Crazy for Flying

We did it!

2010-06-09T20:09:00.001-07:00

We finished the requirements for the Virginia Aviation Ambassadors program!

Last fall, after I got over the worst of the morning sickness, and before I got put on bedrest-- Husband and I flew like mad to try and finish visiting all 66 airports, the 4 requisite museums, and safety seminar and flyin. We almost made it. We had two airports to go-- plus Dulles, National, and the Marine Corps Museum at Quantico. We knocked off the museum on Thursday-- we loaded up the twins and took a field trip. Then, last Friday, my Dad, the awesome Grampy that he is, offered to babysit the twins so we could go flying (Husband had taken the week off).

It was great to be back in the air together. Though a little warm, it was a pretty good flying day for summer. Miracle of miracles, we even got a Bravo clearance on the way out. We don't usually get cleared into that airspace even when we fly IFR! Husband used the flirst stop at Essex to practice his short field landing as we'd need that later on for the landing at Hummel. The new airport at Essex is beautiful-- very nice and clean. Then we flew the short 25 miles over to Hummel. Good thing he'd practiced as this was a tricky landing given how lihttle we've both flown this year. 2200' runway-- right on the water. Thankfully, though the winds were squirrelly, they were light. We landed, fueled, and taxied across the grass to park next to the Pilot House Inn for lunch. Lunch was good-- much better tasting than it looked. Then we hurried on back toward home.

Flying back across Virginia, we had perfect ending for our quest: the controller offered us the East-side Transition past Dulles-- and for a second time that day, we were cleared into IAD's class Bravo airspace! The controller routed us right across the approach end of the active runways, and left us on a perfect 45 entry for Runway 17 into JYO. Very cool. On Sunday, we drove to DCA and IAD and collected the final two stamps. All that's left is to put them in the mail to Richmond!

Back in the Air!

2010-04-20T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a LOOOOONG winter. Not only because our area has seen record snowfall amounts in addition to our usual windy Spring weather... but also because I've been grounded. In December, I was put on "home rest" in response to some signs of preterm labor. I could still move around some at home-- but no more going out and doing normal things. In February, I was then put on strict bedrest. Thank goodness for the Winter Olympics or I would have lost my mind! In March... our new little future pilots were born! Julia and Jonathan made their arrival (somewhat unexpectedly) and immediately took over our hearts and lives! After almost 2 weeks in the NICU, we brought them home and began a new life as a family of four.

A month after the twins were born, I took my first flight as a new mom! Of course, things can't be simple with us-- we had N's brother's famnfily with us that weekend, and decided to take everyone with us to the airport (4 adults, 2 kids, and 2 infants). Since I hadn't flown in so long, we asked our CFI to come along and make sure I didn't do anything stupid! After getting everyone situated, CFI and ond circuit, I was feeling better and we went back to the ramp to pick up my sister-in-law for her first flight in a small plane. We went twice around with her-- and I think she really enjoyed it! Then we went back and picked up niece (7) and nephew (4) for their first flights in our plane. After 2 successful circuits, we went back and traded out for my brother-in-law, who is also interested in learning to fly. With him, we flew out to the practice area, did a few steep turns, and flew along one of my favorite flight seeing routes-- out along the ridgeline, over Harper's Ferry, and then worked our way back in for landing on Runway 17. We had a welcome party waiting along the runway on the ramp.

What a fun day! Maybe next time, we'll take the twins up!

It's Been a While!!!

2009-10-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

But I have a good reason!

I'll post soon about the awesome trip Husband and I had to Europe-- we got to do some really fun aviation things. In the meantime-- thought I'd let you in on why I haven't been posting lately. I haven't been flying too much-- mainly because Husband and I are going to welcome not one, but TWO new little pilots into our family this Spring!

Yup... we're having twins!

I'm not sure which discussion started first-- whether we'd need a bigger car or a bigger airplane! We are hoping to be able to fit two carseats in the back of our 172... supposedly, it can be done! Unfortunately, we won't have much room or weight left over for Flyer, so I imagine he'll be left home a little more... But Husband is already scouring the web in search of the "perfect" next plane (I think he's eyeing the C-206 and a Piper Matrix, but I've tried to stay out of it!).

But we'll have time to figure all of that out in the next few months. In the meantime, I'm hoping to get in a few more flights before I'm too big to fit behind the yoke and also reach the rudder pedals. Leaning down to pull the lever to adjust the seat has already become a problem! Usually- that would be bad... but in this case, it's a wonderful problem to have!

Of course-- I'll welcome any suggestions you flying parents out there have for how to fly ourselves and our new little ones around safely and comfortably!

O Is for Oshkosh!

2009-08-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

I'll try to get more detailed accounts of the best parts... but Husband and I put together a list of our favorite (and not so favorite) things about Oshkosh! Husband is in blue, my comments are in red.

Funniest:

Canine oxygen mask
Fan-powered bicycles

Oddest looking plane:

In-line twin sea plane by Dornier
Stits Sky Baby (world’s smallest plane)

Best innovation:

electric light sport airplane (UNEEQ)
KindleDX Plates

Favorite memory:

P-51 ride
Flying formation into Oshkosh

Favorite airshow act:

Aeroshell Team
Matt Younkin in his twin Beech

Liked least:

old naked men in shower (thankfully, only Husband had this problem!)
More than an hour of Ford and EAA ads before fly-in movie

Favorite presenter:

Captain Sully and Jeff Skyles (a.k.a. "& Crew")
Lane Wallace of Flying Magazine

Favorite airplane:

Pitts S2C
Cessna 195

Best part of Oshkosh:

Ice Cream at VIP Tent (yes, we had VIP credentials!)
People-watching and the people you meet

Favorite places:

Performer’s tent during airshow (this was cool!)
Seaplane base (best kept secret)

Best investment:

Tent that doesn’t leak
Rented bicycles (and learning the shortcuts across the grounds!)

Favorite new gadget:

Brightline Pilot Flight bag

I promise more details to follow. For now... here's some very BAD poetry.

"O is for Oshkosh"

Oh Oshkosh, your runways are so beautiful- a stage on which the country’s pilots play.
How exciting to crawl each morning from my tent and behold the rows of airplanes glistening in the sun.
How thrilling to see the latest in aviation innovation loop and swirl and dive above our heads each day.
How stirring the roaring, soaring warbirds that remind of sacrifices made by so many.
I thrive in the community of fellow aviators, joined together one week each year—and count the days until I come again.

The Weather Dance

2009-07-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

It's that time before a trip... the time where my stomach starts to do little flip flops and I am easily distracted from everyday tasks. I start watching the clock till when the next weather update comes out on http://www.aviationweather.gov/, and trying to compute enroute times, mapping possible routes in my head against the weather map.

I always think I'm not going to do this dance this time... but somehow always seem to do it anyway. One reason-- the weather's always moving, always changing. So- even if it's nice in one area, if you're flying anywhere distant, you're likely to hit weather issues somewhere else. This time-- it looks like there's currently a low front across my route of flight... and at some point between now and when I reach that front, it may turn into a cold front. And that multiplies the worry, because I have a general idea of how cold fronts behave... and a general idea about warm fronts. But how does a warm front changing into a cold front behave? These are things that will keep me awake tonight when I should be sleeping.

The good news is: we are about 85% packed up. I just need to do the final little bits tonight-- in addition to my real flight planning. Our new plan is that I am going to fly most of the way myself, and meet up with Husband tomorrow evening after he flies out on a commercial flight. Then we'll go together to the formation flight training required to participate in the Cessnas 2 Oshkosh.

For those that didn't click the link to see what Cessnas 2 Oshkosh is... we will be flying into AirVenture in formation with 60 other Cessnas! I've never done any formation flying (and neither has Husband), so we'll spend Friday learning how to do it safely for the arrival. Pretty exciting! Last year, it took the group 11 minutes to get all 60 planes down once the first one had landed. That's crazy fast! I have to admit, I'm a little nervous-- so we've agreed that if we don't feel confident about our-- or the group's-- ability to do the arrival safely, we'll just drop out and go on our own. But I'm hoping it works out-- can you just imagine?!

And the countdown begins...

Oshkosh Dreaming... Again!

2009-07-15T13:54:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again. Time to dream about Oshkosh! Husband and I are again making the trek west in our airplane. I think I understand more the annual journeys that some pilgrims go on... I really do feel the call of AirVenture!

Of course, we're going through our usual cycles of trying to decide what our plan is for getting there. Originally- we were going to depart home on Saturday-- spending the night along the way so that we could arrive at Osh on Sunday morning. Then, we thought about flying straight there on Saturday. Our latest thinking is that we may try to do the Cessnas 2 Oshkosh arrival on Saturday. To do that, we need to get away from work earlier than planned... so I'm not sure if it will happen or not.

We're also debating the best method for getting us, our stuff, and a mode of transportation to Oshkosh. We haven't decided whether it's better to ship our camping gear and take our bikes, or to rent bikes and take our camping gear with us in the plane. Dilemmas!

In any case-- for those also planning their own trips, here's my detailed list of camping gear we're taking. Hopefully, I've gotten it all down. We have a lot for cooking as we tend to enjoy camp cooking. If you see something missing, drop me a line in the comment area!

Bungee cords (for strapping stuff into the plane and for strapping things to a bike)
Solar charger with tips for phones, etc.
Binoculars
Tent (lightweight one)
Self-inflating sleeping mats
Sleeping bags
Queen-size sheet*
Earplugs
Pillows/pillowcases
Dishcloths
Towels
Electric lantern with remote control
Camping chairs (folding)
Tablecloth
Roll-up table
Single burner stove
Lightweight grill
Mat for under grill?
Ceiling fan/light
3 plastic boxes- food, cookware, purchases
2 backpacks
Sunscreen, bug-spray, chap-stick
Pack light on t-shirts (will buy lots!)
Tie Downs & chocks
Cooler
Forks, spoons, knives
3 sizes of cutting knives
cutting mat
mess kit
extra pot
bowls (4)
matches
mugs
measuring cups
whisk
spatula (rubber and metal)
wooden spoon
tongs
scissors
sponge, steel wool
extra rope
can opener, bottle opener
poncho
playing cards
mirror
sugar, salt, pepper
Notebook with full procedures (impt info highlighted and tabbed) and schedule, etc.

Day at the Beach

2009-06-09T05:44:00.000-07:00

Husband and I decided after the recent trip to the Outer Banks that another trip to the beach was in order. We'd heard good things about Tangier Island- and at about 1 hour flying time it was perfect for a day trip. The island is tiny- maybe a mile long and 1/2 mile wide. It sits in the middle of the Chesapeake. You can get by boat or by plane only. Most residents (about 700 total) there use bikes or golf carts for transportation. We chose to eat at a family style place that had okay food. After lunch, we rented bikes and explored before chilling on the beach for an hour. The only downside were the mosquitoes! The whole island was soggy and marshlike so they were everywhere. Husband had some many biting his legs that his legs were blood streaked. I got off easier- which is unusual. Usually I'm the magnet. We think it's because Husband buried his legs in sand while we sat in the beach. After escaping the bugs, we flew on across to Accomack, VA. Two stamps in one day!

On the flight home (my first as PIC from the right seat!) Husband took a nap. He woke up as ATC gave us vectors and told to expect new routing. Expecting a diversion or delay, we were thrilled to learn that the change in plans was to send us to the EAST of Dulles! Pull out a Washington sectional. You can see how rare that is just from looking at all the airspace we deal with here. We were routed right over Reston and could clearly see Vienna, Tysons Corner, Wolf Trap, and our neighborhood. I think I actually squealed with delight before forcing voice to a calm and professional level to tell ATC that yes we did see the Southwest jet passing 1500 feet above us. Good times. We ended following that jet and then turning to go right across the final approach for Dulles so we were on a perfect 45 for JYO. I don't know who was working that Sunday afternoon, but I sure wish that controller could know how much he made our day!

Flying to the Beach

2009-06-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Husband and I made a quick trip down to the Outer Banks this weekend. Some friends of ours had a beach in Corolla for the weekend and invited us to join them. We had hoped to get out Friday-- but a combination of factors (me needing more sleep to recover from a cold, Husband having some additional meetings to get through, and then several lines of severe thunderstorms on our route) kept us from getting airborne until Sat morning. We took off (after a few last minute delays) at 6:40am, and touched down in Manteo right at 8:40am. Husband had the leg (I was still feeling the effects of the cold) and did a great job. The FBO there (great folks!) supplied us with a rental car and we were on our way up to Corolla. Expecting a 1.5 hour drive (GoogleMaps), we were pleasantly surprised to be at our friends' place by a little past 10-- even with the obligatory stop for doughnuts and coffee!

The beach was great. Flyer (yes, we took him with us) had a fantastic time. Our friends also have a dog and the two get along great. Plus, we took Flyer out to the beach with us and he lay on the sand with us-- and also chased balls through the waves. By the end of the weekend, he was jumping over the waves and paddling out to get the ball, then riding the waves back in like a true surfer dog. Maybe we should change his name to "Dude".

We had a hard time leaving paradise, but managed to pull ourselves away in time to have a leisurely drive back to the airport, stopping on the way for awesome seafood at Sugar Creek. Yummy. Then we did a little flight-seeing up and down the coast before pointing toward home and calling up ATC for our IFR clearance. Husband had fun poking through the wisps of clouds that floated along our route (I still couldn't kick that cold!).

All of this weekend fun leaves us wanting to do another flying beach trip this summer. Any suggestions out there for a good place to go from the DC area? We loved the atmosphere in Corolla, but could do without the 1-1.5 hour drive after a 2+ hour flight. Write in if you have suggestions of where to fly next.

Gone Flat

2009-05-21T11:36:00.001-07:00

(Note: this is from a few months back. I just forgot to finish and publish the post!)

The flat tire was a startling surprise. We were landing at a little airport just west of RIC-- and in fact, had only been in the air for about 10 minutes after departing RIC. As Husband started to land, he could tell something was wrong. Sure enough, as he let the power out and the weight settled a bit more on the wheels, I could hear the thump-thump of a flat tire. He called out at that point, "Flat nose wheel tire!". Somehow, I came up with the response "Soft-field landing technique!" He didn't understand at first, but then quickly realized that I wanted him to hold the nose wheel off as in a soft-field landing. Doing that, he was able to minimize the damage as we rolled off the runway and came to a stop. After calling the FBO on the phone (they didn't answer on the radio), we learned that there was a mechanic on field-- but that he was out of town for the next 2-3 weeks! Uh-oh!

They were friendly folks, though (most airports are) and came out to give us a hand. We tried just adding air using an air compressor, but the seal just wouldn't hold. To do anything else would require moving the airplane from the far end of the runway back to the ramp in front of the terminal building. Hoping to find some sort of tug, the airport manager took us around to the various hangars. If we hadn't been feeling the stress of being stranded, this would have been tons of fun. We found all sorts of people working on airplanes in various conditions. They all stopped and tried to help us solve the problem. Eventually, we were able to rig up a makeshift tug from a cart, a pair of chocks, and a rope attached to a pickup truck tow hitch. See the picture below. Using this contraption, we slowly towed the plane to the ramp.

Once back on the ramp, we resumed the process of finding a way to fix the flat. We had asked all the hangar inhabitants whether they had the type of tire/tube we needed... but no dice. We also started calling mechanics. Luckily, the airport manager knew the mechanic from a nearby airport enough to have a cell number. After leaving a message, we heard back from him a short while later. We were also lucky to have caught him before he started a drive to WV. He agreed to stop by on his way out and fix the tire for us. Phew!

It took about an hour for him to get there, and then we watched while he took apart the plane to change the tire. Because of the way the strut is fashioned, he had to take off the cowling and depressurize (I'm probably using the wrong term) the hydraullic fluid in the strut. Then, he could take off the wheel and change the tire. He had to replace both the tube and the tire-- which first had to be fitted together. Then he had to put it all back together again and readjust the strut.

While he was working, I started talking to the daughters of the friend he had with him. The youngest (maybe 7 or 8) had never been this close to a small plane before. She was fascinated. I had her climb up in the cockpit and showed her the various controls and screens and let her move the yoke back and forth and up and down. When the mechanic was almost done, I got an idea. I discreetly asked the girls father if he would like me to take the two of them up for a quick turn around the pattern. He said yes-- if she wanted. When I asked her, her eyes lit up and she started bouncing up and down (I think she had just consumed an entire box of candy). We found a blanket to use as a seat cushion and borrowed an extra headset from the FBO. I showed her what I was doing as I preflighted and started the engine. As we performed our final runup tasks, I looked over and saw the skydiving team that had been practicing all afternoon was just landing next to us on the grass. Very cool!

Around this time, I asked if she was okay. She admitted she was a tiny bit scared. So we agreed that if she was still scared once we were in the air, I would immediately come back around in land. But if she gave me the thumbs-up, then we would go fly out over the river and see the sights a bit. Of course, she gave me a huge thumbs-up and a big smile as soon as we were in the air. So I positioned us out over the river and did a few turns so she could see out the window. I then showed her how to take the yoke and move it side to side. She giggled as she realized that the plane moved side to side when she did that. Of course, I keept my fingertips on the controls and my feet on the rudders. But for a few minutes that day, she had wings.

As the sun began to set, we turned back toward the airport and I announced that we would be entering the pattern. I managed a smooth landing, and when I opened the door for her to get out, she was beaming. I think she bounced all the way back to the terminal building. Oh- and her dad seemed to enjoy the flight as well. As we said goodbye, she made the observation that it was very cool they had done something nice for us (delaying their trip so the mechanic could fix our plane) and then we had done something nice for them... Isn't it nice when things go right?

Long Hiatus

2009-05-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time since I posted. Lots has happened since then- though flying has been a bit scarce this Spring.
I have managed to do a little, though. Highlights (or in some cases low lights!) include:

A few forays into the clouds to gain actual instrument time an experience.
A (VA Aviation Ambassadors) passport stamping round robin that had to be aborted because of a Flat tire on landing.
A mountain flying lesson in the Rockies.
Volunteering (for Women in Aviation) at the Joint Services Open House at Andrews AFB
Developing and studying lesson plans for slow flight, eights on pylons, stalls, aerodynamics, weight and balance, and ground reference maneuvers
Flying my first real "right-seat" lesson in prep for my Instructor Rating
Giving Husband a lesson on eights on pylons
Discovery of a newly reopened restaurant at MRB that is awesome!

The mountain flying lesson was incredible. We tacked it onto a ski trip out to Telluride, meeting up with an instructor in Montrose on our way home. Husband let me fly while he sat in the back. The instructor kept telling me to "get closer to that mountain over there". My response was typically, "Are you sure?!" We flew the entire flight at max power in an old 172 that had had an engine upgrade (to a 180HP). On takeoff, he cautioned me that though the ground looked relatively flat, there was actually a gradual incline (and we were already at something like 7,000' MSL), and that if I did not hoof it up-- and turn at the right place, I'd get caught with not enough altitude or power. And I could tell that he was right, though I'm not sure I'd have been able to see it without him telling me! I'll try to remember to upload the pics sometime soon-- it was beautiful.

I'll post more about the flat tire in another post-- but just wanted to get myself back on a blogging trend. It's good to be back!

Women, Women, Everywhere!

2009-03-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

Last month I celebrated getting my commercial rating by attending my first Women in Aviation International (WAI) conference in Atlanta. (Since then, I've also gone skiing, taken on a new job at a new company, and begun work on my CFI... so more will be coming!) The conference was amazing-- and the people I met there were even more amazing!

I flew down to Peachtree DeKalb on a Wednesday in my C-172. I had hoped I might find someone to go with me, but unfortunately, the few women who expressed an interest weren’t able to come. So I was very thankful for both the XM Weather and the XM Radio in our plane! I had no idea what to expect, but figured that minimally, I’d build a little time by flying myself (and who can resist air time!). My trip down was relatively uneventful. I picked up a few more minutes actual IMC... and landed just after dark at Peachtree. I definitely have to give a shoutout to Epps Aviation at PDK. They were great-- and because I was attending the conference, they gave me a discount on the fuel, half price on the overnights, a ride to and from the MARTA station, and even a round trip ticket for the train. Oh- and they also gave me a goody bag of snacks (much appreciated during the long days of the conference!).

Unfortunately, I got there much later than anticipated (tough headwind and too much to do at home)-- and too late to go to the Chapter social that I had signed up for. So my first event was on Thursday morning-- a tour of the Delta Technical Operations (Tech Ops) Center at ATL. Walking into the conference registration area at the hotel on Thursday morning, I realized that I had badly underestimated what a big event the conference would be! Though things had not yet kicked off officially, there were already several hundred women (and a few men) milling around.

Delta Tech Ops, located at the Atlanta airport, was huge! I think they said it was almost a mile from one end to the other. About 150 of us listened to the head of Tech Ops tell us about the business. In the last few years, Delta Tech Ops has completely changed their business model, and now does light maintenance and modifications for a wide range of outside customers. We then split into smaller groups for a tour of the facility. We saw a variety of shops—from avionics to tires to engines, and we also walked through the huge maintenance bays where aircraft come in to have the modifications and maintenance performed. What a way to start the conference! We saw all kinds of airplanes, engines in every state of repair, and even an engine test cell -- they had been testing an engine right before we went in, and it was still spinning when they let us in the bay. Crazy stuff.

When I was a kid, Delta was "the" airline. I can remember flying them all over the place-- and I loved the playing cards and wings they'd give out to all the kids on board. I flew what seemed like a fair amount (of course, it was nothing compared to the amount of travel that Husband did when we were first married)-- and made several trips sans parents. Those were the best because they'd introduce you to the pilots and all of the crew and let you come up the cockpit. Hmmm. Maybe this flying thing has been in my blood longer than I thought! In any case, I haven't been that crazy about Delta in recent years (Delta fans out there, forgive me!). We flew USAirways when we lived in Pittsburgh... and recently, I've been flying United (mostly because they have a lot of flights in and out of the Washington area AND you can do Economy Plus-- which makes a huge difference on long haul flights. But-- I was really impressed by the Delta folks I met at the conference. And judging from the amount of sponsorship they gave to the conference, I'm guessing they are doing a little better than a lot of other airlines.

I won’t go through all of the events I attended in detail, but I learned more about FAA and airport operations, listened to the WASP talk about their experiences, and learned about different aviation career options. Between sessions, I explored the exhibit hall which was still pretty lively, even if the airlines aren’t doing much recruiting. I also prowled the silent auction items and came away with two VIP tickets to Oshkosh (my husband is so excited!). The social/networking events were amazing. The first night was a cocktail reception complete with door prizes. The next night was an incredible reception (hosted by Air Tran) at the Georgia Aquarium, and the last was a formal gala where five women were inducted into the Hall of Fame.

I met amazing women from all different aviation-related disciplines (I was surprised to learn that not everyone there was a pilot!). A few examples: a group of students looking to find their aviation path, a finance executive from Pratt & Whitney, two military pilots who fly the big refueling tankers for the Air Force, a staff photographer from the EAA, and many, many more. My favorites were probably the military pilots. They were fascinated with learning about my flying—and thought I was “incredibly brave” to fly in so “unstructured” an environment. That made me laugh—to me, they define bravery! But we found common ground in that we all wanted to learn whatever we could about aviation.

All good things must end—but my conference experience lasted a bit longer than I thought it would! With a big snow storm (and accompanying high winds) hitting the East Coast, I ended up spending an extra two nights in Atlanta. This allowed me, however, to volunteer with the group packing up after the conference—and to catch a glimpse into how the event is run. You can bet that I’ll be attending (and volunteering!) the conference in Orlando next year!

Efficiency at Work

2009-02-23T10:30:00.000-08:00

Un-freaking-believable. That's the phrase rolling through my mind right now!

A few weeks ago, I got a call from the DPE that did my instrument checkride. I'd been wondering why I had not ever received my new certificate in the mail. I thought maybe things were just backed up. Well, it turns out that the FAA had sent him a letter saying that my application was being rejected?

WHAT?!

He explained that apparently, I had entered all four of my names (I couldn't decide whether to drop my middle name or maiden name when I got married, so I kept both as middle names and just added on a new last name) into IACRA when I submitted the application for my instrument rating. I later learned that this interfered with the system in two ways:

1)It didn't match the three name version that I used when I got my original private certificate.

2) The system won't allow someone to have two middle names (but apparently is not designed to give you an error if you don't know this)!

I later found the tiny print that states this fact if you print out the instructions sheet that go with the old form you could use to fill out by hand. The only way to know this in the new online system is if you click the help file next to the name blank. And honestly... how many people *think* they need help to fill in their name! I guess my original instructor knew this fact-- I got my original certificate when they were transitioning in the new system-- so we filled out both the manual form and the online form, and he had read that little instruction sheet for the manual form. Given how few women get their pilots license (only 6% of pilots are women), it probably doesn't come up that often.

So after some discussion-- he had no idea how to fix this particular problem, he decided he'd get copies of my passport, drivers license, and pilot certificate and see what he could do. I was already meeting him for my commercial checkride, so I just brought everything then.

No dice. So then we decided that we should try just submitting a new application all together-- which required meeting again, this time with my instrument instructor. We met yesterday and went through the tedious process of entering my information (carefully using only three of my names), and all of my flight time, etc. It's not an intuitive system and there are several awkward handoffs you have to make in creating an application (apologies to anyone out there who designed it... but then, I imagine you KNOW that it's not an intuitive system). We get to the very last step-- where the DPE has to sign the form... and ERROR. The system tells us that the practical (i.e. the checkride) is out of date. Yikes! Now what?! We tried calling the help desk, but it's Sunday afternoon and we don't get anyone. So we gave up and went home.

Today I get a call from the DPE who has spent much of the morning trying to unravel this mystery. He has an answer. I must now go to the local FSDO (locally it's close by-- at Dulles) and have an appointment with a FAA inspector. If the inspector agrees that I am who I say I am, and understands what has transpired, then hopefully he/she will sign off on the paperwork and send a letter to Oklahoma City to explain to the FAA HQ what has happened.

Oh- and it gets more fun. I DID pass the commercial checkride (yay-more on that to come!)-- which we submitted as an "unrestricted commercial rating". However, to qualify for an unrestricted commercial rating, I must have an instrument rating. And while I am valid to fly with my temporary instrument rating for another two months, I don't know what the system will do if my correct commercial paperwork makes it through prior to my revised instrument paperwork. We may have to go through all of this again! Argh! Maybe I should have listened when my husband said that having four names would make life confusing!

How to Slow an Arrow

2009-02-20T14:20:00.000-08:00

After working with R on Saturday, I decided to do a little Arrow practice in the pattern on Sunday. Husband came with me and sat right seat for the flight(s). He had with M and I on a previous pattern flight-- but only in the backseat where there are no headset jacks. So this was still pretty new to him. It was also my first time to fly the Arrow without an instructor.

We were focusing on soft field operations. I felt good about short field, but wanted to make sure I had the softs down. The first two take offs and landings went pretty well. I felt reasonably good about my control of the airplane-- and then takeoffs and landings were both within tolerances. Given that I had a volleyball game and needed to leave the airport soon, we decided to do one last circuit-- and this time I'd do a power off 180 just to make sure I was polished on those.

As we came abeam the first stripe, things looked good. No one was in front of me though it had previously been busy in the pattern, so I could do the landing as planned. Unfortunately, with the stiff headwind, I didn't turn quickly enough toward the runway, and put in flaps too early. We weren't going to make it. I did the "smart" thing and applied full power for a go around. No problems. I'm good with go arounds, though it does get my blood pumping. Little did I know just how good I'd become with go arounds before we were finished!

Coming back around for a second try, we ended up as number 3 on downwind. No worries-- I've been there before. But... this isn't my nice slow Cessna. Before I knew it, I was creeping up on the guy in front of me. So I powered back, and even threw in a notch of flaps to slow myself down. What I didn't count on was that this guy insisted on going to the end of the earth and back before turning base! Seriously-- I'm pretty sure he went close to the edge of the Bravo airspace! I didn't want to keep going and bust the Bravo myself... but it didn't seem like a good idea to do a 360-- there were too many other planes in the pattern, and too much crazy airspace around. So I decided to slow it as much as I could and turn almost immediately after him. All should have still worked out-- he landed at the very beginning of the runway. I saw him miss the first turnoff... but no big deal, he'll get the second. Then he missed the second! And he's going pretty slowly! My forehead is now starting to perspire a bit and I'm biting my lip. He finally started to turn at the third turnoff, but I was way too close. I'd already made the decision to go around a second time.

I thought for sure we'd get down the next time around. I knew to power back to try not to get too fast. But someone had slipped into the pattern just ahead of us, and yet again, I found myself needing to go around. By this time, Husband was trying to give pointers. I was just trying to stay calm and to be disciplined in doing my before landing checks. Definitely the time when it would be easy to make a mistake. After this, I powered way back. From the beginning of downwind. And luckily, though there was again traffic in front of us, I had plenty of room. And so we finally made it on the ground-- after three go arounds. If nothing else, I felt far more familiar with the airplane. Almost like it was an initiation rite or something. Fun times.

Stage Check... Part 2-- and Three Airplanes!

2009-02-17T16:13:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I mentioned that I needed to finish the complex portion of my stage check prior to taking my commercial checkride on Monday. So I arranged to fly with one of the higher ups from our flight school on Saturday. But first-- I flew two other aircraft!

