Flight Sim Adventures #001 - Windshear in Vienna

7th of May 2017, 19 o'clock. I'm planning to make a short IFR flight in Austria, of course with live weather provided by Active Sky Next. From Wels to Vienna, a flight of approximately one and a half hour. My plane is a 1967 Piper PA-31 Navajo (By Carenado). I am filing my flightplan, powering up the plane and taxiing along to the runway.
The weather is nice, partly cloudy and looks really amazing with the REX Soft Clouds. I am departing from runway 27L out to the east. The weather radar only shows green areas, the engines are in the green, everything is good.



While climbing on 10.000 feet, the clouds got denser. The Wx-Radar shows some yellow spots. The clouds look stunning from above.

At half of the way the clouds got higher and I came into rain and some turbulence, but the journey continues. 

ATC instructed me to go down to 3.200 feet. Due to the lack of an altitude selector for the autopilot, I had to fly the descent manually, what already was really hard because of the up- and downdrafts in the rainclouds. But I could manage to level off at 3.200 feet and waiting for further instructions. Because of the wind coming from about 300°, I could expect runway 29 for landing. ILS frequency is 109.55 Mhz. 

ATC told me to fly a heading of 300° and descent to 2.700 feet. I entered the ILS frequency and the course and ATC gave me the landing clearance.
I had a visual quite soon but of course I use the ILS as long as possible to stay on the perfect glideslope. All looked good, I was centerlined and the glideslope was coming down slowly, but the weather radar has already been showing solid red and even blue areas. That's not good. 



And suddenly my predictive windshear system alerted me: Windshear, Windshear. I disconnected the autopilot and expected the worst to be happening. There was a slight drop in airspeed, only about 5 knots. Then, another windshear alert. At this point I had an altitude of 2.700 feet and a speed of 150 knots. Suddenly my speed dropped to 140 knots. I realised there is something bad inbound to happen. I immediately set the prop-lever to high RPM and the throttle on full but in a microburst this has no effect anymore. After a second my speed dropped for another 10 knots. A massive down-draft stroke the plane. I was applying full thrust but the plane dropped faster and faster. The airspeed decreased to only a hundred knots, with only one notch of flaps extended. I thought this will be the end and I will hit the ground. It is indeed one of the most terrible situations a pilot can think of. You can do nothing, the plane is slow and getting even slower, even when applying full thrust. You drop like a rock. But at 1.500 feet MSL (900 feet above ground (AGL)) the microburst stopped and I could gain airspeed again and climb on a safe altitude. I was so relieved I didn't crash.

The approach had no other events and I could land the plane safely and smoothly according to the circumstances. 

 Here is a video on how what could have happened:


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