Turbulence: Another new addition to Private Pilot Weather

All right, says we are live. I'm gonna leave this picture up just for a second. The BK117. I love this helicopter. We have a great little story here behind this. This is Matt and he sent us an email and he was all excited about passing his checkride. And if you want to go ahead and go back to my camera, that'd be cool, Heather. And we'll bring this back up in a minute. Basically, he was a one of the flight crew or one of the medical members on this helicopter that was in the opening picture. And so he sat up front dreaming of becoming a pilot someday. And a lot of the medical professionals get interested after going up an EMS helicopter like that. So here's one guy that did it. So he shared not only the picture of the BK when he was flying there. If you want, show that second picture of his checkride, Heather. So he just passed his checkride. And I was thrilled to hear from him that he was a past or, you know, medical professional on an. On an EMS aircraft. And the fact that he flew for Omni Flight, I wanted to mention that because that's who I flew. Flew for for five years. And that BK117, if you'd pull that picture back up again, Heather, what a wonderful aircraft. I love flying that thing to this day. One of my favorite aircraft was the BK117. And one of the Czech airmen said, you know, the heavy duty truck of helicopters or the Mack truck of helicopters, redundant system, absolutely everything had a backup. And I always say every single helicopter is underpowered. But that was one aircraft that man, it always had the power to do what you wanted to do. So congratulations. Matt, thank you very much for sending in that picture. It's a fun story sharing that again that you rode along as a medical professional. Medical professional. And then chased a dream to get the license. That is awesome. All right, and we're going to get to Brian's new presentation here in just a minute. So, Heather, if you want to bring up for Bill, and this is quite a long email and I'll just tell you real quick, we're going to share his picture now. Let's give it a little bit. Subscribe to your page. A little year ago, I had a great instructor, but traveling an hour each way time to do this ground wasn't as easy as I thought it could be. So I turned to you guys in just a few short weeks with you and some time spent with my instructor going over some things, I really struggled with being ready for the exam. For me, the oral portion was the most stressful. I passed it with flying colors. Enough. The DPE said I was the most prepared student he had had recently and he was impressed with how well I did. He asked me how I prepared and mentioned you guys. And instead of just here sitting reading, reading you more of it. That's the gist of it. There's. There's more to it, but. Congratulations, Bill. And then our next one will be Stuart. You want to share Stuart's picture? Heather, I almost called you Gloria. Heather. So Stuart just passed his commercial and now he is moving into his instrument training. So he emailed us and said, hey, can I. I think he was on a yearly membership which we don't offer anymore. So I passed that on to Brian. Good time to mention that if you're a current member and you're looking to upgrade or switch, Brian will take care of you and work you some kind of a deal to make you happy. Because sometimes people want to switch from one to another depending on what you bought, how long ago you bought it for. We're always willing to move forward and help you out. So Stuart on his commercial, these three will all be going up on the Hogs wall of fame. And Heather will be sending out the no go button to all three of those. So we've reached out to get their addresses. Some of them we have might be waiting on more address. If you're new to Helicopter Line ground school, I am Kenny Keller, creator of helicopter, creator of helicopter ground school. And we send out a no go button when our members pass a checkride. So we get your email and we send you one of these as long as supplies last. The idea is these weather decisions can be hard sometimes. So a little treat when you get done. You look at the weather, you want to go, you need to go, somebody else wants you to go, but you just make the decision for the right reasons. Even though you wanted to go, you know you shouldn't.

To fly another day.

Helicopterground.com boom.

Just a little.

And we used that from em and ems and I verified where this came from. I just talked to Rex Alexander, who I worked with at omniflight for two and a half years. That was my first EMS job. And Rex did my original training and I asked him on the phone there. I said, hey, we had that easy button when we were flying ems. I said, was that you that came up with that or was that a gentleman named Matera? And he goes, no, that was a Matera thing. And I said, you know, I just. That was so cool. That's what we did at the EMS base and this gentleman Matera was a Vietnam era pilot and I learned so much from that guy. He was just a wealth of information as you can imagine, a guy flying for, you know, 40 years of his life and he's the one that I guess came up with that. So at the EMS base, you know, you got the pressure of the hospital want you to go. The EMS crew is always ready to go and it's difficult to make that decision sometimes. So when we would turn down the flight for weather, that was easy. It just made it a little bit easier. That was easy. It made it, it was a little treat. So that's what originated the no go button. Again, members pass your checkride. Heather will email you after you send us your picture and she'll get your address and get this right out. So three more no go buttons going out and looks like we're down to about Maybe there's maybe 20 left or so. So we'll see if you send in your pictures after you get the no go button or a short video with it. Let's make it popular. We'll keep them going. We need some pictures. We need some people to send in some pictures and share that stuff with us. Okay, so next we're getting ready to roll a new video on turbulence. And I want to mention this is number seven of seven new weather videos inside the private pilot section inside Helicopter online ground school. So what we've done, and if you're new to this or you're a member, hasn't logged in for a while. Those seven videos are at the beginning of the weather section. A member emailed the other day. Where do I find those?

And I said, well, just like I.

Said in the video, go to the weather section private pilot and you'll just start seeing them one after another. Now, as Brian continues building new videos, we will end up deleting some of the older videos that are now covered by Brian in a new video or something that maybe just isn't relevant anymore. So it is a lot of information in there right now. Don't be overwhelmed and know that we just don't want to take any of the old out because somebody might be partially through. But that's something Brian's going to be doing, is going through and deciphering when we can start removing some of the older videos because what he has produced new, you know, is a better quality video, more pertinent. And what we've done is weather is very, can get really, really deep. So I went super deep in Those original weather videos because I felt I needed to back in the day, right. And so, but those were five years ago. I made the majority of that. So the new focus with the new weather section is giving you what you need. Trying to break them down into, you know, 10 minute videos or so, 12 minute, 15 minute, but breaking them down. And Brian's trying to give you the essence of what a private pilot needs to understand and how to make a good no go weather decision. That's what it's all about. And moving forward, you know, we're doing our part. We've got some cool stuff coming up that will be announced in the future with the US Helicopter safety team and a big magazine and something else going on where we're going to be highlighting some new changes to one of the weather tools and we're going to get to be a part of that and we're excited about that. So. And it goes, I got invited to do this and it's like, it's perfect because we're pushing the new weather section.

We're pushing the no go button.

So being involved in something with the U.S. helicopter Safety Team on weather and someone from the aviation weather center. Gonna be cool. Gonna be cool. Alright. Heather is typing in or saying hi to everybody. I see Brian is here in chat. So we're gonna roll this video. But first I want to mention down below there's a new course Brian just built called Flight Review. Rusty Pilot. The link is right below this video. It's brand new. It's not for someone, it's not for a student working on a private. It's for anybody that is rated, maybe hasn't flown for a while or they're preparing for a flight review. That link is down below. I just added it to my private. Well, not my private. I have a discount code that I throw out occasionally. That's KK25 off Heather, if you'd throw that up on the screen. I just added the flight review to that. So.

All right, today's lesson is going to be all about turbulence and the things you need to know. So turbulence, it can, it can vary. It can be just that annoying bumpiness to very severe jolts. There are some different causes of turbulence and as a pilot. Keep talking.

Okay, so. Oh, you're playing the video. It started the video, but I didn't even hit it. Okay, that's all right.

But you're back.

That's okay.

