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.