For me, this is sort of a big deal. I have roughly 315 hours in our Cessna 172... and about 12 hours in the Arrow (to get my commercial) and about 2.5 hours in other Cessnas. So I still get pretty excited to fly other aircraft. Saturday morning, after a particularly draining session with our trainer at the gym, Husband and I went out to the airport. Our plan was for me to demonstrate the commercial maneuvers to Husband (he'd not seen them before), land at MRB to get an oil change, and then I'd fly another plane back to JYO in time for my stage check. After taking a few looks at the weather, we launched into cloudy skies and headed over the ridge.

I started out by demo'ing the "steep" steep turns (i.e. 50 degrees +/-5) required for commercial. It was fun to see Husband's reaction. I've been practicing these since September (lots of delays!), so I've kind of forgotten the thrill that you have the first time you go beyond normal 45-degree steep turns. Next, I did a few chandelles (basically, a climbing turn where you start at cruise airspeed, and end up about 10 knots above a stall). Again-- he was fascinated. Then we did a couple of lazy 8s. This is the maneuver I've struggled the most with-- today was no exception. Not knowing the maneuver, he was also excited by these, though I was pretty disappointed with my performance. I did one set not quite to PTS, and one set that was just inside of standards- but neither were great. Finally, I finished up with a few 8s on pylons. By this time, we needed to boogie on over to MRB to drop off our plane and pick up the other.

The other plane was a 172-R (ours is a 172-S)... and was of course steam gauges. I felt somewhat daring-- this was the first time I flew a steam gauge all by myself (I was almost surprised that this was approved-- but then again, it is almost just like our plane, except for the gauges-- so I wasn't worried about doing a short, very familiar trip in the plane by myself). I preflighted thoroughly-- the plane had just had a 100 hour, I think... and called for permission to depart. As I climbed, I felt my stomach tighten just a little, but as I began to fly my way back to JYO, I relaxed a little. As a private student I had problems with navigation -- but as I've gained flying hours, my navigation skills have significantly improved-- and not just when using the fancy screens. Soon, I was approaching JYO and talking to another plane who was right off my wing. I let him know I'd slow down and let him go in front and sequence myself in behind. I never can understand when people know there's another plane right next to them and yet don't take proactive steps to sort our the sequence prior to entering the tiny little maneuvering area around the Leesburg airport.

On the ground, I had to get help from the line guy to push the plane back in place. At first I wondered if there was something wrong, but then I realized it was just pushing it uphill! Wow- that makes a big difference! I then hurried over to meet R, who was giving me part two of the stage check. I was a little nervous about this as I knew he is big into systems-- and I am not the most mechanical person. But he soon put me at ease and I really enjoyed the time we spent going through the electrical, propeller, landing gear, and other systems of the two planes (our plane and the Arrow). I looked at my watch as we finished the oral portion and was shocked to see we spent over two hours talking-- and this was in addition to the hour I'd spent with the head of the flight school. I then went and preflighted the Arrow for the flight portion of the stage check.

As I finished, R came out and did a walk around with me, pointing out a few more things that I didn't know about the aircraft (and a few things that I did). I'm always worried that I don't know enough about preflighting an airplane-- preflighting is usually something your instructor goes over only at the very beginning-- and then you're on your own. The problem is that as you learn to fly a given aircraft, your understanding of what is important changes as well-- but typically, we don't get an updated lesson on preflighting from an instructor. So I was happy to do this walk around with R to update my knowledge of the plane.

Instead of just a few times around the pattern, R had let me know to plan to fly over to OKV and back for a landing or two. Given that it had been a while since I had flown the plane out of the pattern, this made me a little nervous. But it was actually fine. My biggest problem was that I mixed up in my head which runway was 32 and which was 14. I knew we needed to land 32 given the winds... but for some reason I completely spaced and turned them around in my mind. A little prompting from R, and I realized my mistake, but it meant I ended up flying upwind, crosswind, and then downwind for my approach. 'Doh! You would think after the 30 or so times I did approaches into OKV during my instrument training that I would know which side is which without even thinking... but then, I guess that whole not thinking thing is what got me in trouble (as I do know how to identify the runway direction).

I think we did a shortfield landing-- though maybe it was a power off 1800 (I was so tired by this point that things are a little blury), and then headed back to JYO. Before we returned, though, we did an emergency gear extension and R had me turn the master off completely (yes, we were outside the Mode C ring). I've never flown an airplane without any power before (it always seems too risky to do in our plane because so much is controlled by the G1000). It was very strange... and for some reason, seemed very quiet. I'm not sure if this is because the Arrow's radios tend to hum and squeal when they're on-- or if it was my senses confusing the fact that the screens were all black and colorless (i.e. quiet) with the auditory condition. In any case, I was happy to have the power back on and let my breathing return to normal.

Back at JYO, we did a softfield landing-- apparently the examiner has recently failed a commercial student for not being able to properly do a softfield. That may have been my first time to do a softfield landing in the Arrow. It wasn't horrible, but given how much heavier the Arrow is than our plane, I didn't do a great job in keeping the nose up. So R recommended a little soft/short practice to make sure I could do them well. More on that in another post. Other than that, he signed me off to do the checkride. Woo hoo!

Breaking the Blog-O-Pause

2009-02-13T13:57:00.000-08:00

Whew. It's been a really long time since I blogged. I can tell because I'd never accessed my blog from the computer I'm using now! I have flown somewhat regularly since I last blogged... but lots has been going on in my life outside of flying.

In January, I left the company I'd worked with for over 5 years-- which of course brought with it all sorts of emotions. In the end, I'm happy to have left-- and am close to lining up (I hope!) some new work. Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself with that cryptic comment! So over the past few weeks, I've had a little time to do some fun things-- like a quick trip down in the plane to NC to see Mom and attend a UNC/Duke women's basketball game (awesome!). I used that trip to get the last couple of solo night hours that I needed for my commercial rating. I was worried that I might be nervous about the 2 hours by myself in the dark, but it was actually pretty fun. It was a beautiful night, and once I passed over the front line in central VA, the winds became more favorable and I zipped on down to Chapel Hill. Mom, Dad, and I had fun tromping around UNC, and then Mom and I screamed our best for the Tarheels during the game-- which was at the famous Dean Dome. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and had an uneventful trip back-- that included a few minutes of actual instrument before I broke through to a pretty blue sky. The only fly in the ointment is that the XM radio is not working right in the plane. It is definitely getting the signal and the information (I can even see on the screen what song is playing), but no sound. If anyone has any ideas as to what it could be, let me know!

I also took a trip to Texas to see my childhood best friends and my brother and his family. It was pretty cool to just take off during the week for something fun like that! I met up with 3 of my closest friends (see picture below) for some good Mexican food (yummy!). There are advantages to being older-- one of which is that we can enjoy a few margaritas along with our traditional fajitas! I can't even begin to think how many fajitas we've shared together over a lifetime of memories! It was fun to hang out with Brother and his family. They have three kids (#4 is on the way!) who are just too cute. I had a great time coloring, making cookies, watching movies, and generally being "Aunt Head in the Clouds"! Of course, my trip coincided with an ice storm in Texas and one in the northeast, so I also got to experience the joys of delayed commercial flights!

Speaking of commercial flights, I am scheduled to take my commercial checkride on Monday! Hopefully the weather and the airplanes will cooperate with this plan. Oh-- and I still have to finish the stage check needed to take the checkride. I've done the basic oral and the basic commercial maneuvers-- but got winded out before we could do the complex oral and flying (i.e. complex time in the Piper Arrow that I fly). I'm scheduled to do both of those tomorrow, and I'm hoping things go better with those than they did on Wednesday when I did the first half. For whatever reason, I found myself completely unable to think clearly or communicate well during the oral portion of my stage check with the head of my flight school. He asked questions that I definitely know the answer to, and I would either 1) not be able to understand (at all) the question that he was asking, or 2) my mind would go completely blank. It was humiliating-- especially because I know better! After going back over things in my head, I think I just got a bad case of nerves. I screwed up in my flight planning and didn't have the correct charts at home the night before. So I had to scramble that morning to finish out the planning. I never did feel together and prepared, and it showed.

Luckily, I pulled things together when we got in the plane and was able to fly pretty well. I stumbled a bit on the cross country navigation (it's been a while since I've navigated purely by visual waypoints with the timer, etc.!), though I managed to pull things back together. My weakest maneuver (no surprise here) was the lazy 8s... but I did *ok* on them. Several of my other maneuvers were spot on-- and I felt pretty good about the ride overall.

Holiday Travel- Part Two

2009-01-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

When I left off in telling the tale of our holiday travels, we were overnighting in Greensboro, NC. The next day, we did an early morning weather briefing and developed a plan for the day. Our main concern were the pretty high surface winds along our route. We found, though, that we could go a little more south to Athens, GA, and then go west from there and avoid the worst of the winds. After about an hour of flight planning, including a long phone call with a briefer and making sure we had all the necessary-- both IFR and VFR, just in case-- we departed GSO off the same runway on which we had arrived (and in front of a US Airways jet).

On departure, we almost immediately entered the clouds... and then popped up above them. The cool thing was that as we climbed above the clouds, we saw towers poking up through the clouds so that you could just see the tops of them. Cool looking-- but scary to think about those towers lurking just below that you couldn't see!

After about three hours of flying-- with a a fair amount of turbulence and a little actual instrument thrown in for good measure, we landed in Athens to refuel and do another weather check. On landing, the winds were gusting up to 23 knots-- at about 30 degrees to the runway. We checked in with a briefer to get a picture of what was happening with the cold front. After some consultation, we decided we could continue on and filed appropriately.

With Husband flying, we departed Athens, quickly being cleared and climbing to 4000'-- and approaching Atlanta. The turbulence was awful. We were being bounced up and down and sideways. Husband was having difficulty keeping us in a climb-- and at times couldn't even maintain altitude. As we discussed what to do between the bumps, we asked ATC for any pireps on the bumps ahead. The news was not good-- pilots in airplanes bigger than ours were reporting moderate to severe turbulence all along the path in front of us. To make matters worse, our ETE (estimated time en route) to Dallas (we had gone ahead and put in DFW as our destination as we new we'd have to likely make some diversions, etc) on the PFD now read 9:33-- 3 minutes MORE than it had read when we left GSO that morning. Though we knew that number would come down some once we were able to increase to a reasonable cruise speed, it was still a very LONG way to Texas. That, combined with the unrelenting turbulence was enough to make Husband to declare (and me agree) that we needed to land.

Though there was an airport right off the nose, we decided to turn back to Athens as it offered a nice, clean FBO and friendly staff. We also had seen how close the town was to the airport as we departed earlier. So, we asked ATC to return to Athens. The tower controller seemed a little surprised to hear us back on frequency-- and kindly asked if we had any mechanical problem or needed any assistance. We told her no, we just found conditions to be too much for our taste. Husband then battled the same high and gusty surface winds for a fine landing back in Athens.

I have to say-- if you're going to get stuck somewhere, that was a pretty good place. We found a nice little inn right on the edge of downtown. We took a taxi there and a hotel shuttle back the next day. The town itself had awesome restaurants and great little shops-- and was almost empty as the university community was gone for the holiday break. We had fun exploring-- and finished up some last minute shopping for our family.

We also called my family and let them know we would not be seeing them in Texas for Christmas. They were not surprised as they had been watching the weather and figured we'd need to call off our trip. We also called Husband's brother and asked if we could come crash with him the next day. He graciously said yes, so the next day, after Husband finished a few work calls, we set out for Chattanooga.

This leg helped restore our faith in general aviation flying. After all the clouds, icing, bumps, and headwinds of the last few days, this day gave us the gift of beautiful blue skies, low winds, and a calm ride. We had a short 1 hour hop over to Chattanooga and after getting sequenced in behind a few planes practicing instrument approaches, we landed without further issue. We had a great time in Chattanooga with Husband's brother and sister-in-law. I especially enjoyed touring the organic farm that J manages. Unfortunately, the weather got bad again and we were not able to depart for Nashville where we were all spending Christmas. After waiting it out one day, we decided to cry "uncle" and rent a car to drive to Nashville the next. Of course, the weather promptly and unexpectedly cleared up as soon as we arrived in Nashville.

After lots of fun with Husband's mom, brothers, sisters-in-laws, niece, and nephew, we drove back to Chattanooga for the flight home. I got the pleasure of this leg as Husband was not night current. We had a nice flight home and landed just behind a couple of friends (fellow students) from our flight school. Our long adventure was over-- and we had never made it to Texas. But we did both get to practice our actual instrument flying skills-- and I even made an approach in instrument conditions. We had encountered and survived an icing encounter, and probably doubled our experience of flying IFR with ATC. Finally-- we definitely deepened both our knowledge and our questions about flying in winter conditions.

Info for Pilots in the DC/Baltimore Area

2009-01-03T18:04:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to post about an upcoming seminar on winter weather flying next Saturday on the Eastern Shore at the Kent Island Library. I think there's a shuttle of some sort from the Bay Bridge Airport over to the library, and then over to Hemingway's afterward for lunch.

Husband and I are planning to attend. If you're interested-- you can sign up through the Wings (FAASTeam) website. I saw Susan Parsons presentation on decision making at a 99s (women pilots) regional conferences-- and it was really good!

Actual, Icing, and Diversions... Oh My!

2008-12-20T18:13:00.000-08:00

What a day! First of all- thanks for all the well-wishes on the instrument ratings. Husband and I really tried to put them to good use today. Of course, 9 hours after leaving home, we had only made it 220 nautical miles from home!

We started by trying to depart JYO on an IFR plan. Our intended destination for the day was Nashville. Because of the weather, we had opted to try for the "southern route" as opposed to the "western route". Unfortunately, about 3000 feet up off of JYO, we entered a cloud (not the bad part) at -1 degree C (the bad part). We pretty quickly started to pick up ice. We asked to descend-- but we still had the ice, and were still in and out of the clouds. So, before we even reached Upperville, we turned back for Leesburg. I could tell there was a tiny amount of performance degradation-- it seemed to take a little more power to maintain airspeed, particularly in turns. However, we were able to maintain altitude and airspeed without any problems. Once safely on the ground, it was interesting to see the ice caked on the leading edges. We couldn't have been in the clouds more than about 5 minutes total, and yet we picked up a pretty significant amount. Enough that it didn't come off on its own. We ended up having to put it in a warm hangar to get the ice off.

For our second try, we decided to try flying under the cloud layer. We knew the clouds were pretty low, but we also knew that if we could make it down just a little farther south, the freezing level was significantly higher and we'd be able to go IFR. So we started out (with a warm, dry airplane) VFR, heading south, generally toward Richmond. Around Warrenton, the clouds lowered a bit more, and we made a cautionary landing at Warrenton. We didn't even get out of the plane at this stop-- we just wanted to be able to fully focus on the weather maps on the G1000. We took off again soon, and made it down to Mecklenburg, VA. We had been headed toward Chapel Hill... but saw that we were headed into some pretty heavy precip and wanted to reassess, and get on an IFR plan before going further.

After refueling and some serious map reading, we headed out again- on an IFR plan-- this time, for Greenville, SC. We didn't make it that far though, this time, we got up to 6,000 feet. Initially, we were flying nicely between the layers. Just before GSO, though, the layers closed in, and it became very turbulent. I was flying-- or rather-- the autopilot was flying. The turbulence was enough that I had my fingers posed over the off switch on the AP and the kill switch on the yoke. We were getting bounced around like crazy. It was also raining, we were in and out of clouds-- mostly in... and it was getting dark. This was officially no longer fun. In fact, I was afraid of the turbulence for the first time in a while. We talked to ATC to see if it would get better at 8000... but it didn't seem like it would. We also saw on Nexrad that we'd be in and out of this same stuff all the way to Greenville. So we called uncle and asked ATC to divert to Greensboro. The controller was great. She immediately descended us, gave us vectors right to the ILS, and even read us the weather. Husband gave me a rolling briefing, and I managed to fly the ILS pretty well, all things considered. When we broke out at about 1800-1900 feet AGL, I was dead centered on glide slope and the localizer. Instructor would have been proud! The guys at Landmark were great. I think 4 of them met our plane. They got us unloaded, refueled, and brought a van right to the planeside for the short ride to a hotel. After a good dinner at Ruby Tuesdays (gotta love that it was right in the parking lot), we (all three of us-- including the dog!) are snuggled in bed for the night safe and sound. We have no idea what tomorrow will bring, but we'll figure that out in the morning.

Some interesting things for today: Our (my) first actual IMC after getting my ticket. My first icing encounter.

Some cool things from today: Breaking out between layers-- and even getting a glimpse of sunshine for the first time. Wow. Words can't even describe-- although I did cry out "with glee" and giggle hysterically. Also- the woman at Landmark called over to the hotel to make sure Flyer (our dog) would be welcome. Her question to the hotel staff: "Do y'all house animals over there?" I also laughed long and hysterically at this. It was the perfect antidote for a long and stressful day!

Husband is Instrument Rated!

2008-12-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

After a discontinuance due to weather two weeks back, Husband is finally instrument rated! Congratulations, Husband!

We had a great (non-flying) Thanksgiving trip to New York. The insane traffic (7 hours from DC to NYC) reminded us that we bought an airplane, learned to fly, and got our instrument ratings so that we wouldn't have to do these drives. Somehow, given the weak economy, and our seemingly flexible schedules, we (okay, I) decided that we should drive instead of fly. Lesson learned, though. Flying far beats the agony of driving.

I'll get around to posting something substantive again soon. I haven't been flying since before Thanksgiving due to a cold that just won't go away. I'm hoping to be back in flying form by the end of the week, though.

Flap hard...

Time Marches On

2008-11-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

The pace of my flying has slowed a bit, mostly because of the approaching winter weather... which is something of a good thing. Our checking account can't keep up with the rate of flying I did in October! I have still managed to fly around twice a week lately- and I've been studying like mad to get through the knowledge stuff for my commercial. I took the written yesterday-- and did reasonably well (89)-- that's good for me as I never manage to do as well on a test as I can in real life. It means I have to really prepare well to do as well as Husband-- he always does better on a test.

Speaking of Husband, I'm pleased that he commented on our last flight that I seem far more confident and comfortable in the plane that in the past. I don't think it was a dig on past performance-- but I have become a lot more in command. It's a little strange to be more confident than Husband, though. I'm not really used to that role (except maybe in the kitchen!). I'm having to adjust a bit to that idea-- but it makes sense given how much more time and energy (and studying) I've done lately. Husband is out right now finishing his stage 3 check for his instrument. I'm very excited for him-- and am glad he was able to find time. His schedule is always nuts.

This past weekend I ended up flying a few times. Husband and I went out to do a practice flight (and to help him knock the rust off) before his final instrument lesson. I acted as safety pilot and he flew all three approaches into OKV, and then one back into JYO. Even though I wasn't flying, it was nice just to be up... and I practiced asking him questions as opposed to just telling him when he was missing something). It went pretty well- and he had a beautiful landing back at JYO-- even with a pretty gusty crosswind. I think he's ready.

Sunday, a friend (R) and I flew up to meet up with a bunch of other 99s (the International Association of Women Pilots) for lunch in Lancaster. It was a lot of fun. I hadn't flown with R before-- I only just got involved with the 99s. She couldn't find an open plane to rent- so I offered for her to fly along with me. She's a great copilot-- very meticulous and conscientious. I was a little nervous at first (I haven't flown with many pilots that aren't instructors-- though I've flown with a bunch of passengers). She has around 400 hours-- in all kinds of different airplanes, which is cool. I thought we flew together pretty well, and am looking forward to more flying with her. In fact, she may join me when I fly down for the Women in Aviation conference in February. It would be great to have company- both for the flight, and for the conference. The lunch was fun, as well. It's fun to meet so many women with so much aviation experience! I'm a bit awed by it.

After flying back to JYO, Husband went up with our instrument instructor while I flew with my commercial instructor. I'm getting close to finishing up my requirements... just a couple more hours in the Arrow, one more night flight, and my medical. I'm hoping to finish within the next two weeks or so. Though, the thought of finishing makes me a little sad, too. This one has been really fun to work on. My instructor is great-- he's very curious about things, so has encouraged me to share articles, etc. He's been working a bunch lately with one of our asst. chiefs, and has picked up a lot of new information. Some of it makes my eyes glaze over a little-- I'm not a very mechanical person. But some of it has been really helpful. This time, we were both a little tired, so we decided to just fly over to OKV for a few landings in the Arrow, and then return to JYO. It had been 10-12 days since I last flew the Arrow, and I've had 4 or 5 flights in our plane since then, so I was a little wary on how well I'd remember things. I actually did pretty well, though I was more tentative than I'd like. I like that he will point that out to me at the end of the flight.

After landing at OKV, he told me to do a full-stop and pull off on the run-up area. Turns out, I had missed that the oil pressure was now showing in the yellow. I think I'd seen it, but it hadn't registered. We knew why-- we had elected not to add oil before the flight, though it was a bit borderline. The pressure was fine when we were prop full forward, but when we pulled it back for cruise, it went a little into the yellow. Given that it was still pretty stable, and only a little in the yellow, we decided it was okay to return to JYO-- but that we would go straight back without any more landings. I think we're going to do a mini cross country next time. I'd like to try doing some approaches in the Arrow to round out my hours. It will be interesting to do them in another plane-- we'll really see how well I do without the G1000! We're also working our way through the systems, so I should get some good ground time next week. I just hope I can make sense of it all. My dad would be impressed, though... looking at things like electrical systems! It brings back memories of him trying to teach me college-level science when I asked questions about my middle school homework.

Husband just called, sounds like he passed his stage check and can do his checkride next Sunday! Woo-hoo! I guess I know which books to pack for our Thanksgiving trip to New York!

B-17 Pics

2008-11-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

I posted a few months back that Husband and I took a flight on the B-17 that came to Leesburg. I never got around to posting those pics... so here they are.

The crowd was pretty big (at least bigger than we expected!). The next shot is Husband strapped in and ready for take off.

Looking out the rear gunner's window. And then looking down the main part of the fuselage.

I think the next is a picture of the radio operator's station... though it may have been the navigator's station. And then the place where they stored the bombs.

The other station- either radio or navigator... this one was on the right side of the plane.

There was a place in the middle of the plane-- where the clear hatch would be-- that you could stand with your head sticking out of the cockpit and look all around. This was one of my favorite parts. Cool to see straight up to the sky with nothing over top of you while flying along.

The gunner's hatch at the front of the airplane-- underneath the cockpit... surrounded by plexiglass.

This is the view from the seat. You feel pretty exposed here. We also noticed how close to the ground these guys were flying. Surprising since the B-17 was used for high-altitude bombing runs.

The engines and props seem very close from the gunner's seat.

View from the cockpit-- notice the different perspective.

And a view from further back in the plane.

The pilots-- and the panel, of course.

And-- a picture of the B-17 taken from our plane as we taxied past!

Catching Up on Good Times

2008-11-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

I've just realized that I never did post about our long IFR cross country-- and I never posted about the B17 (that will be the next post, I think). We had to cancel our IFR trip once because of weather, but then did finally make the trip in early October. We had great weather for it-- plenty of nice sunshiny, blue skies-- AND to make things more interesting, a portion of actual IMC conditions in both directions.

We decided to fly to Montauk, NY-- to a little airport just north of the Hamptons. We figured it would be an interesting flight up, cool to see all the beach mansions, and a good place to get some seafood for lunch. And it pretty much delivered on all accounts-- though a combination of aviation time and strong winds took its toll on our schedule. I'm not sure if our instructor's wife has forgiven us (or him!) yet for how late he was getting home that evening.

On the way up, we had a spectacular view of New York-- and JFK. Wow. What fun to see all the different aircraft flying in and out of there! I'm not sure of all of the locations of these pictures- but I know most are of NYC and JFK... Those from the area may be able to help my deficient memory...

Then we headed up Long Island to the Hamptons. It was beautiful! Check out the houses (and pools!) in the picture on the right.

After we landed, the woman at the FBO gave us a ride to the other end of the runway so we could walk along the beach. (Then the van wouldn't start, so she ended up having to leave it there and walk back to the FBO!)

We walked about 2 miles to a restaurant where we had lunch looking out at the water. The pic on the left is of Husband and Instructor- deep in conversation. They didn't seem to want to put their feet in the water (it was COLD). The one on the right is of Husband-- with the ocean in the background, of course!

I flew on the way home-- Husband took this shot of the harbor as we left. The pic on the right is of me landing at ISLIP. Look at that perfect glide slope-- red over white, I'm alright!

Slightly different view of JFK this time-- the overcast started just on the south side of the field. I took the foggles off and had about 45 minutes of actual instrument conditions. Then- it suddenly cleared and we had a beautiful sunset.

Three-Six-Charlie

2008-11-06T18:48:00.000-08:00

With my instrument checkride complete, now I can focus on my commercial training. Last week, weather, a broken plane, and our plane unexpectedly going for a wash kept me from flying. But this week, I've done two more flights Three-Six-Charlie. I think I'm learning how spoiled I've been! Three-Six-Charlie is a 1981 PA-28R-201-- the airplane I'm using for my 10 hours of complex time required for my commercial.

It's very interesting, getting to know another airplane. I feel so sheltered-- having only flown one airplane all this time! It's sometimes a little hard to tell if I'm learning things that are new because it's a complex aircraft... or if it's just different from our plane. Flying Three-Six-Charlie is a bit like flying my dad's old suburban... which is not just any suburban, but a 20 year old, very well traveled suburban!

The first few flights in the airplane, I felt like a student pilot all over again. I wasn't sure which instincts to trust-- and which to resist. In the air, the plane felt like "an airplane"- i.e. I know how to level the wings, climb, descend, do stalls, etc. without too many issues. But I found myself worrying a lot about if I needed to adjust the prop, or if the throttle alone would give me the performance.

My second lesson in the plane, we did a little airwork (stalls, steep turns, etc.), and then headed over to OKV for pattern work. The first few patterns were pretty bad- I was definitely getting behind the airplane. I usually caught up in time for landing, but I really didn't like feeling behind. After a few circuits (thanks, Aviatrix, for that term! It's a lot more descriptive in this case!), I started to catch up a bit. The flow was getting easier to manage, and I wasn't needing to be prompted much by my instructor. Then, we tried a few emergency simulations-- power off 180s... Everything fell apart. I found us in a position where I was not sure if we were going to make the runway (without power), and we were still turning, and getting perilously close to the ground. In my head-- I knew to add power, but for some reason, I didn't add it-- or at least didn't add enough. We ended up landing hard-- and not in a way that I liked. After thinking about the situation and my actions, I have a few conclusions. One- be very clear about who is PIC. Don't fall into the trap that if there's someone more experienced in the seat next to you that they will take over or tell you what to do. Two- if you don't know how the airplane glides (at idle), be very ready to power up. And Three-Keep communicating either way!

My next lesson in the arrow went a lot better. I finally felt in control of the airplane. I was consistently flying the pattern without assistance from my instructor-- and had the rhythm down.

With my private instructor, I was given a relatively black and white set of procedures to follow... 90, 80, 70 with accompanying flaps 10, 20, and 30 degrees on each leg of the approach. But-- in that case, I didn't know what it was supposed to be like to land an airplane, so those rules were necessary to help me develop a routine so I could learn what it looked and felt like. Now, I know how to fly, and my instructor hasn't given me set rules-- but has rather been helping me figure them out. Over the lessons, we have been refining our approach profile-- in other words, what power, prop, and flap settings work best-- and when. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate teaching technique or if he just doesn't use those rules... But it's an interesting process to go through-- and I feel like I'm learning more than just how to fly the arrow.

Instrument Checkride- Flight

2008-11-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

Part Two of my checkride... Be forewarned-- this is lengthy!

I filed for OKV as we had discussed, then met the Designated Examiner (DE) out at the plane. The plane had been fueled since I last preflighted, so I did a quick fuel sump and checked the amount in each tank. I also did a brief walk around since I’d been inside for over an hour. Then we strapped in to go flying. Luckily, he was more talkative than the Chief in the plane (it doesn’t take much), which helped with some of my nerves. I got our clearance and departed without issue, though Clearance did ask us to make an immediate right turn on course—and stay within 1 mile of the airport until on course. It was kind of fun to make a 30 degree turn as soon as I was about 400 feet off the ground.

Once on course, I contacted Approach and put on the foggles, though I suspected that we might actually brush a few clouds. Approach told us to expect vectors, but then sent us direct to Cladd. I followed their instructions and started to brief the ILS-32 approach. (I use the A-MICE-ATM acronym.) When I got to E for entry, though, I had a quandary. Did I need a procedure turn or not? I didn’t want to screw this up—and risk failing on the very first task! I studied the plate, hoping to find the answer. Ah-hah! NoPT (no procedure turn) required if on the XXX heading from JASEN. We were on that heading… so I surmised no procedure turn required. Later, an instructor at the flight school reminded me that anytime a controller tells you to go direct to a point on the approach, if it’s not the initial approach fix (IAF), then that counts as vectors, and no PT is required. Okay, right answer, wrong thought process. All that thinking was for naught, however, as ATC turned us away from CLADD before we arrived.