All right, so there's a little delay there. We'll get that going in a minute. So to finish what I was saying you can get 25% off the new flight review. Rusty pilot, private pilot, instrument pilot, commercial pilot or CFI. You simply enter the code KK25OFF. You enter that in the coupon box during checkout and you'll get that 25% discount. So that's pretty awesome. Alright now Heather, let's go ahead and roll the video from Brian. Check it out. We'll be back after the video is over. We'll answer any questions you may have. And I'm also going to give away a shirt. So let's see, during the turbulence video, the first person to type in all caps, Hogshoodies.com we will send you a hogs T shirt. H o G S H O O d I e s.com hogshoodies.com whoever types that first in chat, we will send you a new shirt. And I see Brian said turn up the volume on Brian. So let me walk over there so I can help Heather out real quick. And we'll make sure we turn up the volume for that video. So we'll see what we can do. Roll this dude up here. Let's just go full bore. Alright, here you go.

Alright, today's lesson is going to be all about turbulence and the things you need to know. So turbulence, it can, it can vary. It can be just that annoying. Bumpiness to very severe jolts. There are some different causes of turbulence and as a pilot, those are things that you need to know. So we're going to go over what types of turbulence are important to you. Convective turbulence, mechanical turbulence, mountain wave wind shear and clear air turbulence. So when we talk about turbulence, we're talking about the irregular motion of an aircraft in flight, rapid up and down motion due to rapid changes in the air or wind velocities. So severe turbulence, you know, that's one of those things where you can start getting structural damage as well as injury to passengers. So let's go through each one of them. So convective turbulence, turbulence caused by convective currents and the associated rising and sinking of air. For every rising current there is going to be an associated downward current. These different currents. When we're talking about the downward current, typically these are going to occur over a much broader area that's the down downward currents than the rising ones. And they usually have a slower vertical speed than the rising currents. So rising currents are coming up much faster. Downward currents a little bit slower. Typically, convective turbulence is most active on warm summer afternoons when the winds themselves are light heated air at the Surface creates a shallow, unstable layer of air. And remember talking about stability of air, you can go back to previous lessons when we talk about stable and unstable air. For example, convective turbulence flying over a parking lot or plowed field that's going to be much hotter, especially in the summertime, than over open water or area that has a lot of ground cover, vegetation. So this is going to give you uneated uneven heating of the, of the surface. So if you're flying over a plowed field or a parking lot, big, wide open parking lot, you may have much more pronounced turbulence. And then as you fly away from that area, you maybe in a very short distance over, maybe there's a body of water, or maybe it's an area that has a lot of vegetation, the turbulence likely will not be quite as severe, but you're going to have a lot of this uneven heating on the earth's surface, which is going to change the type of turbulence you may feel from convective turbulence. If there's enough, you get cumuliform clouds will develop. If the rising air does cool of saturation, there's got to be enough moisture in the air for clouds to form. But for convective turbulence, you will get these cumulative form clouds. Additionally, when you see these, these clouds, the turbulence below them are going, it's going to be worse below the cloud layer. If you go above the cloud layer, and we're talking about those small cumuliform clouds that we talked about in the clouds cloud section, if you go above them, it's typically a lot smoother. So that's one thing to keep in keep in mind. If you see those, those clouds and you're in an altitude that's conducive and maybe for passenger comfort, just go above the clouds. Again, this is not something where you're in IMC conditions. By no means. If the air is too dry for clouds to form, then you're not going to even know that there's that convective turbulence until you actually fly into it. Mechanical turbulence, this is turbulence caused by obstructions to smooth wind flow. Now, anything can cause mechanical turbulence. It could be trees, buildings, mountains, you name it. Any type of obstruction to the smooth wind flow is going to be considered mechanical turbulence. They create eddies. So if you have a obstruction, say at the airport, and you're getting ready to lift off, and it could be a hangar, it could be a large aircraft, another large airplane in the way, and the wind's flowing, it's going to hit that object, swirl around it, and then on the leeward side