Incursion Excursion

Today was a day of “finalies”. Mostly, I was finally able to go flying again after a three-month hiatus. Even better was that I was finally able to fly in my hometown of San Diego. Better than that, I was able to fly with my mom, in the plane that she is flying in her own training. Better than that, was that the plane is a four-seat Piper Cherokee, so I was able to add another checkout to my logbook. Better than that was the experience of flying in a completely different environment, with challenging terrain and busy Class B over our heads. But as if that weren’t enough, it was also a picture-perfect Southern California morning, with calm winds, clear sky, and temperatures in the 60’s at KSEE. In the “it’s always something” department, however, I forgot to put my GPS in my bag, so I didn’t get to put the track in my collection. Nevertheless I made up for this by having the flight indelibly imprinted on my memory…

The first job was two-fold: to fly with the instructor and get a sign-off for the Cherokee, and to run through my three takeoffs and landings, since it’s been exactly three months (I would have to count individual days to see if I really was over 90, but close enough). With the instructor, Mom was able to fly along in the back seat, so that was pretty cool, too. This went very similarly to my checkout in the 172, but with a bit more emphasis on navigating the environment due to the tight airspace and terrain. We only did one stall, then some steep turns. Since I haven’t done any since my checkride, and since it was such a trial just getting to that point before, I figured it would be interesting to see the results – in an unfamiliar plane no less. It turned out better than I would have expected, and there was a bit of turbulence, so the fact that I was a bit wobbly and lost about 150 feet was good enough. The main focus then was to navigate the high terrain and busy airspace of KSEE.

It should come as very little surprise that I carried too much altitude into my first approach (which, of course, in an unfamiliar plane, was a long final rather than a standard pattern). Rather than let it play out, as I may have in Bozeman with 9,000 feet to work with, the 2,700 foot 27L at Gillespie would not be as forgiving. A go-around was definitely in order, though it would not be the only one of the day. The next try, with a full pattern, was much smoother. The biggest physical difference when flying this particular plane was the manual flaps. The toughest part is the initial reach way down to the floor for the first “notch” of flaps, but once the handle is up, it’s not all that different. Think of it as a large parking brake handle with three specific locking detents – just pull up to lower the flaps.

As we were coming in on short final for the third landing, the completely unexpected – and illegal – happened. Luckily, with the instructor in front, we reacted quicker than I may have on my own. At just about 200 feet AGL, a plane on the ground entered the runway – our runway! – and took off. We aborted the approach and slid over to the left. At this point, it made sense to transfer control, since the instructor could then still see the violator. Another complicating factor was that the plane that we were otherwise supposed to be following had completed its touch and go, and was now going to begin turning back toward us. We chose to turn in front of him, as we still had enough room, but he was rapidly closing in. In the meantime, the controller was berating the violator and trying to straighten out the mess. Although it could have gotten much uglier, everyone managed to keep a clear head and work the problem.

The moral for me was that you really do have to be ready for anything. Both the instructor and I had noticed the runway incursion at the same moment, but he was quicker to recognize that the approach was thereby immediately terminated. I took an extra second to stare in disbelief that someone was pulling out in front of us. The other challenge was that we were then boxed in between a parallel runway to our right, the violator below us who would be climbing up toward us, and the aircraft in front of us. It took some quick thinking, and the instructor was on the ball.

As we came back around, we requested a switch to 27R to change it up a bit and do a right-hand pattern. This requires a slightly different approach (ha!) due to a mountain being right where you would normally fly the base leg. It turned out okay, and the instructor was ready to send us on our way.

Compared to the first hop, the sightseeing portion was uneventful. The San Diego Class B has several VFR corridors through which we could transition the area, and with the numerous landmarks, it was fairly easy to navigate. I tried to monitor some of the tower frequencies as we moved along toward the coastline, but it finally got to be too much chatter and not enough useful information. The best course of action was to simply keep eyes outside. We turned north and followed the beach at 4,500 feet all the way up to Palomar. The instructor had pointed out in our pre-flight briefing that the corridors are set up to allow two “levels” of VFR traffic in each direction – 3,500 and 5,500 for southbound, 4,500 and 6,500 for northbound. This results in the Class B volume dropping off significantly as we got out over the water and out of the controllers’ reach.

