A Scary moment

[kloot piloot]

Skin, what you and Nkwazi experienced sounds what us hang glider pilots refer to as "going over the falls".

I will try to explain it, but first I must tell you that I dropped a wing of to Jenya last week, and between Bapsfontein and your runway at Petit I counted 31 dust-devils !

"Going over the falls" is typically a "what goes up must come down" theory. There was a mother of a thermal in the vicinity. In the core of a thermal everything goes up at easily 4 - 6 m/s. Around the thermal you end up with "falls" of cooling air going down again at the same speed. Caught in between this convergence you will experience what you did. Nkwazi enjoyed the core (the good lift) and you had the "falls". The "falls" are typically worse on the down-wind side of a thermal.

Another thing to keep in mind around thermals are the dust-devils. If you drag your hand through water you will find lee-side twirls in the water. Dusties are the twirls caused by a thermal traveling through the air. Hitting a dusty low-level is far more dangerous than hitting the falls. The falls (in theory) cannot slam you into the ground, because it needs to bounce back up.

But it is a K@K experience. I am witness to 2 blue cheek bones when it happened to me near Beestekraal at 13h00 last year.

NOT NICE. Glad you are OK though.

This time of the year is the ideal time for the strongest thermal you will experience.

[skybound®]

Also considered the thermic answer, but since no mention of a turn induced in any direction (hitting side on to the downdraught) discounted it. If hit was square on, the sink would have been followed by some significant lift (or significant lift prior to the 'incident').

[Wallaby]

Had the same type of experience a few months back. Look at viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9667 .
Different time of the day, but nearly the same temperature and also wind gusting.
Glad you're okay, because I know it had rattled me for a long while afterwards. Everytime you take-off, and the aerie starts entering even small turbulance, your arse start nipping and your legs start tremblin'. Not a nice feeling when the aerie suddenly ends up in a abnormal flying position.

[bryan]

Hi Guys
Now with 3hrs Solo time and doing circuits on Sunday had gust conditions with warm afternoon. Wind about 7 to 8 knots crosswinds had similar experience on finals at 150 ft. Quite scary but continued by turning a landing into a low pass and going round again. The turbulence at that area was gone and felt comfortable to land safely
Rgards
Bryan
ZU BFR

[Gyronaut]

You are going to catch one p@#s klap when you not looking you chop.

Bwaahahahaha, I know this is off topic... so sue me... but that comment had me in hysterics! Elsewhere on this forum and on Avcom, pages and pages have been written about the use of the word 'currently'. Methinks we should let the Thatchman loose on them. He doesn't mince his words does he!?

Thanks for brightening my day!

[Sukkelaar]

Not the lingo to use on this site guys, my 11 year old son as well as a few others I know of use this site.
In afrikaaans this is a very bad word and I know of very little people that would use it. Would appreciate a edit to it.

regards

Sukkelaar

[andreb]

Hendrik

Glad you OK. Similar happened to me after taking off from a touch and go at Lieb Grabies field last year. Very bumpy and then dropped suddenly (one wing first), right over the power lines. I recovered but had to land to stop shaking.
Thanks for the birthday wishes!

cheers

Andre

[powerfly]

prefrontal....

[Gyronaut]

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy