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“Almost” VFR into IMC and Wind Shear

Asked by: 1525 views Private Pilot

I received my Private Pilot license last month. I am a pilot in Michigan, and I wanted to share a story when I was training. I was doing a mock check ride with my instructor on October 20th, 2018, after the big game (University of Michigan vs. Michigan State Spartans football game). I checked the weather and everything looked good. So my instructor and me got in the plane and had taken off. My airport has 2 parallel runways (27L-9R, 27R-9L) and runway 18-36. The winds on takeoff were 300 @ 15. We started heading north but I could see ahead 2 cells that looked like the were converging on each other, and visibility and ceiling was dropping. We were maybe 8 miles from the airport and I made the decision to stop the flight and return to the airport. I contacted tower and they gave us clearance to land 27R. They gave us a wind check which was now 350 @ 25. When we turned base to final the winds pushed us between the 2 runways and I went around. The airspeed was stuck at 80 knots and we were climbing, I had glanced down at the airspeed and it read 0 momentarily and the stall horn chirped a little. The tower then gave us clearance to land on runway 27L, which is a wider runway (for jets). When we turned base to final, my instructor took over and tower was giving us wind reports what seemed like every 10 seconds. The winds went from 270 @ 29 g 35 to 360 @ 20 g 30. On short final my instructor had full aileron into the wind and full left rudder. Even when we touched down, it felt like the wind wanted to pick up the wing. This is the closest that I want to come to wind shear and almost VFR into IMC, as a private pilot.

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1 Answers



  1. Gary S. on Aug 10, 2019

    Fernando, thanks for the story. It shows how quickly weather can change.

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