of it, it's going to create these eddies, the swirling wind. The intensity is going to depend on wind speed and roughness of the obstruction. And the eddies are going to be carried downstream by the wind. How far those eddies are going to go really is going to depend on how fast the wind is blowing. And again, the roughness of the obstruction itself. I pulled this NTSB report. There's the number. Feel free to pull. Pull it up. This was a B2, an A star 350B2. And it was during engine start on an offshore oil platform, main rotor blades contacted the tail boom, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot reported the winds out there were at 23 knots. He also reported the wind was from the east and the wind itself contacted the generator room. This is going to be an obstruction to the wind. That generator room was west of the helipad. And he knew that it often resulted in occasional updrafts and downdrafts on the helipad. The checklist, the starting Checklist for the B2 required in strong winds to apply slight forward cyclic during engine start. The probable cause that the NTSB came up with was improper centering of the cylinder during start and gusty winds. So here's an example of mechanical turbulence in windy conditions on an offshore oil platform that, you know, there are procedures to take because of the windy conditions and the the pilot failed to do that. And during startup, that gusting wind coming around that generator room resulted in the main rotor blade striking the tail boom. Mountain wave. This is a form of mechanical turbulence because mountain is the obstruction and develops above and downwind of the mountains. It forms as stable air passes over a mountain or a mountain ridge. It occurs above and downwind of the mountain. So, you know, you have your mountain, you have the wind that's flowing towards it. If the conditions are right, you'll get this mountain wave. And what happens is on the leeward side of the mountain is you're going to start to get eddies that will form. You'll get violent downdrafts. And if you're not paying attention to it, aren't aware that there's a mountain wave at the time, you're flying over mountainous terrain and you get on that leeward side and you get into those eddies, it could out. The downdrafts will actually be stronger than your maximum climb rate in your aircraft. If there's sufficient moisture, you will get clouds to form. And if the air is too dry, just like when we were talking about talking back in the convective turbulent side, if air is too dry, clouds won't be present. So you won't know it's there. Here's standing lenticular clouds. That's a telltale sign of mountain wave conditions. Conditions. If you see that over a mountainous area, steer clear, do not even go flying. Don't even try to cross over those mountains. That, that's enough. That will just drive you right into the mountain. And this is a rotor cloud. Rotor clouds. If you see this again, very dangerous. High wind speeds, severe downdrafts, updrafts. You know, a light helicopter is not going to be able to sustain, fly through this type of condition. A mountain wave condition. Wind shear, turbulence. This is the rate of change in wind direction and or speed. Thing about wind shear is you can't see it until you do. You fly into it. The shear zone, it's located between the different wind directions. So you have maybe have a section where the wind is flowing this way and then below that the wind is flowing the opposite way in between the two. That's going to be your shear zone in between. Wind shear can occur at any level in the atmosphere. Any level. And it can actually occur horizontally and vertically. Wind shear also occurs across a temperature inversion. And so a temperature inversion is typically the air will cool as you go higher in altitude and in a temperature inversion, actually warming. And at that zone between that cool and that warm zone, a lot of times you can get a wind shear. How strong the wind shear is going to be really, it just depends. It really does depend on the conditions. And here's an NTSB report. Feel free. Look this one up as well. This one's about wind shear. So it was a CFI demonstrating to a student pilot straight in auto rotations in an R22 pilot reported that the wind was generally from the north, but it was shearing horizontally across the Runway. And he knew that during the practice auto rotation he began the flare when a large wind gust with horizontal shear actually caused the aircraft to drift off centerline of the Runway. He was able to correct. And he also says that he had a loss of tow rotor effectiveness the moment that happened. That's an immediate go around, go ahead and bring throttle back in and stop going with the practice auto rotation. But nonetheless not here to Monday morning quarterback the guy. See if I corrected and continued the flare. He said during the last portion of the flare, he then encountered a vertical shear. So he had horizontal shear. Now he has a vertical shear. And the helicopter climbed uncommanded 20ft. Then suddenly the wind stops. CFI now attempts the power recovery. It's too late. Helicopter descends, lands hard, breaks a skid off, rolls over on its side. I think there was just minor injury, no fatality. Clear air turbulence. This is associated with the jet stream, which is typically much higher altitudes than what we typically fly, fly, obviously 20,000 to 50,000ft and there's no clouds present. That's why it's called clear air turbulence. You're going to have airliners, planes that fly at the upper altitudes and the flight levels, they're the ones that are going to be flying in clear air turbulence. So if you're flying, you know, a thousand feet off the ground and there's not a cloud in the sky and you hit turbulence, that's not clear air turbulence. That is not. It's between 20,000 and 50,000ft. The frequency and intensity are maximized during the winter when the channel jet stream is the strongest turbulence intensity reporting. Now, there are different intensities of turbulence that you need to be aware of and we're going to go over those in the aim 7 1, 2, 3. It states pilots are urgently, urgently requested to report turbulent conditions to air traffic control. Providing this information to ATC is going to help them pass along information to other pilots because if you're reporting turbulence in an area where, you know, you had done a weather briefing and there wasn't supposed to be any turbulence, this, this helps in determining what the weather conditions are doing. Also helps the, the weather experts that are putting out the information help determine if weather conditions are improving or degrading. So there is the turbulence criteria table that's in the aim, and the table is broken down into intensity levels and then what reaction the aircraft will have in turbulence, depending on its intensity level. And then the reaction inside, meaning you and your passengers. And then there's a reporting term, definition. But we're going to talk about the intensity levels. They are light, moderate, severe and extreme. And each one of them has a particular definition and we'll go over that. So light for aircraft reaction momentarily is going to cause slight erratic changes in your altitude and your attitude and or attitude. If there's rhythmic bumpiness, then that's going to be called light chop. And think of rhythmic bumpiness as you're in a boat going across the lake and there's a light wind causing ripples in the water. And as you go across, it's just kind of a rhythmic bumpiness that's going to be considered light chop, moderate. That's greater intensity, obviously than light. And the Aircraft remains in control at all times, but it's just a little bit more, a little bit more reaction than it was in the light category or intensity level. If you have rapid bumpiness which is, you know, just bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. Think of that as you know, you're in the boat and the wind's a little bit stronger and you're going across these waves or crests that are being made in the water and it's just bouncing you around as you go across the water. And if you had a cup of coffee in your hand, it's splashing the coffee out. That's going to be moderate, severe. So now you're going to get large abrupt changes in altitude and or attitude and you may momentarily be out of control. You do not want to be in severe turbulence and then extreme, violently tossed and impossible to control the aircraft. Possible structural damage. This, you know, extreme turbulence has taken down severe and extreme has taken down the largest of aircrafts out there. Now the reaction inside what you as the pilot would feel so light, you're going to feel a light strain seat belt or the shoulder strap. If there were unsecured objects, which you should never have, but if you had some, they might slightly move, moderate a definite strain against the seat or shoulder strap and unsecured objects will become dislodged and severe occupants are violently forced against the seat belt shoulder strap. Unsecured objects are thrown about the cabin and extreme parts start falling off of the aircraft. So in conclusion, with turbulence you're flying a small single engine helicopter. Even if it's a single engine turbine or even a twin engine turbine, that's going to be considered what you may consider light turbulence yourself or let's turn that around a larger aircraft, what they consider light turbulence is probably going to be moderate, severe or even extreme to a small helicopter. So you think about a 747 flying around at 30,000ft and if they reported there was light turbulence on climb out up to 30,000, you might want to take caution because if they're feeling light turbulence, it's definitely going to be a lot worse for a light aircraft. Best ways do a good weather briefing. Airmets are issued for turbulence and that's going to be another section we're going to, we're going to go over. But paying attention to airmet tangos, which is turbulence is a big thing in flight planning. That is it for turbulence.

