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I feel your pain, lack of relevant knowledge is the key to a lot of the hesitation or resistance to tackle. If you understand all about weather, turbulence, mountain wave and thermals you will be able to avoid or anticipate. Having fear or hesitation is healthy and normal, I think those with no fear or overconfident is dangerous and I know some people that have fallen in this catergory and know of serious risks they have taken. Fly with others to learn their habits, enjoy the view and remember why you want to fly. I would recommend a flight in a glider as you will understand the thermals and the silence is relaxing, Aerobatics could put you off but is definitely a good thing to do to improve flying skills and an understanding of how an aircraft behaves.

 

 

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All good options. I have a pax endorsement but will have to find a volunteer to come up with me LOL and caboolture has gliders so I could go up with them.

See if you can find some old guys with lots of experience but no medical, I'm sure they would love to fly, have a friend with two planes ( GA ) and he grabs anyone with a licence that wants to fly as he has no medical and that way he can go flying.

 

 

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Regarding the aerobatics.... If you don't do it with the right person it may have a negative effect. Not everyone will enjoy aero's especially of the extreme kind. Unusual attitude recovery is not high "G" and I strongly recommend it.. If you are cruising above say 100 Knots you will feel turbulence more, than at 80. A lightly loaded aircraft will feel the bumps more.( Or one with a low wing loading.) (Lbs / square foot).

 

You may be overcontrolling, a little. In stronger convective (thermal) bumps, go a bit with the air and loosely maintain control with moderate control inputs.. Most aircraft have a natural stability. I don't like too much of it, and prefer it to be more towards neutral. IF your concern is with aircraft structure, stick with stronger designs. You are quite brave to bring this up, and I know you have been flying for a while. I avoid situations where there might be turbulence all the time and slow down if I can't. Study meteorology and particularly standing wave effect. Landing where there are trees or buildings upwind of your touchdown point etc. If it isn't fun for you that is important. There's no point if you can't overcome the anxiety. Some time in a glider may be well spent.. Nev

 

 

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You're right Nev this has been a ongoing monkey on my back. but there has been improvements over the year. So I feel its worth the stress. I have flown low and high wing aircraft and it seems to me that low wings ride the bumps better. but I could be wrong. At the moment I fly a sling out of caboolture and they seem to be a very popular aircraft at the moment. what I will do is start recording my flight and on my gopro and keep up dating my progress here.

 

 

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Whether a high or low wing 'rides" better might be due to the fact most high wings are strutted and therefore less flexing takes place. Your speed and wing loading have the most effect on how bumpy it gets (in a given situation) Turbulence can be just annoying or a real safety issue.. Safety concern is loss of control (stall)) or imposition of too much load on the airframe due to high speed and control position . In a gusting situation you may get airspeed fluctuations of 40 + knots when a sea breeze or front goes through. You need to be taught the appropriate optimum technique for this situation Nev

 

 

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You're right Nev this has been a ongoing monkey on my back. but there has been improvements over the year. So I feel its worth the stress. I have flown low and high wing aircraft and it seems to me that low wings ride the bumps better. but I could be wrong. At the moment I fly a sling out of caboolture and they seem to be a very popular aircraft at the moment. what I will do is start recording my flight and on my gopro and keep up dating my progress here.

Shafs:

Filming your flight is also a good way to resolve the bumps. (BTW I agree strongly with FH that it is courageous of you to admit what we all feel but rarely speak of) Filming your flights will show you how little the airplane actually moves in the bumps compared to what it feels like when you're experiencing them. When you go back and look for that "big hit" you had and maybe you'll have trouble identifying it on the video, you'll start to think "WTF? Where was that "big hit?" Then you might start to think "It felt BIG, but it looks kind of "meh" on the video!"

 

Confession time: I also had the turbulence monkey when I had the trike. It ended up getting so bad, I swapped to three axis flying and eventually got over most of it. I still get a little wobble in the early stage of the flight if it's significantly bumpy. Having said that, flying a trike is a whole different ball game in turbulence as Alf mentioned. Weight shift flying is VERY physical in the bumps.

 

 

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Yes we still live in an age where men are men and the rest of us are pussies. but feel talking about it in this forum helps. And its great to see yourself and others sharing there stories and giving helpful advise.

 

 

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There is no place for yobbos in flying....they won't last long if they make it at all...

 

I think you will find the stubbies and esky brigade are either not in here, or only act dumb during the week when they are not around pilots.. Im yet to meet a moron pilot...Im sure they are out there, but they are a massive minority and probably wont recieve accolades in here for dissing on sensible conversations.

 

 

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There is no place for yobbos in flying....they won't last long if they make it at all...I think you will find the stubbies and esky brigade are either not in here, or only act dumb during the week when they are not around pilots.. Im yet to meet a moron pilot...Im sure they are out there, but they are a massive minority and probably wont recieve accolades in here for dissing on sensible conversations.

All too often the yobbs end up smeared across the countryside like a thin spread of Vegemite. Unfortunately they sometimes take innocent victims with them.

 

 

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Yes we still live in an age where men are men and the rest of us are pussies. but feel talking about it in this forum helps. And its great to see yourself and others sharing there stories and giving helpful advise.

Shafs:

I'd rather be a live chicken than a dead duck.

 

 

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You can fight the bumps with rudder and wear yourself out, or you can let the aircraft roll around a bit and leave the pedals alone. I think there is less stress on the airframe, and certainly less on the pilot, if you let the plane move about with the bumps and not fight to keep it straight and level all the time. That means getting used to the movement and trying to enjoy it.

 

 

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yes I agree. but when I discuss this issue with people who know me. say but you have raced motorcycles isn't that far riskier?

The people that have no fear do come to grief, I've been called a Woss for not flying in poor conditions but of those people that called me that some are dead from accidents and some just got real scared and don't fly anymore. It is very healthy to respect the weather and if you are a fair weather flyer then that's your choice and it is my choice if I can get fair weather but I'm not so lucky sometimes. I posted before on another thread about being caught in a strong wind and it was over 50 knots and 45deg to runway, seriously bumpy, my buddy was laughing and said he had faith in me, the hardest part of landing was getting to a place to park. I did a flight with a low hour pilot as passenger and he was afraid that it was the worst conditions including X wind he'd experienced, we kept doing circuits and he built up a little bit of confidence. It wasn't outside my or the aircraft ability but he was well out of his comfort zone, the fact I was with him was the only reason we were there.

 

 

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You can fight the bumps with rudder and wear yourself out, or you can let the aircraft roll around a bit and leave the pedals alone. I think there is less stress on the airframe, and certainly less on the pilot, if you let the plane move about with the bumps and not fight to keep it straight and level all the time. That means getting used to the movement and trying to enjoy it.

Absolutely agree but it takes time to get confident enough with the bumps to let go of the controls.

 

yes I agree. but when I discuss this issue with people who know me. say but you have raced motorcycles isn't that far riskier?

Yes, bike racing IS a lot more dangerous than flying, but we're not dealing with rational fear here. We're not riding a motorcycle 3,000 feet up in the air. The fear of falling is a powerful one and can only be overcome with time and experience. It CAN be done and the key is not giving up or letting it beat you.

 

 

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I wouldn't recommend letting go of the controls. In turbulence, loosely maintain the desired attitude, pitch being the most important as it relates to airspeed which you keep in a band ( never chase it or over control) which you decide is the safest under the conditions.. Nev

 

 

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when I was flying GA aircraft I went to the training area and I returned to point cook and encountered big gusting winds in the in the circuit area! had to give it a lot of throttle to get it on the ground. Also I agree if you where riding race bike at 3000ft it would be a different story. I also am big on flying in the right condition's but some time if you book a hire aircraft they will charge you a cancel fee. if you are not liking the weather

 

 

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Hard to tell from the video without actually experiencing it, and probably not very helpful anyway as everybody will have a different idea of what a bumpy ride is. Even that will change over time as you become more used to flying in turbulence.

 

rgmwa

 

 

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I only watched the section around 20-23 min on the video and i would describe that as minor trurbulance. Or perhaps even just slightly bumpy...

 

If some one asked me about that flight i would say regular tiny bumps. Nothing to worry about at all.

 

 

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these guys are describing this as turbulant....

 

I would describe it as minor turbulance

 

At the 27 sec mark they hit what i describe as an isolated bump

 

If they had consistant bumps like that i would describe that as moderate turbulance and flying any long distance would be very uncomfortable and undesirable...

 

But i would have no hesitations flying in these turbulance conditions, especially on a short nav or local flight

 

I recently flew from

 

Fraser Island to Hervey Bay with bumps like the 27 mark the entire distance...it was very unpleasant, but in no way dangerous...I also had a half an hour segment near lake keepit like that 27 sec bump constantly and just slowed it back to 80 knots, but thank god it stopped after 30 odd minutes. The Mrs wasnt real impressed

 

You domt want to be flying in those conditions but its certainly going to be like that in some areas, particularly from heat thermals.

 

 

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