We were then vectored around a few times. I think we were in and out of the clouds at this point as I asked the DE about some traffic I saw on the TIS and he responded he couldn’t see them because of the clouds. ATC finally vectored us onto the approach—1 mile outside of the final approach fix, at 3300 feet (I should have been at around 2200 feet). Adding to the confusion—a traffic target showed up without altitude information, so though I thought we were going to cross paths, I didn’t know if they were anywhere close to our altitude). Hmmm. Let’s think about this. I’m 1100 feet higher than I should be, finally intercepting the localizer, but way above glide slope. Not a good thing. In fact, it felt so out of whack that I double checked the approach plate to make sure I was reading it correctly. Yup. I told ATC we’d cancel IFR with them and slowly pulled the power to idle, and trimmed the plane for 90 kts. I thought about dumping in a second notch of flaps and slowing to 85 kts, but I didn’t want to risk busting PTS, so I held 90. Of course, that close in, I never did intercept the glide slope. Oh- and because of the vectoring, I didn’t get the GPS to recognize where I was once I intercepted the localizer. So I used the moving map on the MFD to estimate where the MAP was, and went missed, still well above the glide slope. DE made a comment something like, “Well, ATC really screwed you up on that one.” Then he gave me vectors to follow, so I figured I hadn’t failed!

After going missed, we climbed pretty much straight out and DE gave me a few vectors to follow. Then he asked me to load the VOR-A approach back into OKV. After that, he had me dim my screen all the way down and asked me to hold my altitude and airspeed and do a compass turn. Goodness, I haven’t done one of those since the beginning of my IFR training- a year ago! Ack! But I figured that I could just give it a go. I got myself oriented and stable with my standby instruments, and then began my turn. I used a combination of my compass, the moving map on the MFD, and my standby instruments
(airspeed, attitude, and altimeter) to gauge how my turn was coming. During the oral, we had talked about compass errors, so I tried to use everything together to guide me. When I had gone most of the way around, he told me to roll out and hold a given heading. Then he asked me to enter the hold and fly the VOR-A approach. I wasn’t sure what to say—how can you fly a VOR approach without a VOR (I only have VOR on my PFD—there’s no backup for that). I asked how I could fly a VOR approach on partial panel? He just repeated that I could fly “this” approach. Finally, I looked down at the plate, and realized that it was the VOR-A/GPS-A approach! Suddenly it became more clear. So, I quickly briefed the approach and began to fly it. On going missed, he gave me back my screens, and after vectoring me around a bit asked me to fly another hold, this time with all my tools. I did, and then he told me to set up for the GPS-17 approach into JYO.

Determined to make the last approach go well, I began to get the weather and set up for the approach. I told him I was going to go ahead and enter the JYO transponder code so that I wouldn’t accidentally forget to do it at the last minute, and that I would still do a double-check as we got closer. He really liked that. At the same time, I wondered if we were going to do unusual attitudes and steep turns. On the one hand, I didn’t want to remind him, on the other, I didn’t want him to suddenly remember later on and make the approach more difficult. So I asked if we were going to do unusual attitudes. He looked at me, a little startled, and said, “Oh, yeah. We should do those! I have the controls and put your head down.” So we did two quick and relatively easy unusual attitudes. Then, it was back to the approach. I quickly programmed it in, briefed it, and then started flying it.

At this point, I realized that he was sitting up a little straighter, so I started trying to figure out why. I checked all my instruments—and everything seemed ok. Then he asked me to go ahead and descend down a few hundred feet, even though we weren’t supposed to descend again till after the next fix. I realized that we were likely skimming along just under the cloud layer. He gave me a few deviations right and left by 10 degrees or so. I could see on the moving map that we were still west of the ridge. I could now see little bits of white in the reaches of my peripheral vision (I wasn’t trying to cheat—but my head is small, so I can usually see a little more than I should be able to!) so I offered that we could descend more after the first ridge as the second one is a little lower. He liked that, and told me to descend down another 200 feet. I responded with the altitude I’d descend to and told him that I would then hold that altitude until we caught up with the altitudes on the approach plate. He seemed to like that.

After that last drop, things seemed to clear out and he relaxed a bit more (and so did I!). I then just focused on my descents, keeping track of our progress, and making position reports on CTAF. The winds had shifted such that it clearly made sense to land straight in on 17. Well out from the runway, he called field in sight, and I pushed my foggles up on top of my head and began final preparations for landing. I managed a pretty decent landing, and we taxied off. He then basically told me that unless I did something really stupid on the taxi-back, I had passed! Woo-hoo!

As we parked the airplane and got our stuff together, he told me that I had flown very well—not perfectly, but that no one flies perfectly. Whew. What a relief! He helped me push back, and then left me to finish caring for the plane. I then met him again in the office to complete the final paperwork. I could tell the instructors in the office were dying to know the outcome. Finally, one of them came over and whispered, “Can I put your picture on the wall?!” –we have a wall of pictures of new student pilots, new pilots, etc. The Chief had taken my picture the night before in preparation for this. So I said with a big smile, “Yup! You sure can!” Then I started getting congratulations from all around! I was an instrument pilot!

Instrument Checkride Oral

2008-10-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Given that I want to capture as much detail about the checkride as possible, I'll post it in two parts. First up-- the oral, of course!

After an anxious night spent dreaming about flying, I woke up to find that the predicted low ceilings had not materialized as predicted, and it looked like I might get to do my checkride after all! I arrived at the airport about 30 minutes before my checkride on Friday morning—later than I wanted, but still enough time to pre-flight and finish my last minute calculations. Right at 9am, I walked over to meet the examiner (DE)—I had heard him talking to one of our Asst. Chiefs, so I knew he was around. After the initial intros, we got down to paperwork. Thankfully, everything worked the way it was supposed to on IACRA (what a painful system!). Then we moved to the conference room and settled in for the oral.

He first went through my logbook. Momentary panic when he said he couldn’t find all the instrument hours… but I quickly realized he was only counting the totals at the bottom of the page, and had neglected to add I the 2 hours I had gotten the night before-- I had a total of 40.9 hours. Whew! The one thing he seemed surprised at was my lack of solo hours (only about 30 out of around 275). I explained that it was because my husband and I usually fly together—so I have a ton of PIC hours (around 165 or so), but I can’t count them as solo for that reason. I think he was okay with that, but I do need to get some more solo time.

Next he asked me to get out the flight planning he had asked me to do. The trip was from JYO to Cleveland—any airport. I chose BKL—mostly because we’ve talked about flying there for real. He asked how the weather was—I told him the highlights (pretty good VFR weather, except maybe in the local area). Then we looked at my route on the low en route chart. He asked questions about the MEA and MOCA, about various symbols on the chart and what they mean, and what we would do in the event of lost communications. Mostly pretty easy stuff. Then we switched over to an approach plate, and he asked me some questions about the approach. Things like: what it is I do at decision height, what I need to land, what fuel reserve I need—and when, what the standard minimums are for an alternate, etc.

The only answer I gave that he didn’t like was in response to a question about what I would do if on an approach, I saw the runway before reaching the MAP/DH, but tower was reporting only a ¼ mile visibility (1/2 mile required). I responded that if tower was reporting ¼ mile, but I could tell I had more (i.e. was more than 1 mile from end of the runway, but could see it), then I could land because tower’s visibility may not be accurate for what the actual was for that runway. But, I also said that if I could see the runway, but didn’t actually have the ½ mile visibility required, that I could not land. He said no—that if I could see the runway and was able to land normally, then visibility didn’t matter. I’ll have to check on this as I don’t understand 1) why there are visibility requirements, and 2) why required visibility is included as one of the three things you have to have to land if this is the case.

After this, he told me to go file and get ready to fly. Wow. Really? The oral is over?! I was shocked—it was only 10am… including all of the paperwork, we had only been talking for 60 minutes. We couldn’t have spent more than 45 minutes talking about real questions! After my 2.5 hour oral on my private, I was really surprised. So I went and filed according to what he told me—we’d launch IFR to OKV, then cancel on the first approach (the ILS), and fly the rest (the VOR-A for OKV and the LOC 17 for JYO) VFR.

Stage 3, Part 2

2008-10-28T09:51:00.000-07:00

After getting “winded” out for the flying portion of my instrument stage 3 check, I was anxious to finish up the check. I met with the head of our flight school (“Chief”) on Thursday afternoon in hopes that I could still do my checkride on Friday. Since we had completed the oral, we headed straight out for the plane. I had already pre-flighted, so was already settled in the plane when Chief came out. He did a fairly careful walk around, checking to make sure there were no obvious problems, checked the oil, and then got settled in the plane. After the delay of a few days, my nerves had gotten a bit worse, but I jumped right into the checklists, hoping that action would calm me down.

We taxied out to the runup area and after going through the necessary checklist items, I called for our clearance. This was to be a JYO-JYO flight—staying with ATC the whole time. I managed to get the clearance copied without any trouble (I was worried about this as some controllers talk like auctioneers—and it’s tough to copy down the clearance correctly!). Our first stop was the VOR-A for OKV. After takeoff, I delayed donning the foggles for a moment to make sure we cleared the airspace without tangling with any of the several planes in the pattern. Then it was straight to the instruments. We were cleared direct to MRB, and I began to set us up for the approach (I had made the mistake of forgetting to set all this up on the ground, but I think I did okay getting it together in the air.). Just before we were to turn inbound on the approach, Chief reached over and punched the reversionary knob on the dash, making my multi-function display (MFD) and therefore my moving map be replaced with a second set of the PFD instruments. Hmmm. Okay. This is new. But- no worries. I can just fly the needles. My situational awareness is impacted slightly, but I’m still fine.

At the MAP, Chief tells me that we’re still in the clouds, so I begin to initiate a missed approach over top the runway. Around this time, Chief tells me he wants me to use the autopilot to fly the missed. This should be easy, but I struggled to get it set up correctly. For some reason, I couldn’t get the climb rate and altitude correctly set. I eventually told Chief that I would get back to that, but needed first to FLY THE PLANE. I killed the autopilot and focused on making sure I was on the missed approach and called ATC back and let them know, and ask for the ILS 32 into OKV. They say okay, but give us vectors that take us well to the west of OKV (I’m proud of myself here for maintaining enough situational awareness to know this! Remember—I’m used to ALWAYS having the moving map in front of me. It’s great practice for it to go away). I finally got us set up on the autopilot using the heading function. After 5-10 minutes ATC finally gave us vectors back to the ILS. At this point, Chief asked me to fly the ILS without autopilot and without GPS. I obviously knew how to kill the autopilot (and was relieved to do so! I prefer to hand fly!)… but my brain couldn’t work out what he meant by without GPS, other than that I should switch to the LOC needles on the CDI softkey (I needed to do this anyway). Of course, about halfway down, I realized that he probably meant that I should remove the approach from the flight plan and use the VOR fixes combined with the LOC information. By that point, I was well into the approach, and decided to just continue and not try to clear the approach and load the VORs at that point. He busted me on this during the debrief, but didn’t say anything about it then.

After going missed from the approach (early because of landing traffic on the opposite end of the runway), we again were vectored way to the west by ATC. This time, we were sent a good 30 miles to the west of OKV. I was allowed at this point to get my MFD back, and I also redeemed my earlier lapse by going ahead and getting JYO weather and setting up for and briefing the last approach. When ATC finally got back to us, I was able to secure approval for maneuvering over the MRB VOR—4500’ plus or minus 500’ in a 5 mile radius for 5 minutes. Chief took the controls and put me in a couple of pretty stiff unusual attitude, and then asked me to recover for each. No sweat, though the red arrows on the G1000 screen tend to distract me rather than help! Then I did steep turns in each direction. Once we were finished, I told ATC we were done with our maneuvers and asked for the GPS 17 back into JYO. They told us to start the MRB transition for it, and eventually cleared us for the approach. Of course—I had to do this one partial panel. I did okay on this—my altitude and position were fine, though my airspeed fluctuated a lot. Coming into JYO, there were a lot of planes in the pattern, so I was grateful that a couple of instructors who were on downwind offered to extend and let me land straight in. I think they knew I was flying with the Chief. I pulled off a pretty decent landing (not my best, but good enough that the Chief commented that it was good). Then I proceeded to taxi way too fast to our parking spot (Chief busted me on this as well—I didn’t even notice at the time, though I know I often taxi too fast.). We pushed the plane back, tied it down, and Chief took my picture for the wall in the office (they post pictures of new pilots, ratings, first solos, etc.)

All in all, it went pretty well. I knew I had made a few mistakes—worst was the failure to recognize what I need to do to fly the approach without GPS, and my inability to properly program the autopilot… both of which I attribute to nerves. A few things I thought were funny… Chief commented on my calmness (hah!) and my niceness to ATC. He said he bet that I never got yelled at by ATC because I was so nice in the way I asked everything. It made me pretty self conscious about my radio calls for the next few flights! I do try to say ‘good day’ when I transition away from each controller—and I try to say things clearly and concisely—but not too concisely. It should still be English that we’re speaking! In any case, it was great to have this flight over with! I had never flown before with Chief, so I think I was more nervous about this flight than the checkride!

Checkride... Complete

2008-10-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

Only time for a quick update-- my cousin will be here in less than an hour. But I passed my checkride! I'm an instrument rated pilot! The checkride wasn't too bad- only about 3.5 hours total for the oral, flight, and paperwork afterward.

I'll post more later...

Case of the Nerves

2008-10-23T09:01:00.000-07:00

I have several posts that I need to make... but in the meantime, thought I'd give a quick update. My stage 3 check was scheduled for this past Tuesday. I completed the oral portion with no problem, but then weather, a broken plane, and thoughtless scheduling (on my part) prevented me from doing the flying portion. I knew the winds were going to be gusty, so I asked the Chief if I could fly first and then do oral. He said no problem... but then I realized that the plane was out getting an oil change. So back to the original plan.

While answering the oral questions, I could see the wind getting worse and worse. We finished quickly, and he sent me off to check on the plane. It still wasn't back. After getting myself filed and finishing the last details of preparation, I stood outside to watch for it. I only saw a few planes attempt to land, but it wasn't pretty. They were all getting gusted around, and struggling to keep the plane down and pointed in the right direction. I saw our plane come down, bob up and down and side to side. After a few touches, the pilot got the wheels to connect with the pavement, and I could see the weight settle onto the tires. Then, I saw the plane suddenly veer sharply right, and then (after a heart-stopping second) back to the left. After that, I didn't need to see any more to know that I would not be flying today!

I went back inside and got rescheduled for Thursday (today), and then headed for home. A little later, I noticed on the schedule that the plane was down for maintenance. Turns out, the tach stopped working right after takeoff... Yikes! Luckily, Landmark was able to get it fixed-- turns out there was a loose connection with the magnetos. So... hopefully, I'll still get my stage 3 in today. Then tomorrow morning, the checkride.

I am one big bundle of nerves.

Checkride... Scheduled

2008-10-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

I just scheduled my instrument checkride for next Friday. Hopefully I can manage to keep my nerves in check until then! Tuesday's my stage three check, and then I scheduled some time with my instructor in case there are things I need to polish... then it's checkride time. Between now and then, though, I have some studying to do. I want to make sure I'm more than prepared for the oral.

Night Flying

2008-10-15T20:53:00.000-07:00

It's not as dark up here as I thought it might be-- I'm glad for the big, bright moon overhead. At around 10 miles out, I call Martinsburg Tower and request inbound for landings. I'm struggling to pick out the airport in the sea of lights in front of me. I see a flash of white... and then a flash of green... the airport beacon. Last time I was here- on my long solo cross country (during the day), I had to remind the tower to turn off the beacon. It had been IFR conditions earlier that day, and I guess they forgot to switch off the beacon after conditions improved. I remember that the beacon was to my left as I departed that day, so that must mean the beacon is between me and the runway right now. But why can't I see the runway? Now only 5 miles out, I can start to pick out the huge C-130s sitting in a row- so I know for sure that's the airport. But where's the runway?

I feel my pulse start to pick up, and a knot starts to form in my stomach. I look again at the MFD and try to match the direction of the runway on the screen up with any of the lights out the windscreen. At a little more than a mile, I start to turn downwind, figuring that I'll pick up the runway once I'm oriented in the same direction. I also ask the controller if the lights are all the way up. He tells me he'll put intensify them. Oh, wait- was that the runway? If so, I'm already abeam the numbers! I better pull it together quick! I start to descend and take out a little power. I'm still too fast to being putting in the flaps. The tower controller has told me to call left base for 26, and as I turn, I look through my side window and try to find the runway. Where'd it go? Now, I'm fast, lost, and a little disoriented-- and I've already descended 300 feet.

This is not where I want to be. I tell the tower that I've gotten disoriented, add power, start to climb and turn back toward where the runway is. Tower is mercifully easy-going and tells me to do what I need to get myself together. I turn back along the runway on an upwind, and then overfly the field. OK. Now I can see the full runway. I tell tower I'd like to fly out, do a right 360, and then reenter the downwind for another approach. I'm cleared for the option on 26, and I start my turn back to downwind.

This time, I keep the runway in sight, and things go more as planned. I'm talking out loud to myself by this point, but that's okay. Whatever it takes to keep myself alert, safe, and flying the plane. I land, clean up the flaps and trim, and then push the power back in for another go. After four more touch-n-go's at MRB, I say goodbye to the easy-going controller and depart back to the south. I decide to head for ADOYI and do the RNAV-17 approach back into Leesburg. Of course-- it's all visual, but it calms my nerves about my upcoming stage check, ensures I maintain obstacle clearance, and ensures I'll have the runway in sight well before landing!

As part of the experience required to get my commercial rating, I need to have 5 hours of night flying and 10 night landings at a towered airport. Since my instrument stage check isn't till next week- and my commercial instructor is tied up with an unexpected full time student this week, I thought I'd take advantage of the time and do a few night landings tonight. 5 towered (and one untowered) landings, and 1.3 hours of hobbes time later, I'm back on the ground in Leesburg.

Showing the Colors

2008-10-15T20:26:00.000-07:00

OK-- I have finally dowloaded all the pics off my camera... It'll take me a while to catch up on some old posts-- but I'll go ahead and post pics from our trip to Sporty's this last weekend. Oh- and my Instrument Stage 3 is scheduled for next Tuesday!

'Welcome to Sporty's!' Somehow, they knew where we were headed. :)

As I said... the view was amazing!

The windmills in PA...

Look at those yellows and reds!

Can you say 'CAVU'?! (Clear and Visibility Unlimited)

Colors of Fall

2008-10-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday, Husband and I decided to fly to Sporty's in Batavia, OH. Our route took us over the most magnificent Fall scene-- the foothills and mountains of West Virginia in peak Fall color on a beautiful CAVU day. And I got to experience it all from the sky... behind a hood. Yes, we got 6.6 hobbes time and 6.3 of hood time, while Husband served as safety pilot and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. He did occaisionally tell me to lift my head/eyes for a moment to gawk at some particularly beautiful site.

The good news is: I'm just about done with my instrument requirements! In fact, I'm going for a last minute mock stage/checkride with my instructor to prepare for my stage 3 check. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the stage 3 check later this week, and then get signed off to go for the real checkride. This is all a little bit of a surprise. Last week, we were looking through our logbooks and I discovered a few minor and one major errors in my addition (5+11 does not equal 26!)... Suddenly, instead of needing 5 hours of hood time, I needed 12.5! So-- I started getting agressive about getting it, and managed to whittle that down to under 11 hours... then with Saturday's lesson, and the additional 6.3 on Sunday, I now have what I need (given that I will do a long-ish lesson tonight, the stage check later this week, and possibly a follow-up to clean up any last bad habbits). Though we've been saying all along that we wanted to finish at the end of October, it now seems quick!

My other instructor is tied up all week with an unexpected, full-time student, which is probably a good thing as I really need to focus on reviewing for my oral. While it will be really nice to have this behind me, I have trouble remembering what Husband and I will do with our weekends! Then again, holiday season is almost upon us.

I'll post more about the Sporty's experience once I download the pics from our camera. I've also got amazing pics from our long IFR cross country a few weeks back-- we flew right over top of JFK!

Middle of the Night Fears

2008-10-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

I wake up suddenly. Rain is beating against the window, and lightning is flashing across the sky. I am almost paralyzed with fear. It's storming. The plane... I didn't tie it down! I lie there, trying to shake myself awake. I reach for my glasses and peer out the window, trying to see just how bad the storm is. What did the line guy say as I passed him on my way into the FBO? I was so tired after 3.5 hours of flying- and a day of stress wondering if I'd make it to NC. Did he acknowledge my arrival? I know I told him I'd need to stay overnight, and a place to tie down. But there weren't any tie downs in sight. I had put a funny square-c-shaped set of boards in place as chocks. Would that be enough to keep Good Dog from rolling about on the strange field? All those thoughts flashed through my head in a matter of seconds.

I thought about jumping out of bed and grabbing the car keys from mom and driving to the airport right then. I could hear my mom still up downstairs, working on her lecture for the next day. But what would I do once I got there? Stand out on the wet grass, in the rain, holding onto my plane? I didn't know where any tiedowns were. So instead, I shut my eyes tight and prayed that my plane would be okay. Seems a little silly to pray for that... but it seemed the best option at the time. Then the storm began to die down. I feel asleep with my eyes squeezed shut and a feeling of fear.

In the morning, as I dressed and packed to leave for the airport, I wondered what I would find. Would plane be where I left it? Would it be in some funny orientation? Would it be okay? As we drove up to the field, and I squinted to see the plane, I let out a huge sigh of relief. No tiedowns in sight, but Good Dog was fine. We weathered the storm. And lesson learned. Good Dog gets taken care of first, especially when I'm tired.

Minding the Gap

2008-10-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

"A thousand feet to go." Even though I'm alone in the cockpit of Good Dog, I still say this out loud to myself as I pass through 5,500 feet above mean sea level (MSL)... and then smile. My private pilot instructor, M, used to say that every time the autopilot chirped its announcement that we were within 1,000 feet of our desired altitude. I'm in the middle of my commercial, long solo cross country flight. So far, it's going reasonably well, though I never want to think that in the middle of a flight. There's still far too much time for things to fall apart!

I'm not used to flying by myself. Though I now have around 260 hours in our plane, the vast majority of that time is with Husband, one of my instructors, a handful of friends and family, or a combination of the above, also in the plane. It's kind of nice up here by myself. After checking in with ATC and arranging for "flight following" (not only do I get "company" for the flight, Husband can then easily track my progress along the way), I settle in and unmute the XM Radio to enjoy a little Flight 26 music.

Today's flight is sort of a long distance round-robin so that I can meet all the necessary requirements. I departed Leesburg and flew to Martinsburg, WV. After a touch-n-go there, I departed on a southwesterly course for SOP in Pinehurst, NC. I'll land there, and then go back north to land at IGX in Chapel Hill, NC, where I'm to overnight with my mom. Then, I'll return direct to JYO the next morning. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make the flight today. Flying is often all about the timing. You have to time when to pull the nosewheel up on take off, when to start your descent, when to flare in landing, and when to depart. Today, the timing is about finding the gap-- i.e., waiting long enough for weather to clear in Leesburg, but not so long as to get stuck by the convective clouds that are predicted for the afternoon. So far, I'm lucky. I was able to make it off the ground before anything big showed up on my route going south.

As I keep tabs with ATC, I also keep twiddling with the Nexrad, tuning the range way out to see what colors lie ahead. Greens are okay; yellow I keep a close eye on and try to avoid; orange and red make me sit up and make a new plan. There are two clumps of green and yellow on either side of my route near my destination. It looks like I'll be able to thread the needle between them, but I'll have to keep an eye out. On the plus side, watching the weather gives me something to do as I fly along at 115 kts indicated airspeed. With the headwind, my groundspeed is a measly 98 kts or so. But I have plenty of fuel. Since it's just me, I had the line guy top off the tanks. It's my own version of Captain Dave's "uh-oh" fuel.

As I get closer to the two clumps of green and yellow that I see on the screen, I begin to be able to see the clouds that are causing those colors. I'm relieved to see that the clouds are pretty flat. There's one small area-- the farthest away from my path-- that has a little height to it, but it's not a big huge towering cumulonimbus. More of a small cotton ball cloud. Still, to be safe, I switch the autopilot to heading mode and move the heading bug over so I fly a little more away from that part, and a little closer to the flatter cloud that corresponds with the green on my screen. As I get closer still, I can see rain leaking out of the clouds on either side, and even get a little rain on the windscreen-- but I can always see through the rain to sun on the other side. So I continue on through.

Now, I'm approaching SOP and ATC releases me, telling me, "Radar service is terminated and squawk VFR." I acknowledge and switch over to the CTAF (common traffic area frequency). There are a few planes around, so I carefully sequence in among them. One of them seems to be a plane carrying packages that will need to be offloaded (and then new packages loaded on, I assume). Another is someone doing pattern work. There are a few others that I can't identify, so I scoot in for a quick touch and go. I land, then quickly pull the flaps up, adjust the trim, check my instruments and mixture, and push the throttle full forward as I announce that I'm on the go for runway 5. Then, I'm back in the air. I turn left and head north to IGX, hoping that the text message I cued for my mom sent as I rolled down the runway. I would have taken time to pull off the runway and call her-- but I want to make sure those two cells don't close in over the airport.

As I approach Chapel Hill, I see the rain clouds are right where I left them... they haven't moved. That's good, as it means I'll be able to make it through the gap and land without a problem. I call Unicom for an airport advisory-- and learn that 27 is in use, so I set up for a 45 entry to 27. I call that I'm turning left downwind for 27, and Unicom calls that 27 is right traffic. Ack! Somehow I missed that in my briefing! So I climb and turn and head over the airport for a right downwind. I get established, turn base, final, and then land. Not my prettiest landing ever-- but also not bad. I taxi toward the FBO and ask where to park. I'm instructed to a spot in the grass, and then the FBO comes to life to tend to an air ambulance that has landed right after me. Mom has arrived, so I slip away while they get the patient transferred from the ambulance and settled in the plane.

Planning for My Long Cross Country

2008-09-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping to do my long commercial solo cross country flight tomorrow... if the weather holds. My plan is to fly down for dinner with Mom, spend the night, and fly back home on Wednesday. Should be pretty fun! For the long solo, I must fly 300 nm, have at least one 250 nm leg, and make three landings. Thank goodness for AOPA Flight Planner as that's a lot of info to keep straight! I'm looking forward to the trip-- it should be really fun to fly, and I always like having time with Mom. I think she's looking forward to it, as well. I think I'll be glad for both Flight Following and for the XM Radio/Weather in the plane. The combination of those three things will make this a much easier flight!

My intended route of flight for tomorrow:

KJYO-KMRB-KSOP-KIGX

Total distance: 331 nm
Longest leg: 259nm
Total flight time (not including approach/landings): 3 hours
Estimated duration from start to finish: +/-4 hours

Wish me luck!

Head in the Clouds-- for Real!

2008-09-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

I passed my stage check!

After my flight was canceled on Friday, I wasn't sure if I'd fly on Saturday. Husband and I watched the weather all morning... and it just looked dismal. The ceilings were hovering around 700-800 feet at all the local airports, and visibility was still only around 3 miles at some of the airports. After pretty much deciding there was no way we'd fly- and that we should just enjoy the day doing non-flying things, I decided to check one last time. And all of a sudden, the ceilings had raised 1000-1500 feet!

Husband had a cold, so I went out to the airport by myself. Our plane was still over at MRB, so the Asst. Chief, D, and I were to fly over 8373Y (a PA-28-181) and pick up my plane to do the rest of the stage check in. So yes-- I flew the first approach of my stage check in a (type of) plane I'd never before flown! It was pretty cool to get to fly a different kind of plane. To add to the excitement, we were in and out of the clouds all the way over to MRB.

As we began the takeoff roll, D called out the speeds for rotation and climb out, and we were off. We started our climb up to 3,000 and were vectored around a bit by ATC, and then were cleared direct to MRB (the VOR). I looked around to figure out how to set up for a course to MRB (the VOR) to enter the VOR-A approach into KMRB (the airport). And that's when I realized that there wasn't an HSI-- but rather a heading indicator and a separate VOR instrument. Uh oh! I'm staring at this thing, trying to figure it out, while also trying to listen for a strange call sign, fly this plane that feels slow and weird and is all steam gauges. I took a deep breath and told myself just to fly to the needle. Luckily, D did help me out by putting in a rough course of 330 to get me started.

By the time we got to the VOR, I kind of had things figured out, and we set up for a descent. Because we were in and out of the clouds, I didn't have to put on the foggles for that approach. D jumped in to ask Tower if we could just do a right base for 8 (they had assigned us left base), and we circled in for a landing. We were abeam the end of runway 08 when I thought to ask D the speeds for the pattern. He told me 85, 75, 65, and got the flaps (I never did see where they were), and I brought us in for the landing. Because we were going to the other end of the airport, he had me fly about halfway down the runway before actually putting the plane down. Strangely, I think that helped me get comfortable with the landing. It was a little flat (the sight picture is pretty different!), but not my worst landing ever, either.

We switched the planes out, leaving 8373Y tied down in the grass, and taxiing Good Dog out to the hold line to call tower. Just as we were preparing to make the call, Tower came on to say they were closed and we were on our own. Great. They did give us a frequency to call, though, and we picked up our clearance from Potomac after just a couple of minutes. Once in the air, we checked back in with Potomac, who queried if we had onboard radar. I had a temporary lapse and said no (I should have said that we yes, have Nexrad), so ATC gave us a heads up to some weather nearby, and asked if we wanted to continue on to OKV, our next intended approach. We said yes, that we'd like the ILS-32 for OKV. We received vectors to JASEN, and then were cleared onto the approach from there. Though I felt more comfortable being back in my plane, things were a little busy by this point. I was trying to get the approach loaded (still a little tricky for me), get the approach briefed, keep an eye on Nexrad, and keep the airplane on the right heading/altitude. Oh- and communicate with ATC. I think I did okay, though it certainly wasn't my best flying ever! I was under the hood at this point, so I had to rely on D to keep us clear of any convective weather.

