Scrubbed a flight today

sferguson524

sferguson524

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FormerSocalFlyer
Was going to fly the Debonair from VGT to VCV today on an IFR refresher flight, and to pick up my son from his mom. CFII calls me at 0700 before we were supposed to meet up, and tells me the winds are shaking his house. Crap, that's not good.. log into the PC, and get an updated wx briefing... Airmet Tango for moderate turbulence and Zulu for icing over our route of flight, covering both our ETD at VGT and ETA back at VGT. TAF was forecasting winds building from steady at 12, at almost a direct crosswind to gusting 28. Figured there was no sense in scaring the hell out of my 3 year old, so I drove to Baker to pick him up.. good thing I did, surface winds were giving me light chop to moderate while driving down 15... Guess there's always next time
 
Time to spare ,go by air. The more you need to fly ,the worse the weather.
 
Tell me about it. We’ve been experiencing some of the same conditions here for the past several days.

Good call! There’s always another day.
 
sferguson524 said:
... Airmet Tango for moderate turbulence and Zulu for icing over our route of flight, covering both our ETD at VGT and ETA back at VGT. TAF was forecasting winds building from steady at 12, at almost a direct crosswind to gusting 28. Figured there was no sense in scaring the hell out of my 3 year old, so I drove to Baker to pick him up.. good thing I did, surface winds were giving me light chop to moderate while driving down 15... Guess there's always next time
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We call that spring here... it's not windy unless the house is moving...:lol::lol:

Sounds like a good call to drive.
 
Low ceilings, fog here all morning. Cancelled w/ a student. Oh well. Beer is cold anyway. :D
 
Yeah, CFI said he was going to cancel a student later too
 
What's the old saying: "Pilots flying in bad weather are usually buried on a sunny day."
 
FWIW, I've found AIRMET Tango to be pretty unreliable. Almost all of the ones I've flown through had negative turbulence.

But you had a PIREP backing yours up, so I'd take it at face value.
 
asicer said:
FWIW, I've found AIRMET Tango to be pretty unreliable. Almost all of the ones I've flown through had negative turbulence.

But you had a PIREP backing yours up, so I'd take it at face value.
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Good call to the OP!

Like asicer, I have found Airmets for moderate turbulence pretty unreliable. My last couple of flights have put me in an area where there was moderate turbulence forecast from the surface up to my 6,500’ planned cruising altitude. On the first, the air was so smooth I took the time to make a PIREP to that effect. On the second, smooth except maybe 30 second of bumpiness on descent. That’s not unusual on windy days in the Appalachians regardless.

I’m NOT recommending they be ignored. Only that in the absence of confirming PIREPs I’m likely to at least go take a look. Moderate turbulence is nothing to take lightly, but as long as I have the option to turn around, I personally have not canceled many flights for that forecast turbulence.
 
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