in an Auster AOP.9, we found that when we got there we were downwind to a 747 Freighter on finals. We were told to orbit for 6 minutes on base before we allowed to land.

Martin

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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by bobsk8 »

T6flyer wrote:On the way into Prestwick once on a flight from Sleap in an Auster AOP.9, we found that when we got there we were downwind to a 747 Freighter on finals. We were told to orbit for 6 minutes on base before we allowed to land.

Martin
I was flying North on Miami Beach years ago in a Cessna 152 at 1,000 agl, and I saw a 747 descending into rwy 27R at Miami. They would cross the shoreline at around 4000 feet, but I decided to make a couple of 360s just south of it's approach path , to allow the wake turbelence which sinks at around 500 fpm to dissipate before continuing North. Finally, I decided I had waited long enough and turned north, and about 20 seconds later the 152 felt like it had hit a brick wall. That certainly got my attention.
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G-BJPS
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by G-BJPS »

Wow, I don't read this forum section enough! Glad you were ok Oracle!
I find Wake Turbulence fascinating, and appreciate how deadly it can be, I'm sure you have probably seen these clips, but they demonstrate it perfectly, both visually and audibly!! :shock:

https://youtu.be/4VwDUEwNV_w

https://youtu.be/zW4PmUE151c

https://youtu.be/dfY5ZQDzC5s


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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Taka taka »

Never encountered anything like that - sheesh.

My best was coming back from Olathe KS to Wichita in a C 210 when we suddenly dropped and rolled a bit.

"November 1 - 1 Charlie, be advised you are following a C5 prepare for a wake."

"No crepe? G'day."
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Oracle427
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oracle427 »

This still remains and hopefully forever remains my scariest moment while flying.

I've had one situation during a landing where I encountered windshear on short final, but it was anticipated and I was ready with the power. The bottom dropped out ask of a sudden and the ground came up fast, but it was fine in the end. The key was that I anticipated it, so it was nowhere near as scary.

A C5 wake must be insane!
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Oliver Branaschky
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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Oliver Branaschky »

We've been covering that topic recently in ground school. Also worth a read: http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3/0017&opt=0


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Re: Wake turbulence is scary

Post by Taka taka »

Oracle427 wrote:This still remains and hopefully forever remains my scariest moment while flying.

I've had one situation during a landing where I encountered windshear on short final, but it was anticipated and I was ready with the power. The bottom dropped out ask of a sudden and the ground came up fast, but it was fine in the end. The key was that I anticipated it, so it was nowhere near as scary.

A C5 wake must be insane!
We had some John Denver playing - "Rocky mountain high..." Bump & roll.

We giggled a lot.

We were actually far enough behind that it was not worrisome. It woke us up for sure.
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