As we descended and turned around, I looked up the SoCal approach frequency. I’ve taken a liking to having the controller at least know who I am, even if it turns out that they’re too busy to actually provide flight following. Although the VFR corridor doesn’t technically require communication with ATC, by contacting them they can at least assign a discrete transponder code and then know your N-number in case there’s any need to communicate. In any case, at least I can advise of my intentions so there’s less guesswork if they have a traffic conflict. Call it maximizing the use of my available resources.

In this case, the frequency was quite busy, and the first controller I spoke to turned me over to another sector for flight following. This one was also busy, and I had made the decision to simply proceed outside the Class B and forget the whole idea. Of course, that’s when there was sudden silence for a good ten seconds. Plenty of time. I gave it a shot and advised of our plan to remain in the VFR corridor, inbound to Gillespie. They provided a squawk code and altitude restriction, along with a timely traffic advisory for a plane in the opposite direction.

The rest of the flight was smooth, even though the sun was starting to throw up some thermals. The minor bumps really weren’t any worse than what we have up in Montana, but kept us bouncing as we arrived into the Gillespie pattern. After another mostly-smooth landing, we called it a day. It is probably fitting that Mom is now my most "frequent flier" with me.

Flight Awareness

So, it's not a flying day (yet), but in my preparation for a short flight tomorrow [Ed: which I ended up not taking due to weather], I was poking around the FlightAware website. The main interest was to see if the planes I rent get used for IFR flight. The idea is that I perceive some kind of minimum aircraft reliability for such flights, though it probably isn't warranted. In the long run, it's more for personal interest than anything else.

My search took a turn when I pulled up the history for N46474, the plane I flew down to Laramie last time. Lo and behold, there was my track! How could this be?? I thought FlightAware only tracked IFR flight plans. Turns out, since I had requested flight following (and, I assume, since it had been approved by ATC), I was in the system. Of course, there's always a caveat, and here is theirs:

Can FlightAware track VFR flights? What about a VFR flight with a flight plan?

Some VFR aircraft with flight following are available on the position maps but it largely unreliable and no arrival/departure/flight plan data is available. VFR flight plans are irrelevant and only used by FSS for search and rescue. We suggest ensuring that aircraft are on an IFR flight plan from wheels up to wheels down for proper tracking.

So, while you wouldn't stake your life on it (or even a fairly modest bet), it's a neat way to allow your coworkers to monitor your cross-country boondoggles. Even on this trip, though the track log seems to indicate a more-or-less complete trip, the graphical track is clearly lacking due to my lower-than-IFR altitude. The radar just can't see through mountains yet. The real comforting statement is that "VFR flight plans are irrelevant." Nice touch.

Slow Boat to China, Part 2

After a hearty Denver omelette, with some extra buttery toast and hash browns with I-don't-know-what-kind-of grease (bacon?...mmmm good), it was time to load my extra 10 pounds back into the plane. This leg of the trip would be nearly identical to the trip down, but I still stayed low to gain at least a few more knots of speed.

Reaching the vicinity of Greybull, WY, I had to make another decision. I had to climb up to 10,500 if I wanted to be legal (and avoid some cumulo-granite), but I could also skirt the terrain and lengthen the trip a bit, which could also allow me to stay lower (below 3,000 above the ground). I wavered about whether to go east or west, and finally chose west again. Visualizing the flow of air around the mountains, the southeastern flanks were most likely producing some burbling downdrafts that I'd just as soon avoid.

Remarkably, as I climbed, the winds slackened a bit, and I finally broke 100 knots, but not for long. Mostly, it hung around 95. Better than before, anyway.

