Ok, why not...
There I was... True Story
I always loved high performance vehicles of one type or another. I'll try anything that rolls, flies or floats. Well of course we working men have limited income so our accessibility to much of the very high performance stuff is limited. To date, my best experience was last January in Tucson where I finally (after 12 years in the Air Force) got a ride in an F-16D.
That's really not the point of the story, but it might give you an idea as to the level of my experience.
A great friend of mine and I have always had this friendly rivalry. We loved to race eachother at Malibu Grand Prix. The bastage always bested me by a tenth of a second or so. I mean, no matter what, ol Bake would top my time. Grrrrr!
Well, I finally figured that I'd fly over the damn track in Mt Holly NJ (near Philly) and take photos so I could plan a better line.
Well, I was flying my trusty old "PA28 Arrow" (go figure) and a buddy of mine was going to take the shots. Now due to the nature of the Class B airspace near Philly, I had to stay within a very strict block of airspace to insure that we wouldn't conflict with app/depp traffic.
The block was from 800ft to 1200ft and all in about 1 square mile of the track. So, I checked into the airspace and gained my "block". Now the Arrow moves along pretty good for a standard single so I needed to slow her a bit and drop a notch of flaps to keep from driving out of my block.
The day was scattered at 2k broken 5k and rather blustery. Needless to say, flying slow and low with turbulence and the potential for wind shear is a BAD IDEA!
So, we kept to the top of the block and stayed on the top of the white arc (max flap ext range) to keep it somewhat sane. Then it happened!
I was in a shallow right bank so Hector could shoot over the right wing and at the target. We caught a serious gust from the fwd port quarter which caused me to hold full left aileron/rudder and down stick to keep the bird flying. After a few seconds, I realized that my airspeed was increasing rapidly and I couldn't hold the nose down, so I retracted the flaps and reduced the throttle to about 1700rpm or so.
It was one of those times when you think to yourself, "HU?" I had never felt a gust like that before. Well to make matters worse, the wind changed, and with a serious vengeance. We then caught the other side of the sheer and took a gust from the tail. Needless to say, the bottom dropped out of the airplane and we were on our way down.
Best case in an Arrow with a fairly heavily loadout on a hot day is about 1k ROC and we were on our way down at 3k and in about a 70degree left bank and 40degres nose low. I had NO DEFLECTION control at all for what seemed like eternity.
I was (no toejam) just about to call MayDay when we came out of it. Just as fast as it began, we had everything back. So, about two hundred feet above the trees and buildings, I called, RTB! and bingoed to ACY!
Although the gusts in AH don't cause the pucker factor that my little photo mission did, It made me think back on it for just a second.
-Arrow
P.S. I'd rather be lucky than good anyday!
