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VFR Mountain flying

You can always convert speed into altitude, height into speed, etc. All planes fly with the same principles. If say you are doing 130kt then you can gain hundreds of feet before approaching Vs. This can be used to do a tight (climbing) turn.

What you don’t want to do is run out of height and speed at the same time.

I think “mountain flying” (flying inside the canyons, rather than flying straight over the top) needs a lot of local knowledge and preparation, which is why I have never done it Well, I did it once, in 2004, with a local pilot as passenger, from Wangen-Lachen to Sion where he was collecting a PA28 from maintenance. Got loads of great pics on that flight. We flew 8000ft-13000ft. On the way back I followed him, and my plan was that if I lost him I would use my moving map (I had a special setup even back then, showing a topo map of the Alps, running on a pocket/pc PDA) to stay in the canyon while climbing straight up (there was some cloud cover) and declare an emergency to ATC.

When flying to “canyon airports” (e.g. Zell am See, Locarno, Bolzano) and even when going there at say FL150 you have to be well prepared with topo charts and positively identify the canyon which you are going to descend into, so you can climb back up before getting too far down.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Well, while it is best to know exactly where you are in the mountains and what to expect, regardless I was taught to always have an out, like for icing.

The ‘out’ in the mountains is always having enough room to turn around. This room is highly influenced by your groundspeed.

What is being discussed about faster/slower flying adds some 3D to the decision and that bit is in my view more personal:

  • Do you want to fly faster, hence have more energy margin, and then perhaps plan on climbing/slowing down before turning back?, or
  • Do you want to fly slower, have more margin to turn around , possibly in level or descending flight, but with less energy margin?

I tend to pick a balance, depending on the width of the valley at my altitude…the wider the faster.

Antonio
LESB, Spain

Peter wrote:

I think “mountain flying” (flying inside the canyons, rather than flying straight over the top) needs a lot of local knowledge and preparation

It’s actually very easy. You study the map, then follow roads, rivers valleys, fjords. They are all distinct features, easy to navigate. What traditionally has been a problem is people have gotten lost (almost independent of experience). With a low ceiling and less than 10+ vis, it suddenly starts to get very difficult because you see only a small part of the valley you are flying into, and they all start to look the same. One wrong turn is all it takes, and going back isn’t all that helpful, because you don’t know where you took the wrong turn (+ it all still looks the same). Flying low and look at road signs has been the savior (seriously). It’s that, or you end up decorating a mountain, or manage to land at some odd place (road, football field or similar).

With GPS people don’t get lost anymore. No need for a SD kind of thing, the magenta line is of little use. A very simple moving map is all it takes, google maps works fine, or some of the earliest Garmin GPS with “maps”. That’s how I flew for ages. Traditional paper map planning, and a simple (very rudimentary) moving map/GPS for SA. Today I only use SD (or Easy VFR, depending on how angry I get with one of them due to some stupid “feature” ), mostly because it is so simple and fast. In addition, the planes I fly also have a moving map on the panel. The exception is the Cub.

This is the main reason Alaska is one notch above everything else IMO. There are vast areas with pure wilderness, no human made structures. With GPS it’s no problem, but in earlier times it must have been really difficult. Getting lost was more of a death sentence.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

LeSving wrote:

This is the main reason Alaska is one notch above everything else IMO. There are vast areas with pure wilderness, no human made structures. With GPS it’s no problem, but in earlier times it must have been really difficult. Getting lost was more of a death sentence.

not to mention the magnetic declination that can be 20 ° while in central Europe is neglected (2 ° in Switzerland)

LSGS, Switzerland

From here.

Dan wrote:

Single engine flying thru the Alps is dangerous

While I understand (and even agree with!) the background, one could say the same thing of “single engine flying” in general, and even “flying” in general.

I guess as with all risks, some kind of assessment and mitigating plan (study, instruction…) is required in order to qualify any of the above statements.

This is the job of the PIC.

So for example in the case that triggered this post, one thing is flying the canyons all across the Alps, a different matter is flying FL180 to Aosta (which is at the bottom of a canyon surrounded by 14000ft-mountains) then doing a spiral descent on the overhead (the severity of risk may be similar, the likelyhood lesser since you put yourself at higher risk for a lesser fraction of your flight time).

Last Edited by Antonio at 24 Oct 14:11
Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

While I understand (and even agree with!) the background, one could say the same thing of “single engine flying” in general, and even “flying” in general.

Yes, we could easily quote pilot A.G. Lamplugh, famed for having said “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.”

But…
There is probably no denial that SE flying over dangerous terrain (real mountains, desolate areas, water in general, etc) will, should a problem occur, decrease the chance of survivability, sometimes severely.
Adding all the variants of weather threats, decreasing human, decreasing aircraft performance, etc, will make flying thru the Alps dangerous.

PS
Overflying the Alps whilst in IFR regime at FL180 bears no relation to what is being discussed here…

Dan
ain't the Destination, but the Journey
LSZF, Switzerland

Dan wrote:

Overflying the Alps whilst in IFR regime at FL180 bears no relation to what is being discussed here…

Sure, I was mostly referring to the latter/first VFR part of that flight to/from Aosta, after/before a FL180 IFR cruise. My point in that case being that you are limiting most of the thread-relevant risk to the last/first few mins of the flight (the VFR portion), hence your risk matrix may be turning from yellow to green.

For example. , this is the way @Emir and @Peter tell us they mitigate the risk as PICs when flying into Aosta.

(edited to include a more realistic risk classification, however, I insist: this analysis is specific to each PIC)

Last Edited by Antonio at 24 Oct 17:07
Antonio
LESB, Spain

I do this stuff ultimately by reference to webcams, before departure, so one doesn’t get stuck under a cloud layer.

Then it should be quite safe.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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