Youtube video - DA42 IFR into Frankfurt in heavy weather

boscomantico wrote:

BTW, I guess that among private pilots, the “non-forum” crowd is about 90%. Probably so high because most people have a life outside aviation.

I don’t know. A video like that, it takes some time to edit (I would imagine? maybe not?). I think the main difference is like Aviathor writes. Posting it on Facebook you get lots of cheers and likes from people who have no idea about flying. Post it here, and you will have to answer questions and receive critique from fellow aviators all over Europe. That’s a huge difference. Here you get “corrected” and/or educated through discussions, while Facebook etc is a one way street to show off.

A valid question to ask is if he would be flying differently (meaning better) if he had started posting his videos here from the start. While on Facebook, the rule is the more spectacular, the more “likes” and “shares”.

Alioth. Thanks for posting that video.

I wonder if the pilot would have flown as close to the storm as he thought he was, if it was daylight and he could see the stuff.

Sometimes I think looking at stuff on a map, makes things look further away than they actually are (or indeed, sometimes the opposite is true too).

Well, you seem to like it here Bosco

Clearly it depends massively on the forum.

Here on EuroGA we can have a meaningful discussion without insulting each other. That is not possible on most European aviation forums.

Aviathor this Honeywell presentation is quite helpful. There was a time the Captain handed over control to the co-pilot as he needed to focus on interpreting the weather radar…a relatively grainy, low contrast b&w (or greenish) job.

http://www.gapan.org/ruth-documents/study-papers/Weather%20Radar.pdf

RobertL18C wrote:

Aviathor this Honeywell presentation is quite helpful.

I am sure it is if I can only find the time to go through it all. Thanks.

I have read quite a few articles about stormscope and airborne weather radar, as well as the manual for the weather radar of an airplane I had the opportunity to fly once – a P210. There is however nothing like having an interactive presentation from people with extensive real world experience, who also benefit from company procedures. The semainar thing was a little tongue in cheek, but it occurs to me that we have a number of experienced airline or corporate pilots that could provide some good insight over a beers or three if only they would leave the wife partner at home

RobertL18C wrote:

Aviathor this Honeywell presentation is quite helpful.

It is indeed quite good.

Just watched that video. Many thanks for posting it, Alioth. It’s really good.

I wonder how the comments on the delay apply to the European equivalent, as received over a satphone from e.g. meteox.com or as presented by e.g. the ADL120?

The accident pilot really did pile on the risks, however:

• willing to fly in IMC enroute
• flying at night – no visual avoidance of wx possible
• aircraft ceiling way too low to get above anything, even a small TCU
• no oxygen, so aircraft ceiling degraded to some value which is useless for getting above any convective wx
• no de-ice (one assumes)
• working with minimal fuel reserves (unless landing enroute at some intermediate place)
• 8+ hrs at 8000ft without oxygen
• potentially nervous passengers
• passengers presumably needing to arrive
• I don’t think many would say the type is strongly built
• TS forecast for the area (i.e. you are quite likely to die if you get it wrong)

A video like that, it takes some time to edit (I would imagine? maybe not?)

It depends on the detail but one can spend several hours editing the video and then 5-10 hours rendering it for upload to Youtube or Vimeo etc. Especially if the sound track is recorded from the aircraft audio system, in which case you have to

• drop in the sound track alongside the video
• cut out the unwanted bits of the footage (often one removes ~ 90% – or one should )
• go through the whole thing, probably several times, listening to the sound track, and cutting out from the sound track stuff like private conversation, really embarrassing screwups by yourself or by others on the frequency, etc

I don’t understand why people put videos on Youtube and do nothing else with them other than to attract Youtube reader comments – because

• those comments are almost always banal, or worse, so the poster gets nothing out of it
• the people who could learn from it don’t get the opportunity (because most people with a life don’t spend their life browsing Youtube)
• there is no meaningful discussion (same applies to Facebook)
• there is no SEO exposure so the contribution to the “body of knowledge” is minimal
• I think most Youtube accounts have been abandoned (e.g. I had to abandon mine when google bought youtube and changed the login, so I now use Vimeo and pay them $55/year)

A fixed gear Six is pretty tough if flown within the envelope, but even a 9G fighter might not win against the wind shear of a fully developed Texan TS cell.

Excellent video. With typically no landing fees in the US GA airfields, a free pit stop for some over brewed FBO coffee would have saved this family.

One of the nice things of France is the proliferation of GA airfields with a club community where you can wait out summer CBs. (albeit in daylight)

I have watched the initially posted video of the IFR arrival into Frankfurt. My observation is that the weather is not that extreme for an IFR arrival from what I have personally experienced, but that the pilot seems nervous and plays a lot with all different kind of knobs and doesn’t know how to deal with the weather radar. I seem to also have something when a flight becomes more intensive. I play with my mouth (visible on GoPro videos where I see myself later). Seemingly something stupid I do when I need to concentrate or focus. Maybe this pilot does it by playing with the knobs? I don’t know.

The accident case study posted by @alioth is a great video. Apart from the delay of what you would see on the screen as to the actual weather, I think that if we are aware of the delay and in which direction it is moving, we could stay away more easily, even with delayed weather sources like the ADL. In this case ATC could even help in a great way. Significant TS and buildup CBs are what I fear most in flight, but it is at the same time the weather element that makes flying so interesting.

Let me post one of my videos for comparison. I flew into Rotterdam (EHRD) from France and had studied the weather and found that I would be passing through some frontal weather passing over the southern part of Belgium. I knew that ATC in The Netherlands now has this weather overlay. I only had the stormscope. At that time, the ADL device was not there. So I used the stormscope to tactically fly in between 2 thunderstorm “cells”. ATC had just confirmed that a direct to RR would allow me to fly in between. You don’t see me using checklists in the video, I land left of the centerline. You might even complain about my ATC not being perfect and I fly at night in a single engine and even close to convective weather. A guy in the back recorded this on his iPhone with the audio plugged in to the audio stack. Sorry for some Dutch being spoken. I think it is much the same kind of video than posted here for the arrival into Frankfurt, except for the missing precipitation hitting my Cirrus this time. The video was from 3 years ago. I posted it at that time to some pilot friends and asked for comments. I learned from the comments but was not rediculed for being a stupid guy. Maybe we should relax a little on the pilot that flew into Frankfurt.