Bikesafe's Blog

The attached article relates to sudden very powerful “rogue” wind gusts which I have experienced twice. One is understandable and perhaps even predictable. I was flying my Cessna to Jackson Hole from the East and just starting to cross the front range of the Rockies at about 10,000 feet gawking out the window at those awesome mountains. Not too worried about updrafts from the mountains because of the distance between me and ancient upheavals. All of a sudden out of the blue came a huge thud like somebody had slapped the plane with a giant 2 x 4. I can still remember how scared I was: on a scale of 1 – 10 it was a 15. Finally after I got my composure back I started examining the undersides of the wings for damage which I was positive must have been caused by the mighty blow. I could see nothing damaged so I proceeded to put the plane into slight turns, climbs and banks to see if all of the controls still responded properly. Amazingly all was well and I continued on to Gillette Wyoming where I was weathered in for three days and never did make it to Jackson Hole.

(Above picture is Devil’s Tower taken as I flew over it on my way to Gillette, WY. Before making the trip I was joking around with my instructor and asked him if he thought I could land on the flat portion of the Tower; he said “yes, one time”)

The second encounter with Mother Nature’s hot breath came while practicing maneuvers to earn my pilot’s license. It was just north of St Charles, Missouri and as I remember the exercise was called “turns about a point” or something like that. It basically was to find some landmark like a railroad track and fly a zig-zag pattern over the top of the tracks without losing any altitude (when  you bank a plane for a turn you lose lift). As I recall I was at 1800 feet doing the zig-zags and before I could blink an eye I was almost on the deck at 500 feet. I did nothing wrong – I just simply fell out of the sky. It scared me so bad I turned and headed for the airport and as soon as my knees stopped knocking together I grabbed my instructor and told him about the experience. He basically told me it was a mystery – no known explanation. My subsequent reading on the subject has led me to believe it was wind shear. There have been commercial airliners on low and slow approaches who have experienced the same thing and unfortunately a few have ended up as  total disasters. Because of the two above incidents I can certainly relate to the story in the related article:

Click here