@@Akotski-ys9rrif I put you in an aircraft right now flying through cloud, I would love to see what you thought about what you just wrote. Even if you have an IFR rating.
@@shermansquires3979 I’ve flown in real life before in a Cessna. I’ve played hundreds of hours of flight simulators. If you put me in an airplane right now, I’d probably be ok. In bad weather, I’d probably have a lot of trouble since I have zero real world experience with that but in general, I’d be able to fly an aircraft
Big surprise for me was how much airspeed I lost in heavy rain… makes sense but I never recall being taught or reading about it until I experienced it in the air…
Damn that's crazy, as a Student Pilot I feel silly by not thinking of that. But also, I'm surprised if that isn't explained in Instrument Rating as it seems like a really major factor that can interfere with the flight. Thanks for the heads-up!
Being good to go doesn't make it a good decision. Cessna's are falling out of the skies all over the place because of bad decision-making, & not the aircraft.
It should be IFR ALL the time since no pilot can be confident of being able to fly using VFR without running into bad weather that removes the visual cues whose absence can precipitate disorientation.
@VictoryAviation No. It was an attempt at humor. Obviously, rain isn't going to harm the aircraft... Unless something unexpected happens. That is why I inserted the emoji.
Eveey pilot definately should NOT be instrument rated. But the definately should be trained in instrument flying under a hood or similar. 2 very different things 🙂
@@frederickstienheld2853 hours under the hood is already required for PPL but there should definitely be more focus on instrument flying for private pilots. Considering flying VFR into IMC is the leading cause of crashes.
@@XJag9684god has literally taken the wheel when I was driving a truck in severe wreck, and I survived it. I believe that he can and will guide me till he calls me home.
If you look carefully at the air speed indicator you'll see a visible amount of speed being lost in the rain downpour. The pilot had to increase his throttle to stable the aircraft (cesna 172) again.
He's also trimming up a lot to increase his wing angle of attack. The whole aircraft is reconfigured for the extra weight/drag coefficients. This is crazy...
any good pilot is also a great meteorologist! Flying in heavy rain isn't dangerous but you need to be damn sure that it's just rain and that it's not hiding something else in there or in the process of developing into something that will kill you! Checking a forecast is important but you need to know exactly how the weather works for when that forecast isn't telling the whole story
Most pilots need to learn more about weather. Study accident reports, watch videos of aviation weather (especially the kind of weather in your local area). -retired Flight Service specialist and flight instructor/ATP
Rain is not dangerous if you know how to fly IFR and you have airport close by with ILS or RNAV approach. But freezing rain or frezing drizzle is deadly. So yes, you right, it's extremely important to know what weather can easely kill you.
I was in it yesterday, but not for long. Uncomfortable feeling and can be alarming the first time. Makes a person wonder if the plane is really made for it!
@@steveb5224airplane knows the paint is getting eaten up. If its only rain, its one thing, when its that heavy I would be worried about hail and my paint job... or ons prop.
Such a condition on a fixed-wing aircraft is fine for me. Now in a helicopter, flying by hand, it is very tiring and stressful. Cross-checking with speedometer, ADI, climb, altimeter and HSI all the time without being able to look away is uncomfortable. I finish the flight with all my muscles contracted.
Crossing Lake Michigan from MKE to MKG I encountered the Heavist Rain Ever for about a 20 mile Streach. Sounded like we were in a 55 gal drum being shot blasted.
Reminds me of the nasty weather on the day of some of my own FIRST SOLO flights! (I was long overdue to solo, with nearly 32 hours of training gotten in three states!)
I flew part 135 cargo and I try to avoid this type of rain whenever possible. Even in a turbine aircraft. If you know how to use radar and you’ve seen enough of this stuff it’s easy to avoid. You never know when you might find yourself flying into an embedded thunderstorm and things can go horribly wrong in an instant.
@@glennwatsonPatsy Cline thought IMC was fun and was having a blast belting out her song “Crazy” right up until the Comanche 250 she was flying in crashed killing everyone aboard.
When conditions are right it’s possible to see the “Water trail” left behind an aircraft when it travels through the downpour. It’s a beautiful sight. When the observer is a couple miles away and not under any precipitation while the plane is flying through a heavy deluge and illuminated by sunlight from an early morning or late evening angled Sun, the water trail can be seen as a dense and heavy collection that streams off the tail of the aircraft like an endless and floating banner in the sky.
So many people feel like this is super scary, but this is just another day in the life of an instrument rated general aviation pilot. It's just rain, it doesn't hurt the plane or the paint.
