I fly the same type of aircraft, professionally. If I had carried-out that arrival and approach I would be fully expecting a chat with the Chief Pilot or worse.
Thoughts:
It was clear that there were significant build-ups, weather radar or not. The DA42 may be certified for IFR flight but sometimes it is not very clever. Everyone else was doing their damnedest to avoid weather whilst this pilot merrily ploughed into CBs whilst fiddling with his weather radar. He recognised he needed to avoid some bits but was not assertive enough with ATC. Also, from the AFM “Flights into known thunderstorms are prohibited.”
He had numerous opportunity to cancel IFR and get out of the weather. A smart pilot doesn’t practise bleeding.
Icing – for most of the recording he had the TKS deicing system set on High with occasionally bursts of Maximum – I’m surprised he didn’t run out of TKS.
No structure to after landing checks. Random deselection of deicing, flaps, strobes etc. I think he may have been reflecting on the previous 20 minutes.
I disagree with an earlier comment about him knowing the aircraft. First stage of flap was selected at about 145-150KIAS (Vfe is 137) and second stage was testing the 111KIAS limit. He’s also manually tuning frequencies whereas the he could have pre-loaded through the G1000.
All in all, a good example of someone who is out of his depth and or working at/beyond his capacity. He’s also going to get some very expensive maintenance bills if he keeps fly a DA42 into such weather.
I make no apologies for been hard-hitting; to me this was an excellent example of how not to operate an aircraft.
PS. His windscreen defrosting system definitely needs sorting – the DA42 actually has a pretty good flow of air over the windscreen, which is more than can be said for the footwell. :)
Unfortunately in German, but that’s the opposite risk of what we see in jaunty’s video… Flying when nothing happens and too little sleep…shocking reality in commercial flying :-(
ADL is like XM weather here in the US, I assume? Here it updates every 7mins and, no, it’s not good enough for avoidance. If you want to pick your way through, radar is a must. If you’re happy to deviate considerably, or even divert, then ADL/XM can be enough. It’s certainly a good tool and I had it on the 430W in the Aerostar. Gave you a good overview.
One huge advantage of the ADL over an on-board weather radar is that it allows you to see the weather over hundreds of miles, thus making clever strategic decisions. Here is one from this Monday, flying from Belgrade to Luebeck:
My filed route was nowhere near BILNA or NAROX (was quite a bit further to the east). When still over Hungary, I knew more or less the point I wanted to aim for (of course, there was a chance that things would change considerably, but they didn’t). So, I asked for Slovak, Czech and Polish ATC for avoid headings that put me towards that point. Of course, that’s a bit of a dirty game, since there was not really any significant weather where I was. The requested headings were merely to point me towards that point west of the big TS in Germany. Worked nicely. Try that with a 10-inch radar antenna..
Later, the breaks had become much smaller and one of course has to figure in the delay of the DWD supplied radar image, which, in the best case, is a few minutes old. But I was in VMC and able to “verify” the radar image with the view out the window and it all made sense (note: that route via Hannover was merely a short experiment).
Together with the stormscope, I managed to find the best spot for crossing that area. Still, a wx radar would have been useful in that situation, no doubt. But again, it’s not available for most of us SEP flyers.
boscomantico wrote:
…is that it allows you to see the weather over hundreds of miles,…
Yes and no. Convective weather like thunderstorms is very short-lived and moves fast. So whatever is more than 100 miles away will look completely different when I finally get there. I rarely set the weather radar range to anything above 100NM because even at 400+ KT whatever I see on the screen will be history when we reach it. My usual setting is 50NM and on the approach in that video I would chose a range 25NM. When forced to fly through a gap between individual cells even a range of 5NM can save you from the worst.
For long range stuff, which as what_next says changes as you go along, I don’t see what is less good about simply looking at meteox.com over some internet connection – GSM/3G/4G is you are lucky, or a Thuraya satphone one.
Peter wrote:
I don’t see what is less good about simply looking at meteox.com over some internet connection – GSM/3G/4G is you are lucky, or a Thuraya satphone one.
I would say: reliability, and trajectory depiction (plus aircraft position relative to weather)
(and also processing of different sources [for different places in Europe] to get a uniformed weather picture)
I agree with Dave (if I have interpreted his comments correctly in this regard) in that I am not convinced the 42 is the best aircraft to put in this position. In my opinion it doesnt give a wonderful ride in turbulence and there are limitiations in its ability to deal with ice. That is not to say it cant cope with these conditions, and I am not saying that, simply it will be more challenging than some other piston twins.
I do think the acid test is that if the autopilot had failed, how would the flight have gone? We dont know, only the pilot will have an idea. However there is no doubt if you are really good with the buttons and have a digital autopilot the automatics do a wonderful job – as the video demonstrates.
For me I would have pushed much harder to avoid the weather but I think there is some evidence that the pilot wasnt that sure what weather he was about to fly through. I do think there is a tendency when flying GA in these situations to feel that you should “keep up” with the heavy metal (and I dont mean in terms of speed) but the reality is you need to be much more cautious. I have found that controllers are very accomodating of the needs of the lighter element of the fleet and will in fact do everything they can to meet their needs.
I also think that many other pilots would have considered a visual approach given the conditions which appeared to suggest some good “holes” and reasonable bases and in this repsect light GA has a big advantage over CAT because it can more readily take advantage of planning the arrival early and working with an accomodating ATC to avoid “standard” commercial procedures. That said I can equally understand a pilot saying to himself sod it – I know a VFR arrival is the best way to secure a good and easy ride, but I want to challenge myself because I might find myself in a situation where I have no other alternative and I believe it is safe to continue with an IFR procedure.
Never the less for me the pilot challenged himself and appeared to cope reasonably well, and if we never challenge ourselves our skills and ability to know what is doable and what isnt does not develop. It is unfortunate, but a reality that most GA pilots are simply unable to do this in the far more protected enviroment of a dual pilot enviroment in which the “old” man has seen most situations before. However it is just possible (without knowing just how high and active some of the CBs were) that things could have got really unpleasant.
I recall an approach into Southampton in the same aircraft and probably similiar weather judging by a number of aircraft requesting avoidance and one ending up taking himself outside CAT without being aware he had done so just to avoid the weather. One bit of cloud (I didnt have radar) was really unpleasant, about the worst I have experienced and for me I was relieved to get out of it and it was a real wake up call. I doubt any harm would have come but it is only when you have experienced those conditions that you appreciate just how unpleasant and unsettling they can be.
On Sunday flying into Egelsbach I had a very useful application for ADL-120.
Lots of weather around but I could see it was stable and Eglesbach stayed clear. But flying in until I was visual I kepy my weather radar running to ensure I didn’t fly into some embedded cell that didn’t show or was newly formed.
Could anyone explain me why this video represents an example of GA flying at it’s best?
Difficult airspace? Yes
Extreme weather? Yes
Complex avionics? Yes
But there is very little of pilotage, its all on AP.
