What it's like to skydive through a thunderstorm | Hacker News Reader

What it's like to skydive through a thunderstorm

damninteresting.com

197 pointsmootothemax23 comments

This story also appears in Gavin Pretor-Pinney's The Cloudspotter's Guide, which is one of the more amusing and inspiring books about clouds I've come across.

There's a slightly more modern instance of someone surviving a CuNim under canopy: Ewa Wisnierska (and some other pilots) encountered the mother of all cloud suck during practice for 2007 paragliding world championships in Manilla, Australia. Ewa survived after reaching an altitude of 32600 feet, ostensibly because her unconscious body slumped in a position that steered her glider out of the storm by weight shift, and the accumulated ice in the canopy (paragliders are a ram-air airfoil of non-porous construction) caused a collapse which returned her to a survivable altitude. Another pilot, He Zhongpin, died after being struck by lightning in the same system.

There's a documentary called Miracle in the Storm which details Ewa's survival.

Not long after this happened, I was in China and met up with a local glider pilot to check into the possibility of doing some flying in that country. It didn't work out (soaring is not exactly common or easy there) but we had an interesting talk. Turned out he did paragliding too and was friends with the Chinese fellow who got killed in that cloud in Australia.

This is yet another reason I won't try paragliding. I don't want to fly anything where my body forms the landing gear, nor anything whose terminal velocity is lower than the speed of updrafts in a thunderstorm.

Interesting. I had a friend come back from a flying trip to China a few weeks ago and he said much the same thing - not common and too hard logistically.

It's not the sport for everyone, that's for sure. I love it, and am never quite so happily as when the vario is screaming, although I'll admit it's 98% bliss and 2% pure terror.

It's worth mentioning that a CuNim will happily break a 747 too - that's why all aircraft give them a wide berth.

In Manilla it was a case of competitive pilots taking disproportionate risks. Based on the photos I've seen of that day, I think a lesser pilot such as myself would never even have launched.

Wonder if we met with the same fellow. Andrew Du, I think his name was.

And you're right that a more substantial aircraft is no guarantee of survival, but a glider with a Vne of 140+kts and hefty airbrakes is going to have a much better time escaping from cloud suck than a paraglider.

There are days where it's foolish to launch, of course, but days which look good can still surprise you, so I like having the extra capabilities.

With bigger gliders you get much the same thrill with the vario screaming and such, but somewhat more safety. (Still plenty of risk, of course, but a few obvious failure modes are at least reduced.)

Really interesting yet scary account, not what I was expecting!

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Very interesting story.

One question for any experts: why did he eject at such a high altitude? Would it have been possible for him to have taken the plane down to a lower altitude before trying to eject? Or was there a technical reason why he had to eject when he did?

It sounds like he was losing control of the airplane, which was diving towards the ground, increasing its speed. The faster the plane is going, the more dangerous it is to eject (all of that onrushing air hits you really hard, and supersonic ejections are not at all entertaining). Before too long, it's likely that the plane would have broken up due to excessive speed, at which point the pilot's chances of survival would have dropped dramatically.

In the absence of a thunderstorm, it would have been no problem to eject at that altitude. Since he didn't realize what the storm was going to do to him, I think that's the rationale behind the choice.

Glide ratio, or lack thereof. Swept wing fighters usually have a glide ratio of like 1.5:1, meaning you go 1.5 feet for every foot you drop. With the engine out you've lost the hydraulic boost you have over the control surfaces so the aircraft is going to become more and more difficult to control as it accelerates. Also, crap glide ratios mean it's much easier to get into an accelerated stall that almost instantly becomes a spin...and then you're really screwed.

And the low glide ratio means that even if the control issues weren't there, you're not gliding your way out of a t-cell. I've flown over a flat-top cumulonimbus once with a friend who owned an Epic LT turboprop. Those things are...well, words fail. Epic ^ inf.

A few Germans ejected into a thunderstorm during WWII and got lifted by the updraft... They were turned into hailstones and thrown miles away.

While some German jets did have ejection seats in WWII, they weren't terribly common.

I don't think it was an ejection seat, I think they jumped out the hatch.

I would love to buy the book about his experience, but copies are way expensive ($60-$160).

http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Rode-Thunder/dp/0135482712

Perhaps if all us HNers could click on the "I'd like to read this on Kindle" link the publisher might re-release it: http://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/detail/request-kindle...

Try seeing if you can get it at your local library or a nearby university library. Even if they don't have a copy, they might be able to get it for you through inter-library loan.

done

This sounds horrendous. I've fallen through rain clouds more than a few times, which is painful but bearable, and hail once, which is not. Don't jump through green clouds if you can avoid it.

I'm so glad Alan is back and doing these again, after the book came out he kind of dropped off the edge of the Earth. Definitely one of the few sites I checked regularly.

"Lightning".

Hehe, thanks for the correction; that's one of my "gotcha" misspellings that, despite knowing how often I get it wrong, I still write incorrectly nonetheless! :)

did Nolan survive?

As I read it, Nolan was in another plane, presumably he would have landed normally (on the assumption his engine didn't also cut out).

Like me, you might have initially misread the article and thought that Nolan and Rankin were in the same plane. In fact, they were each flying solo in their own planes.

Awesome.

http://xkcd.com/962

http://explainxkcd.com/2011/10/10/the-corliss-resolution

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