Instructors, have this happened before?

[ZS-NEL]

Want to know if this happened before to anyone. Something almost very bad happened today that I have never experienced before. You know when you have those 15 hour-almost-ready-for-solo students you tend to let them mess up a little bit before taking control. Just to see what they want to do with a landing after a litle all over the place approach. He gets it sort of corrected in a very gusty croswind. I was stepping on the throttle and let him handle it with the bar. Next moment we got a sudden gust and lost a lot of that important speed. we drop the last 2meter out the sky and bounced on the one back wheel just hard enought for both my feet to come of the controls. The next moment we turned almost 90 degrees with the runway with me siting with a bar I can basicaly do anything with and my feet hanging like bananas down. I could only shout POWER, POWER, FULL POWER. The student step on it in a split second and pulled us out of this situation.

Please be carefull . Your feet can come of after a bit of a bad landing and then it might go very wrong.

[Tumbleweed]

Thats happened to me flying solo and look, I'm still fine.

[ZS-NEL]

Ja, but the Secunda dudes are normaly stronger than the rest !

[kloot piloot]

I think the cross wind into ground effect got you. Hence the 2 meter drop and weathercocking.

On a lighter note:

I was stepping on the throttle

and

I could only shout POWER, POWER, FULL POWER.

[Dobbs]

Hi ZS-Nel, while I have not experienced a situation as bad as you have described, if my theory is correct, it would probably have been a hot time of the day, and maybe with a gusty, but not necessarily strong wind?

If this is the case, it could well have been a thermal which had developed close to your point of landing, and as the thermal was drawing the air up, so the surrounding air was rushing in and displacing this air, which would have felt like a cross wind which had come out of nowhere, and with the side wind component, the air speed over the wing would have decreased resulting in loss of lift - if the conditions were not as I suspect, then I have no other thoughts on what may have caused your "fright"

[Big-D]

ZS-Nel - Your feet came off cause you are so tall my boet and your knees were probably touching your ears like usual

Glad you guys are OK

Vat nou 'n lekker glas melk en 'n baal lusern dan voel jy beter

D