“Calling on UHF, say again. You are weak and garbled.” I transmit.
“…ine…. enne…. col… ngs…. rep…..” The static interferes with the message to the extent that I can’t come close to making out what they are saying. It’s like playing audio ‘Wheel of Fortune’. Being on UHF, it is most likely military in origin and I am itching to hear and talk with them. I call for the next twenty minutes, even turning south in order to close the distance but am met by silence. The turn to the south assumed that the radio call was American in nature and, with us cutting the US/Canadian border — or what used to be the US and Canada, the caller would almost assuredly have to be to the south. I look at the coordinates on the nav system and mark the map with a small circle and put ‘UHF contact’ with the time and altitude and turn back eastward to intersect our route.
Much of the flight is spent stretching our legs, switching tanks, developing systems knowledge, and taking turns flying. Although some conversation is spent on speculation of the past events and the future, most of the time is spent wrapped up and absorbed in our own thoughts. The only change is the land below as it transitions from mountainous areas to the flatter plains and hills of Montana and then North Dakota. The occasional smudge of smoke billows skyward from fires to the south of us. Some are small with light brown smoke but several others are large and the smoke is dark and oily; the nature and size of the plume indicates the possibility that some large refinery or city is burning.
As we drone on across the northern part of the country, I spot the tops of a line of cumulus clouds on the horizon directly on our route ahead, stretching far to the left and right. This, I think, is the problem of flying distances without any weather forecasting. I was really hoping to avoid weather of any kind but it is hard to navigate the distances we are without encountering some.
“Are those going to be a problem?” Robert asks as the dark clouds loom larger in our windscreen.
“I’m hoping not,” I reply back with some trepidation.
With the autopilot engaged, I unbuckle and walk over to the nav station where Michelle and Nicole are sitting. Reaching across Nicole, I turn on the radar to warm it up. The radar has both weather radar and forward looking infra-red capabilities. With the radar warmed up and on, I step over to Robert, “This is a repeater scope,” I say pointing at the round dial by his right knee. “The grand master plan is to maneuver around anything red on that scope so you give me the number of degrees to turn left or right. The red will be the thunderstorm cells. As we turn, you’ll see the objects on the radar move in relation to our line of flight. The idea is to maneuver around those cells having the red objects either left or right of center. We’ll thread our way through as best as we can. Keep us going generally eastward though.”
Sitting back in my seat, I look ahead to get a visual indication of where the major thunderheads are and mark them in my head to maintain situational awareness. This is a pretty big squall line and, looking both north and south, it is apparent we would have to travel several hundred miles off our route in order to divert around it; if we could at all. I hate thunderstorms and have an immense appreciation and respect for them. In jets, we could just pop above them for the most part and maneuver around the highest buildups. My memory flashes to one anxious moment when I was caught in one over Texas in a T-38….
A large squall line had marched across most of northeastern Texas cutting off our route home. Traffic control was overwhelmed due to the large number of weather diverts going on and we were being vectored all over the place in order to sequence us into the divert base. Well, I was given a vector to the northwest which would take me directly into the squall line. I requested an easterly heading letting the controllers know the heading they gave me was into the weather and that my preference was to avoid being immersed in a paint shaker. They came back that they didn’t show any weather along my vectored flight path. I told them I was staring right at some and that heading would merge me with it. I think their care factor was pretty low at that point as they repeated that they didn’t show any in that area and repeated the heading. Huh, I must be imaging things then, I thought and turned northwest figuring that continued requests might be met with an even worse heading. I was at 10,000 feet and was enveloped in clouds immediately. The turbulence wasn’t too bad initially but being small and relatively light, I was bounced around a bit. Then, the sky turned dark; I mean black dark. At the same time, it felt like a giant hand had punched the jet. It wasn’t just rough turbulence; it was like being repeatedly slammed into the ground by my ankles. I was all over the sky. The altimeter went anywhere from 16,000 to 6,000. Approach control came on at one point, “Otter 57, we show you several thousand feet off your altitude, maintain one zero thousand.”
Want to know what my thought bubble said at the time — Fuck you!!! You are the ones who sent me into this god-awful mess! What actually came out was, “Otter 57, unable.” They then came back and said, “Otter 57, you are cleared maneuvering airspace from six to one six thousand.” Yeah, right, Maneuver! Are you kidding me! If I only could. My ability to ‘maneuver’ had ceased long ago and the aircraft had lost any functional aspect of the term ‘flying’ and became more like a high speed puppet; pulled this way and pushed that. Oh yeah, did I mention it was raining. I mean, raining inside the cockpit. It was raining so hard, it was coming into the cockpit through the canopy seal, dripping, no, pouring onto my lap and side consoles. Yay me!
After a three hour battle — okay, more like five or ten minutes — and aging twenty years, I was finally given an easterly vector and eventually flew out of the cell. After landing, I crawled out of the cockpit furious. Seems that happened a time or two. One of my buds that had just parked next to me came over and asked me what happened. I was absolutely soaked. “Never mind,” I told him.
“I mean with that,” he said pointing at my jet. I looked back and my heart froze. Every bit of paint from all of the leading edges of the aircraft was gone leaving only the gleaming metal showing. The rain had been so intense that it had stripped the paint off. Yes, I respect thunderstorms!
Other stories flash around in my head, such as the one where my wingman was struck by lightning, but the line of thunderstorms is looming large ahead so I focus on the coming penetration. In the 130, we will maneuver through them as best as we could. I know the aircraft can take just about anything but I hate them nonetheless. After all, the weather chasers would fly 130’s through hurricanes into the eye to get telemetry data so I knew the aircraft could take it. I wouldn’t want to be one of those pilots though and there was one thing I could never understand about them; how they could fit their balls inside the cockpit.
As the sun sinks below the horizon behind us, the Great Lakes appear ahead on our route and slightly south of it; the line of thunderstorms is rising to incredible heights above them. Large cumulus clouds rise above our altitude with even larger, imbedded cells within. Lightning strikes downward against the earth’s surface in a continuous light show. Flashes of light show within and between the clouds; their strobes, in almost continuous intervals, highlight the rising mass.
“Everyone buckle in tight,” I say slowing the aircraft down to 180 knots. “Robert, give me a heading around that monster,” I say pointing directly ahead.
We have turned on the instrument and outside lights and I dimmed my instrument lighting enough to read them clearly. I look over at the NDB — non-directional beacon — and see the needle swing left and right. Another lesson learned from thunderstorms, the beacon needle will point to lightning. One night, I threaded my way under a squall line at low level and at night using the NDB and my mark-one eyeball to show the imbedded cells. That was another time I had to have the seat cushion removed via a surgical procedure.