As we flew closer to the approach, ATC again told us of weather nearby-- which we also saw on the screen. D indicated we should carry on, but that we would be cutting the approach short to miss a big area of yellow just off the runway. Around this time, I ditched the foggles as we were mostly in the clouds. I figured it would be better training to get the experience of being in and out. Turning inbound on the ILS course, ATC queried us a third time about our intentions and told us there was a Level 2 cell sitting right over the airport, and a Level 3 just to the north, right on the missed approach path. This time, we told them we'd be cutting it off just past the final approach fix. I was able to pick up the glide slope early, and fly that for just a bit. Immediately after we passed I-TZX (Cogan), we followed ATC's instructions for a climbing right turn.

Soon after, they vectored us over and cleared us for the LOC-17 approach into JYO. Again, I had a little problem programming the GPS with the approach and the initial approach fix. I ended up having to load STILL directly into the flight plan, and then reload and reactivate the approach. I don't know if that was right, but couldn't keep messing with the G1000-- and needed to focus on setting up for our approach. By this point, I was pretty tired-- the intensity of the stage check, the constant ATC chatter, and the focus required to fly in these conditions was starting to catch up to me. I lost my altitude a few times, and then was way off course on the localizer. I managed to pull things back together, though, and we landed uneventfully on 17. Whew. Stage check done!

Getting Ready for a Stage Check

2008-09-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Husband and I have now scheduled for our IFR stage 2 check. We both need to fly with the same assistant chief from our flight school. We thought about scheduling a back-to-back stage check just as we've been doing for our training, but opted instead to schedule two separate appointments. I'm scheduled for tomorrow (Friday) afternoon, and Husband is scheduled for Saturday afternoon. However, given the weather predicted for the next few days, we may still have to double up (and we may not be able to do the check.

Our CFI tells us that the stage 2 check is typically done as a VFR flight with a few different approaches into OKV, a nearby airport, and a few steep turns and unusual attitudes thrown in for good measure. Given how the weather is predicted to be, it's possible we may not be able to fly VFR, but may be able to do the approaches IFR. While I'm not generally a fan of doing new things in the aircraft on a checkride of any kind (even just a stage check), it would be cool to get in a little actual instrument time-- and do an approach without having to use the foggles.

On the down side, this weather is screwing with my plans to get in my night flight tonight. I just hope it clears out before my scheduled long commercial cross country on Tuesday. I've worked out with my mom that I'll come down and see her for the night. I can fly down, do the required 250 nm leg (300nm total) and three landings, then spend the night with her and fly home the next morning. I get my flight in-- and get to have some fun, as well (I mean, outside of the flying! That's always fun!).

We've still been flying as much as possible-- and I flew a total of 6 times between last Friday and Tuesday. Twice, I did back to back flights-- commercial to instrument. I think I'm getting a little bit of a feel of what it's like to be an instructor-- it's fun, but I am exhausted afterward. Tuesday afternoon, I flew with our old instructor, M, to practice my commercial maneuvers. He hasn't been in a 172 in a while-- he's now flying for Wisconsin Air-- so he had fun being in a small plane again. He taught me several useful tricks while we flew-- and then we came back and did landings. I did one pretty decent softfield, and then four shortfields. The last was dead on. M did three landings-- and it was pretty funny watching him try and adjust his flare after flying in a big dog for a while.

After that flight, I got the plane refueled and relaxed a bit. Husband and CFI T met me about 45 minutes later and we went out for our stage check prep-- three approaches each plus unusual attitudes and steep turns. Husband flew first-- he's not as much of a night owl as I am, and I needed a little more time to rest up. By the time I climbed into the front seat for my turn, I was zonked! But I still did reasonably well. My approaches weren't dead on-- but they were definitely well within standards. Makes me confident that I'll do fine when I'm fully awake-- and that I'd do fine after a long cross country flight coming in on a real approach.

I'll be keeping a close eye on the weather, hoping for the best!

Commercial Maneuvers and Baby Elephants

2008-09-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

Last night was another great flight. It's so nice to fly again in cooler weather. The plane almost jumps into the air, and it's much easier to concentrate on leaning a new skill when you don't have sweat dripping down your face. I'm enjoying the commercial maneuvers. They're mostly about finesse and control of the airplane. They require the pilot to know the feel of the airplane and be able to work with all the various factors. When I'm successful in completing a manuever within PTS, I feel like I'm almost dancing with the plane-- like the sky is a big dancefloor and we are dipping and turning around it. I've seen Matt Younken (I think that's his name) do an airshow routine in a twin beech a few times-- it's a funny routing to watch as the plane is not one that is used for aerobatics. The music he chose to play along with his routine is a little quirky- I think it might be called "Baby Elephant Walk". As the music plays, he and the plane lumber up and down the runway. For whatever reason, when I do lazy 8s, that music plays in my head (trust me, lazy 8s are a far cry from the magic he is able to do with his twin).

M and I have quickly worked our way through all of the commercial maneuvers. To be honest, I thought it would take longer! Last night, we added eights on pylons and power-off 180s to the growing list of: steep turns, steep spirals, chandelles, lazy eights, and short field landings that we've been working on. We also covered oldies like simulated engine outs and power-on and power-off stalls, soft- and short- field take offs. Somehow we have skipped soft field landings, though I imagine we'll pick those up next lesson. After one more lesson, I hope to move on to complex operations: retractable gear and a fixed speed prop!

Learning a New Tail Number

2008-09-16T10:10:00.000-07:00

I finally have another tail number written in my logbook! I've been a complete slacker about posting lately-- though not from lack of flying. I've been flying a lot. In fact, I had back to back lessons scheduled for this past Saturday-- and since our plane was booked for much of the day, I decided to take a different plane up while ours was out flying! (For those who aren't regular readers, I've basically only flown our airplane throughout all of my training, though I once had a few minutes instruction in an ultra light while on a sight-seeing trip.)

I figured I'd make it easier on myself and stick with a Cessna 172 S-model... that way the speeds, engine, and basics would be the same. But since the other 172 with glass was not available either, that meant flying steam gauges. I was pretty excited about this- I've read a lot about transitioning from steam to glass, but not as much about glass to steam. So I was anxious to see how I'd make the switch. The plan was that M and I would go up and practice my commercial maneuvers for a couple of hours, then we'd meet up with Husband and T at MRB. I'd hop over into our plane to do 1.5 hours of instrument training while M flew the other plane back to JYO. But all good plans...

It took me a little longer to preflight than usual since I wasn't familiar with the plane-- so I was a little glad that M was late getting back from his previous lesson. After reviewing a bit, we hopped into 144ME and started the engine startup and runup checklists. My eyes didn't know where to land at first! I had to look at each instrument and think about what it said. Luckily, I'd studied pictures of them recently when Husband I studied for our instrument written exam. M kind of laughed at me a bit... but was very patient as I assured myself that this was in fact an airplane-- and would have very similar capabilities to Good Dog.

Of course I screwed up the radio call before takeoff, and used Good Dog's call sign instead of 144ME. The funny thing was that the student and instructor who had booked Good Dog before us happened to be returning to the airport right at that moment. After I made a new radio call with the correct call sign, they responded that they were happy to hear the correction as Good Dog was just then turning base.

Once in the sky, things were a bit hectic at first as I adjusted to reading the dials instead of getting things in one big picture. I'm not sure what the hardest to adjust to was. Probably the turn coordinator as this looks very different. That was also the only thing that was more sensitive on the steam gauges. M had me turn this way and that, holding specific headings, bank angles, etc. Then he had me do a stall or two- just to show me that it still flew the same as Good Dog. After that, we found a little bit of sky not covered by really tall, almost towering, cumulus clouds and practiced my chandelles and lazy eights. Clearly, my practice earlier in the week had paid off as I was actually hitting (mostly) PTS for each after a few tries. Though I missed having Nexrad to check and make sure those clouds weren't going convective on us, it was actually kind of nice to not know about the 30 IAD arrivals that were probably going right over us. I felt like I was in a little cocoon.

After an hour or so, it was time to head over to MRB to meet Husband. I was surprised we hadn't heard him on the radio yet, but figured that he and T had cooked up some craziness and were off doing approaches somewhere else. So I turned the plane roughly in the direction of MRB, and then started to reach over to find it on the MFD as the clouds were such that we didn't have a lot of visibility. Hmmm. No MFD. How am I going to find it? A slight wave of uncertainty as I realized that my charts were in the back of the plane. I decided to fess up and talk it through with M, hoping that he wouldn't make me go through the process of using pilotage to exactly pinpoint our location on the chart and calculate a route. He took pity and instead showed me how to use the plane's GPS. We clicked through, found MRB, and loaded it in. I didn't even need my kneeboard printout from AOPA that I had brought along-- the frequencies were in the GPS, just like in Good Dog.

After a reasonably uneventful landing, I gave Husband and T a quick call to verify they weren't on the ground back in JYO for some reason. When neither answered, we assumed they were in the air and went inside the terminal to wait. After about 20 minutes, my phone rang. It was Husband-- and he disclosed that they had never made it in the air-- that they were still in JYO. There had been a problem with Good Dog. So M and I headed back to JYO to see what was happening. Turns out, someone (not sure who), had entered a waypoint that caused the G1000 to get corrupted. Through a series of chance events, Husband and T were able to figure out there was a bad waypoint, delete it, and get the systems back up. But now there was no time to fly. So, Husband decided to do a few circuits while he waited. So Good Dog followed me home.

All in all, I'm pleased that there were no huge barriers to overcome. It was still an airplane- and fun to fly!

New Addition to the Fleet

2008-09-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

I went out for a little commercial maneuver practice yesterday, and when I walked out of the building toward the plane, this greeted me:

Cool! The "new" Decathalon has arrived! Husband is pretty excited about this-- he really wants to get his tailwheel endorsement (as do I)... and this plane just LOOKS fun! It's occupying the spot next to us for now, so I got to spend a lot of time looking at it as I did my preflight.

After pulling myself away from this pleasure, I headed out to the other side of the ridge to do a little practicing. I first did commercial steep turns (steep turns, but to more than 50* and connecting a left and right one together to form a figure eight). These went okay-- which isn't that surprising since 45* steep turns are part of your private checkride. My first one wasn't so great, but I pretty quickly got it together. I practiced them starting from both the left and the right. Surprisingly, the ones from the right were a little better.

Next I practiced Chandelles. I first had to reteach myself about these as my lesson last week felt very long ago. The basic idea is that you're doing a climbing 180* turn at full power. When you finish, you should be going the opposite direction and your airspeed should be 5-10 kts above a stall. These are all about finesse-- and knowing your airplane. I think I managed to pull off at least one decent one in both directions, though I had to take a moment and review the picture I had brought along to remind myself of the mechanics.

Finally, I practiced Lazy 8s. These are where you do two 180* climbing and descending turns back to back-- with the power at a constant setting. I had a really hard time with these. I kept trying to do it like the picture said-- nose up to ~15* pitch, slowly bank to 15* and then to 30*, then slowly remove the pitch and then bank and come back to neutral... then repeat in opposite direction. I couldn't get it at all. I was about to give up and call it a day when I decided to try it again-- but this time by feel. That time, I think I got pretty close. That makes me think I was probably over-thinking the maneuver. By keeping in my mind what the airplane should look like, I could fly it almost by feel, though I still did an occasional check of the instruments to verify my progress.

After a few of these, traffic in the area significantly picked up. I think there were three other Av-Ed planes all doing maneuvers. Without an instructor or safety pilot to help watch for traffic while I concentrated on putting the airplane through its paces, I decided to head back in. What a beautiful evening! As I returned to JYO, I realized the clouds had lifted even more-- and visibility was great. I could see Leesburg, Reston, Tysons Corner, and even DC in the distance. It was awesome-- literally. I did a soft-field landing, just for kicks. Considering I haven't done one in ages, it was pretty good. As I left the airport after tidying up Good Dog, I realized that I had a huge grin on my face. Life was good.

Around and Around, Where Will Hanna Land?

2008-09-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

We are supposed to fly down to the Outer Banks this weekend for a family event. Of course, we may not be flying anywhere, depending on where Hanna goes! The weather may be ok for getting down there on Friday and getting back on Sunday. But we're realizing that it becomes more of a question than just being able to get down there safely and then get back safely. We also want our airplane (and us) to be safe through the storm, as well.

So, we've done our homework and called Manteo to see if there is hangar space available (there is), and looked at the weather graphics to see where the storm is predicted to hit-- and how hard. Now, I guess it's just the waiting game. I also have two flight lessons scheduled for tomorrow-- one with my commercial instructor, and one with Husband and our instrument instructor. Hopefully I'll get to fly at least a little tomorrow!

P-A-S-S-E-D

2008-08-30T16:02:00.000-07:00

It wasn't pretty, but both I passed the written instrument (Husband passed his, too). The actual exam was harder than any of the practice exams than I took... and I was a little disappointed with my score (an 82), but then again, I passed and it is done. I do think that I know a lot more than that score suggests. Unfortunately, I definitely get test anxiety!

The B-17 was awesome. I'll post about that-- complete with photos! But I think my next stop now is a shower! It's been a long (and hot!) day!

Eve of the Instrument Written

2008-08-29T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's probably a good thing that my commercial flight lesson cancelled this morning. It meant I spent more time studying for my instrument written exam that I have scheduled for tomorrow. Husband came home around 3pm, and we studied off and on all night. Now I'm heading to bed soon in hopes of a good night sleep. We'll see how the test goes-- I got in the 80-85% range on the practice tests I took. But I've been drilling using Sporty's Study Buddy this evening (highly recommended-- you can select different topics and go through the FAA questions on each), and seem to be converging on scores more in the 88-95% range.

Tomorrow should be fun!

The Rain Will Come

2008-08-28T07:03:00.001-07:00

Long drought in posting, I know. I've been busy trying to get my written instrument course wrapped up, starting instrument flight lessons again, and generally trying to get started with the commercial course.

Husband and I did successfully complete the King Schools coursework to prepare for the instrument written exam. And we have the exam scheduled for Saturday. Now it's just practice, practice, practice! We both took practice exams last night. I scored and 83%. Not great, but definitely passing (>70%). That was without any review. So we both reviewed the sections we missed together, and we'll take another practice exam tonight. I'm hoping to stay solidly above passing... my ultimate goal is to get better than an 85% (though of course higher would be great!). The stuff we have the most trouble with is, not surprisingly, stuff we don't have in the airplane, and therefore have no experience with. Like-- for instance-- ADFs. But, it seems to be finally sorting itself out in my head... I hope.

Husband and I have now done three flights with our new instrument instructor. I think they're going well. We went for a practice flight 10 days ago to dust off our instrument tracking abilities-- we did climbs, descents, turns, stalls, slow flight, and steep turns under the hood. Last weekend, we met up with T and did our first lesson. It was a late afternoon flight on an incredibly hot and humid day. The air was bumpy and the density altitude high. It took some doing to get Good Dog off the ground and in the air. I really didn't think I performed well. Husband said it wasn't too bad, but I couldn't get the airplane to stay trimmed for more than a couple of minutes. I was pretty frustrated (and a little nauseaus!) by the time we landed and switched pilots. The next evening was a world of difference. The air was smooth, and I felt in control of the plane. I hit my altitudes and my courses pretty well. All in all I was pretty happy with my flying. The third flight was a night flight. Husband started flying before sunset, but by the time we switched seats and I took controls, it was well into night. I think I did ok, but I didn't have the same confidence. Everything seemed a little different-- little things, like glancing at the approach plate to verify the speed became much harder (because now I needed to also balance a red flashlight at the same time as the approach plate!).

I now have a new commercial instructor as well-- but we haven't actually met up yet (though I know who he is from seeing him in the office). If weather holds, then I'll start my commercial training tomorrow! I think I'm about to get all the flying and training I want!

More to come. (Oh- and Husband made us reservations to fly on the B-17 at JYO this weekend!)

Oshkosh Day Two: WomenVenture

2008-08-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

The day starts early at Oshkosh. The airport opens for departures at 6am, and therefore we were awakened by engines starting up each morning at 6. Once I got eyes to properly open, I realized we could see airplanes taking off through our tent (screen) door. I savored lying there for a while before actually getting up. But then I was up and going. We had cereal (still no propane!), cleaned up a bit, and then headed over to the bus stop. Husband made the comment during the week that he hadn't spent that much time on a bus in a long time. For the most part, the bus rides were interesting- we enjoyed seeing all the different planes and camping set ups. One of our favorites was a Cessna with a tarp draped over the wing. Printed on the tarp was the saying "Reason #23"- referring to Cessna's ad campaign of the 100 reasons to own a Cessna. I can't remember the exact wording for it, but I think it's something like "Camping under the high wing of your Cessna 172."

We hopped off the tram at the fly market and wandered around the stalls for a while. Not too much of interest here, though we did try a cool folding hammock. Maybe next year. The tent with all kinds of spare parts was much more interesting. You could buy old life vests still in their pouches, cylinders, or all sorts of engine bits and pieces. Outside the tent there were several old plane bodies- crumpled in places from previous unintended impacts with the ground. It was interesting, though a little morbid, to try and imagine what had caused the various wrinkles and tears in the skin and structure of these planes.

After making our way through the spare parts, we headed for one of the exhibit halls. Inside these are the usual jumble of vendors-- selling everything from training courses to extra fuel bladders to aviation art. There's so much that it kind of runs together after a few minutes. After poking through the exhibits, it was time for me to head over to Aeroshell Square for WomenVenture.

WomenVenture was pretty cool-- the organizers were handing out pink shirts and then all the women pilots gathered behind the KC-10 for pictures. I liked the idea... though I think maybe the organizers weren't quite prepared for the actual execution. Though it shouldn't be remarkable that I am a woman and I fly, it somehow still seems like it is. Only 6% of all pilots in the US are women. That's a pretty low percentage. I'm always interested that I seem to get more attention as a pilot/owner at our flight school than Husband does-- because I'm a woman. Aviatrix wrote a post on this topic-- but I kind of disagree. Though she knows and I know that women can be a pilot just as easily as a man, it is still a little surprising to people to find that a woman is the pilot. The more people are exposed to the idea, the less surprising it becomes. And besides-- there are a lot of girls in my family or in my neighborhood that benefit from seeing that it's not just a dream for little boys. I'm happy to say that when my parents bought a book about airplanes and rockets for my niece (4) and nephew (almost 3), my niece was far more intrigued than my nephew. She talked about flying and rockets for the rest of the weekend. So I am proud to wear my pink shirt... especially the one that says "No, It's not my husband's airplane. Women Fly"!

After the picture, I met back up with Husband, who was securing our much-sought canisters of propane. We went to a few airplane booths (including the Eclipse, the Icon A, and the new roadable car). We also explored a few more exhibit halls. I found a headset that I eventually bought-- the Clarity Aloft lightweight headset. It has little foam pieces that go in your ears. So far, I like it a lot-- it doesn't make my ears sore like my Bose headset has. Of course, I looked at a few other headsets, including the Lightspeed (that's what I originally thought I would buy...).

After we'd had our fill of exhibits, we found some food and watched the beginning of the air show. About an hour into the show, we headed back to camp and sat out in our chairs to watch the airshow and listen to the airboss coordinate the show on our hand held radio. Very cool. Later, we made dinner (yum, fajitas!) and enjoyed another beautiful sunset.

That evening, we took a series of buses over to the fly-in movie. John Travolta introduced his movie "Broken Arrow" before departing in his 707 painted in Quantas livery. We were late getting there-- we ended up having to take 3 separate buses to get there. The movie was fun- and made infinitely more pleasurable by the fact that EAA had kindly provided bug spray (which we didn't think to bring to the movie). Getting home was a bit of an adventure. I'm not sure why EAA didn't anticipate the need for people to get back to the North 40 after the movie. Everything else has been so well thought out and planned. We ended getting a tour of Camp Scholler (where the fly in movies are held) before getting dropped and picked back up (by the same bus!) at the bus park. Then we were dropped and picked back up by that bus two more times before making it onto a North 40 bus for the final ride to our campsite. We were all grumbling a bit by the end. After a quick shower (how strange to dry my hair outside the shower trailer, standing just inside a fence with cars whizzing by at 12am).

And a second day at Oshkosh comes to an end.

Oshkosh: Getting the Lay of the Land

2008-08-09T04:55:00.000-07:00

Warning: If you want a detailed version of our trip to Oshkosh-- this is for you! I'm writing this both to share our experiences with others, and to serve as a reminder to ourselves next year as to what to expect! I'll cover each of our three days at the show, and then do a wrap-up post that includes a complete inventory of what we took to osh-- and what we wished had taken.

After we pushed the plane back into the parking spot, we set up our campsite. Then we headed off to register and explore the show. To do both, we hopped on one of the many "North 40" buses that took us to one of the entrance gates. Here, we exchanged our pre-purchased paper tickets for wristbands, and registered our plane to get a permit for our windscreen. They also told us about the free shuttle that runs between the North 40 and a local strip mall that has a Target and a Pick n Save. Good info for later.

Once the administrative tasks were finished, we grabbed a tram and headed into the main part of the show. As tempting as all the planes and exhibits were, eating was the first priority. We hadn't had anything since early that morning, and it was now close to 2pm. We ate at one of the first places we came upon-- though we later realized there were a ton of food places just around the corner that had better food.

After eating-- and consuming about 3 bottles of water each (note to self: have a snack before attempting the landing procedure at OSH!)-- we wandered around a little and tried to orient ourselves. We had planned to just keep walking around and looking at exhibits... but weariness overcame us much sooner than anticipated. So we found a nice spot on the grass, not far from airshow center, and sat down (ok, laid down!) to watch the airshow.

I had not been very excited about the airshow-- I often find that I get bored of watching them well before Husband does. But this was incredible. The acts were all quite good-- and they were pretty varied as well. We saw the Red Bull Helicopter (amazing, who knew a rotorcraft could do such things!), the F-22 Raptor (loud, powerful, fast, and also incredibly delicate when in slow flight), Julie Clark, the Jelly Belly plane, Matt Younkin in a twin beech (we saw him in his first major airshow at Sun'n'Fun-- and were awed by his act then. I especially remember the music!), and several others. One thing that made this more fun is that I was actually able to start noticing the differences between acts. I don't know if this is how they are judged, but I could tell that the Iron Eagles (I think it was them-- it was a two plane act) had beautiful arching lines, and were graceful and elegant. And after them, a single plane (I don't remember who) was much less fluid-- more sharp and jerky. I appreciated the beauty of the warbirds-- flying in an amazing formation more than 50 years after their first flights. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this part of Oshkosh (Husband was ecstatic that I did!).

After the show, we made our way out of the show site, picked up some ice at the North 40 bus stop, and headed back to our campsite to drop off the ice. After depositing our three bags of ice, we walked over to the Hilton Gardens parking lot to catch the free shuttle. This was very convenient as we were only a few rows over. The shuttle took us right to the door of the grocery store and Target (and maybe other places, too-- we got off there). I was happily surprised to find that the Pick n Save was a pretty decent grocery store. The produce was fresh, the facility clean and bright, and they were well stocked for EAA campers. I had planned for three breakfasts (eggs and bacon for two, cereal and yogurt for one) and three dinners (chicken kabobs, brats, and fajitas), and was able to find everything I needed. I ignored my conscience and just bought paper products (who wants to wash dishes while at Oshkosh?!). Our only hitch was that Target was out of propane. According to Husband, they were pretty much out of all camping supplies. You'd think they would catch on to overstock camping supplies for these two weeks in July... but apparently they haven't gotten clued in to that. So... we quickly found some prepared food to have for dinner, and paid for our groceries. Along with all the food, we bought a case of water (and we used all of it) as we had discovered water was $3 a bottle at the concession stands in the convention.

We loaded up our backpacks with all our purchases, and hopped the shuttle back. As we settled into the campsite for the evening, we watched all the activity above and around us. At about 8pm, when the airport closed, things quieted down... except for the karaoke club across from us. That heated up. We watched the sun set, ate, found the showers (very clean!), and got ready for a well-deserved rest.

And so ended our first day at Oshkosh.

Getting There is Half the Fun!

2008-08-07T18:20:00.000-07:00

Husband and I left for Oshkosh on a Wednesday. We originally planned to leave on Thursday, but decided getting out here earlier would ensure we made it to there before the airport closed for the airshow. Unfortunately, large storm cells rolled through the area that afternoon, so we weren't able to get out very early. The good news, though, was that the storms were fast-moving, so after watching them for a bit, we were able to go ahead and leave.

Once off the ground, the air was reasonably smooth, and not too hazy. There were still some large buildups hanging around, but we were able to see them both on the Nexrad and in real life and though we had to do a bit of maneuvering, we maintained a safe distance from the storm cells. Combined with a really stiff headwind, we weren't able to get very far before the sun set. Given that neither of us were night current, we decided to land just west of Pittsburgh in Wheeling, WV (HLG). We thought it looked like a pretty big airport (it was towered, with multiple runways, etc.) and that it would be easy to get fuel and arrange for a place to stay. Boy were we wrong! It was empty! We were able to call a cab-- which took over 30 minutes to arrive, and then had a 15 mile drive into town for a hotel. So much for a quick stopover! But, we were able to find a room at the local Hampton Inn and settled in for a good dinner at a local place with a sports theme. I studied the arrival procedures while Husband read the paper.

The weather the next morning (Thur) was much better than expected, and we were able to depart around 8am. This was my leg to fly, and we had great weather. We alternated between 4500 and 6500 for most of the way. Given that we had stopped much sooner on Wed evening than anticipated, we did not have a planned fuel stop. So Husband did some calculations as we flew and pinpointed an area just before Lake Michigan that looked good for fuel stops. He picked out an airport (don't remember which one) that seemed a good choice and was right along our route and we amended our flight following destination. We didn't get a response when we tried contacting Unicom for an airport advisory, so we decided that we should overfly the field and check things out (there was no weather reporting for this field). Good thing that was our plan-- the field was closed! Not only were there large x's on the ends of the runways, but there was a large truck parked in the middle of the hard surface runway. Time for plan B! Luckily there was another airport (Ottawa Executive) a short distance away-- still on our route of flight. So we headed there and had more success this time around.

After fueling up, we took off again and I initiated a pretty steep climb to get as high as possible before going feet wet over Lake Michigan. After much discussion, and seeing how clear the weather was (so we could go high) we had decided to go the "water route" over the lake to save time. At 8500 feet, we had a shore in sight the entire time. We had thought we'd be within gliding distance the whole time as well, but I suspect there was a short amount of time when we weren't. We amused ourselves while overflying the lake by calculating the point at which it would make sense to glide toward the shore in front of us instead of going back to the one from which we came. We also reviewed the procedures for a water landing-- or ditching. I suppose non-pilots would think it a bit morbid to talk about such procedures, but it seems a natural conversation given the circumstance, though I really prayed we wouldn't have to test our knowledge! A little more than halfway across, Muskegan ATC cancelled our flight following and told us to monitor Milwaukee-- but only to call them in case of a real emergency.

About this time we started trying to monitor the Oshkosh ATIS. Bad news. The airport was closed-- and would be for at least another 60 minutes when another update would be given. Of course we continued on across the lake, but we started pondering what to do-- and tried not to think about why the airport had been closed. It could only be bad news. Listening to the approach frequency, we discovered that the holds were filling up and pilots were told to begin impromptu holds prior to arriving at RIPON. Once across the lake, I decided to do a few circles on the edge of the lake so that we wouldn't fly into the inevitable chaos near the airport.

After a few circuits, Husband convinced me that we should start heading toward the arrival point. About this time, we heard on the approach frequency that the airport was open again and they were starting to position arrivals to begin the landing procedure. Interestingly, the ATIS wasn't updated with this information for at least another 30 minutes. We saw a lot of aircraft as we approached RIPON, the beginning of the procedure. They must not have been listening to approach, though, as many seemed to be continuing to hold. We were able to slot into the sequence pretty easily (in fact there wasn't really anyone right in front of us) and started flying up the railroad tracks. Husband and I had discussed our procedures before we got there, and had decided that I should use the autopilot instead of hand flying to avoid inadvertent altitude changes that close to the ground. This meant that I was using the heading bug to control the left right tracking of the plane, which was not the easiest thing given how much I was trying to keep my eyes outside the plane. Somewhere around FISK, about the time ATC recognized us and I waggled our wings, we lost the railroad we were supposed to be tracking. Within a few seconds, we felt lost. We made the safe decision and decided to turn left out of line and head back to RIPON. It took a few minutes, but made sense given the large number of aircraft in the area. We wanted to make sure we were not one of the idiots you read about who fly in oblivious to everyone and therefore cause huge amounts of trouble.

So, try two. We sequenced back in-- this time in with several other planes. This was good as we could play follow-the-leader. I also was hand flying this time which made things much simpler. Unfortunately, about the time that the tower acknowledged us, the plane in front of us seemed to levitate. I've never seen a plane go so slowly! After watching it get bigger and bigger, and feeling the controls get mushier and mushier, I decided I'd had enough and we got out of line again. This time, on our trip back to the beginning, we discussed what our SOP would be. Instead of waiting for the airspeed to drop so much, we'd start putting the flaps in as soon as the airspeed dropped below 85-- and we'd try to get a bigger gap between us and the plane in front of us.