As I was enjoying my slow, smooth cruise, somewhere in here, the engine decided to keep me honest, and suddenly dropped about 50 RPM. This is a bit unusual. I have kept a watchful eye on the tachometer, since I have never had experience with carburetor ice, and wanted to catch even the slightest drop in power as soon as it occurred. I have read that often, pilots will not notice the drop, or sometimes will just add a bit of power to correct, without realizing the cause. So, when I hear and feel a 50 RPM flutter, I immediately pull the carb heat, push the mixture to full rich, and push the throttle to maintain my power. And then nothing.

If I had indeed had carb ice, there should have been some noticable sputtering and argument from the engine as water is melted into the cylinders. Then, the power should come back up to a normal setting, indicating that, most likely, the ice is cleared and the carb heat can be turned off. First off, the air today was very cold and dry, so icing should not have been a problem in the first place, and I'm not surprised that nothing came of the little incident. I was impressed that I reacted in a split second to what in truth was a minor change in the engine power. I probably could have done nothing and waited to see what would happen, but that's a dangerous choice if you really do have ice in there. Again, like the frost on the wing, most likely it would have turned out benign, but would I be prepared to defend my decision on the accident report? After a minute or so, I put everything back where it was, and the engine ran as if nothing had happened. A bit of water in the fuel? Who knows. But I was ready with a contingency plan if everything went bad.

The rest of the flight was uneventful until it came time for landing back in Billings. There were several planes in the pattern and arriving from outside. I requested the smaller runway more into the wind rather than take it from the side. It meant some careful spacing by the controller which, ultimately, did not work out. I probably was moving slower than he would have preferred, but all it required was a slow 360 out to the north of the field to come in and try again. This time, I was looking straight into the sun, so it was a challenge to squint for the runway and monitor my sink rate. I came in a bit high, but landed smoothly (story of my life).

All in all, a good trip with some new experiences and some new judgments that were needed to complete it successfully. There were probably lots of right answers, but luckily I didn't pick any of the wrong ones either.

Slow Boat to China, Part 1

As before, the weather forecasters have it in for me. What was supposed to be lighter winds today ended up being about the same as the last couple days. Namely, 30 to 40 knot northerly winds that turned the return trip into a 5-hour, 2-leg journey. The only redeeming factor, weather-wise, was that there was no turbulence whatsoever. For sailing upstream with a groundspeed in the 85 knot range, it was surprisingly smooth.

The funny part was that I ran a hypothetical flight plan yesterday, with the winds skipping along, and laughed at how long the trip would take, thinking, "Well, at least it's supposed to be better when I'm actually flying." No way. I charted, plotted, calculated, ciphered, and drew strange symbols on my charts, wondering what it would take to get the forecast I was promised. To no avail.

I ended up with two basic choices of routing. One that took me east, which kept me alongside the terrain but in a turbulence AIRMET. The other was more like my trip down, over some higher terrain, but toward a higher density of airfields, all of which had calm surface winds as well - and no indication of turbulence. In my first judgment of the day, I decided that I would make the flight, plan on a fuel stop whether I needed it or not, and pause during my climb to cruise to assess the winds at different altitudes. It was only the first of several decisions I had to make on the fly today.

Preflight went smoothly, except for a little thing that I haven't had to deal with before -- frost on the wings. Many pilots apparently manage to ask, "How much is too much?" But really, according to the safety data, it isn't a question. If you can see and feel it, it is theoretically enough to disrupt the airflow over the wing. Enough to affect the flight? I don't know, and I'm not interested in being a test pilot. Hence, an extra ten minutes to warm the ice with my hands and wipe it off.

I noticed that the tail section did not have any frost, and that it tended to be along certain portions of the wing. I'm guessing that the metal was heating up in the sun, but the fuel in the tanks was still below freezing, which kept the ice in place. As with many things in flying, there was probably a 99% chance that this barely perceptible ice would have not caused any problems. But as I've read elsewhere, a good rule is to imagine how your decisions would look on the accident report IF anything (ANYthing!) were to go wrong. I don't want to have to explain why I'm such an expert that I decided that I could fly with ice on the wings....

As I returned the borrowed ladder to the fuel truck, I heard some radio traffic from a plane in the pattern and some ground vehicles. Apparently, there was some maintenance work on one of the runways (of course, the one I was originally planning on using) and that it would be closed for a couple of hours. In my case, this wasn't anything more than an inconvenience, since the winds were calm and I would just have to taxi farther away to get to the other runway.