Exactly! It’s just rain! Flying through rain is not a big deal. It’s high winds that you have to beware of. Heavy rain with light winds is not a problem.
@@bickleyjonas6145 Sometimes rain can create downdrafts, but other than that it doesn't affect the performance of the airplane or engine at all. Heavy rain and thunderstorms are a different issue. No planes can fly through thunderstorms.
@@ervinthompson6598 Very true. Countless crashes have been caused by inadvertent flights into thunderstorms, which is why it's good to understand the convective forecasts, know the stability of the air you're flying through and have some kind of radar or precipitation picture enroute. Where I live and fly in the Seattle area, we have very stable conditions and low visibility. We can fly in the clouds all the time with a very low probability of convection. However, in many other areas of the country embedded thunderstorms are a real risk anytime you're in the clouds, especially in afternoon.
This was a training flight, so they almost certainly went up with the express purpose of flying in the clouds/rain. If it was a surprise, the instructor would have taken over and landed.
@@abdullaal-obaidi833 I know it’s on the MEL and the ATOMATOFLAMES thing but I’m talking about how do you see the magenta dots that line your plane up to the runway. Localizer and glide slope
i live in Scotland. You can drive down a road and see a dry wet line over the road and go from dry where its dry outside to wet where its - if i step outside i will drown in a second.
I circled DTW in a small regional plane more than 10 times waiting for our turn to land. It looked just liked this. The feeling everytime we began our turn-away thereby resulting in another 15 minute holding pattern was extremely stressful to say the least.
I'm wondering if you can put hydrophobic filter socks on the intake, like in race cars for rainy racing. There's only like 1 foot of intake piping, that can't give lots of time for water to fall out of the air intake before the cylinders.
UND did a study and found it's about a 3-5% performance loss due to the weight of the water and density of the air. Cool to watch an insturment approach in a steam gauge 172.
simulator pilot here, saving to get my ppl but im still pretty fluent in the pilotry department. if i ever plan to fly in that weather i always make sure there is lots of airports with precision approaches covering my flight path (im im the us so not difficulty) and i have the approaches of every single on of them on standby
Have flown a Cessna though a heavy Florida rain shower before (I could see the other side through the rain). Was surprised how even with it at max climb, we were still losing altitude. Learning experince for sure on the downdrafts that exist even in small rains.
Just stay focused on your artificial horizon gauge, speed and altitude gauges, your ILS gauge if you're landing and you'll be fine. Happy✈️ flying, stay safe.
IMC conditions are not really a problem if you are rated for it, my main concern here is they dont have weather radar and so they could end up in a cumulonimbus cloud, which starts making things more interesting. Lol
That’s why you look at convective forecasts and keep an eye on the nexrad. Light to moderate rain isn’t automatically a problem. I’ll happily fly through green, and maybe yellow too as long as there’s no red around. And I’m planting my ass on the ground if there’s purple anywhere on the screen.
Gordon Baxter, that wrote in FLYING, told of getting caught in a cell over Florida, in a Mooney - he said it was like trying to fly up a fire hose.... updrafts, downdrafts and carburetor ice leading to a brief but scary loss of power ; from many instances of in-flight breakups I've read about, he was lucky to escape it.
@Unicorse1000 .....they can be broken - one fell straight down in somebody's yard and burned less than three years ago, with both wings folded straight up near the roots.Google ASN Accident, N9156Z.
@@MuffinCHeeler ....they can be broken - read ASN Accident N9156Z ; this airplane fell straight down in somebody's yard with both wings and horizontal stabilizers folded up.
What he should have done was the "low safe cruise" - full flap, and power to compensate. The increased airflow will help clear the windscreen allowing him to see better, the lower pitch attitude for level flight allows him to see more, and he's going slower, so if a hill looms into view he's got more time to see it. Better still, get an instrument rating. Finally turning 180 degrees and flying out the other way may be sensible as rain that heavy is usually due to highly convective-cloud, which may harbour severe windshear/turbulence and icing. (Retired ATPL IR and QFI at commercial level)
I always wondered, especially in smaller planes, how the rain on the surface of the plane effects it’s aerodynamics. Does it create noticeable drag or any type of aero anomalies that large jets don’t experience?
It can be like flying in a river. It happened to me years ago when my kids were little. The 2 oldest were sound asleep, but my youngest was wide awake point at the windscreen yelling "dad! dad! dad!"
@@bickleyjonas6145 yup sound asleep. 1 nite I was flying from Corsicana, TX to Cleburne, TX it was so smooth, long, and comfortable that I fell asleep. On a nite like that and the plane is trimmed out rite it's hard to stay awake.
