Sudden Fog in Aeronca Chief! Pilot Stories

(Please Subscribe!) Pat Heavirland ‪@mypilotandme3102‬ from Minnesota talks about a short trip in blue skies that quickly became IMC when fog formed around him.
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[@boogerwood]

He hit it: what's the temp/dewpoint spread! Under 5 and it can change in a HEARTBEAT! Thanks for sharing this.

[@thomasaltruda]

Exactly!I bet it was either just after sunrise when the moisture comes out of the grass, or towards the end of the day when the temp closes in on the dewpoint..

[@patrickheavirland3599]

Great job on the video. Thank you😊

[@TakingOff]

It was so awesome meeting you in person!

[@glennwatson]

Always been taught to 180 and maintain constant height. In theory it should be clear where you’ve come from. I guess the tricky part in this story is the lack of instruments so good job using whatever visual references you could get hold of.

[@rogerwilco4736]

Not always the case, in many mountainous terrain weather can close-in behind you as quickly as it can in front

[@rogerwilco4736]

Experienced a similar situation myself many years ago, as the cloud began closing in below me i reduced power and made a rapid spiral decent through one remaining hole and landed on a school playing field which happened to be immediately below, scary situation for several minutes

[@KevinSmithAviation]

Great pilot story with a thankfully happy ending. Thank you for sharing your story with us, so that hopefully others can prevent making the same mistakes. Keep up the excellent work. Safe skies my friend 🇺🇸🛩️

[@grayrabbit2211]

I had a similar experience on my first solo flight away from the pattern. Nice day, 3 hours before sunset. Temp/DP not a factor in the briefing. I was planning on heading to an untowered field for some touch & goes, some maneuvers and back home. Some angry thunderstorms were forming by the untowered field so I stayed clear and practiced manuevers. After awhile I noticed visibility was going downhill. Not good. Between where I was and the home airport is a large tower farm with multiple sticks above 1500'. I made a beeline for the river which I knew was south of the towers and would have no obstructions above 100' and followed it back around 500'- 800' or so. Adding to the misery was the airport running the opposite runway from what I was used to. No ILS on that end, but I dialed in anyway hoping it might do something useful, and quickly learned the hard way about a back course ILS approach. My posterior was chewing on the seat cushion like a horse's mouth on a bit. Landed, put the plane away, and immediately called up flight service to figure out what happened. The briefer suggested an inversion and recommended calling the NWS. I called them next and got a nice lesson about it, and spent the next week learning about Skew-T diagrams. I didn't want to be surprised by that again.

[@capt_yeti]

Similar experience many years ago. Just one go landing before fogged in. Walked into the clubhouse with 20+ pilots waiting to fly out . For me , it was not pretty flying.

[@jim8368]

Interesting story, I'm glad it turned out so well. Your Dad is one of the nicest guys I've met in avaition. Keep those Chiefs flying!

[@baimbrib]

Thank you for sharing

[@paratyshow]

👍✅

[@thomasaltruda]

Let me guess.. the temp/dew point was less than 5 degrees spread and closing? A standard VFR weather briefing could have enlightened him.. some basic instruction, I hope someone else reading this can learn from it, glad that you’re still alive to tell it, but the fog appearing wasn’t out of nowhere.