A little bouncy bouncy…

Posted on by October 8, 2024

This link, HERE, from Fox News shows a bit of video from Miss Piggy, the NOAA P-3 as it penetrates the eye wall of Hurricane Milton.

This is just a little bouncy, for a few seconds. Try doing this for 20-30 minutes or more and you get an idea of how ‘rough’ turbulence can actually get. These crews EARN their flight pay every day, and everyone who lives in the path of hurricanes should be thankful they are willing to fly a 60 year old airplane into hurricane after hurricane to collect the real time data the NHC needs to give the warnings it does.

Say a prayer for those folks who are about to get hit tonight with this mess. At least the folks further north are thankful this one isn’t following the track of Helene.

However, an issue on the ground in Florida is the debris left by Helene that will now become projectiles when Milton comes ashore…

 

Comments

A little bouncy bouncy… — 21 Comments

  1. I didn’t realize they still used a P-2 for that.

    Really good airframes.

  2. Yes , they definitely earn their pay. Prayers for the Floridians sent.

    NFO , what’s it like flying in a hail storm ?

    • I don’t have personal experience flying through one, but I was there when one of our P-3s came through one at Cubi Point in the Philippines back in the late 80s. Contact was lost with the plane until they got very close to the airfield because the hail took out one of the radio antennas. All of the leading edges were essentially sandblasted down to bare metal, the stripes on the props were all removed, and the nose radome was caved in about 7 inches. Everybody, aircrew and ground crew were REALLY happy when that bird landed and everyone was safe again!

  3. 10 minutes of clear-air turbulence at a patch was enough, thanks. With Boeing’s situation, somehow I’d feel more comfortable in an overbuilt, 60-YO airframe.

    Helen debris is around, and a fair amount of the water is probably still in bayous and creeks. Pray for family and friends there, this could get ugly-ugly.

    • My parents are up visiting from Florida to see their granddaughter. (I am now chopped liver – LOL.) They live outside the mandatory evac zone, so some of their friends are evacuating to their place. Hopefully it doesn’t get hit too hard by the wind or airborne debris.

  4. They had a nice program on Mighty Planes (Smithsonian Channel) on Kermit and Miss Piggy. Kermit was doing double duty because Miss Piggy was in overhaul. They mentioned losing three engines after flying into a salt updraft near Newfoundland one time.

    Didn’t they fly a C 130 doing a similar mission back in the day?

    • The Air Force (Reserves) currently operates the WC-130J out of Kessler AFB in Mississippi. Per Wikipedia, NOAA has procured but not received two WC-130Js to replace the WP-3Ds.

      Yeah go Herks!! I am a C-130 pilot (well, I used to be but am past the age.)

  5. I have a few friends who live in the path or near it. Will be interesting to see what happens down there. Most expect to be offline for at least a week, and to be without power probably about that long. Course they’ve been living there a long time, so they’re prepared.
    I think the biggest ‘concern’ right now is ‘what is FEMA going to do?’ Everyone’s been hearing the stories about what’s currently going on after Helena.
    Kinda sad when the people are more afraid of their own government than they are of a natural disaster.

  6. Bad link. “Jessica Alba is trying to put on a poker face for Kamala Harris”

  7. Jim, didn’t your crew fly into a hurricane once to rescue a sailboat?

  8. A friend of mine just moved a week ago to a mandatory evacuation area, packed as much as she could into her car and took back roads to her son’s house. It’s truly frightening because she’s wondering if she’ll have a place to live when it’s over.

  9. All- Thanks and yes, we penetrated a typhoon back in the 70s looking for an old Fram destroyer that got caught off the Philippines. It beat us up pretty bad. Yes, Gerry, the did lose 3 engines to salt water intake off Greenland. I knew one of the engineers on that flight, he said it got ‘interesting’ for a few minutes, but there was so much rain it effectively washed out the motors and they got one restarted before they hit the water. McC- Sorry.

  10. About debris, ? PINELLAS ? County had locked up its’ County dump despite a Fla State emergency order to have it open 24/7 to get that debris gone.
    Yesterday DeSantis ordered Fla DOT / St Police to pull the gates open and get the trash gone ASAP. Too late now, but a good try.
    Better than FEMA, which today sent a few hundred electric chainsaws to Western N.C.
    Another site found that the Blackhawk that rotor washed a privately funded hurricane relief supply base near Asheville was indeed a US military helicopter, lacking unit numbers or other markings.

  11. John- I hadn’t heard that.

    Bill- I did hear NOAA is looking at C-130Js to replace Kermit and Miss Piggy. They want to be able to carry more equipment and scientists to get more data.

    • Watch the video to see what’s being done to the rescuers
      Link

      From the comments:
      Because the locals and civilian volunteers from all over stopped allowing the communist FEMA to confiscate and store the freely given support that all of Americans have sent? One or two posts on social media could be called a conspiracy theory, but hundreds of them mean that FEMA is actively trying to stop all relief efforts. Even Musk’s donation of hundreds of Starlinks was taken.

  12. I would far rather fly into a storm on a airframe designed in 1950s instead on one designed today. in 1950 engineers designed a built airframes to last. Today every decision has to be approved by a business major who can over rule the engineer.