I went to PAMR here in Anchorage to shoot some touch and goes yesterday morning and had an interesting occurence. The wind was basically dead calm, but on 3 consecutive occasions on short final to runway 25, I hit a wind sheer that tried to roll the airplane over on its left side. Altitude was about 100' and the sheer was pretty strong even though all the wind socks and flags were dead limp. In fact the 2 nd time the bird rolled overabout 45 degrees instantly. If I hadn't stopped the roll my sense is that it would have gone up 90 degrees to the horizon or more. It wasn't anything that caused a problem other than to make me ask "Now where in the heck did that come from? as I was looking around. I could not see any other indication of any wind and after climb out the last 2 times, I hit some turbulence at pattern altitude as I turned downwind (a sharp bump or two). I finally figured out that the air had to be coming from the local air force base as they were scrambling some of their F22's that morning and taking off to the north with afterburners on. The blast must have drifted a mile to get to PAMR. It was a sure way to wake up on a dead calm day for sure.

Should have went to Gwennies for breakfast instead
Reindeer sausage omlet, deep fried home fries and soughdough toast. don't get any better then that

Gwennie's, yum, reindeer sausage!

AKGrouch, maybe it was your own wake turbulence, seeing as it was localized.

ASW.

i second the Gwennie's idea! Hopefully back that way next month

You may have been encountering an inversion layer, with the transition being where you were getting the bumps. I've hit something similar several times where the SURFACE indications were that it was calm. In fact, there was a breeze at a bit of altitude, and the shear layer was a bump or three while transiting.

MTV

For those of you that have been into Idaho's Smiley Creek:I landed there one time about 20 years ago, 8:30 AM, dead calm CAVU day. Tied the Kitfox (at the time) down, set the 2 person dome tent up, and transferred the usual xc gear into same. I then turned and walked maybe 100 yds at most to a water spigot to fill up my jugs, when I turned around something caught my eye. It was my tent, about 150 yds away from where I set it up. My first thought was "oh well, doesn't take much to move one of them around", then I remembered I'd thrown all my gear in it. I had heard or felt no wind whatsoever from around 100 yds away, and had my back turned for maybe 5 minutes at most. Another aero camper was also looking at my tent, I asked what he'd seen and he said it was the weirdest thing he'd ever seen, a little micro burst kind of gust (early am on a blue sky "perfect" kinda day)....nothing similar happened the rest of the day, and the weather remained "perfect" for a few days after.
I wish I knew the moral of the story, I guess maybe its "stuff" happens, I do know that every time since when flying over Smiley or landing I cinch the shoulder harness a little tighter.

Ah yessssss.. Gwennie's. A wonderful local institution.....been there quite a few times in the last 37 years.

Gwennie's rocks! I went there alot when I lived there and now when I come back for visits I always try to go.

Home of the Alaska Air Guides Pilot Safety Meetings

DonC wrote:Should have went to Gwennies for breakfast instead
Reindeer sausage omlet, deep fried home fries and soughdough toast. don't get any better then that

I dunno....

Nasty wind shear vs reindeer sausages...

decisions, decisions....

Interesting- I was streaming ANC tower communications via the Alaska Airmen's website earlier in the week, and they were advising every inbound plane about "gains or losses of one-five knots reported on final" all throughout the day.

Here's the link- it's fun to load the AOPA airport diagram for ANC and follow the action.

http://www.alaskaairmen.org/index.php?pagename=web-cam

Also noteworthy that folks are still going into LHD "at pilot's own risk" Thought that ice would have been pretty dodgy by now.

-DP

I think it's possible it was the jets too. I hit what I presumed to be jet vortices a few years back. It was a dead calm day over by the Fallon Navy base, I was sitting there about half asleep, at about 8,000 feet going to Reno, and hit something that cranked me back and forth violently, hit my head really hard on the window frame, and popped both doors open on a Cessna 180. Then, dead calm again, never did see any traffic.

Never had raindeer sausages, . . . they do sound good!

Anyone know if Gwennie's delivers far south as Nevada? How 'bout we put together a group purchase . . . Coyote, Gump, ya in?

bumper