...being forced down by weather and having to land off-airport. I'm cooking up a little article idea.

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Your identity can be "changed" if you like, or you can enjoy the full glory.

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Don't everyone step up at once! LOL

I was forced down due to weather on my second cross country after receiving my ppl. The airplane almost ended up in a ball of metal just off the runway in Challis, ID. Does that count? [emoji38]

That landing stood as the worst in my wife’s record book for ten years. As of a couple weeks ago some poor SkyWest pilot now holds the honor.

Forced down at the nearest airport count?
Scud running the Appalachian when everything closed up and went white. Luckily Bedford County was only a few miles north of me.

High-octane BCP flyers like us are unlikely to get into such a situation, what with our superior judgement and all...

Does using the drainage cut next to the paved runway because there was too much crosswind to land on asphalt count?

I've gotten one submission that was awesome! It had photographs of the gradually degrading weather and then finally the airplane parked on the river bar waiting it out.

It's not much but......

I took a brandy new Husky on amphibs from St Augustine to Calgary once. VFR only airplane. As I passed by Sioux City the weather was coming down and I thought I would keep pressing onward and if it got too bad, well I would just land in the Missouri river if I had to and wait it out. I mean what could go wrong with that solid of a plan???

When I flew just over some power lines that I didn't see until the last minute I started to second guess my master plan. Then the clouds got lower and the vis got worse....

The voices in my head started talking............

Bailed on the I Follow Rivers game plan and made a beeline for KSUX. Weather continued to drop. As I turned off the runway the tower turned on the beacon. Pretty sure he did me a solid that day.....

While not forced off airport I was planning on VOLUNTARILY landing off airport. I waited for almost 2 days for the weather to improve before I left. Not sure how well my master plan would have fared if I had followed through with it.

In my best Bugs Bunny, what a maroon....

About the worst I've suffered is a stuck valve over the red river. Intake valve at that so it blows into the intake and f--kers up everything. Really not that scary in farm country though.

Snowstorm near Weed, NM. Landed Pawnee on road. Upslope fog SW Kansas. Landed Pawnee on road. Airmass thunderstorm near Stirling, Colorado. Landed Pawnee on road. Heavy rain between Mississippi river and St. Charles, Missouri. Landed 172 on road. Steam fog near Siloam Springs, Arkansas. Landed 172 in farmer's field. Most precautionary landings were to spray field or near airport. Many were to farmer's field or roads or levee.

There are many good places to get on the ground. Before GPS they were used extensively. GPS is very helpful so long as it doesn't lure us into a worse situation.

We lived in Bettles field Ak. Personal plane was an old Stinson 108-3, We needed to make a run to FAi, I checked the weather with FSS, it was alright, high overcast but looked a little lower to the west. My wife and three kids 5 and under were with me in the plane. The further south we got the lower the overcast became. By the time we got half way to the Yukon river it looked bad ahead so I turned back only to find the weather behind was worse. The storm was moving in from the west with incredible speed. I swung to the left to be near the pipeline haul road, then under construction as the snow started covering the ground and filling the air. The heavy equipment working in the road right-of-way stood out as a dark line in the white out conditions. I had to get lower and lower the maintain eye contact with the road work. To keep the dirt work in sight soon required flying right down the road causing the vehicles to run off the road because the airplane was at the same elevation off the ground as the pickups. I would have landed right there but they had it so torn up there wasn't any straight smooth spot yet. I flew for several miles with no forward visibility. We cleared that last hill before we got to Five mile camp and with the strip right next to the road we had to climb just a little to be high enough to land on the strip. I had been flying with flaps half down and power back so as to not be going so fast. As we saw the strip come into view I jerked the power off, flaps on full and landed with out asking clearance. They didn't want civilian planes in those camps but no one said a thing to me. I had been into those camps lots of times but in the DPS planes.

I've never been forced down, but I did have one flight in which we deliberately flew until we couldn't make any more progress safely, landed, tied down, got ice cream and then got this lovely shot before taking off and continuing after the storm had raced over.

I've got loads of them...



Still looking for Glider Tundra Tires

Cool! Weather looks pretty good though...

Back in the early 80's, I was flying back from Montana in my Pterodactyl ultralight and got forced down by a thunderbumper on Monida Pass, part of the Continental Divide. No big deal, there were plenty of fields to land in, and the 'dac had great rough ops landing gear. Due to increasing winds I quickly pulled the ribs, folded the wing's compression struts, and secured the sail cloth fabric to the air frame, which was standard procedure for riding out inclement weather while tied down, as it totally destroyed the lift and took less then 5 minutes.

