Mooney_Driver wrote:
If he still could turn around… the turbulence and rotors would have been to the North of the TJ and the question would be, can you actually turn around and clear it.
Anybody knowing the area well enough to tell whether emergency landing somewhere would have been an option? I don’t see any airfield on the maps?
There are some outlanding fields for gliders in the aera. Most are only 250 to 300m, but the one called “Huben” inside the Ötztal is about 700m and might have been suitable.
It’s however very doubtful if a landing at one of those fields could succeed if even keeping the aircraft in the air was impossible. Plus, those fields are usually not mentioned in charts for powered aircraft.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
even though rotors may well reach that high.
Can rotors really reach higher than the mountains? (Lee waves, certainly!)
Airborne_Again wrote:
Can rotors really reach higher than the mountains? (Lee waves, certainly!)
I’m also curious about more information. Btw a very good primer for flying in the Alps is this presentation: https://youtu.be/UBbgmqrEeRE?si=_eMWQ2vDivhdbuGO
Thomas_R wrote:
Plus, those fields are usually not mentioned in charts for powered aircraft.
Very interesting and maybe relevant far beyond this special case. I looked at Foreflight and Skydemon and did not see any of those.
Where to get this information in each country, maybe even as .KMZ so it can be imported into FF, like the DULV example for Germany (http://www.dulv.de/sites/default/files/Einfache_Seite_Files/Flugplaetze_Google_DULV_0.zip)?
They can be downloaded at https://landewiesen.streckenflug.at in .cup(x) format. I don’t know if that can be imported into SkyDemon or FF (good idea though).
Please be aware that these are not proper airfields, but outlanding fields (meadows, agricultural fields) that are mostly listed as last option solutions for gliders. Many have obstacles or are very short. Furthermore, the content is user-generated and may be obsolete, i.e. the outlanding possibility may no longer exist.
When I’m gliding in the Alps, I try to have a look at the principal fields before possibly having to use them (either from the air or preferrably from the ground) and also update the database.
@Thomas_R Thx a lot! No idea why they use these odd double ZIPs, but there are free online converter from CUP(X) to KMZ, so I’ll try.
update Unfortunately it does not work straight away – the CUP files do convert to KMZ Google Earth is able to render, but FF won’t – so I guess I’ll drop a request at the FF support on that as I find it very useful in case of emergency.
