Comments

I was a VERY early adopter of in Cockpit Nexrad, and also an active IFR pilot in the midwest. I always tell other pilots the truth about in-flight WX, which is that "I never flew into a thunderstorm UNTIL I had datalink weather on board" There is something mighty convincing about seeing those cells so perfectly defined on the little screen that instills a false sense of confidence. I KNEW that even when the data said it was a few minutes old, that one had to add at least 5 minutes to that value, just to be safe. What I didn't fully understand is that when cells are rapidly building (on a hot summer afternoon, for instance), the weather service(s) use various ground clutter removal algorithms that (at that time anyhow) could sometimes suppress a new and rapidly building cell for another 5 or 10 minutes, dismissing it as ground clutter. I had been cruising on top of the puffies at 15K and could see that there were getting to be some really tall ones in all quadrants. Center dropped me down to 11K for traffic, and my approaching arrival at KSBN, this altitude had me plowing through the buildups, IMC about 70% of the time. I would poof out of a cloud, get a few seconds to look around, then poof back into the next one. The Nexrad display was reassuring, there were some bigger cells and I could hear Center approving and recommending deviations. It was almost fun to imagine where those poor guys were at on my little electronic map. The display showed NOTHING near me and NOTHING ahead of me. The cloud penetrations were getting a little more intense, but nothing too bad. POOF - I broke out of a cloud into a relatively large valley, and had just enough time to scan my head vertically, surveying the towering monster about 20 seconds ahead of me... then POOF. I frantically killed the autopilot, pulled the throttle, and worked diligently to keep the shiny side up as the VSI surged to the positive peg, then just as abruptly swung to the negative. My Bose headsets did a remarkable job of suppressing the noise of the heavy rain, and then POOF - I was out of it, 1000 feet higher and 30 degrees off course. I demanded lower from Center, they guy must have sensed my plight, as he immediately cleared me to 5000, which put me below the bases. Looking at the little screen, the area just behind me was now peppered with reds and yellows. Nexrad is NOT for picking one's way through rapidly building storms, it's for staying 100 miles away from the bad stuff. Period!