Try three. We made the now familiar turn past the windmills and over the railroad tracks at RIPON. We got in line behind what I think was a Mooney. Again we were acknowledged. This time we were told to head to runway 36 (try two was to 27 and try one was to 36). The controller nicely held our turn to base to give us a little more spacing (those controllers really know what they're doing!). We followed the Mooney on in, waiting to see if we'd be directed to 36L or 36R. We thought they'd send the Mooney to one and us to the other, but we both ended up being cleared to land on 36L.

By this point, I of course full flaps, and had slowed as much as I could. We kept waiting and watching to see what would happen with the Mooney-- would it get off the runway? My mind was trying to grab onto my training-- what was the rule here? I knew I wasn't supposed to land if there was another plane on the runway-- but would the controller tell me it was time to go around? Or should I keep descending? I knew there was a waiver for Oshkosh so that planes could be closer together than normal, was there one for the runway as well? Just as I was getting close to flaring, and therefore getting close to the point of no return, the controller blared into our ears with a very rushed "White High-Wing Cessna-- hold off till the green dot. Land on or past the green dot!" Oh... okay! So then I shoved in some power (too much, to be honest. It made Husband yelp at our high angle of attack). I was able to get things mostly under control, and somehow, miraculously, we flew at about 15 feet off the ground until the green dot. I think I landed about an inch behind it. It wasn't my most graceful landing, but I did get a "Atta-boy, Good Job, Sir!" from the controller (and I forgave him for not realizing that it was a woman flying the plane.

Knees shaking, palms sweating, and heart racing (and with a huge grin!), I taxied off the runway at the controller's instruction. After cleaning up, I high-fived husband and let out a big "woo-hoo! Welcome to Oshkosh!" Then began the longest taxi of my life. We were marshaled along in a long line of planes. Every hundred feet or so, there was another flagman waving us along. We snaked in and out of planes and parking spots and runways. Finally, we were marshaled into a row and brought to a stop. As we opened the doors and hopped out, we got a (somewhat subdued), "Welcome to Oshkosh". I had been waiting a long time to hear those words.

Note: We later learned that the airport was closed for a crash. A Lancair crashed just off the end of 27 and both the pilot and passenger died. Turns out, they were from Washington, PA (a town just a little east of Wheeling where we spent the night). They had taken off for Oshkosh just 8 minutes before we departed Wheeling, so we likely shared airspace with them in the first few minutes of our flights. (They were in a much faster plane and probably didn't need the fuel stop that we took, so arrived in the area two hours before we did.) So sad.

My Flying News...

2008-08-06T07:38:00.000-07:00

I'm still getting to those Oshkosh posts... but in the meantime, I thought I'd share my flying news that I mentioned a few weeks back! The paperwork is now all signed, so I can say it out loud. Drumroll, please!

I'm officially going to part-time in my current job so that I can have more time to pursue aviation interests! I'm really excited about this-- and am planning to obtain (hopefully quickly) my Commercial and CFI ratings. Of course, Husband and I are still working on our instrument rating together-- so I'm still working out how I'll do some of this in parallel. It was great to walk around Oshkosh and know that I'm doing something to get more into this world.

I'm still formulating my overall plan-- which is why this arrangement is so great. I still have the structure and benefits (and paycheck) from my current job, but I'm able to start making more connections within aviation. I'm not sure where it will lead in the end... I know that my goal is not to be an airline pilot... but other than that, I'm not sure where this will take me. It is a great adventure!

Oshkosh was... AWESOME!

2008-08-04T18:12:00.000-07:00

We're back! I'll be putting together a series of posts describing our adventures... but for now, we are home; we had an incredible time; and we are already planning for next year!

I have a few pictures, but Blogger is acting up, so I'll post them with some of my future posts.

Fly Safe...

Oshkosh... Ohskosh... Oshkosh...

2008-07-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

(Can you hear the chanting?)

Things have reached a frenzied state in the Good Dog residence (well, actually, virtual residence as I'm at work for a few more hours). How do I know we've achieved that frenetic level of activity? Well...

Husband has been obsessively checking the aircraft parking and camping status. I think he's up to about one call an hour now!
I went so far as to put together a complete notebook for our journey-- with special color-coded tabs and clear folder pockets to hold all of our necessary paperwork. This includes a carefully noted and tabbed version of the NOTAM for Oshkosh, kneeboard airport info for potential overnight spots on our route, our tickets for the "Convention", shopping list for groceries once we arrive, weight and balance sheet with notations on all of the gear we are bringing, airport alternates, frequently used frequencies, and a whole load of reference information.
Husband had a 25 item checklist of things he needed to do this morning after he got up... and was already ticking through them when I pulled myself out of bed at 6am.
Our route of flight is marked on three sectionals (marked OSH 1, 2, and 3) , two WACs (OSH WAC 1 and 2), and is noted for entry into the G1000...
We are anxiously awaiting the 2pm forecast and my stomach has been doing flipflops since last night.
We now have contingency plans for our contingency plans... I think.

Our biggest concern now is weather. They are predicting evening TS here, and there is a big line off the west edge of PA... We keep reminding ourselves that even if we only make it an hour or so out of town, that is an hour closer to OSH! I think we might actually be ready... perhaps in spite of our preparations!

Camping Gear... Packed

2008-07-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

Our camping gear is all packed, weighed and recorded, and stacked ready to put in the car and take to the airport. It took us much of Saturday to finalize our gear. We ended up going shopping for a third time... but hopefully we will be properly outfitted for the trip, and properly balanced for the flight. Lots of weighing things and adding up weights. Husband still needs to do the final balance check to make sure how we plan to load the plane will work ok. I won't divulge how much of the weight is fuel vs. gear vs. us... but will say that we will be starting out pretty much at gross weight.

We're hoping headwinds will be light, as then we'll be able to make the trip with only one stop (which will coincide with an overnight), though we are trying to allow time for a second stop if needed. Our biggest concern is having enough fuel to be able to deal with any holding or diverting time that we might need on approach to Oshkosh-- but also to be well within our weight and balance limitations to be able to go low, slow, and make unexpected maneuvers if necessary.

We flew up to Lancaster yesterday to the Joe Pilot Shop (Airways) on the field. It seemed a little silly to go right before we go to the biggest gathering of aviation vendors in the US... but we needed tie downs, and it seemed simplest to have them on the plane when we land in Osh... self-contained. We decided to go for the Sunday brunch on the field at Florentino's, and then head over to the Pilot Shop. After a leisurely brunch and a relaxed stroll through the shop, we checked weather again before heading out to the plane. But... not so fast! Out of nowhere, a whole grouping of convective cells had popped up, unpredicted! Yikes! Within a few minutes, several pilots filled the lounge-- all had been forced to divert (or delay) for the storms. At one point, there was even a tornado warning a few miles from the airport.

We took the opportunity to pull out our charts and start our route planning. Three hours later, the storms had mostly cleared, and our route was marked on the 2 wide area charts (WACs) the 2 of the 3 sectionals that we'll need. A big part of the discussion was whether to overfly Lake Michigan to get there, or to go around the long way. We've decided to try and cut straight across the lake-- but only if we think we'll be able to fly at 8500 feet to allow ourselves to be within gliding distance of terra firma the whole way. We even picked a few potential overnight locations (Toledo is one, I forget the other) along each route. We want to be far enough along that we only have about 2-2.5 hours left for Thursday morning.

After a lengthy debate over how we will get propane for our little grill and single burner stove, we finally discovered that there is a camping store at Oshkosh-- in the Camp Scholler section of the grounds-- so hopefully that last hurdle is resolved. Now, I just have to get our clothes and toiletries packed up. I'm hoping to be able to keep those within 25-30 lbs... but that may require a miracle!

At this point, even though we don't depart until Wed night, it is very hard to force myself to concentrate on reviewing client deliverables!

One Week and Counting!

2008-07-24T12:15:00.000-07:00

Till our arrival at Osh (hopefully!).

The plans are starting to come together. Husband is as excited as I am. I can tell because he took time yesterday to duck into Hudson's Outfitters-- ostensibly to look at whether it would make sense to buy a new, lighter weight tent... and he came home with:

2 new chairs (actually 1 each of two kinds-- so we can choose a kind, and then buy the second)
new sleeping mat-thing... kind of like an air mattress
1 new tent
2 new sleeping bags
1 bar of weatherproof chocolate

We had fun trying everything out. I don't know if we'll keep it all, though. I need to do the calculations to see if the pricetag on the new sleeping bags and sleeping mats makes sense given the increase in available useful load.

Saturday, we'll finish getting the gear together and start making a pile of stuff that needs to go. I may even (gasp) pack the suitcases early! We're hoping to get in the air late on Wed afternoon so that we can fly halfway that evening. Husband is planning to load up and fly up toward my office to fetch me so we can get underway sooner. Then we'll fly about halfway, stop somewhere for the night, and get an early morning start on Thursday. We're hoping to bypass the worst of the traffic in the approach that way... and we're hoping it help ensures we can get a campsite before the weekend rush!

I'm getting excited!

Fun Picture

2008-07-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

Didn't fly this past weekend... but have been doing a lot of thinking about flying lately! We're getting close to halfway through the King School lessons for our IFR written exams. So far, nothing is too hard. Hopefully it stays that way!

I hope to have some exciting new flying news soon... well, at least exciting for me! More details on that as I get things ironed out.

In lieu of a post today, I'll leave you with a picture or two...

Husband took this one at the Red Bull Air Races... you can almost hear the engine and smell the exhaust:

Looking down on final at Philadelphia International. The SW Jet landed on the intersecting runaway seconds earlier.

A few weeks back we took Flyer hiking on Roosevelt Island-- an island in the middle of the Potomac River. We had no idea there'd be such great views of the planes landing at National! Some of them were so low they startled us.

While we watched the planes, Flyer hung out in the shade of the bench. (It was HOT that day!)

Convective Activities

2008-07-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Any pilot flying in the US knows that there is a high potential for convective activity (i.e. thunderstorms) late in the afternoon on most days in the summertime. Our flight down to Georgia provided more evidence of that phenomenon.

We tried to leave early for our flight down. Our goal had been to be off the ground around 7am as we knew it was a minimum of 5:15 flying time. Of course, after all the last minute chores were done, we finally made it wheels up around 8:45. The first stretch of the flight was great. There was only a little haze and the sky was clear, smooth, and cool. In fact, once we got established in cruise, Husband set the autopilot and it was almost boring! We had planned a fuel stop for Salisbury, NC. I was pretty glad when we made it on the ground uneventfully-- as I needed a rest stop as well! In planning for the trip, I had even checked fuel prices and knew to tell Husband that if he was willing to pump the gas, we could save over a dollar a gallon, and get the fuel price down to a very reasonable $4.80 a gallon. Not bad for 100LL.

The FBO was nice-- though no food except for a vending machine. We made use of that and bought a few packs of peanut butter crackers to tide us over. I was looking forward to good, home-cooked Southern food, so had put myself on somewhat of a fast in preparation! After only about 30 minutes on the ground, we were ready to take to the sky again.

What a difference that 30 minutes made. The second half was my leg to fly, and it was immediately clear that this half of the flight would be very different from the first. The air had, in that short time on the ground, become very choppy, and we were constantly bounced around in our seats. It had also gotten quite warm, which doesn't mix well with the bumps! We signed on with ATC for flight following, and after some initial vectoring, we were actually cleared through the Charlotte Class Bravo airspace. I still find that exciting as it so rarely happens in DC!

During the entire flight, we were keeping on eye on the weather down south. Even from early in the morning, there were buildups about 50-75 miles south of Douglas, our destination. We hoped they would stay south so that we could get in without issue. By the time we approached the Bulldog MOA, we realized that we were going to have to deviate to avoid some weather. At that point, the question became: which way to deviate, east or west? We ultimately decided to go west-- though that took us more out of our way, it meant we could go behind the storms as opposed to trying to run in front of them. Of course we kept in communication with ATC as we deviated, and noted that others in the area were having to deviate as well. Just as we got abeam the storm cell, ATC notified us that the MOA had gone active, and we could either go all the way around the MOA (and stay with ATC), or we could go through the MOA-- but they would terminate our flight following. We of course chose to go around the MOA.

Once around the end of the MOA, we called and informed ATC that we'd turn south. We thought about then trying to slot between two small cells, but I decided against it when the Nexrad showed that both cells were building. Instead, we picked our way around the west side of that cell, and headed straight south to Douglas. From the Nexrad, we could tell that the storms were buiding a few miles on the other side of the airport. They also loomed large and gray in the windscreen. We decided to go ahead and try landing, knowing that if it didn't work out on the first try, we'd probably need to go ahead and deviate to our alternate airport because we were now starting to eek into our fuel reserves. Thankfully, the storms stayed on the other side of the airport, and we made it down without an additional excitement.

After orienting ourselves with the airport layout, we headed over to Harless Aviation where we were scheduled to get an oil change. Even though we were an hour late, the mechanic was still there, and helped us get fueled and in the hangar. He showed us around and agreed to let us park the plane in the hangar for the next few nights-- which saved us a parking fee!

Good Dog Goes to Georgia

2008-07-07T11:28:00.001-07:00

We flew down to Douglas, Georgia last Thursday for a family reunion. Although, I should really call it a family celebration as we reflected on where we had come from, celebrated who we are now, and looked forward to who we will be as the next generation takes form.

What a blast! Many people don't think of family reunions as fun-- but I had been looking forward to this for several months now. The cool thing-- it even surpassed my expectations! My mother's entire family gathered in Douglas for the holiday, and we had the official reunion on Saturday afternoon, with close to 50 people in attendance.

We had all kinds of things to keep us busy while we were there. Lots of stories to tell and hear, food to prepare and eat, kids to play with, and fireworks to watch. Saturday, Husband and I made 8 flights, and took a total of 17 people up in the plane to fly over the farm, many of whom had never flown before in a small plane. I think I can safely say everyone had fun! I know I did!

As we flew home on Sunday, Husband asked me what my favorite part of the weekend had been. I had a hard time picking just one... Instead, it's almost like I see the weekend through snapshots of memories. Some of the highlights:

1) Hearing my Aunt L exclaim in delight as we flew over the family farm.

2) Taking off with my two great aunts (86 and 87 years old).

3) Laughing as my Aunt M broke open the pinata after all the great-grandchildren had tried.

4) Listening to (and telling) stories about my grandparents after a family dinner.

5) Walking back across the road to the farmhouse, seeing (and hearing) the kids playing softball, groups of family sitting under the carport talking, and the shadows of others in the house talking, and knowing that I belong to all of these people, and that they belong to me.

The whole weekend made me remember what it was like to be a kid and go to the farm to visit Granny and Grandpa. There was nothing like that feeling of contentment and safety to tromp around the farm with my cousins, building forts in the hay, eating ice-cold watermelon on a hot afternoon, and gathering around the table for a blessing with the whole family for a meal. I'm glad that my niece, nephews, and all of my cousins will know this feeling, too. That's what summer should be.

When the Pattern is NOT a Pattern!

2008-07-01T09:53:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, Husband and I were returning to JYO from somewhere up north (I forget where, exactly), headed for runway 17 (based on previous traffic calls and the clear preference based on winds).

As background, JYO has a bit of a strange pattern when landing on 17- it's up against Class Bravo airspace for Dulles on the east-- as well having to pay attention where you are with regard to the ADIZ airspace. When approaching from the south or west, we usually fly the long way around, going fairly far north of the field, then using a few visual landmarks to turn back just before the approaching airspace, and come in for a very 45 entry to the downwind. Flyaway blogged about this issue here. When we come in from the north or northeast, though, we can abbreviate that approach by flying in straight over the same visual landmarks, making the 45 turn to downwind, etc. Of course- if things are really quiet, you could also then do a straight in.

On this particular day, we talked about doing a straight in, but decided to be safe, and do the normal entry from the north. No problem. Only, as we are on downwind (past midfield, getting very close to base), an aircraft calls that it is departing 35 and headed straight out to the north! Hmmm... now what. We made a quick call to confirm what we were hearing, and we also took a look at the windsock to confirm that 35 would mean a tailwind-- and it would. Because the airplane was a bigger faster one, we did some mental math and figured if we extended downwind a bit, it should be able get out first and allow us to then turn behind it and come in to land.

In retrospect, I would have made a different decision (we did have right of way given that we were in the air, and he was on the ground). In any case, we told him of our plan, and I slowed down as much as I could. Then we waited... and waited, and waited. Bod did he take his sweet time! The frustrating thing-- he only communicated if we asked him a question directly-- no sense of hey- you're waiting for me, so I'll give you a heads up of when I'm off, when I'm turning, etc. We *finally* saw him pass us when we were probably 2-3 miles past the airport again. By this point, I was worried we were going to screw up the whole ADIZ entry by accidentally leaving the ADIZ and then having to reenter it! Once he finally was past, we turned back and tried to do a straight in. Of course-- we had drifted as we flew out, and turning base to final, we had to do a series of turns to get back on course again. We did finally land uneventfully.

In the future, though, if anyone says that are departing on a runway opposite to the one I am in the pattern for landing... I'll gently remind them that I have the right of way.

Oshkosh Dreamin'

2008-06-25T04:03:00.001-07:00

Husband and I are thinking about going to Oshkosh this year! We can't decide whether to attempt flying into Oshkosh itself and camp under the wing of Good Dog, or whether we should fly into Appleton, stay at a hotel there, and drive back and forth to Oshkosh. \

Does anyone have experience making the trek? We're concerned about:

the campground filling up (we're probably not going till the second weekend),
the actual flight into Oshkosh (is it reasonable for two 200+ hour pilots to make that journey?),
what the commute would be like to drive back and forth between Appleton- and find parking each day, and
if it's reasonable to plan to be there about 2.5 days (or is that just way too short to make sense).

I'd love to hear from anyone who's made the pilgrimage and might be able to offer comments!

When Accidents Happen

2008-06-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

I recently read this post on "Fear of Landing" about a 16 year old boy (Sam Cross) who crashed while soloing a few years back. What an awful thing! It is certainly a sobering post to read for anyone who is going through or who has recently been through flight training. It's also so frustrating because it seems like this was one that was preventable!

Apparently, the student pilot was out doing pattern work (or circuits, since this occurred in the UK) at a towered airport. While on final (and I think after he had initially been cleared to land), he was asked by the Tower first to go-around, and then to turn to the left and do a 360 (an orbit) to allow faster traffic to land in front of him. The controllers in the Tower had just gone through a shift change, and the new controller apparently did not realize that this was a student pilot. Being asked to do a go-around, and especially something as unusual as a 360 off of final would be stress-inducing for any pilot. For this student pilot, he wasn't able to process and do what was asked while still "flying the airplane". As a result, he stalled, spun, and crashed.

My flight school has a policy that students flying solo should identify themselves to controllers as "student pilot" as part of each transmission. (i.e. "Cleared to land, 17N student pilot". When I was going through my cross countries, I remember scoffing at the need for this. I thought, "I don't want to advertise that I'm a student pilot! They'll just make fun of me if I goof up. Or they'll treat me as if I don't know anything!" I also remember being very grateful to be able to include that "student pilot" designation at times-- like on one transmission when I got mixed up which runway to land on, or another when I needed help withe slower progressive taxi instructions.

After reading this, I feel foolish for having felt so confident that I sometimes did not include this designation when checking in with a new controller. Now I see that this is more than just alerting a controller to the fact that you may not get the transmission just right-- it prepares them to help you move through the airspace in the safest way possible for everyone.

So fly safe out there! And don't be ashamed for someone to know that you're just learning. We all need help from time to time.

Good Dog's a Show Dog! (and a Bravo Dog!)

2008-06-23T13:42:00.000-07:00

I recently posted about our trip down to Suffolk for the Virginia Regional Festival of Flight, but didn't blog about the Festival itself.

When we arrived on the field that morning, we noticed that our plane was still parked right we had left it-- on the line with the show planes! (We hadn't known where to park it, and were worried about finding someone to help us get our car, so we just left it in an open spot in front of the FBO). We asked inside the FBO if we should move the plane somewhere else given that we're not exactly a show plane (that's putting it mildly since the dog hasn't had a bath in a while!). They told us we could leave it there without a problem. It made us laugh a lot to see our plane sitting alongside all the showplanes-- and to see people walk up to it, obviously curious why a dirty 172 was sitting there with them!

This fly-in was much more casual than the AOPA one. We saw a lot of the same vendors that we had seen the previous weekend, but in a more relaxed atmosphere. We spent about 20 minutes talking to the ultralight guy that Husband met the weekend before. It was intriguing to think about being able to buy one of those little aircraft for as little as $32,000. And it sounds like maintenance is much cheaper. Of course, where we would fly it is another question. We daydreamed about keeping it at the airport we fly to when we go see my parents. That way, we could fly down to the airport there in our regular plane, land and switch planes, fly over to the valley where my parents live in the ultralight, and land on a pasture right there. Seems like it should be a time saver-- and then we could take little joyride flights around while we were there. Great idea, right? Makes me want to keep my Honda with 90,000+ miles just a little longer!

We bought a few things as we went-- though nothing so useful as the new flight bag; did I mention I like it?! We picked up another cool aviation-themed Hawaiian shirt. Well-actually, they're mailing it to us. Of course, I had to have one of the event shirts- it has all kinds of different planes on the back. And I found a pair of little stud earrings in the shape of an airplane.

After perusing the exhibits, and finding something with caffeine in it to keep Husband awake, we headed over to the seminar tents to catch the decision-making seminar that counted for a stamp in our Aviation Ambassador quest. The seminar consisted of the projecting of a dvd about decision making off of a laptop. The speaker was not working on the projector, so they just set the hand-held microphone next to the computer speaker. Aside from the annoying squeal when one of the narrators said anything with an "s" in it-- and some technical difficulties at the end, it was actually a somewhat interesting video. We never got to the second half of the seminar which was supposed to be on preventative maintenance that you could perform yourself. I'm not sure why no one had realized that you couldn't fit an introduction, 65 minute video, and a presentation on preventative maintenance into 1:15 time slot... but I won't complain. Especially because the one thing the expert did say about preventative maintenance was that airplanes were too complicated now, and you shouldn't do your own maintenance!

After that lively seminar, we followed about half of the seminar attendees over to the Virginia Aviation booth to get that elusive third stamp in our books. Then it was time to head out as we had plans in Philly that night. We had already taken care of getting fueled (they had a $.15/gal discount off of the self serve prices that weekend in honor of the show-- so gas was only a little over $4/gal! What a bargain!). After some discussion with the line guys on how to best get to the runway, we started up and headed to the active. For the weekend, the second runway was closed and being used as a taxiway... but there was no run-up area set aside. I had a little trouble deciding where to park for the run-up, but finally settled on a spot. Hopefully I didn't cause too much of a traffic jam.

And then we were off. Because of the fire, the TFR was now only 2 short miles off the end of the runway. I got a little confused about where I should be going, and where the TFR was. At one point, I thought I had accidentally clipped it, but I hadn't. Whew. Husband helped me get oriented and turned in the right direction. I was thankful to have him along. It was still verrrrry hazy, so we climbed as high as we could to get 1) over the Norfolk airspace, and 2) out of the haze. We finally got above it and sailed along at 7,500 feet over the coastline. We flew up the Delmarva peninsula, and had it been clear, it would have been beautiful (I have no doubt!). As it was, it was a nice flight. Husband even napped for a few minutes (first time that's happened while flying!). He woke up, though, when ATC helpfully alerted me to an oncoming plane at our altitude. We decided to descend early- and that turned out to be a good decision as the plane came quite close to us and we could not see it until the last minute. ATC even commented to us that we had made a good decision.

After that, we were handed off to Philly approach- only there was some confusion and they sent us to the wrong controller. We were glad to switch to someone else as the guy sounded like a jerk. Unfortunately, within 5 minutes, we were handed back to him. Oh well. Twice, he told us to turn in directions that seemed to have us heading straight for another plane. It made us very uncomfortable. Especially as we were then scolded for not maintaining the heading he gave us. He was right that we should have minimally told him we were turning for traffic- but there was not much open time on the frequency.

We ended up approaching Philly Int'l (PHL) straight in for Runway 35. The controller told us to watch for a Southwest jet approaching the runway crossing 35. We kept looking for it- and the controller kept asking for it. Finally, at the last second (while I'm trying to get the plane to go slower and slower), we saw the plane streak across in front of us. Because we hadn't been cleared to descend, I then had to do a forward slip to get us down in time. Husband thinks that because the controller wouldn't let us change frequencies to Tower until we had the jet in sight that we also couldn't be cleared to descend below a certain altitude. Does anyone know if that's a typical practice-- that you have to be with Tower before you can go below a certain altitude (in this case, 2500)?

After all of the excitement, we made it over to the FBO without any further excitement. Our first Bravo-class airport in our own plane! They didn't quite know what to make of our 172, but were very nice to us anyway. Because we purchased 15 gallons of fuel, the overnight fee ($49) was waived, and we only had to pay a $10 landing fee. The FBO was filled with charter pilots waiting for their flights. It was kinda funny to see so many pilots-- all dressed alike-- standing around staring out the windows or checking their email and voicemail. We must have looked ridiculous- after a full morning in the hot sun, and then a long hot flight, we were looking a bit scruffy!

We had a great time with our friends- E & S-- who had driven down from New Jersey to meet us. We had a great Cuban dinner at Alma de Cuba, went to see the new Cirque du Soleil show, and wrapped up with drinks and dessert at a fun upscale diner/martini bar called the Continental. Sunday morning, we all had breakfast and then went out to stroll around the city, see the Reading Terminal Market, take a duck tour, and have some really good cheese steaks. Then it was back to PHL for the trip home. We realized when we got in the cab, that we weren't really sure how to tell him how to get to the GA terminal- and he only knew where the main terminal was! Once we got that sorted out, we were on our way. Our only hiccup getting home was again knowing what altitude we had been cleared for. If they don't tell you, and you're taking off VFR from a class Bravo airport, should you assume you're cleared to fly in Bravo airspace? Something to ponder.

AOPA Fly-In Madness

2008-06-17T12:57:00.001-07:00

These posts are a little out of order... but that's how it goes sometimes!

I blogged about the AOPA Open House/Fly-in a few posts back. It was hot... but really fun. This was our third visit to this particular event. The first year we went, I was bribed into going with a promise to continue on out to the Baltimore inner harbor for dinner. Husband was getting serious about buying a plane and wanted to use the event to check out the options. The second year, we both were nearing completion on our private pilot certificates, fresh out of Sun'n'Fun, and couldn't wait to explore more of the flying community. This year, we're still newbies, at least compared to the grizzled old veteran pilots and their wives who have been to thirty of these shows, but we know the lay of the land and run into quite a few folks that we know. It feels good to finally feel "part of the community". There aren't a lot of communities left like the pilot community.

We were so late arriving that we missed the seminars we wanted to attend. We did head over and hear Phil Boyer say a little about general aviation, but left after a bit because it was hard to concentrate in the heat (and with so many shiny planes nearby!). So, we walked through the exhibitor tents and picked up information on the 99s (an international women's flying club), Angel Flight, Virginia airports, Tangier Island, and all kinds of other stuff. We also succumbed to the advertisements and bought the new AOPA/Sporty's flight bag, and of course- a new dog toy for Flyer!

(After completing a round-robin trip since then, I have to say, the new bag is much easier keep organized than our old Sporty bag. There are individual pockets for charts, pens, flashlights, and just about anything you could need.)

From there, we meandered over to the Frederick Flight School-- picking up a colleague of Husband's along the way who is also into flying. At the flight school, we met up with my housemate from senior year of college. What a blast! He's now working toward his CFI and running the computers at the flight school. After scoring a few burgers from the flight school's bbq, doing a lot of catching up-- and admiring his hangar and 182, we wandered back over to the exhibits to check out the myriad of planes.

There were quite a few to look at- old and new, big and small. I mostly focused on the C-182 and the Cessna 400. Nice planes! The Cessna dealer who sold us our plane was there and took good care of us, giving us tons of information on the two. We're already thinking ahead to what our next ride (i.e., investment) might be. Husband took a look at the Mustang, and the sales guy showing him around the plane gave him a nice Cessna hat so he wouldn't completely roast in the sun (Husband doesn't have much hair left, as you can see in most of our photos!). J, Husband's colleague, was checking out a lot of the flight share and flying club options as he's thinking of getting up to date on his currency and back in the flying game.

After a long time of looking around at the planes for sale (that standard air conditioning option on the C-400 was sounding GREAT!), we went inside the AOPA building to check out the other exhibits. We had our picture taken in the AOPA photo booth in front of a backdrop featuring the AOPA Get Your Glass sweepstakes plane, and watched some kids try (badly) to fly a Microsoft Flight Simulator setup with yoke and pedals. Though there were a few more things we could have seen, we then learned that my mom had caught an earlier flight in from Indianapolis, so it was time to turn for home.

From Smoke to Sweet Grass

2008-06-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

What an exciting weekend!