All right, and we're back. Let us know what you think of Brian's New Video 7 Number 7 of 7 New Videos Inside the weather section inside helicopter land ground school. Where do you find them? I believe it's less than 17. Weather. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. He's working on fog next. And something else. So before we rolled that you may not heard this, I was giving away a shirt that might be when we went wacky. So I just put on a fresh.

Shirt today because my others have wore out.

So I thought, you know what, let's give away a shirt today. So the first one to type in chat in caps. Yeah, I don't care.

It doesn't matter.

Hogshoodies.com H O G S H O O d I e s.com the first person to type in hogshoodies.com we will send you new shirt. That is where you can find our hoodies and our T shirts and you can also go below the videos here on YouTube and you should be able to see them below the video. They should show up our products below the video. So any last, any questions that we need to answer while we're there, I am going to cover the phone number. Heather's got the phone number up here in the corner. You can call Heather and talk to her if you catch her. She is handling the phone line at 574-767-1797. Heather is monitoring that seven days a week. Since the world's crazy like it is, Heather is currently just coming in on Tuesdays. When she comes in on Tuesdays, she ships no go buttons, post the latest pictures on the hogs wall of fame, the latest member pictures and helps me run the live stuff. So our deal during this crazy world we're living in is I let Heather stay home the rest of the week. And our deal is she earns a paycheck and takes care of the hog's phone. So she checks it a couple times a day, probably morning and evening and she returns your text or calls. And at that number, 574-767-1797, Heather can answer most of your most of your questions about sign up issues or questions about our courses. If it's something that digs in a little deeper that she needs our help, she'll refer it to either Brian and I. And remember, as a member you have a free consultation 30 minutes with Brian Rutledge. And as a brand new member you get that 30 minute phone consultation. The other day Brian talked to three people or four people, maybe even five. I know he talked to four and was getting ready to talk to another. Brian has enjoyed talking to everybody and now Brian's been full Time, like probably three months now. April, May, June, July, probably four months. Brian has been full time with us at helicopter on ground school. So Brian has a special, how you want to put it, he brings a special something to the table because Brian is the CFI in both airplanes and helicopters. I'm just a helicopter CFI that did my fixed wing add on private privileges. Brian came from airplanes first 30 years ago, started flying airplanes and then along his path he also started flying helicopters. So he's now dual rated airplanes and helicopters. So Brian can answer some things for you that might be a little harder for me to relay or answer because my knowledge is limited on fixed wing aircraft because I only have private privileges added after my helicopter rating. So we know that probably half of our members are add on pilots. So Brian has that special, you know, niche that he's bringing to the table. I've been able to help you with transitioning between the two and can answer a lot of your airplane questions. When you ask me about the different airplanes, I mean I know what a Cessna is.172. And that's about the extension of my airplane knowledge. I know what a Tomahawk is. Did my private in a Tomahawk. Awesome. So before we go, KK25 off you can get right? This code is good in well through. Like I forget how it's good for a while. Okay. So if you happen on this video, you can get 25% off the first month of any monthly membership which includes our new flight review Rusty pilot course for anybody who's rated and maybe hasn't flown for years or if you're preparing for a flight review and you'd like something to go through that doesn't go back to private pilot level and teach you cross country, but goes through all the stuff that we really think you need to know and be fresh on when you go for a flight review. So 25% off the first month of that private pilot monthly, commercial pilot monthly, instrument pilot monthly, certified flight structure monthly, 25% off of any of those. And then the big professional pilot package which is private, commercial, CFI and instrument all together one course, 25% off. You get that code for watching this video whether it's today or a month from now. That code's actually good through I think July of 2025. So you hop along this video, you can get a discount.

Any other.

Is there any questions there that I needed to answer? Heather, is everybody taken care of?

Brian is taking care of it.

All right. Brian's handle everybody. So awesome deal. Make sure you subscribe to the channel, and when you subscribe, click the bell. That way you'll be notified of our weekly videos that we do and upcoming training events and different things that we have going on. So do us a favor, subscribe, click the bell, put your comments down in the description box below, and we'll see you in the next video. Text heather, call her 574-767-1737, peace out.