After securing it to a fence line, I decided I'd hike up to the closet "town" (just a gas station and a bar) and wait out the storm dry. After a mile or so hike, I got to the bar, and found it was "closed for a private party." Someone noticed me and took pity I guess, but I was invited in, to the birthday party for one of the bartenders. Long story short, I had a great time, and while there (while the storm hit and really raged outside) meet another traveler through the area who had also crashed the party, one thing led to another (turns out she was a pilot, though very low time) and as I was stranded and facing a long night in a damp tent, she offered me a ride home. She was headed to SLC, and my place was just 10 minutes off the interstate.

BUT, as she had a brand new Thunderbird (early 80's, vinyl roof and everything), I sure as hell better not scratch it! No problem, I had that down.....once back at the bird, I completed the tear down in another few minutes (the 'dac broke down like a hang glider, though it was a rigid wing), and then using my sleeping pad and sleeping bag as padding, hog tied it to the roof with my tie down ropes. Properly secured (I took pride in being able to tie down to any vehicle, and then drive any speed) we blasted off for the 2 hour drive to my exit.

On the way she told me an incredible story of how she had bought the T-Bird: it turns out she was involved in a horrific car accident down in SoCal a few years earlier. It seems some vandals had purposely moved some hiway construction signage, and she had driven off an under construction overpass, dropping a LONG ways, I can't remember exactly, but it was far enough to easily/probably be fatal. She told the story expertly, having told itmany times I'm sure, and described in great detail how the impact (she hit more or less flat) broke every window and blew every tire and broke almost every bone in her body. I had noticed she had kind of an odd look to her, and moved kind of funny, the result of the accident of course. She eventually received a very large financial settlement (thus the new car) and promptly moved the hell out of SoCal. A great lady, though we didn't have anything going on romance wise (I know what you were thinking.... and I have another story about that, involving TWO French Canadian ladies and a 1500 mile ultralight XC) I sure appreciated her dropping me off back at my place, though she did inspect the car roof closely before driving back down the mountain, a hug was as far as things went. A safe flight was the bottom line, as I landed well before the WX really hit, and had a backup plan, (land, tie down, and hang out somewhere) though I didn't realize at the time exactly what that plan would entail, it made for a pretty good log book entry.

This happened to my Dad in 1964 when he was coming home from an aerial applicator school the Univ of Ohio had just west of Columbus. He was chosen to attend the first of only two years since too many planes were wrecked. He didn't wreck anything and when the school was over there was an Englishman named John Doyle who didn't really have a plan so Dad brought him home in his 120 Cessna. They were just south of Warrenton VA at Opal when John told my Dad they better get the "bloody" thing on the ground. I was 8 yrs and can still remember riding with my Mom and sister in our 61 Buick in pouring rain to pick up Dad and John. John stayed at our house while he looked for a job and laid the tile in part of the house. He looked like a Beatle and was a hit with all the neighborhood girls. Previous to the school, John had been flying in Kenya. Here is Dad's logbook entry.

My last for real airplane incident was last year, after getting fooled by all the smoke in the air that was obscuring some rain up ahead. I was just leaving Phillpsburg MT, (a gas station there within e biking range) and by the time I got a few miles north, it was obvious "something was going on." Possibly partially due to all the smoke, the thermal activity that day was nil, and the low pressure system was stable, the air was glass smooth.

I just needed to get through one little range, and could see it looked OK in the flats beyond. I pushed it a bit, thinking I could squeak through, but hit my first bump and got a bit of spatter on the windshield and that was all it took, I'm a wuss. I turned around and landed on the ridge line a few miles back, I had eyeballed it earlier and liked the looks of it. I could have gone another 8 miles back to Phillipsburg, but didn't feel the need, so I guess I wasn't forced down, but just used the wait time to land a cool looking site. I believe I posted the pics here but Photobucket is holding them for ransom. It was a non emergency, and after a 15 mintue wait the little squall passed and I flew through the area in glass air again. Having a slow flying big tired plane makes getting into real trouble more difficult, it's almost like I'm cheating. The fast, small tired ones, I can really see how it can bite you in the ass quickly.

Zzz wrote:Cool! Weather looks pretty good though...

Yeah, but he had absolutely no gas in the tanks... Doesn't that count? LOL

I landed on an abandoned airstrip in my Cub on the way to Oshkosh in 2012. Thunderstorms ahead and not enough fuel to make it back to El Paso. I have a write up about it somewhere.

Cannon wrote:I landed on an abandoned airstrip in my Cub on the way to Oshkosh in 2012. Thunderstorms ahead and not enough fuel to make it back to El Paso. I have a write up about it somewhere.

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