Friday night, Husband and I loaded up the plane to head down to Suffolk for the VA Regional Festival of Flight. The start of the flight was fine, though a little hazy. We kept checking and double checking landmarks on the chart to make sure we had reasonable visibility. Husband was flying (I've been hogging the flight hours for way too long!), and the weather was looking good. As is our custom, we picked up flight following for our route which would take us from JYO (Leesburg), out of the ADIZ, over CJR (Culpepper), past RIC (Richmond), to SFQ (Suffolk). We settled on a cruise altitude of 5,500-- nice and smooth (and cool!). The cool air was nice given that it had been around 90 on the ground. Ugh!

As we neared RIC, we began to hear the controllers working frantically give IFR clearances, and the haze seemed to get much more intense. About the same time, during my usual checks of the weather and METARs along our route, I saw that RIC was now listed as IFR. Uh oh. We weren't going to directly overfly RIC, and we could tell that airports north and west of RIC were all still VFR-- which meant that we would likely not have a problem staying legal. But we were concerned about the decreasing visibility- we are VFR only pilots, so we definitely wanted to know what we were flying into. It looked like things were thinner up higher, so we notified Center that we were climbing to 7,500.

Around this same time, we first saw the big cloud of smoke on the horizon. Once we were up above most of the haze, we could see the cloud clearly. We couldn't see the ground very clearly (there was a lot of haze), but the smoke cloud stood out on the horizon- stretching straight up into the sky, seemingly endless on the blue horizon above the brownish gray band of haze.

In our weather briefing before leaving JYO, we had noticed a warning for smoke around the southern parts of Virginia. We learned that there were two huge wildfires (well, huge for us in the East!) right on the North Carolina border- just south of where we were headed. There were also two TFRs for the fires-- one just a few miles south of the airport for a controlled burn related to the wildfire. We evaluated our options-- but thought that we wouldn't have any problems. So we knew there was a big fire-- but we were definitely surprised by the far-reaching impact of the fire! The smoke cloud that we saw in Richmond was the cloud of smoke from the wildfire burning around 100 miles away!

Thankfully, things cleared up as we edged west of RIC, and continued on down to the south. As we neared SFQ, the controller told us a jump plane was just heading up to release (parachute) jumpers over the airport. We realized that the jumpers would be released right about the time we would be arriving over the field. After talking more with the controller, we decided to circle west of the field until we knew we wouldn't hit any jumper as we turned final to land! The other thing we saw, though, was that a huge cloud of smoke stretched right over the airport. In fact, though we knew where the airport should be, we couldn't actually see it. So, while we circled, we also talked to the pilot of the jump plane to learn what the conditions were. He said the smoke was well above traffic pattern, and that we should have no problem landing.

(Side note: the visibility on the AWOS for SFQ still reported visibility greater than 10 miles, even though there was a huge cloud of smoke hovering over the field and impacting visibility. Does anyone know the impact of smoke on automated weather services?)

Building on some recent online safety courses, we set up the autopilot just in case we entered cloud, started our descent to pattern altitude, and took the plunge. As we flew toward the field, we could see the thick smoke looming. I thought it might be like the haze earlier-- look solid, but then just be hazy once you're in it. I found out I was wrong, though, as we did pass through it momentarily on our descent to the field. Before we could even think about telling the autopilot to turn us around, we were through it (just barely!). We finally caught sight of the field (man was I glad!), and lined up for a downwind entry. The delay and circling we did to avoid the jumpers gave us some confidence that there weren't other planes about to pop out from the cloud of smoke, and we made our way to the ground, literally overshadowed by a cloud of smoke.

Once on the ground, we immediately recognized the smell of burning wood. In fact, neither of us opened our windows, even though it was boiling in the cockpit. The smell of the fire hit us even harder once we opened the doors and disembarked. It was like being at a campfire, in the path of the smoke-- only you couldn't escape this. It burned our throats and stung our eyes. I certainly wondered what we were doing flying into this place! How on earth could they hold a festival here the next day?

We had to stick around the field another 45 minutes or so, trying to get our rental car. The FBO closed much earlier than their website indicated, and our car keys were locked up tight inside. We finally convinced the manager to come out and let us in. He wasn't too happy given the long day he had put in getting ready for the show-- and the fact that he had to be in at 5am the next day. We tried to pay him for his troubles-- at least enough to replace the steak dinner he was cooking when we called... but given his status as a government employee, he wouldn't take it. Our wait paid off, though, when the hotel manager took pity on our long day and upgraded us to the presidential suite! Be sure to stop in at the Hilton Garden Inn if you're ever in Suffolk...

The smoke followed us (or maybe we followed it?) to the hotel and to dinner that night. Strangely, we didn't notice the smell after dinner, though we did still feel the thick, dense air. After a good night sleep, we had breakfast and headed back out to the airport. Stepping out of the car, we noticed something. One- the winds had shifted and the smoke was gone. Two- the smoke had been replaced by the intensely sweet smell of fresh cut sweet grass. What a difference... from smoke to sweet grass.

Flying into a Fly-In

2008-06-11T07:54:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was HOT! It was also the AOPA Fly-In in Frederick, MD, a short hop, skip, and a jump away from JYO. Husband and I have been looking forward to this fly-in for a long time, mostly because we'd be able to "fly in" instead of drive in. (We went last year and the year before that, but we didn't have our certificates yet.

Our departure from JYO was delayed by haze. The air was thick, hot, and steamy, even once it cleared enough to depart VFR. Usually, to fly up to Frederick, we can head out of the ADIZ and then turn to a head of around 350 and we're on the ground less than 30 minutes later. Because of the special procedures for the fly-in, we flew through the ADIZ to northeast of GAI, out through the WOOLY gate, and then joined up with the line of traffic to fly over the EMI VOR, turn right before the tower, up along a highway over a school and another water tower, then descend to land straight in. I flew the plane while Husband tried to figure out the procedures and listened to the temporary tower frequency. Sounds simple, right?

It actually wasn't too bad. Husband is good with maps and charts-- and our G1000 was a big help. I was on edge though-- and I think he was too-- both because of the heat and because the route took us within a very short distance of the ADIZ. Neither of us wanted to be the cause of an ADIZ bust!

We did hear someone bust the ADIZ as we were flying along the posted route-- the on-guard channel was hopping for a while as the controller barked out instructions to the guilty party (TURN RIGHT TO HEADING 360, DEPART THE ADIZ IMMEDIATELY). Later, we learned that the pilot was not going to Frederick, but had managed to stray into the ADIZ. When the guard started barking orders and scrambling whatever it is they scramble, the pilot then fled from the ADIZ, only to run straight into the expanded P-40 (restricted) airspace around Camp David! Poor guy had a BAD day.

We heard some of this on the frequency as we made our way through the AOPA hoops... so I was a bit flustered. As we approached the VOR where we would join the line of planes headed to FDK, we saw blip after blip appear onscreen on our MFD. I was a little nervous about making my way into line. The visibility wasn't great, so it was hard to trust that the other pilots would see and avoid us. Luckily, Husband had a handle on things and was a huge help.

We continually heard pilots announce their position on the tower frequency as they came into the area. This really confused me at first as the instructions clearly said not to talk to tower, but only to waggle your wings in affirmation if tower gave you instructions. For a while I was convinced that we should be communicating with tower, until we finally heard the tower state that all planes should maintain radio silence unless asked for specific information. That made me feel a bit better.

Somewhere over the school, we heard the tower recognize the plane in front of us, us, and the plane behind us (we were separated by about 3/4 mile between each). That was good, but it was strange to not answer on frequency, instead waggling our wings with vigor in response. After this point, things got a little hectic. The runway was looming in the windscreen-- right at my 2'o'clock. The plane in front of us didn't seem to be descending. Up until this point, I had been basically just following that plane, and since I hadn't heard a clearance, I didn't know whether to descend and prepare to land, or to stay high and follow the plane in front of us.

As I debated-- (and inadvertently made altitude and power changes to match my indecision), two things happened, 1) it became clear that the plane in front of us was not landing and was instead turning to parallel the runway; 2) I realized that Husband was telling me what to do. After a few moments, I was finally able to listen to what Husband was saying and I got us stabilized on short final and landed without incident.

Reviewing the approach and landing afterward, I realize a few things:

I will know to look ahead of time (and listen) for what point the controllers are "recognizing" planes approaching the fly-in.
I'll be more comfortable next time with the non-verbal communication aspect of these approaches.
Husband and I need to be even more clear in these situations about what job each of us is filling. We almost always split the flying and navigating/communicating responsibilities. But the pilot flying typically is still able to follow the communications as they occur. In this case, it was very helpful to have a second person in the plane that could devote 100% attention to communicating and figuring out how to follow instructions. In these complex situations, we need to decide what the pilot must hear for him/herself and what (s)he can trust the copilot to hear/understand.
This was a great example of needing to fly the plane first. I goofed and made some pretty big altitude and power changes when we were pretty close to the ground. Luckily, I never had the stall horn go off, and we were never in danger of being out of control. However, my pitch and power changes resulted in several wide airspeed swings (65-90) in a short amount of time and distance.
Though I hope our next entrance to a fly-in is a little more polished, I can say that we didn't damage ourselves or the plane, we didn't bust any airspace, and the landing (in the end) was pretty respectable with distinct chirps for back and front wheels.

More next time on the fly-in itself!

T-Storms: See and Avoid

2008-06-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

Husband was planning to be gone all day Sunday, and I wanted to do some flying while I still could. Thunderstorms were predicted for later in the day, so we decided to get out early and go for breakfast. This basically required a crow bar to get me out of bed early as I am not a morning person. I used to bounce right out of bed to go flying, but I guess I must be getting jaded as I now have to have a conversation with myself to make it out of bed early. It goes something like:

"Ok. Time to get up."
"Oh, but this Heavenly Bed is soooo soft. I don't wanna get up!"
"But there's an airplane out there waiting for you... and pretty nice weather. Don't you want to go flying?"
"Weeeeell.... Maybe. Though it doesn't sound that fun right this moment, I can sort of remember that when I actually am flying it's awfully fun. Then, there's
always the landing... that's fun."
"So that's it, you're going to get up!"
"In theory, yes. We'll see how it goes."

Luckily, at this point, Husband stepped in with some coffee. I don't drink it often, that way it really does the trick when I need it. Thank goodness for Husband! (Course, don't think he's too chivalrous-- he knows he only gets to go flying if he's able to get me out of bed!)

A little later on, I was glad to have gotten up early. The radar was showing storms-a-comin'. We had originally planned to head up to Lancaster for breakfast and a trip to the pilot shop there... but decided to instead head to York for those most excellent pancakes. Once we got off of JYO, though, we could see the buildups in the distance. A quick check of the Nexrad confirmed that the storms were already moving in. The briefer had said the storms were moving about 50 knots/hr, and it seems he was correct. So, we made a quick decision, did a 360 while we set things up, and then turned back for FDK. After a go-around (maybe we didn't quite get things set up, after all!), we re-entered the pattern and landed in variable and gusty wind.

Breakfast at FDK was pretty good-- though York pancakes still hold the title. Then we headed over to the flight school to pick up some charts for Husband. While in the flight school, we left a message for F, an old college friend recently rediscovered. After a quick preflight, we were back in the air and headed home. An uneventful flight with a nice landing. I always wondered if I really put the correct wing down on crosswind landings-- I'm not really able to think about it while doing it, I just instinctively do it. Sure enough, I do-- because this time, I somehow put the wrong wing down for a second, but realized it instantly and was able to correct in time for a good landing.

After landing, we stuck around to clean off all the dead bugs on the cowling and leading edges. Yuck. I guess it's bug season again. I'll need to keep a close eye on things to make sure birds don't try to nest in the elevator again. (See this AOPA blog about things nesting.) We also warned a couple of fellow pilots headed over to MRB about the buildups we'd seen. I think they changed their plans. I felt bad for being the bearer of bad news-- but who wants to fly into thunderstorms!?

Husband's Fun Day at the Races

2008-06-02T07:44:00.001-07:00

I usually only post about my flight experiences-- but this time, I thought I'd share one of Husband's stories. (If I can wrangle any pics out of him, I'll post those, too!)

Husband's catching up to me in terms of hours of PIC and X-Country time! He flew to Canada and back yesterday for the Red Bull Air Races. I opted out of the trip for sanity's sake (life's been moving just a little too fast lately!), though I kind of wish I had joined him. He did take another pilot friend, K, who also went with him last year to the Reno Air Races.

They decided somewhat last minute to fly to Windsor (Canada) instead of DET in Detroit, so we had to scramble a bit to get together the appropriate paperwork. It wasn't as hard as it seems to do-- all the information you need is easy to get on AOPA's website. The only difficult piece was navigating the site to get the Radio Operator's License-- the web site is hard to navigate. (Thanks, Aviatrix, for your posts on crossing the border-- we read those a few times, as well!) We also were confused about the English proficiency requirement. In case anyone's wondering, the FAA has secured an extension through March 2009 for US pilots. I ended up contacting the AOPA pilot helpline to confirm that piece of information. I highly recommend using the helpline if you have a question. It was really easy, quick, and comforting to be able to ask someone so directly!

Now, Good Dog is all set with a custom's decal and the proper paperwork-- and we've learned more about how to file a VFR flight plan. For some reason, our flight school isn't that big on VFR flight plans-- maybe because of the confusion with filing an ADIZ flight plan? We almost always get flight following, but neither of us had ever filed anything other than an ADIZ flight plan.

Husband had a 30 knot headwind on the way over, but was able to cut time off the trip by going more or less direct to Sandusky. Our experience in the Washington area is that you almost never get cleared through the Bravo airspace. I think I've been offered it twice in two years of flying. Apparently, that's not necessarily the norm for other places, as he was cleared through the Bravo airspace around both PIT and CLE. They had an uneventful landing at Windsor, were quickly cleared through customs (in fact, the customs folks had him taxi directly over to the fuel pump and met him there so he wouldn't have to stop the engine and then restart it to fuel up).

The races sounded amazing (and I mean that literally- I could hear them over the phone!). He and K opted for the "box" tickets instead of just general admission. The seats had not been selling well, so the price was cut in half. No big dramas happened on the course-- though because Saturday's races were cancelled, they ran both the prelim and the finals on Sunday. The US customs people were very accommodating in helping him change his arrival time so that he could stay for the end of the races.

After the races, they headed back out and had an equally smooth transition back into the States. For all the fuss that you usually hear about crossing the border, the customs folks that he dealt with-- on both sides-- seemed very helpful and easy to work with. I was actually surprised when he called around 8:30 to say they were back at JYO-- I thought they'd be gone much longer! His total time away was around 13 hours-- 6.9 of which were with the engine running-- and that was with a 30 knot headwind!

Birthday Wings

2008-05-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

I finally got my birthday flight... and it was awesome! Last year, I tried to go for a birthday flight with my dad and my instructor, M, but the plane was over-fueled and we were too heavy. This year, though, Husband was in town and we had a great birthday flight!

Since it was my birthday, Husband let me fly both legs. I've been (as usual) hogging all the flight time recently, so he was sweet to think of that. We just did a simple flight out to Frederick. It was nice to be up in the sky in the middle of the week.

After landing at Frederick, we parked at the FBO and walked out the door to the airport restaurant. It's just a little cafe, and was filled with locals having an early Wednesday night dinner. Husband had a soft shell crab sandwich, and I had a cheese steak... yum. When we finished eating, we decided to walk around a bit to work off some of the food we had just consumed. We walked over and looked at the AOPA building. I have a secret fantasy of working for AOPA... working in the aviation field, for an organization that helps others, with other pilots. Oh-- and getting to fly to work if I wanted! What could be better! Hmmm, I wonder if they need management consultants for anything.

After living in the fantasy for a few minutes, we walked back across to gape at the Goodyear Blimp tied down in the grass. While there, one of the blimp's crew (I think he was the guy that drives the 18 wheeler that accompanies the blimp) came over to talk to us. He was really interesting to talk to. The blimp itself is basically buoyant-- and depending on it's load, travels with +/-200 lbs weight. The blimp travels with it's own tie down-- a big post that gets staked to the ground. The blimp has one big wheel that is turned perpendicular to the tie down so that the blimp rotates around the post freely. While we stood talking, it moved back and forth about 10-15 feet. We also learned that the blimp travels at about 35-50 knots in flight, and usually travels about 8 hours a day when on the go.

After our heads were full of blimp trivia, we walked back over to our non-buoyant, but very fun airplane and loaded up to head back home. We had a nice, uneventful flight home. What a great birthday!

Good Day for Crosswind Landings...

2008-05-14T07:42:00.000-07:00

Looks like a good day for a few crosswind landings! Husband and I are taking off a little early this evening to fly over to FDK for dinner. A few years ago, when asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, I probably would have voted for the nice dinner out with friends, or something similar. Now, I can think of nothing better than to take an evening flight with Husband to a nearby airport with a diner. And hey-- he may even let me do a few crosswind landings for fun! :)

Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS)Output produced by METARs form (1440 UTC 14 May 2008)found at http://adds.aviationweather.gov/metars/index.php

KIAD 141129Z 141212 24005KT P6SM SCT250
FM1800 21008G15KT P6SM SCT150 BKN250
FM0300 20004KT P6SM OVC100
FM0900 21003KT P6SM OVC050

KMRB 141129Z 141212 18004KT P6SM SCT250
FM1800 18008G15KT P6SM SCT150 BKN250
FM0200 19007KT P6SM OVC100
FM0600 22003KT P6SM OVC050
FM0900 26003KT P6SM OVC025

Making Mom's Day

2008-05-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday was Mother's Day (which you probably already knew unless you're under a rock or you live outside of the US). I can't remember the last time that I spent Mother's Day with my mom... We just usually aren't in the same place at the same time. So a few weeks back, a little idea popped into my head. "Why don't you fly down and see her?"

I thought about it for a few days, and then asked Husband. We've been trying to get a bunch done on our house lately, so I didn't think it would be a good time to go for the whole weekend... but he was up for a quick trip. I thought about trying to surprise her, but Mom isn't big on surprises. She likes to anticipate and to plan... and sometimes, to anticipate the planning. (Sometimes, I'm very aware of how much I'm like my mom!) So I decided to mention the idea to her about a week out... once I had seen the 7 day forecast and thought we had a small chance of actually making it happen. She seemed interested-- and by a few days later was definitely excited. In the meantime, I'd also mentioned to Dad that he could hitch a ride if he wanted. He wasn't planning to go home that weekend as he had commitments here in DC, but immediately accepted the offer.

So, we spent the end of last week carefully watching the weather. We only had the plane reserved for Saturday afternoon through Sunday afternoon. The plan was to fly down late Sat afternoon, meet Mom, have dinner, spend the night, have breakfast (or brunch, if we were lucky), and fly back. We got lucky, and the skies cleared just in time for us to launch.

With the three of us in the plane (Flyer got an overnight at daycare), we were a little heavy, and I could feel it in the controls as we slowly lifted off the runway. But, the flight down went relatively smoothly. We flew into Horace Williams, a little airport owned by UNC. Apparently, the state is trying to get rid of the airport to make room for more campus buildings, but it's still there for now. Our landing was a little more exciting than I like. The winds were gusting across the runway as we landed, and didn't die down at all as we came below the tree line. I was surprised by this, and had to use all my focus to fight the gusts to get us on the ground. I was embarrassed by the two big bounces (and I think Dad was a little worried), but all of us were pleased to be safely on the ground given the strength of the wind. In hind sight, I have to wonder if we encountered a bit of tailwind, too. The wind measurement on the ASOS was knocked out of service by a storm the night before, so we relied on information from RDU and the airport advisory given by someone on the ground at IGX.

We had a great evening- Mom seemed to really enjoy us being there, and we had dinner out on her deck. The next morning, Husband and I both slept longer than intended. As soon as we were up, we checked the weather. Uh oh. The front coming across the state was arriving a bit faster than expected. So we nixed the idea of breakfast, and headed out to the airport. The first drops started falling as we drove up. We tried to preflight and get loaded up as quickly as possible-- debating our go-no-go the entire time, but by the time we taxied up to the runway, the visibility had dropped to 2.5 miles and the ceiling to about 2000', and there was no longer a decision to make. We were no longer in VFR conditions.

After a minutes of looking at the Nexrad, we taxied back to the FBO and fueled up. We went inside to get warm and dry, and were able to take a look at the radar as we waited. We saw a break looming, and started discussing the possibility of getting out then. We could tell that after that break, another wave was coming, and the airport would be IFR for the remainder of the day. Around that time, a crew came in who had just flown down from Philly. They confirmed our hunch that if we could get up and out about 10-15 miles, we would be in the clear and able to get home. So, once we saw the visibility go up to around 4-5, and the ceilings up to around 2500, we ran for the plane. We taxied out, did a quick runup to make sure all was good, and went over our procedures. In addition to our normal departure briefing (anything happens on the runway, pull to idle and brake; in the air below traffic pattern, ...), we added what we would do if we encountered low clouds or low vis, Husband would engage the autopilot, I would stay focused on the instruments, and we would use the head indicator to do a 180 and return to the airport.

It was pretty hazy when we first took off-- and there were a few low wisps of clouds, but we had both seen similar conditions at one time or another, so we stayed calm. After a few minutes of visibility around 5 miles, the sky suddenly opened up and we realized we could see at least 15 miles. From there on home, we had a nice, smooth flight. We slowly climbed to about 3500'-- leveling out every 500 feet to make sure we didn't inadvertently enter clouds. We used flight following-- and heard lots of other pilots asking questions about the weather. And we again had deep appreciation for the G1000!

We reviewed our decision making when we got home, and were pretty pleased with it. On the one hand, we were prepared to postpone, cancel, or divert if we needed, but on the other hand, we were able to safely complete the trip. It ended up being very nice flying weather, once we left the initial haze. If we had been a few minutes earlier to the airport, we might have made it out before the visibility dropped the first time, but studying the weather maps and resources for a few extra minutes gave us more confidence on what we would find. Dad must have been relaxed-- he sat in the back and worked the whole flight home!

In the end, I don't know if we made Mom's day, but I think it made our day to expand our flying horizons!

Flight in a Trike

2008-05-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

Husband and I did an ultralight flight a few years on the the east coast of South Africa. That was back before I had any interest in learning to fly-- though Husband was already crazy for anything aviation. Some friends that we were staying with knew about the ultralights-- and so a big group of us went out to the coast to check them out. All the men were going up-- but none of the women. Husband had to talk me into to going... and I finally relented with the promise that if I freaked out, the pilot would just circle around and land again (I remember the comfort that gave me whenever I take someone up in our plane who's never been up before). Of course, as soon as we were airborne, I loved it!

So when I discovered the option to take an ultralight tour in Kauai, I immediately penciled it into our schedule! The day of our flight was beautiful. A few clouds at around 4500-5500 feet, but otherwise blue skies. While waiting for the two trikes to return from the previous flight, we suited up in flight suits provided by Birds of Paradise, our flight school for the day. After waiting a few minutes (remember my post on Aviation Time?), the woman helping us told us to look up. It took a minute, but then we saw and finally heard the trikes approaching the field. They seemed to drop effortlessly onto the runway, and then screeched onto the pads laid out on the grass as a sort of makeshift "ramp".

I got buckled in behind Dan and Nathan behind Tim, and then we quickly rolled out to the runway for the takeoff roll. I heard both pilots make the appropriate calls, and then we were airborne. The runway is right on the tip of Kauai-- running crosswise on a piece of land jutting out into the ocean, so that both ends of the runway are out over the ocean. We immediately flew out over the ocean and stayed just off the beach, flying over the water. The pilots flew us in and out of a few quick turns. I'm not sure what it would look like from below, but I imagined us dancing through the air on our large kites. Luckily there are no strings to get tangled! Dan started to show me how to maneuver the little craft-- and explained the basic principles of a weight-shift airplane. He let me take the controls after a few minutes. Though I was seated directly behind him-- his arm resting against my knees if not on the controls-- I could reach up to the giant bar that ran across in front of him and bent upward on either side of him. With that bar, I could control our pitch and roll movements. Unlike in conventional aircraft, pulling the bar back toward us made the nose pitch down, and pushing it away made it pitch up. It took me most of the flight to get used to the sensation as it is the exact opposite of our airplane. To turn, you moved the whole bar to the left or right. Of course, Dan had rudders and much of the usual flight controls in front of him.

I flew four or five times during the flight, each time for a few minutes. Most of the 90 minutes, though, I just enjoyed the sights and feeling of the wind whipping around us. In such a small craft, we could maneuver easily around and get very close to the cliff faces. We flew down to the water-- and leveled off only about 10-20 feet above to see some sea life (dolphins, sea turtles, etc.). Husband said that he and Tim flew down to about 5 feet off the water! They were definitely much more daring in their flight!

Once we made it around to the west side of the island, we turned inland and flew across part of Waimea Canyon. Spectacular! Then we flew along the Na Pali Coast, zigging and zagging along the valleys that open out to the sea. Most of this coastline is not accessible except from the sea, so it was beautiful and untouched. We watched kayakers cut through the water below, and saw a few sea caves where the water rushed in and out. Then we came up to Hanalei and Princeville, and we flew over our hotel, the Princeville Resort. I waved to the people on the beach, but I doubt anyone saw me as we were quite high at that point! We flew over Queen's Bath and I saw the water rush in and splash high over the edge. After a bit, we turned inland and flew over the saddle of the mountains, coming across the middle of the island.

We flew along side each other and a few helicopters, in and out of the craters and canyons. Everyone seems to fly clockwise around the island-- nice to know for safety! Once we came close to Lihue (where the big airport is), we turned south, and headed back out to sea, flying over the Sheraton, where we stayed for the first four nights. All too soon, we were flying over the coffee fields on the south side of the island, and we knew this amazing flight was coming to an end. Both Tim and Dan did dead-stick landings, cutting the power on downwind, just abeam the end of the field. Two other ultralights came in just as we did, all of us taxiing back across to the makeshift ramp. We learned later that one of the others was flown by the guy that edited/authored the guidebook we used while on the island. If only we'd known, we would have thanked him for all his suggestions!

The Garden Island

2008-04-30T12:30:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post-- we're back from Kauai. What a beautiful, amazing place! We had a blast-- and the highlight of the trip was our ultralight tour of the island. Pictures and stories will be forthcoming... for now, a few quick pics (sorry about the sideways ones... I don't know why Blogger is publishing them that way!). Oh-- and I finally have a second aircraft listed in my flight log!

Old Friends

2008-04-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend catching up with "old" friends. Readers that I grew up with may know Nancy and Matt. Our families were all part of a close knit group that spent a lot of holidays and time together. Nancy and Mat have recently reconnected, married, and are moving to the DC Area! It was amazing to catch up with them and get to know them as adults (I hadn't seen them in years). Turns out that Matt is a big "car guy"... and we joked about trading rides in one of his old cars for rides in our plane. We had a great evening and I look forward to seeing more of them both.

Sunday, Husband and I caught up with another "old" friend (ok, not so old!). We went flying with M, our old flight instructor. We've been trying to get together with M for a while, but every time our schedules coordinate, the weather's been bad. So we met up Sunday morning for a flight to JGG for lunch. When we arrived at the airport, a fellow pilot alerted us to a couple of potential problems. Apparently there was an unmanned rocket launch NOTAM for right over our route-- and the clouds were decreasing at a much faster rate than anticipated. Hearing this, I figured I should check out the NOTAMS and get the information for myself. I searched and searched, but never could find the notice about the rocket launch. After conferring with Husband and M, we decided we'd go ahead with our planned flight-- but would make sure to get flight following to help keep us out of trouble (always a good thing, anyway).

It was strange flying with M again. Husband sat in the back on the way out, so M handled the radios for me while I flew-- and kept accidentally starting to use his call sign (Wisconsin) to begin/end radio calls instead of ours (Cessna). We all got a chuckle when the controller heard one of these slips and said "Gee, Wonder what your day job is?!" The flight went pretty smoothly. We had to descend from our desired altitude of 6500 feet because we encountered precipitation (and it was -2C outside-- definite icing potential), but the air was a balmy 2C at 4500, and the precipitation didn't do more than spit on the windscreen. Landing at JGG is always fun. Near the water, the winds always seem more variable-- which translates to more challenging! And JGG is right traffic for 13-- the runway of choice. On the plus side, the runway is a healthy 3200 feet long, and there's really good lunch waiting at the other end! Somehow, after all the landings with M, I got nervous on this one. But still managed to get the plane down reasonably well-- and without embarrassing myself in front of all the people watching from the restaurant!

We had a great lunch-- who can resist their homemade bread and great sandwiches! Though not as busy as in the summer, several planes came and went while we sat outside. We struck up a conversation with a guy that's in process of buying land to make his very own grass strip. Husband was pretty fascinated. We also checked out a group of ultra light planes that later left as a flock. We laughed to see one of them put on a helmet and start the engine while standing outside the plane. Not giving us warm and fuzzies for flying with him! Maybe it was for protection against potential bird strikes!

During the trip home we quizzed M about his new airplane job. Sounds like he's really having a blast. He described his panel and the avionics in the planes he flies. It's crazy to think that in some ways, we have more advanced avionics in our little 2550 lb airplane than in his $40million dollar plane.

All in all, a most excellent weekend!

Vacation Time!

2008-04-10T12:06:00.000-07:00

Husband and I are taking a little vacation soon. Since we missed the good ski weather (my crazy project kept us from going in March), we've decided that we should go warm instead... so Kauai, here we come! We were hoping to do a little flying while there-- we read a very cool article about flying on Maui... but we can't find an FBO on Kauai. Has anyone heard of any FBOs that fly out of Kauai?

