currently completely fogged in IFR, take off and landing, short 20 miles IFR flight from EGJB Guernsey to EGJJ Jersey, British channel islands:

JEREGJJ

Saint Helier, JE

Jersey Airport

12

0.12

10/10

29.65

EGJJ 071650Z 25012KT 0200 R26/0375D FG VCSH  BKN000  10/10 Q1004

similar conditions at EGJA Alderney:

https://www.badbadweather.com/visibility

 

 

 

EGJJ Jersey - ILS rwy 26 - 200 ft. AGL:

 

Edited February 7, 20242 yr by turbomax

had some well interesting approaches into EGNM these days, typical cross winds, rain showers, low cloud patches and fog. all in all very nice. except my landing experience in the A320...

Yeah, I’ve seen all of this too and it’s very nice, but not one thunderstorm since, say, SU3.

Flew into EDDK night time, Cologne with heavy snow fall. Landed okay but as I rolled out I hit a wall of snow across the runway. The result was not good!! The A320 tipped on its side!

Low vis conditions in MFS 2020 are very convincing overall.

3 hours ago, cappy42 said:

Yeah, I’ve seen all of this too and it’s very nice, but not one thunderstorm since, say, SU3.

I hadn't seen a thunderstorm in MSFS for ages as well.

Until yesterday! I encountered a thunderstorm with visible lightnings and audible thunders while flying in the Caribbean. It was quite immersive.

3 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

I hadn't seen a thunderstorm in MSFS for ages as well.

Until yesterday! I encountered a thunderstorm with visible lightnings and audible thunders while flying in the Caribbean. It was quite immersive.

Hmm, was that using the MSFS live weather? Or was it a preset or using REX Weather Force? Sure wish some screenshots were shared. Seeing a thunderstorm in MSFS live weather anymore is like seeing a ghost!

46 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

Hmm, was that using the MSFS live weather? Or was it a preset or using REX Weather Force? Sure wish some screenshots were shared. Seeing a thunderstorm in MSFS live weather anymore is like seeing a ghost!

MSFS live weather.

9 hours ago, cappy42 said:

Yeah, I’ve seen all of this too and it’s very nice, but not one thunderstorm since, say, SU3.

What!? You can actually see lightning flashing on the world map when you zoom out. Click on places that look interesting, set as destination then see what weather conditions show in the top right corner.

I wonder why that 'finally' is in the topic title... I get bad bad weather quite frequently. Did you never had bad bad weather before?

10 hours ago, cappy42 said:

Yeah, I’ve seen all of this too and it’s very nice, but not one thunderstorm since, say, SU3.

I was in a wicked thunderstorm flying from Bora Bora to Papeete a few days ago. So they are definitely still there.

Flew into Heathrow an hour ago, VATSIM and all. My first online approach and the lights became visible as late as 400 ft. I really was fearing I might have misjudged the minima and should have gone for a CATII approach. A Go Around would have been something.

This reminds me of a trip, so here we go. I had a leg from Lakenheath AB over to Aviano AB. Just so happen, we were delayed a day because the emergency power system failed and the good folks at FEDEX was nice enough to sell us a part 🤣. Good thing they were still flying DC10s. Unfortunately, the following day was a holiday and the base was closed. We had to coordinate with base ops to ensure we would have support that morning so that we could depart. We showed up and as expected, no one was home. We made some phone calls to find out where our support or lack there of was. In the midst, the fearless AC/PIC decided we should start engines to be ready to depart immediately since we are now late due to support. I expressed concern and after a debate, we centered on starting 1 and 3 and getting 2 on taxi out as we normally do. By the time support showed up, we had been idling for one hour😑. I looked back at the engineer's panel noting that we were below optimum fuel. We were already limited on fuel because Aviano had a short runway. We thought about fueling back up, but how long would it take to drag someone in to fuel us. I checked Aviano and alternate weather and they were great. We thundered off heading forward. An hour out, we checked weather again, descent briefed and headed earthward.

We check in with approach and was cleared the ILS. We descended on the GS down through the unsuspected soup seeing nothing. At the DH, I called go around and we went missed. With a confused look, we went to holding wondering where the heck did the fog come from. An hour ago, the foretasted weather was fine. As the engineer checked weather at the alternates, I called tower to get the play by play. He said that the fog just rolled in and it had been happening the last couple of mornings. Looking over my shoulder at fuel, I saw we were at alternate fuel and we needed to decide to head to an alternate or burn in holding with min fuel flow. The engineer reported that the alternates were all weathered out and passed up a holding speed. As alternate fuel walked off the flight deck, we decided to stay put. I called tower again asking for insight and he explained that the weather usually got better gradually until the sun burned it all off. I asked if he could give us regular updates and let us know when the ceiling and vis hit our mins. He gave us the play by play every 10 minutes, which felt like hours as the lumps in our throats grew knowing we had no options.

Eventually, he called saying if we started the approach, we should be at mins by the time we got there. We told approach we were ready and asked for short vectors. Again we dove into the soup headed earthward. Knowing the surrounding terrain in the area made the hairs stand up on our necks. We were destined to shoot approaches until we came down one way or the other. As we approached mins, I strained outside looking for something, anything resembling the runway environment. Right as I started to say "go around" I saw a flash of a strobe and called the runway in sight. We continued on and we saw the second strobe and finally the rest of the ALSF-1 lights and the REILs. We touched down and whipped those high speed cascade reversers into action. Pulling off the runway, I looked over my shoulder and saw we were below or standard minimum landing fuel.

Looking back at that leg, I can easily see the links in a chain that lead up to an incident. Good times.

54 minutes ago, G550flyer said:

Looking back at that leg, I can easily see the links in a chain that lead up to an incident. Good times.

A hair raising story indeed! 

Yeah, lightning still exists I've seen it in the wild, but only outside of the METAR coverage bubble.

I've never seen lightning at an airport when the METAR says there should be.

Edited February 8, 20242 yr by Tuskin38