I took off, and climbed to 9,500 feet, leveled off, and saw that the winds were already doing around 25 knots. Unfortunately, this was as low as I felt like flying at this point, only about 2,500 feet above the ground. As I arrived at my first waypoint, Medicine Bow VOR, I again tried something new. I contacted FlightWatch on 122.0 and asked about conditions to either side of the mountains directly in front of me. The turbulence AIRMET was still active, and so I asked about the current conditions at Riverton, WY. With calm winds on the surface there, I decided to go west. It meant a climb up to 10,000 or 10,500 and flying over some spinning wind turbines, but it turned out smooth, if slow. I was down to 80 knots groundspeed in a few spots. It felt like I was standing still. It was nevertheless a much better flight than the last time I had such a strong headwind on a cross-country flight.

I poked along and finally reached my fuel stop at Riverton. Again, some judgment was in order. Theoretically, I could have probably streteched the flight all the way to Billings. Though slow, my speed was still a bit higher than predicted by the flight planning. Would the winds aloft stay that way? What if it turned out I couldn't make it -- where was the next fuel? It was a good exercise, but I had made up my mind beforehand anyway. Best to stop, gas up, eat, and be less fatigued on the final leg.

Out Yonder

Eventually, cross country trips need to cover some new ground. While my past ones have at least been over territory that I am familiar with from the surface, this trip was into "uncharted" territory. New mountain ranges, new towns, and into Denver Center ARTCC sectors.

If flying is indeed hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, this flight may rank fairly high. We weren't in code "red", but at least orange. 99% of the flight, from Billings, over Thermopolis, and into Laramie, was uneventful. Yesterday's forecast that showed mild winds apparently wasn't good enough for the flying gods today. I looked it up this morning and saw 20 knot wind predicted for this afternoon in Laramie. Blah. That blows.

What it did do, however, was give me a nice tailwind for a good part of the trip, and while the big iron was slogging it out above 35,000 feet, begging ATC for any relief from the turbulence, I was happily cruising along at 9,500 in fairly smooth air. Just a few burbles from nearby mountains until I was about 60 miles from Laramie. Then it came apart.

I was picking up some pretty good bounces, and climbed up to 10,500 to see if that would clear it up. It was a bit better, but by this time, I was starting to need to descend. And then, the happy news on the weather report -- winds 32, gusting 40! Well, at least it was right down runway 30. I had to quickly get things squared away, since my groundspeed at this point was around 140 knots. What usually would have been a fairly liesurely descent was accelerated, and the winds weren't changing on the surface.

There was one plane flying touch and go's (!) in the wind, so I figured it couldn't be too bad. I was trying to evaluate whether I should use all, some, or none of the flaps on approach, but time was running out. I was scooting along like the dickens.

I flew one of the fastest patterns I think I've ever done, and as I got turned on final, I had to keep medium power just to keep making forward progress. To heck with the flaps. I could land at 80 knots if I had to and still be at a reasonable groundspeed. I dropped a bit in the gusts only about 1/4 mile from the runway, but still had good control, and I just kept power on, with a close eye on my airspeed and vertical speed. As I crossed the threshold, power came to idle, and I was ready to go around, since I was bobbling pretty good. I floated a bit, but touched down soft and a little fast. Enough for a couple of low hops, but keeping the nose up got me slowed down fairly quickly.

As if that weren't enough, I had to taxi at a snail's pace toward the ramp as the wind buffeted the plane and tried to weathervane me into the weeds a couple of times. I parked and shut down the engine, but still felt as if we would lift of again with the winds ripping over the field.

This was a good lesson in keeping your options open (where would I go if I couldn't land in the wind?), knowing the airplane (I was attempting a no-flap landing in a plane I had never landed in that configuration), and being ready for the unexpected (those were some fierce gusts). Luckily, it was virtually a no-crosswind condition, or things could have turned out different.

Now that all is done for the day, I can work on preparing for the flight home.