In the meantime, we've found the next best way to explore... we're going to do an ultralight lesson. It looks very cool! And I will definitely post about it afterward. I know some pilots are really hesitant about the whole ultralight scene... but it's actually one of the things that contributed to my wanting to learn to fly. We di a similar thing in Durban (South Africa)-- took an ultralight flight out over the beaches and the ocean. I was terrified to do it-- Husband and the instructor had to sort of talk me into it. But once I was in the air with the instructor, it was amazing! Very different than I expected-- very smooth and freeing. It helped me to really understand the aerodynamics of flying.

Aloha!

Night on the Town

2008-04-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Ok... so maybe this is better termed "Early Evening on the Town"!

Husband and I finally made it up to HGR this past weekend. We've had two or three trips scheduled and something has always gotten in the way... either P-40 is expanded, the weather is bad, etc.

I didn't think we were going to fly this weekend. The plane was booked by someone else on Sunday, and on Saturday: I had a volleyball tournament, Husband had to work, and the weather looked awful. But... Saturday morning, we started seeing some blue through the clouds. My volleyball playing ended early (read: we lost!), and Husband managed to get his work wrapped up by late afternoon.

So, we headed out for an early evening treat: a flight to Hagerstown and dinner at the airport. HGR is so close, we each only got .6 hours of Hobbs, even with the runup and taxi time! But it was nice out-- almost smooth, and a lot of blue sky (and also a lot of haze!). I had done all the flight planning, so I flew on the way out and Husband manned the radios. HGR is a towered airport-- but we've gotten much better at our radio calls, so even that wasn't a big deal. Our approach brought us within a few degrees of the prevailing runway path, so we were told to call a 3 mile final. As soon as we did, we were cleared to land. We asked how to get to the restaurant, and Tower gave us instructions to park at Jet Ryder, an FBO on the field.

We pulled onto the ramp and were directed into a spot. The marshaller then met us at the plane. We were worried when he said that we couldn't walk to the restaurant, but he quickly followed that with an invitation to use the crew car. As long as we were back within 1:15, it would be free! ('course, we ended up with an $11 ramp fee because we didn't need fuel, but that's ok)

Within a couple of minutes, we were in the courtesy car (a maroon blazer) and we headed around the perimeter of the airport to Nick's Airport Inn. We felt a little strange going to dinner at 5:30 (can you say early bird special?!)... but the food was great; I even had plenty left for lunch the next day. (The dinner rolls and mashed potatoes were especially good!) Being accustomed to DC pricing, it seemed inexpensive-- especially since no wine with dinner!

After a nice dinner, we drove back over to the FBO and did a quick preflight. Husband flew us home... he even hummed a little (sure sign of a happy husband). We were back just as the sun started to get low on the horizon. We closed up the plane for the night and headed for our car. What a great date. In only a little more time (and a little more money) than we might spend for an expensive restaurant in DC, we had a great flight and dinner at HGR.

It was only as I started to get in the car that I remembered... the take away box. Hopefully, another hungry pilot borrowed the crew car after us!

Stealin' Grace

2008-04-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I did something I haven't done in a loooong time... I cut out of work early and went flying just for the heck of it! The Washington area had had a string of grey, gloomy days (and that seems to have the effect of turning normally sane people into "Eyeores"). My crazy project at work was finally coming to an end, but my schedule hadn't filled back up with other stuff. Oh- and inexplicably, it was a beautiful blue sky day.

So after staring at my computer for a while after lunch-- without actually getting much done at all, I just shut it down (I discovered the next day that I didn't even click send on the email I was writing!) and left the office. I was torn between a nice indulgent mid-afternoon nap and a peaceful jaunt through the skies. I decided to do both! A quick 40 minute nap had me refreshed and ready for the flight. So I headed for the airport.

It was nice to be out there again. I took my time with the preflight. I'm a little embarassed to admit it, but I always greet our plane when I arrive. I love to see "the Dog" sitting out there on the ramp, with it's cute stubby nose. I whisper a little hello and give it a pat on the wing as I walk up, and feel like I'm greeting a dear old friend. (Does anyone else admit to such foolishness! Husband makes terrific fun of me for it!)

I decided to head somewhere familar- just to shake the rust off. It didn't matter much where I flew-- but I know that to enjoy the flight, I need a destination. So I picked Luray. It's a nice little airport, out in the country. It's only about 45 minutes away, the perfect length for a quick mid-week pick-me-up.

On the way out, there was a ton of traffic! Every time I glanced at the fish finder, there were more planes headed my way. Without Husband there to help me spot the planes, I felt a little out of sorts. But I eventually made it through the fray and headed on out. As soon as I got out from the Bravo, I went ahead and crossed over the ridge to the long skinny valley that Luray is in. It was comforting to fly somewhere that I could basically find by feel. The airport is about halfway down the valley between the last two of the long ridges that make up the geography of the area.

I landed without incident and taxied to the small ramp. Once on the ramp, I braked, but didn't shut off the engine. Instead, I turned the plane so that I could look out over the nearby farms. I opened the window and breathed in the cool late afternoon air. Ah. That was more like it! After a few deep refreshing breaths, I ran through my checklists and made my calls to back taxi to the end of the runway.

Taking off (of course I did a soft-field!), I felt much more relaxed and in control. While the flight down had been a bit stressful with all the traffic sightings, the flight back was exactly what I wanted: peaceful and full of grace. I felt alive again. Just me and the flocks of birds around me. I landed back at JYO feeling rested and happy. I found I was smiling again for the first time in ages. Too bad you can't bottle that feeling... Well, no, I take that back. Then we might take it for granted, and flying is way too amazing to take for granted!

Oh-- and of course, I thanked the plane as I said goodnight, stopping to lean my forehead against the strut for just a second.

The Benefit of Time

2008-03-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

Greetings. It's been forever since I blogged. A series of work trips and crazy deliverables have kept me very busy... New York (twice), Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Napa, and Philadelphia. Somewhere in there, Husband and I even managed to squeeze in a family trip to North Carolina. Unfortunately, the only trip we flew ourselves on was the North Carolina trip... but on to other topics

We have a joke in our house about "aviation time". From the very beginning of Husband's flight training (he started a while before I did), I remember being confused why he could manage to make a two hour flight lesson take five hours! I knew it took half an hour to drive out to the airport, and half an hour to drive back... And I could understand that there might be a little fluff in there-- hanging out with the flight instructors, etc. But that still leaves at least an hour and a half! It wasn't till I started to fly that I began to understand aviation time. Even so, each of us has to occasionally remind the other... "it's okay, it's aviation time" when it takes forever for the fuel truck to come or to get the books for the plane from the office. So given that we know this lesson well, it's a little surprising that I let myself almost get caught in the trap of aviation time.

Our trip down to North Carolina went smoothly... except for a bit of turbulence. Husband was flying and it was a little tougher for him. We spent the weekend with my family at my parents' place. It was great to see everyone (and meet my newest nephew-- who's not so new anymore!). We did a photo shoot on Saturday that was a ton of fun-- and we got some great photos from it (that you can see here). Sunday we enjoyed some good family time with the kids, went on a hike, that kind of thing. Husband left Sunday afternoon to attend a conference in Phoenix...which meant that I was flying home on my own on Monday.

Monday's weather started a little foggy and cloudy, but improved throughout the morning and was looking good by noon. I had planned to leave around noon to give myself tons of time to get home and settled before leaving on a business trip the next morning. But, I learned that my brother's family was leaving around 1pm, so I thought... why not stay a little later? Then my mom and I started cleaning-- and she was my ride to the airport. Still, I thought, as long as we leave by 1:30. When it got to be 2pm, and we were just getting in the car, I was a little worried, but not too much. The weather was looking good and the trip back is usually shorter than the one going down, we're still ok.

I head out to the plane (my baby!) and with mom's help get all of my stuff loaded in. I do a careful, but quick preflight, and take care of the fuel bill. I start to feel better about things-- I'm later than I wanted, but still have time to make it back to JYO before sunset... and being this late, some of the crosswind there should have died down by the time I land. Mom is already sitting in her car (with our dog, Flyer), watching me prepare to taxi out. I go through the checklist and start the engine. As I do, the tachometer catches my eye... it's spinning all over the place. Then, as my mind says "wait, does it usually do that? i don't remember it doing that before...", it slowly settles on 0.

Uh-oh. I really don't think that's right... but there's no red x. My attention is now totally focused on the inoperative instrument. I feel like my thoughts are going in slow motion. What now? I try flipping the MFD screen on-- this causes all the engine instruments to switch over to the other screen on the G1000. Sometimes this can fix a problem if the system has just gotten confused. No, that doesn't work. So I shut down, sit a second, and go through the startup procedure a second time. Still no luck. Deep breaths, deep breaths. I pull the POH and G1000 manual out and try to think where to look this sort of thing up. I don't find anything in the emergency checklists-- there are no red x's, so it seems the instrument is working, sort of. I next call Husband, and get him started looking online for information. Then I make a series of calls to my flight school and instructors. I have mixed results. But my flight instructor seems to think it may just be a minor problem.

So, I get out of the plane and go to the FBO to see if there's still a mechanic around. It's now around 3:30... and I can almost hear my watch ticking and feel the sun sinking. Turns out the mechanics left at 3pm. But I talk to the owner of the FBO who seems to have a fair amount of experience with planes like ours (172-SP with G1000). He thinks it's a p-lead... Then he stops and asks how many hours I have... I tell him around 175... and he asks if it's in this type of plane. I laugh and say it's all been in this particular plane! He then says that I should be ok to fly with a p-lead; I should be able to listen to the engine and watch the airspeed to keep the engine from red-lining. I think about this... But don't I NEED a tachometer? I study him a little.

I can't be seriously thinking about taking advice from someone I've never met before, who probably isn't an AME. So I call Nathan back, who rightly reminds me (I'm so proud of him for remembering) that a tachometer is required for flight (remember TOMATO-A-FLAMES from flight training?). I also talk to my old instructor who offers that while it's required, if it failed in flight, he wouldn't expect me to have to land immediately- I could continue on to my destination. What to do, what to do. Suddenly, I find myself thinking about aviation time. This is how it happens. It's a little problem... but I don't want to fly illegally or be unsafe. I also really want to get home tonight.

I decide to go and give it another shot and see if I can verify it's the p-lead by doing a mag safety test. To do this, you keep the engine running, and quickly switch the magnetos to the off position and then back to both. If the engine starts to die when they're in the off position, then the connections are as they should be. If not, then the engine will keep running. I'm not good with technical stuff-- but basically, the propeller is designed to start and kick the engine on if it moves (remember the old movies where planes are hand-propped?). But this design prevents this from happening if the magnetos are off-- for safety purposes. Apparently, this same wiring would give me my tachometer reading. (Someone out there may have a better explanation! Feel free to enlighten us.) So I start the engine... and to my relief, the tachometer quickly jumped to an appropriate reading. I sat there a moment and said a short, heartfelt prayer of thanks, and then got down to business. Given that it was now working-- and I had heard from several that it would likely be ok to fly without it (except for the legalities), I felt reasonably safe to give it a shot. I glanced at my watch... it was now after 4 pm. I'd really be pushing nighttime, but I'd be back in familiar territory-- and most importantly-- out of the mountains by the time the sun set. So I quickly got everything set and took off for home.

By about halfway through the flight, I relaxed enough to listen to some music. I appreciated the comfort of flight following with ATC, though I didn't see another plane until I flew under the approach for Dulles. The controller was even going to vector me directly into JYO through the Bravo space, but I decided that given the darkness, I'd better stick with the familiar, so I declined and stayed VFR. Oh-- and the sunset in my 6 was spectacular. My landing was even pretty decent, given that I hadn't done a night landing in quite a while. And those crosswinds had almost died completely.

Big Dogs and Little Dogs

2008-02-09T08:11:00.000-08:00

Husband and I usually refer to airplanes as "Dogs"... as in "Look at all those dogs in the sky!" I know that sounds strange... and I'm not even sure how we started that. I think we may have even done that before we named our plane 'Good Dog Flyer'. In any case, Friday afternoon, as I sat in Chicago O'Hare, waiting for my flight back home, I looked around at all the 'big dogs' and wished I were the one doing the flying, as opposed to sitting in the back listening to "channel 9" (the channel on United's entertainment center that lets you listen in to cockpit-ATC communications).

My colleague and I were headed back home after my fourth straight week of business travel (New York two weeks in a row, then Atlanta, and finally-- Chicago). I enjoy a little travel, but it does make it tough to keep up with home stuff. And our real dog, Flyer, has apparently been pretty stressed by my absence, as he's chewed a nice hole in his leg. So-- I was pretty happy to head home. Up in the sky, we quickly climbed up through the low-lying snow clouds and up through the clear blue to our cruise altitude. It's amazing how fast a 777 can fly!

As we climbed up above the snow clouds that had been covering Chicago since well before our arrival on Tuesday, I started to feel the pull of the blue sky. By the time we got into the familiar airspace surrounding Dulles, and I started hearing familiar voices on ATC, I was hatching a plan to do a little flying of my own. A few quick calculations-- if we landed by 4:15, I'd be in the car and out to JYO before 5-- that'd give me about an hour before sunset! If I was lucky, I'd even be able to get Husband to meet me out there to go with me.

On touchdown, I called Husband-- and he immediately jumped in the car to come out and join me. After an eternity on the people mover, and miles of walking, I finally made it to the car and out to JYO. Somehow, Husband and I arrived almost at the same time. A quick preflight and check of weather (and filing!), and we were on our way. I breathed a happy sigh as I pulled back the yoke (with 10 degrees of flaps in) to do a pretty much perfect soft field takeoff (those are my favorite). Husband didn't even know we were off the ground until at around 75 knots, I released the pressure and we soared up into the sky.

Because we knew the sun would be setting soon, we just headed over to Winchester for a quick flight. Going out there, the sun was a blazing ball of fire on the horizon, dippin lower and lower. It's only a few minutes out over Purcellville and Round Hill and then over the ridge, and over Berryville to Winchester. As we neared the airport, we could hear all kinds of traffic reporting in, including a helicopter coming from a local hospital. I decided overflying the field at 3500 ft (at midfield, of course), and then flying out about 2 miles before descending and turning was our best bet. As we manuevered around, we were pretty glad to have the TIS, though at one point, it screamed "TRAFFIC" as a plane crossed underneath us inbound on the 45 entry while we were still outbound at 3500. Luckily, the craziness ahead of us had straightened out (at one point there were two planes on base at the same time-- not a good thing!) before we got there, and after a nice smooth landing we were on the ground at Winchester.

We ran in the airport to get our stamps, and headed back out as the sun sank completely below the horizon. Husband had the flight back-- and did a great job getting us back into Leesburg. He's done less flying around that time of day than I have, so he was a little startled at how easy it was to see other planes. By the time we landed, it was definitely good and dark. I guess it must sound kind of funny to go out and only get .5 hours each of time in the plane each. But it was a GREAT way to end the week. Now, if only the weather will improve today, maybe I can sneak in another flight!

Till next time, flap hard.

Heros

2008-02-04T14:45:00.000-08:00

Heros come in all shapes and sizes. This past weekend, I got a new one... completely by chance.

Husband and I were out exploring more Virginia airports (in pursuit of the "$10,000 leather jacket"), and we stopped for lunch at FCI- Chesterfield County Airport. While enjoying a great lunch buffet-- barbeque, fried chicken, biscuits and gravy-- a great combination of southern foods, we watched the comings and goings of the local aviation community. The restaurant is right in the FBO, so we were able to see the ramp and the runway from our table. We saw a flight instructor and his student land (it was a really bouncy landing!), and then we saw the flight instructor go back out with another student.

Then we saw an older woman walk briskly across the ramp to one of the planes (a high-wing Cessna tail-dragger), give a cursory look at the airplane, and hoist herself up into the plane. She got herself settled and waved to the line guy as he took away her chocks, and off she went, taxiing at a great clip across the ramp. A few minutes later, we saw her take off and climb up and away.

I've been pretty proud to say that I'm a pilot-- especially as there are not a lot of female pilots out of my flight school (a few, but not a lot). But seeing this older woman fly so confidently really got my attention. How long has she been flying? How awesome that she still seems to enjoy it so much. Ironically, later that day, Husband was perusing the Virginia Aviation Ambassadors site for some information, and found a picture of her! She apparently the Honorary Aviation Ambassador-- and has been flying for over 56 years. As Husband said when we watched her climb into her plane, if I think I sometimes get funny looks for being a female pilot, think what she must get! I just hope that I'm still flying with zest and enthusiasm when I'm her age.

Unexpected Christmas Gift

2008-01-20T18:53:00.000-08:00

No, I didn't get a new plane for Christmas!

We all rush around trying the find the perfect Christmas gifts for those we love... but sometimes, we are blessed... or maybe the trim gods smile on us, and the truly perfect gifts fall right into our laps.

After an exciting trip down to North Carolina, we had a nice Christmas Eve and morning with my parents. But by around noon, the clouds were clearing and our thoughts turned to flying. We knew that Christmas Day would be the best day to get in a flight as it was supposed to get rainy and cold the day after. So we invited my parents along for a little flightseeing. Mom was too beat to come (she's a present-wrapping fiend!), but Dad was definitely game for a flight. So he, Husband, and I headed out to the airport.

We found the plane tied down and ready to go (the line guy had come out after we landed on Christmas Eve and tied it down for us). Before takeoff, we put in an estimated waypoint for my parents' mountain house, though we figured we'd just be able to follow the roads along to get there. With so few roads in the mountains, it's pretty easy to find places. After take off, we flew along the GPS route for a few minutes till we picked up 321-- the road we take to get to my parents. It was pretty cool to see it from the air and see how close together everything looks compared to on the ground when things are separated by big mountains. Dad was getting more and more excited as we got nearer to the house. In just a couple of minutes, we saw the turnoff from the highway into the valley where the house is. We could see the new development of homesites, and picked out a few familiar farms along the road. Then, we saw first the long driveway (around .5 miles!) and then, finally, the distinctive roofline of my parent's house. As soon as he saw it, my Dad, who was moving from side to side in the back of the plane (he likes the pictures from the back), picked up his cell phone and called my mom. Soon, we could see her moving around on the driveway-- a white and red speck against the dark grey driveway.

We circled for a while-- maybe close to 10 minutes. Dad took tons of pictures-- I think around 40 or 50. Husband even took controls for a few minutes so that I could take in the sights, as well. It was so amazing to see this place that I have known since I was a little girl from the air. I could see the river and Mrs. Shore's house, and the horse pasture... it was really awesome. Flying in the DC area is always interesting and often challenging. But I will never be able to come fly over my own house or neighborhood here. Or-- as they joke about at the flight school-- I guess I could fly over it... exactly once. And I'd have a very interesting story to tell, though I might not get the chance!

After we soaked in enough of the house, we flew over the town, and circled Boone. Then we flew over to Sugar Mountain and circled Grandfather Mountain, pointing out familiar landmarks to each other-- like the viaduct, the Boone golf course, and Chetola Lake. We even picked out the tiny runway in Boone that's owned by the power company (we need to find out how to land there!). We finally turned back toward the airport when we saw some snow clouds in the distance.

We had such a great time-- and Dad was so impressed with the pictures (it was cloudy-- so they weren't the best-- but really cool, nonetheless)-- that we decided to go back up on Thursday for a quick flight with Dad before leaving for Asheville. The sun was out-- so Dad was able to get some great shots.

A week or so later, Dad called to tell me about a dinner he and Mom had hosted the night before. During the course of the evening, his guests (homeowners in the same valley) noticed some of the pictures out on the table. Apparently they were quite enthralled with the pictures and Dad had a great time showing them off. Though not always a talkative man, he talked for 10 minutes about being able to show off these pictures. And then it hit me. For a man who loves all kinds of maps, and who loves this little valley even more than I do... our flights on those two days were truly the perfect gift.

Riding the Wave

2008-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

After our Thanksgiving travel experiences, Husband and I were watching the weather very closely for our Christmas trip down to North Carolina. After a weekend of clouds and rain, we were happy to see a clear forecast for Christmas Eve. Our plan was to take advantage of the nice weather and have a little fun on the way down to my parents. We knew there was a pretty stiff headwind forecast-- but figured that we'd still be able to get in a few stops along the way. The winds on the ground looked reasonable-- and seemed to be up and down the runway all along our route. W24, LYH, W90, and 0V4 are all within a few miles of each other, so our plan was to hit as many of these as possible before we got to our bingo time and needed to leave the area so we could make the Christmas Eve service with my parents.

Isn't it funny how most flying blogs start with something along the lines of, "the plan was to..." but rarely finish with completing that plan?!

After a good workout at the gym and a final check of all our gear, we loaded up and set out. By now, the winds were forecast for around 50 knots at altitude. We double checked with our flight instructor as we preflighted and decided that even though our progress would be significantly slower than desired, it would be fine to fly. We took off and started down to our first stop, W24. We could tell the winds were crazy soon after we were air born. The turbulence below the Bravo shelves was intense. So we were happy to leave the Bravo airspace behind us and climb up to our cruise altitude.

Our route took us right down the edge of the foothills of Virgina. While West Virginia is very mountainous (though someone from Colorado might not see it that way!), where Virginia and West Virginia come together is right where the mountains start to break up. From our perch, we could see flatlands over to our left (the East), and we could see the very straight long ridges to our right (the West), and below us was a mixture of both, showing up in scattered peaks and smaller hills. Flying along, Husband set the autopilot and we admired the view. A few times along the way though, we noticed a strange occurrence. We would start to lose airspeed-- and occasionally altitude. At the same time, our RPMs would decay. The autopilot would keep fighting it, and that seemed to make the situation worse. We discussed the possibilities. Was this some form of mountain wave activity? Was there something wrong with the airplane? We talked about landing, but every time we got really worried, the problem seemed to get better. So we tried flying a little further away from the hills... but how far was far enough?

We were thankful to see that our first destination was approaching-- but as we started our descent, the turbulence became intense. Given how we were getting bounced around, we decided maybe it wasn't the day to get a bunch of stamps in our aviation passports. After considering our various options, and realizing that we would need to land and refuel somewhere, we decided that we should cut our losses and land at Lynchburg. We'd at least get one stamp, check for the updated weather, and regroup. So, we called Tower and set up to land. Once on the ground, we ended up at Falwell Aviation-- the newest FBO on the field.

Falwell Aviation is run by a couple of brothers. One of them happened to be there when we walked into the FBO and offered to give us a tour. It was really interesting. He and his brother also own a airport W24-- the airport we were going to land at before we decided to come on to LYH. Apparently their family had owned a trucking business a long time ago. They put in a runway at their family farm, and started to use planes to ship some of the materials by air. Over time, that grew into an airport used as an alternate for the factories and airlines using LYH. Now, the family owns the airport, a flight school, and a whole fleet of airplanes. Pretty cool. You never know what you're going to find at an airport!

Back to the flying tale. After fueling up and checking the weather, we got ready to depart. On our runup, we noticed some strange fluctuations in the RPM. We were pretty confused at first-- but realized that we were doing the runup with our nose not facing into the wind. Oh yeah! That's right, M always taught us to face into the wind to do the runup. Hmmm. Maybe this is why. :) So we turned the nose into the wind, and tried it again. Yep. That did it. Things seemed fine. Quick call to Tower and we were on our way again. This time with me flying. We got off the runway and were about 10 miles off the airport, when the problem started again. This time, the drop in RPM, airspeed, and altitude was even more pronounced-- we lost our ability to climb. Unsure of what the issue was-- or the best way to deal with it, we told the controller we had just been handed off to that we were experiencing difficulty holding our climb and our altitude, and that we wanted to return to the airport. We both looked at each other at this point. We couldn't believe we were having to make a "return to airport" call. We were transferred back to Tower and told them what was going on. Another plane (I think maybe a commuter plane) was also approaching, but the controller had them extend their downwind a bit so we could come on in. We landed without issue and went back to Falwell. On the ground, we decided to give our instructor a call. We ended up talking to a few instructors-- and all agreed that based on the conditions we were seeing and our location, we were experiencing mountain waves. They gave us a few pointers on dealing with it-- to try and ride the wave, using power to keep us somewhat stable. We decided to give it one more shot. So after a quick text message to my parents, we called Tower and departed LYH. In the air, we found that by adding power as the RPM or airspeed started to decay, we could keep the altitude from decaying. It was definitely more work than usual, but we were able to feel confident in our ability to keep the plane flying and somewhat stable. As we continued south, the wave activity decreased, and things got easier. We landed safely in Morganton as the sun was getting low in the sky. Dad and Flyer were there waiting for us. We were pretty happy to see Flyer bound across toward us when we got out of the plane (the airport was empty).

Some lessons learned:

Mountain wave isn't just about sudden and violent drops, it can show up in other forms
If it's gusty or high winds, it really matters if you keep your nose pointed into the wind
ATC is really great about helping you out
Your flight instructor can be a great source of information even after you get your license-- it's in their best interest to help keep you safe... but you have to let them know if you need help
High winds at altitude can impact performance in some surprising ways-- it may feel smooth, but anytime there's something unusual in the flying conditions, you should keep an extra eye on things

Suddenly I See!

2008-01-02T14:51:00.000-08:00

It feels like a lot has happened since I last blogged! It will take a few posts to catch up on all the stories... but if I keep delaying the writing, it will just take longer. This first post is about not flying... but not to worry, some flying posts will follow as soon as I download the pictures!

December is always a very busy month-- for everyone, I'm sure-- but is especially so because I make a lot of cookies. So I was really looking forward to our Christmas trip. Because of the gift of an additional holiday, we were hoping to fly down to Hilton Head for a quiet weekend before flying over to my parents for Christmas night, and on to other relatives after that. But it wasn't just the bad weather that kept us in town and on the ground.

The Wednesday before Christmas, I had a stinging sensation all day in one eye-- I thought maybe some dust from the construction on our house had gotten in my eye. A reasonable conclusion because I am very allergic to dust. The next morning, all seemed fine, so I put in my contacts as usual. By an hour or so later, as I drove to work, I noticed that my sunglasses seemed fogged over... so I took them off to clean them... and discovered that it wasn't my sunglasses! Everything was that fogged over... like flying with about 2-3 mile visibility! When I got to work, I tried taking out the contacts and cleaning them-- and even without the contacts, my eyes were cloudy. I attended a few meetings-- all the while my vision getting worse (yes, I know it was dumb!).

Finally, after the end of my second meeting, and realizing that I could no longer read, I decided it was time to take action. So I postponed the next meeting and headed to the eye doctor. Luckily, I caught him right before he left for lunch. After looking at my eyes for about 45 seconds, he sat up straight with a look of surprise and ordered me to take out the contacts... now! So I took them out and asked what was going on. Then he took another look at my eyes, and then told me that I had a chemical burn on both of my corneas. This was scary news... especially to a pilot.

Let me stop and say here that I know that my eyes are important for a lot more than just flying-- especially since I don't fly for a living. But at that moment in time, I couldn't let myself imagine losing my sight completely-- that was too horrible... so flying was the thing I thought of.

He put some drops in my eyes and asked if I was feeling any pain. I wasn't-- maybe just a little tiredness, like after your eyes have been dilated, but no real pain. Again, he seemed surprised. What he didn't tell me was that I would feel pain, and lots of it-- some of the most intense pain I've ever felt! After getting a prescription for some antibiotics (thank you, K, for filling it for me!) and a very surreal and careful drive home, the pain started to set in. I lost complete sight for about 12 hours, and then couldn't keep both eyes open for about 18 more hours. Finally- after about 30 hours, I was able to stand light again. And then by the next morning, my eyes felt normal, though I sure wasn't in a hurry to put in my contacts again!

The ending to this story? My eyes are now just about back to normal. By 48 hours after the trip to the doc, my vision was almost back to normal (almost 20/20 with glasses). By Christmas Day, I finished the antibiotics. By New Year's Day, I was allowed to wear contacts again for short amounts of time (less than 8 hours). By next week, I should be able to wear contacts like normal.

What was the cause? I still am not completely sure-- though most likely, I had something on my hands that transferred to my eyes when I put contacts in or took them out. It could have been hand lotion, some Vick's vapor rub I used one night, or even the peppermint oil in the peppermint marshmallows I made one night. (Apparently all of those substances get into your pores and don't always come out with a simple washing.) All I know is-- I'm telling everyone I know-- if you wear contacts, be sure to wash your hands with soap and water before putting them in or out... and think about what you've had on your hands! Your sight is too important!

Love those Pics!

2007-12-18T07:15:00.000-08:00

Since it's a slow time of year for my flying (too much bad weather, too much time spent making pretty and tasty holiday cookies, and too much time in general merriment...), I thought I might post some backlogged pictures from our trip to Nashville at Thanksgiving.

The river coming into Nashvile-- with the dam visible.

Niece G met us with her father, B, at the plane when we landed. We haven't taken her up yet-- her mom wants her to be a little older-- but I have a feeling she'd make a good pilot some day!

