Airplanes

[Oldherkpilot]

Flat light in low viz crash:

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2022...thwest-alaska/

I get the low viz crash but what does "flat light" mean? Autocorrect gone wrong?

[GJM]

I get the low viz crash but what does "flat light" mean? Autocorrect gone wrong?

https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/tag/flat-light/

[hiro]

If we're talking favourites, I'm partial to the de Havilland Mosquito

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito

[Oldherkpilot]

https://blog.aopa.org/aopa/tag/flat-light/

Thank you. I have experienced the phenomena a couple times but always had the instrumentation to alert the crew to the illusion. Not sure how I did all those years and never heard the term before. Thanks again for the lesson.

[rkittine]

I flew the Cessna A-37 showing in the original post as well as F-4Cs and the Cavalier P-51s. But that was back in Vietnam days.

[GJM]

Thank you. I have experienced the phenomena a couple times but always had the instrumentation to alert the crew to the illusion. Not sure how I did all those years and never heard the term before. Thanks again for the lesson.

Flying instruments, it is not the issue as low and slow, flying visually in fixed and rotor wing aircraft. I heard this 206 was following the shoreline, which provided some visual reference, turned over the frozen lake and descended and hit a wing tip without realizing what was happening. For this reason, you have to be very vigilant flying floats over glassy water -- the rule is no descending turns over glassy water.

[Oldherkpilot]

Flying instruments, it is not the issue as low and slow, flying visually in fixed and rotor wing aircraft. I heard this 206 was following the shoreline, which provided some visual reference, turned over the frozen lake and descended and hit a wing tip without realizing what was happening. For this reason, you have to be very vigilant flying floats over glassy water -- the rule is no descending turns over glassy water.

I was referring to the radar altimeter and GPWS, but i take your point.

[GJM]

I was referring to the radar altimeter and GPWS, but i take your point.

Both those are awesome flying instruments, but the ground prox is almost always inhibited flying VFR in those conditions because in normal flight you are so low, the terrain would be alerting constantly. We leave the rad alt on 50 feet in those conditions but I can guarantee that 206 didn't have a rad alt.

[entropy]

Radio altimeters and Gip Wiz aside, pressure swings can be pretty large and occur over a fairly short period of time up there. That as driven home to me at PAJN one day. Two consecutive misses on a proprietary RNP approach and each time around we were setting QNH lower and lower...by a fairly significant amount. Curious if this played into it as well. Hats off to anyone who flys GA up there...it’s a challenging world.

“High to Low Look Out Below”... “True Virgins Make Dull Company”. Lol. It’s all coming back to me now!

[GJM]

Radio altimeters and Gip Wiz aside, pressure swings can be pretty large and occur over a fairly short period of time up there. That as driven home to me at PAJN one day. Two consecutive misses on a proprietary RNP approach and each time around we were setting QNH lower and lower...by a fairly significant amount. Curious if this played into it as well. Hats off to anyone who flys GA up there...it’s a challenging world.

“High to Low Look Out Below”... “True Virgins Make Dull Company”. Lol. It’s all coming back to me now!

Just spitballing, but my guess is the pilot was looking 90 plus percent out the window, periodically at the gps, and not at all at the altimeter. The escape maneuver is to level the wings and climb, but that is really hard for most VFR air taxi pilots.