Husband and Brother J took a little excursion (via the plane) to J's home in Chattanooga. While there, J showed Husband around their new house, the farm that he manages, and around town. The picture on the left is stacks of shitake mushrooms growing! They brought back a ton of them for us to take home. Yummy! (I'm glad I didn't have to figure out if this is ok to take through security-- also glad I didn't have to think about whether the pumpkin cheesecake I took down to Nashville counted as a gel!). The picture on the right is J showing off his gasoline engine-powered bike. Yup, you read that correctly. J attached a small weedeater engine to a bike in order to provide easy and quick transportation around the farm that he manages. Crazy!

Here we are back at the airport, preflighting for our trip home. As you can tell-- Flyer (the dog) is all ready to hop in the plane. B, G, and Nephew H are taking a few minutes to look at the planes and the equipment around the airport.

And here's a nice group shot of Husband, his mom, and G and H before we loaded up and took off. Maybe one of these days we'll convince Husband's mom to go up with us!

And It Rains Some More.

2007-12-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

Rain, rain go away,
Come again another day...

But not on a day I want to fly! Weather in the area is keeping all the birds on the ground. I hope it lifts before Christmas! (For the first time ever, I'm NOT dreaming of a white Christmas!)

Ambassador of the Skies

2007-12-02T18:16:00.000-08:00

Virginia has an aviation ambassador program: the goal is to fly to every public airport in the state and get a stamp in a little book (your aviation "passport", attend a few aviation-related events, and you receive a leather jacket as a prize. Husband and I discovered this a few months back when we went to Williamsburg, but had only gotten stamps for two airports. We decided last weekend that we really should take advantage of this cool program... so we're officially on the hunt!

So, when the weekend rolled around and we started discussing where to fly, we decided we should try to get a few more airports in our passports. Saturday was gorgeous-- clear blue skies with great visibility and lighter winds than predicted. Weather wise, we could go just about anywhere! We picked a line out of JYO to the southwest, and identified a few airports along the route. Our thinking was to land at different airports and get as far as we could by 4pm, and then to start heading back so we were sure to make it back to JYO before dark. We also made the pledge to not just rush in and out of each airport (sort of like leaving the car idling), but instead to take the time to look around each airport and discover each ones personality. Oh-- and we also decided it would be fun to take a picture of the plane at each airport-- something that captured the essence of the airport. I'm not a great photographer, so we'll see just how well that idea turns out! But for now, we'll give it a go!

After our trip to Nashville, we totalled up our logbooks. We found that Husband has around 130 hours and I have roughly 175... which is a pretty big difference. The delta in our hours is completely explicable-- I got my license a month before Husband-- and therefore flew him all over during that month; I tend to fly and he navigates if we're uncertain where we're going or think we'll need to closely watch weather; and Husband just enjoys looking out the window more while I really enjoy flying the plane! But-- I realized I need to be more purposeful in giving him more PIC time- so Husband was PIC for the whole flight instead of switching seats like we usually do.

Our first airport of the day Front Royal. Front Royal is basically just on the other side of the ridge-- so we've both flown over it many times (probably at least 25). In fact, I can remember my early pilotage attempts with M occasionally ended up with me hopelessly lost over Front Royal, thinking I was over Wincester or Charlestown or somewhere. Despite it's proximity, neither of us had ever had a reason to fly there. So we were pleasantly surprised to find a nice little airport. Our practice is to give each other "airport" briefings before we approach an airport--we go over the elevation, traffic pattern altitude, runway length and width, frequencies, and any unusual characteristics of the airport or area. For FRR, I noticed that the chart showed a right traffic pattern -- but instead of a runway number, it had an asterisk. In the AFD, I found the explanation: right traffic is only for gliders, ultralights, and gyrocopters. Yup, we were going to be mixing in glider airspace! Knowing how windy it was supposed to have been, I figured we wouldn't see any ultralights, but sure enough, when we tuned in CTAF, there were gliders in the pattern.

It took a few radio calls and a lot of looking (those things are hard to spot!), but we finally figured out where both gliders and the tow plane were... and Husband took us down for a nice landing. As we taxied in, one of the gliders came in and landed-- a very cool sight! Even cooler, as we walked toward the FBO, the tow plane took off with another glider. It was amazing how quickly they both got off the ground and in the air-- and by this point, it wasn't really even that windy.

Inside the FBO, they had a display of all sorts of miscellaneous military equipment-- most of it aviation related. We talked to the guys who were coordinating the glider activity and learned that they are out there most weekends between March and November. You can buy a sort of pass (I think it's actually a club membership) and then pay a fee for instructor and glider time. Husband wants to come try it some weekend. I might even try it-- though I tried hang-gliding once-- the kind where you're towed behind a plane up to altitude... and didn't like that at all!

Our next airport was 8W2-- New Market. It was only a short hop, so I had my hands full trying to find the frequencies and get the radios and airport briefing set up. After a little discussion as to which way to enter the pattern-- and which runway to use (no AWOS), Husband got us set up for a nice landing. When we got out of the plane, we could hear some music playing over the loudspeaker... but didn't see anyone around. We peered through the windows of the FBO and were about to declare our hunt for a stamp a bust, when we saw the stamp in the window of the FBO. I decided to try the door just in case-- and sure enough, the door to the FBO was unlocked. So we let ourselves in and got our stamp! For this picture-- we didn't see much that would be of interest to others... but I did spot what appeared to be big chicken houses right next to the runway! (My mother's father raised chickens, among other agricultural pursuits, so we have something of a family legend about chicken houses and coops.) So of course, the picture above shows the chicken houses under the left wing. It's always a little surprising to me that GA airports seem to often be in bucolic places!

Our last airport of the day was VBW-- Bridgewater. Husband did a great job of getting us into this airport. We still haven't done that many real-world short field landings... so I get a little nervous with fields shorter than around 2800 or 3000 feet (I know that this would not be short to many 172 pilots-- but JYO's 5500 foot runway has spoiled us!). Husband has more confidence on these (maybe because of my experience landing on a 2500 foot runway with a tailwind and wet pavement... not so smart!), and he did very well with the 2600 and 2700 foot runways that day.

As we taxied off the runway, we were surprised to see rows of King Airs and other larger aircraft-- including the DC3 in the picture above. Most looked to be in flying order, though they were in varying stages of repair. What we couldn't figure out-- how had they gotten into this little strip?

In any case, as we got out of the airplane, a security guard in a little cart drove over towards us. We waited for him to drive up-- worried that maybe we had missed a NOTAM or something! But when we told him that we were hoping to get a stamp, he told us to hop on and drove us over to the office. He took us in and gave us the stamp. As we walked with him, we asked about the planes out on the ramp. Apparently, there's an aircraft restoration business at the airport-- which explains all the old airplanes! We asked if we could take a picture of our plane with the DC3-- and he said sure. Then, after hesitating for a moment, he also told us to come with him and took us to the door of a hangar attached to the office. There, in the hangar, was a beautifully restored/maintained T-6 Texan! Our jaws dropped! I asked if I could take a picture-- but he was worried he might get in trouble (I hope I don't get him in trouble for writing about this-- he didn't let us loose in there or anything, just showed us from the door). Still, it was awesome to see in the hangar.

After ogling all the planes again, Husband taxied our plane over across the little gravel strip and positioned it so I could get a picture with the DC3, and then we started back out. BTW-- the picture at the top of this post was the sky behind the airport as we departed. This is a beautiful picture-- but it doesn't even begin to do justice to the sight. Though it seemed really early and still very light, I knew that the sun would soon be setting-- and our plane would eventually turn into a pumpkin. So despite Husband's desire to go to just one more airport, he turned us toward home and we headed back to JYO.

We were rewarded with a great sunset as we entered the pattern. It's tough to tale a good sunset picture-- especially from a plane! But this gives you an idea.

I must say-- we started the day not knowing what to expect, but ready for the adventure of exploring new airports. It was really cool to see the different personalities of each airport along the route-- and all were within 75 miles of JYO. It really gave us an appreciation for what GA has to offer... and made us wish, not for the first time, that JYO weren't within the ADIZ and could have a little more of a relaxed atmosphere. But then, that's what make JYO unique!

Homeward Bound-- Part 4 of the Long Journey

2007-11-30T09:13:00.000-08:00

I realize that it probably seems like I've spent a lot of posts talking about one trip. But we learned so much on each leg, that it felt right to devote a post to each leg. So we've finally made it to the trip home (though I have another post started about a side trip that Husband took with one of his brothers while we were in Nashville... but I'll save that for another time).

We had planned to depart on Sunday-- but were keeping an eye on the weather, knowing that we might need to leave early to make it back. Saturday, we double-checked the weather and decided that though the forecast showed clouds, it looked reasonable for getting home. By Saturday night, though, the forecast had worsened. We decided that our best chance to get out of Nashville and back home was to leave as soon as it was light on Sunday. So we set the alarm for 5:45, warned B that we'd be waking him early to take us to the airport, and went to bed. Husband woke up Sunday morning and checked the forecast. The 6am forecast (put out around 20 minutes before 6) showed that contrary to prior forecasts, the clouds would be at a nice high height of 8000 feet for the whole morning. After a quick (and admittedly sleepy) conversation, we decided to sleep another hour and then get up and go.

Of course, delaying our departure by an hour meant that the family was up and about before we left... so it was really delaying the departure for two hours. Just before we left, Husband checked the weather again. Oh no! Soon after we checked the 6am, forecast, they issued a special (codeword: speci) forecast. This new forecast showed the ceiling was dropping by the minute! We started going double time to get packed up and out of there.

By then time we were ready to go, almost everyone decided to join us at the airport for a sendoff (that was really nice!). So we bundled up G and H, B's two kids who are 4 and 2, and Husband's mom, S, and B, and headed for the airport. The fun part of this is that we got to drive one of the cars out onto the field to load the plane. I know that sounds silly, but it was still cool! :)

We got a little more fuel, did a preflight, and took a few pictures of the gang with the plane (I'll publish them as soon as I get them off the camera!). One more look at the forecast seemed to be in order. We didn't like what we saw, but decided to give it a try. We looked at the minimum safe altitudes in the area and decided that if we were able to get up over around 2000 feet, we'd continue. If we couldn't make it to 2000, we'd turn around and land again. After hurried goodbyes, we got in and taxied out to the runway for departure, with me flying and Husband in the right seat. As we roared down the runway (can a Cessna roar?!), Husband waved to the family watching us. We were off... but not for long. We knew that there were towers not too far off the end of the runway, so were prepared to turn a bit early to stay well clear. We made the turn to the East, and just seconds later-- at around 1700 feet, ran straight into a layer of clouds. We were both a little surprised-- we'd had brushes with clouds on the trip down, but had always had a bit of warning beforehand. This time, there was no warning. I think the difference was that the clouds on the other day were puffy cumulus types. The clouds on this day were stratus- thick layers of clouds. After a moment of breathlessness, I had the plane in a turn and descending back to pattern altitude. But I was pretty worried because I knew from studying the chart-- and looking at the screen in front of us, that there were some other towers I needed to avoid. Unfortunately, on the other side was a TFR that I needed to avoid. So I told Husband to keep an eye on those towers-- both on the map and on the screen, and let me know if I started to come anywhere near them.

After a minute, we were clear of the clouds, the towers, and headed back to the now familiar JWN pattern for runway 02. We landed without incident and as we taxied off the runway, Husband's phone began to vibrate. His brother was calling to see what was happening-- they had all watched us and saw that we had quickly entered a cloud. We reassured him that we were ok, and that we were going to go take another look at the weather and decide what to do.

Looking at the weather and the charts, it was pretty clear that weather north of Nashville was reasonable for VFR flight, but weather south, east, and west was not. So we knew our only chance was if we could get north. The question was whether or not to try for it. Husband started calling AWOS for various airports to see if we could get more accurate information for what was happening. I headed out to talk to some pilots who had just landed to see if they had information on conditions north of the field. They had actually just flown in (IFR) from West Virginia-- pretty much exactly the route we wanted to go. They confirmed that if we could make it out of the immediate area, conditions were much better elsewhere. We also determined that the weather was likely to deteriorate throughout the day, so it was basically now or "never". Talk about pressure!

Here's where the fun begins. We had to decide what to do-- take off again and take another chance on the clouds? Or hang it up and wait for better weather? Or find another way home-- which likely meant leaving the plane, the dog, or both in Nashville. What would you do?

At first, I said no. This is the sort of thing that gets pilots killed. Husband was willing to acquiesce and leave it at that. But we decided to think about things with the idea being that we should not go-- which meant that instead of thinking of why we shouldn't, we were thinking about why we should. What we decided is that:

we could change our path and head straight north instead of going east first
we could airport hop-- fly from airport to airport as opposed to a straight line. This approach would give us more options in case weather was worse than anticipated, and would encourage us to make the smart decision in case the weather was worse (hey! the airport's right there!)
we reevaluated the minimum safe altitude, and realized that with the exception of the one group of towers that we could see from the airport, the msa was actually much lower-- around 1600 feet... meaning we could fly a little lower and still be safe.

With all of these things in mind, we decided to give it another shot. As we walked back out on the ramp, we also realized that it was much brighter outside than before and that the clouds seemed a little higher and more promising. We talked briefly about switching up our pilot flying/pilot not flying, but decided that it was working pretty well and stuck with that arrangement. So we climbed back in and headed out for try number two.

This time, we had success. We kept a very close eye on the altitude-- Husband calling out towers and constantly tuning different AWOS and ATIS frequencies so we could get an idea of weather. We did about 3 zigzags back and forth (over different airports), and finally felt like we were out of the worst of it about 30-40 minutes after departure. Clouds were still a little low, but we were consistently able to stay several hundred feet over minimum altitude and around 500 feet below the clouds. Of course, just as we started to get comfortable with our situation, I started to get uncomfortable with human factors! I had to go! Luckily, Husband was very nice about all of this, and we prepared to land at the next closest airport, 6I2. We landed no problem (I was worried my human factor need might disrupt my concentration!) and taxied over to the fuel pumps. No sense landing without getting fuel! After a quick stop to fuel, grab some snacks, and take care of the human factors... we were on our way again. This is how a quick stop is supposed to work!

As we took off this time, we found that we were able to get much higher. Going a little at a time (I was still concerned about ending up in clouds), we made it up to 5500 feet. I can't tell you how good that felt! We picked flight following as we bypassed the Lexington airspace. Now that the weather had cleared and we were headed home with a 24 knot tailwind (drastic change from the trip out!), things were good-- and I remembered something. I love flying!

We only had two other obstacles to maneuver. The route we had picked to travel home meant that we would cross the mountains at the end of the trip, more or less going straight across them West to East. When we approached the mountains, we could see a lower layer of clouds developing over them. At the same time, we wanted to climb a bit to get above the highest peaks. So, we started to pick our way through-- which confused ATC a bit as it meant we deviated slightly from our course. After we told them that we were "deviating to avoid the mountains and the clouds", they were happy and just told us to let them know when we had decided on an altitude and a course.

After zigzagging around the mountains a bit (boy, is that terrain avoidance handy!), we saw what looked to be a break in the clouds ahead of us. I pointed the plane towards the break hoping it would be big enough to get through. After making it this far, I didn't want to have to turn around! We sailed past big puffy clouds, deceiving in their beauty, and thankfully far enough away to still be safe and legal. The mountains were just below us. Husband kept asking if we were far enough above. They were deceiving in their scale: they looked close enough to touch... until you looked at the houses and cars and realized that actually we were well above them. As the mountains started to get smaller below us, we breathed a sigh of relief. We made it past!

Now, we had to figure out the second piece... we hadn't filed a flight plan back into JYO because we had thought we'd need to stop again... but looking at the fuel gauge, we would reach JYO just after we entered our hour of reserve. Knowing that we were flying back into familiar territory with good weather, we felt fine with this... so we pressed on. We thought about asking the controller to help us file one, but decided she sounded busy, and since we were back in our stomping ground, Husband cancelled flight following and filed a flight plan with Leesburg FSS (Leesburg Radio). He also agreed that it was fine to turn off the autopilot and hand fly the rest of the trip. We had decided that flying over mountains and with crazy weather conditions was safer with the autopilot keeping us straight and level and on-course. All of our maneuvering was done by putting the autopilot in heading mode and adjusting our heading to get us around.

In any case, we made it back to JYO, safe and sound, after only a little over 4 hours in the air... and that was with our non-direct route. What a difference winds make! It felt so good to know that we had made this long trip-- all on our own. It also made us realize we really need to get our acts together and get our IFR ratings so that we have more options. And it made us want a faster plane in the future!

Joyriding with the Brothers

2007-11-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

After our adventures, it was nice to walk into the warm familiarity of my mother-in-law's (S) house. I usually spend a lot of time cooking while I'm there-- partly because I'm really into cooking, partly because it's my established role, and partly because it's something to give structure and pass the time. It's been somehow easier to get to know each new sister-in-law (there are two others, now) if I have a spoon or a whisk in my hand. And early on, I started the tradition of providing tasty things to Husband's brothers to win them over. But this trip, I had something even better! A nice new-ish plane and a nice new-ish pilot's license!

So, to break up the days this trip, instead of the usual home improvement project that the brothers undertake for S, we decided to take a few trips out to the airfield. Friday was cloudy in the morning, but by the time we got underway, the clouds had started to lift enough for us to go give it a try. All four of us-- B, J, Husband and I went out to the airport, even though we knew only three of us would fly. I offered to let Husband go, but he thought they would be quite pleased if I took them.

The first challenge at the airport was getting fuel. The line guy had told us that self serve was $.80 less per gallon... which makes a big difference when you're buying 30 gallons or so! But this was our first experience with self serve. We talked about using the self serve when we flew to Bay Bridge-- until we found out that self serve there is $.25 MORE than full service. We managed to get the plane in the right spot, and get the ground placed correctly, and even figured out the trick to getting the fuel flow to start. It was pretty cool!

After fueling up, B, J, and I climbed back in and taxied out for departure. We put in a sort of zig-zag route into the GPS-- just so that we would have some sort of plan to follow... but really, we were just flying east, avoiding the TFR and the Charlie shelves... After takeoff, I extended out a ways to avoid these crazy tall towers (one of them was close to 2000 feet tall!) before turning right back towards our course. That took us right over Old Hickory Lake. This is one of the few times I've ever flown without a plan. Usually, we fly to go somewhere-- even if it's just to go check out another airport, or get lunch at some bad airport cafe. But there's almost always a real purpose to the flight-- even if we had to invent it ourselves. This was different. Though we had picked out an airport where we could land (ostensibly so B and J could switch seats), this was more just flying for the fun of it. So we sort of meandered along at about 1500 feet off the ground. We flew over the neighborhood where J's wife's parents live. And we flew over B & J's old boy scout camp. We went and looked at some sailboats, and B & J had me fly over a certain spot so they could see the "Crab"-- I'm still not sure what it was, but apparently it's some building that is built with all sorts of funny angles. After a little while, we decided to head back to the airport. I couldn't tell at that point if they were enjoying the experience-- they were both very quiet through all of this, but they both later affirmed that they had a great time.

The return to JWN was the most exciting part of the trip! JWN is right on the tip of BNA's airspace... and since we had been flying along the outside of the airspace, I figured we'd continue that arc and then turn back to make a 45 entry to the pattern for landing on 02. This was going reasonably well until a plane took off just as we were cross the extended centerline of the runway. Still shouldn't have been a problem-- if that plane had bothered to make any consistent calls or follow the proper pattern procedures. But no, that plane was an aerobatic plane (we assume, anyway), and it proceeded to make very sudden sharp turns in all directions-- including straight up-- all within 2 miles of the airport! Luckily, B and J were quite good at spotting traffic, and helped me keep tabs on the guy... but it was crazy! Every time I'd get established, he'd all of a sudden turn toward me, or cross my path, or something. The traffic warning was freaking out by this point-- trying to keep up with all the changes. And it was clear that this other plane was a lot faster than mine, too. Thankfully, we finally shook that plane (after calling out our position every 30 seconds or so- we had NO idea if he saw us!). There was another plane in the pattern as well-- that had come from the opposite direction. After a slight moment of panic when I thought we were on a 2 mile 45, but there was no runway in front of me, I readjusted my mental map to the right and entered a left downwind and managed to fly a nice pattern and land.

I was worried B and J might think I was a bad pilot because of all the craziness with the other guy. But I needn't have been-- the first thing they told Husband when he walked up was about this crazy aerobatics guy that was doing loops around our plane! Maybe a little embellishment, but hey, isn't that flying (fish) tales are all about?! :)

One Night in Somerset-- Part 3 of the Long Journey

2007-11-27T08:37:00.000-08:00

After checking in and getting Flyer (the dog) settled in the room, we ignored the "Do Not Leave Pets Alone in Room" sign and headed across the street to the Somerset Mall for some food. We were both starving after a long morning of frantically packing, checking the weather, getting to the airport and in the plane, and a stressful flight due to the weather uncertainty. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have tried this trip without the G1000. In fact, I felt a little silly for causing such a production and delaying for weather when the sky still looked okay, and there was just a little wind. I kept telling myself to trust the data we were getting from the points ahead of us on the journey, and that it was better to be on the ground, wishing to be in the air than to be in the air, wishing to be on the ground.

We had an *interesting* meal at the Somerset Tumbleweed Inn and thought about exploring the mall, but just as we left the restaurant, the rain came tumbling down. I have to admit feeling a little vindicated. Husband caught the look in my eyes and called me on it. We laughed, wondering if the kid who had brought us over the hotel was now thinking, "Oh.... That's the storm they were talking about!" After the rain came, we felt pretty at peace with our decision to hole up for the night, and made the best of it. We had both prepared for this sort of contingency and pulled out our laptops to get some work done. We even indulged and ordered pizza from Papa Johns for dinner. Hard to believe how quickly pizza comes when you're in a small town-- and it's the night before Thanksgiving.

After a good night sleep, a little workout on the hotel's treadmill, and a quick breakfast, we jumped in a taxi to head back over the airport. We had continued to monitor the weather through the night, assessing and reassessing our decision to land and overnight. So we thought everything was looking good for a 10am departure (we had waited to give the fog time to lift). On the drive to the airport, we talked to the taxi driver about the town. Apparently it's some sort of tourist town because of a nearby lake. We both lifted our eyebrows at that-- but didn't say anything (it looked like any other southern town to us!).

We climbed out of the taxi at the airport, and the sky did not seem to match our expectations. After preflighting, we were thankful to leave Flyer in the plane and go inside the warm FBO to figure out our options. Luckily, the FBO opened for a Gulfstream that had just come in, otherwise, we would have been sitting outside in the cold! For anyone looking for a quick fuel stop, I can highly recommend SME! They were so friendly, had a nice place to sit, decent computer access, and even had snacks out for us. At one point, they even offered to let us borrow the crew car to drive down to Nashville. We decided to wait and watch for a gap in the clouds that would let us out.

Watching the clouds rolls through and looking for a large enough opening reminded me a bit of being a little girl and trying to get the rhythm of the jump rope down so I could join a game of double dutch. While we waited for our 'jump rope game' to start, we wandered around looking at the airport. It was a nice little airport-- though they were chock-a-block with visiting planes. Another Gulfstream had landed the evening before-- and was still sitting there on the apron. Apparently the taxiway for the airport had recently been moved (perhaps to allow for an extension of a runway? or to provide more space for the airplane mechanic school based there?)-- and this had reduced the apron to the point that the staff weren't quite sure how they were going to turn the Gulfstreams around for departure. We ended up not seeing what they did-- fairly soon after the Gulfstream started its engines, we saw the opening we wanted, and made a dash for it, again with me flying and Husband navigating.

It was nice to be in the air again. We had to stay pretty low because of the clouds-- especially for the first few minutes. But we mainly stayed 100-200 feet above the VFR minimum safe altitude-- so we felt pretty good. Visibility (when we weren't in a cloud!) was pretty good-- and we could mostly see where the clouds were and appropriately ascend or descend as needed, so we only nicked a cloud once or twice. Departing the SME area, we flew right over the lakes the taxi driver mentioned. They were pretty cool! But it was a little alarming to fly so low over a body of water, especially when it seemed to be completely surrounded by state forest-- not a single good landing site around! We talked about what we would do if the engine quit on us right then. We both thought that trying to land in the treetops offered a better chance of survival than ditching in the lake, though maybe that had something to do with how cold we were right then!

Though it was a little strange to go so far 1500 feet above the ground, it was also kind of refreshing. We kept track of our route both on the chart and on the G1000, noting towers in our path. The terrain avoidance definitely gave us a little peace of mind as the landscape was mostly flat, but had little peaks interrupting the flatness from time to time. By this point, we felt very sure that we had made the right decision to wait out the weather, and the tension was measurably less in the cockpit. We both started to enjoy the flight and the sightseeing we were able to do along the way. All too soon, Husband started to notice landmarks that he recognized, and we were entering the edge of Nashville's airspace. We had decided to just fly along under the Charlie airspace (2400 feet), being careful to avoid the stadium TFR on our approach to John Tun airport (JWN).

We managed to get over the airport and into the pattern in the correct direction. The wind was really blowing hard across the plane as we flew downwind. I over-banked a tad turning final and Husband squawked a bit, especially since just as I started to roll out and simultaneously add flaps, the wind gusted preventing me from rolling out and instead keeping me turned steeply to the left. After getting that straightened out, and turning onto final, I was still having a little trouble getting a stable attitude and altitude-- but was relieved to see a four-light PAPI. The ground surface on this end of the runway was all over the place-- ridges, ravines, trees, wires, etc.

We settled out and floated out over the runway. Just as I thought the wheels would come down the last little bit, a big gust blew us up. I added a little power so that we wouldn't come back down too hard. Then, because it was an unfamiliar runway and I felt a little hesitation, I added power and did a go-around. Husband was pretty surprised-- he had been watching the wheels and knew I was only a few feet off the ground. We were both surprised when I took out a notch of flaps and we sank-- we both realized at the same time that I had only put in 20 degrees of flaps to begin with, so I was taking away important lift at a critical moment! Thankfully, the airspeed quickly started moving more to the green, and the stall horn stopped sounding, and the ground started floating away from us instead of toward us. This time around, I was nice and stable, so after a somewhat dramatic go-around, managed to get us on the ground in a respectable manner. We both let out a few "whoops" as we cleaned up the flaps and trim and started our taxi for the apron.

By the time we got the plane unloaded and all our bits and pieces stored, we saw Husband's brother B walk through the terminal and out onto the apron. After 6.5 hours of flying, 29 hours away from home, and a few unplanned detours, we made it safely to Nashville-- our first flying family vacation!

Unexpected Circumstances- Part Two of the Long Journey

2007-11-26T10:22:00.000-08:00

After dipping the tanks to see how much fuel we needed to add, and requesting this from the line guy who met us, we scurried off to the FBO at HTS. (Side note: fuel was CRAZY expensive here-- over $6 a gallon!!!)

After taking care of a few personal needs, we settled down to take another look at the weather. Even though we have XM weather and all manner of gadgets in the plane, we always still like to take a look on the ground... just in case something new pops out at us. Besides-- it's a lot easier to consider your options and play with different scenarios when you're still on the ground. We confirmed at this point that we would not be making it to our final destination (Nashville) today. The line of storms that indicated the frontal line was already arriving in Nashville. Though Husband's mom had cheerfully told us in a voicemail a little earlier that the sun was shining and it was looking to be "a beautiful day" there, we knew that if the greens, yellows, and reds were showing up over the radar there, there was no way we'd be able to get past that line in the sky. Especially not in a 172 with only a VFR license!

So we considered the options. We could go south to Tri-Cities (TN), west toward Lexington (KY), or southwest to Somerset (KY). With all of these options, we would then be able to reassess in the air just how far we would then make it towards Nashville and adjust the plan accordingly. The idea was to get as far as we could, then land and find someplace to bed down for the night, letting the front pass over us while we were safely on the ground. We ruled out Tri-Cities pretty quickly. Though we have personal connections there-- family ties to the area-- this was also the furthest west of our options, making it less likely that the front would get past in time for us to then make it on to Nashville in time for the big turkey dinner Husband's mom was planning. While there was appeal to going straight west to Lexington (or even Louisville) as we were pretty certain the storms would be past the area in time for us to depart, we were concerned about the wind that preceeds a cold front. Winds not only slow us down while up in the air, they can make landing safely pretty tricky if encountered near the ground. Especially if gusts are involved (and they usually are with fronts). So, we opted for going toward Somerset.

With this decided, we gave the dog a little rest break of his own, and then hopped back in the plane for the second leg of the day. This time, Husband was PIC and I was on the radios and charts. As we flew towards the south and the west, the skies got grayer and the clouds got lower... and the winds got higher. We probably could have made it another 20 miles or so to the next airport, but we decided to play it safe. If we got down there and the winds were too strong for landing (the runway there was 5000 ft long, but only 40 feet wide!)... we would have to turn back towards the east-- going further away from our destination. Besides, Somerset had a nice-sized yellow splotch on the map that promised better options for lodging.

We felt like quite the pioneers as we came into Somerset. Husband had a great landing, and we talked to Unicom and let them know that we wished to stay the night. Some really nice guys helped us tie down and refuel so that we'd be ready to go the next day. Then we all went inside to try and figure out lodging for the night. Luckily, there was a list of nearby hotels and we only had to call two to find one that had availability and allowed dogs. The next step was to arrange transportation to the Comfort Inn. We again got lucky as one of the guys working there offered to drive us over in the FBO's crew car. Ten minutes later, we were standing in the lobby of the Comfort Inn, checking in. I've always thought that folks associated with general aviation were nice people... this experience really proved that thinking!