Down for Maintenance

My fingers are itching.  I'm antsy and restless, squinting against the light from a bright sunny Texas fall day.

I'm not sick.  I just want to go flying, and I can't.  My Sundowner is in pieces in the hangar, undergoing annual inspection.  I suppose I could rent a plane, but at current rental rates, I think I will just hold off until 49C is back in the air.

The annual, as usual, started in the the hangar next door, where I had the LORAN removed, and some weak signals from the ILS, DME and ADF systems checked out.  Since the US government turned off the LORAN signals last winter, the radio was just dead weight and the antenna extra drag.  The weak signals were as expected, poor contacts somewhere along the coax path.  My 1982 model Collins transponder just needed cleaning, not replacing as I thought might be the case.  The stuck mic issue on my Garmin 430W turned out to be a bad contact.  Nothing major, just annoying and a wallet drain.

Last week 49C was moved to A&P hangar.  I need new tires, some corroded screws replacing, an oil change and analysis, as well as the annual inspection.  Perhaps they can also solve the long standing problem where 49C just wants to turn left and dive, but I'm not holding my breath.  I hope they can fix the issue where the front wheel vibrates from side to side like a stuck wheel on a shopping cart.  Apart from the annual, none of these were enough to ground the aircraft, just niggles that built up until the annual strip down and inspection, when I also clean up my list of squawks.

But it's been 3 weeks now, and I want my plane back.  I need to fly.........

Why do I Like Texas?

Well, it's Home.  With a capital "H".  I moved here in 1982, moved away in 1999, and back in 2006.  All the time I was away, I wanted to come back.  It's Home.

"But you can't possibly like the summers!"  OK, well you got me there.  But when we lived in the North, I disliked the winters even more (at least you don't have to shovel sunshine off your driveway before going to work!).  I thought about the Northwest , in fact Sally and I nearly moved to Seattle in 1997 (the job fell through), but I do like the clear skies of North Texas.  The horizon unblemished by trees, mountains - I do miss the Big Sky when I'm away from home.

Politically I'm a Stranger in a Strange Land here, being a classical Liberal in a Deep Red state, and for those who believe the re-definition that the Republicans try to commit of the word "Liberal", which they try to convince everyone is the same as "Socialist", I say they are not.  Liberals believe in the free market for goods and services, individual freedoms and rights (the opposite of socialism, where these are subordinate to the State); however Liberals like me, also believe that the purpose of government is to govern, and to assist those who need assistance in the name of justice and fairness.  So we believe that taxes are right and proper if they serve the purpose of fair governance.  President Obama is classical Liberal in this sense.

But Texas is Libertarian/Republican Land, especially in North East Dallas/Forth-Worth where I live.  They may be wrong, but the people here are nice, for the most part, and don't really act in line with their political beliefs.  They are generous, law abiding and always polite, even to government officials.  Especially the ones carrying guns.  And the sense of individual freedom here is greater than anywhere else I have ever been.

July, August and early September are times to survive as best you can, air conditioning cranked up to 11 (nod to Spinal Tap).  But October through December, and March through June are glorious times.  The Fall skies are bright blue and severe clear.  The Spring is pretty, with flowers and trees budding everywhere.  The Winter is interesting, with everything ranging from snow, to ice, to 80 degrees and sun - sometimes all on the same day.  And you can fly year round (important to me), and cost of doing so is far more reasonable than in the old country (I grew up in England).

In North Dallas the choice of foods is outrageous - we have Southern, Tex-Mex, and Cajun, all mixed in with Western BBQ, and traditional and new American foods such as Italian, and now Indian.  We lack really, really good seafood (other than Cajun) and Chinese, but perhaps I just don't know where to look.  When I lived in New Hampshire, the seafood and Italian were to best, but I missed all the rest.

So what do I like about Texas?  The freedom, the food, the people, the space, even the weather.  Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Never Again

It was nice Texas early Fall day in 1992, just like today.  The sun was shining, the sky was steel blue, temps around 80 deg F during the day, 50 to 60 at night (that's about 25C daytime, and 15C night, for you Celsius users).

I had got my private license the previous year, with about 75 hours PIC, and a wife-to-be.  I think those two things came together as a package, because once I had a strong, settled relationship, I could find the time and interest to finish up my private license.  We thought it would be fun to fly down to San Antonio and visit some friends there, and do it in my flying school’s Cessna 152, call sign Five Kilo Alpha.

My original intent was to pick up the plane after work on Friday, and return Sunday morning (autumn Sunday afternoons in Texas are dedicated to football).  We got to Addison airport (KADS) around 5 pm, expecting to take off shortly thereafter, and to land at San Antonio International (KSAN) around nightfall.  Astute readers will note from the tense, that things did not go as planned.

The school had lost my reservation.  There was no blue and white Cessna 152 sitting waiting for us, tanks full, keys on the rack.  After some discussion, they said there was one just coming out of annual in the hangar, 38 Hotel.  I could have that one, although it was new to me.  An hour or so later, it appeared on the ramp, signature still wet in the log book.  I started pre-flight.  Step #1 - turn on the master, and check the fuel level indication.  Ooops!  no fuel.  Call the office, await truck.  I completed the rest of the pre-flight, and climbed the struts for a visual check of the fuel level after filling - ooops #2 - no fuel caps!!!  A hurried search of the hangar reveled two caps, which clicked into place with a reassuring "snap!"

7pm, and we had engine start.  I taxied out to runway 16, received take off clearance, and climbed on runway heading.  A call to DFW approach, and I had clearance through the Dallas Class B airspace, South over Love Field, and past the skyscrapers downtown, as the lights started to come on.  I should mention here that as I rotated, one of the radios started to slide out of the rack, and my fiancée, sitting in the right hand seat, pushed it back in.  She told me later.  Fortunately, she is a good sport when it comes to flying.   She isn’t interested in the mechanics of learning to fly, but she would like me to teach her enough to land if I was incapacitated.

Level at 5,000 and 20 miles south of DFW on a heading of 190, I noticed that the radio reception with DFW departure was weak, but it was (just) good enough to communicate.  We continued to San Antonio, skirting the restricted airspace around Fort Hood.  Approaching the class C airspace around San Antonio, now fully dark and near 10 pm - I couldn't raise San Antonio approach, unless I circled as close as I could get, under the outer shelf of their class C ring, and called when facing AWAY from the field.  Finally I made contact, got clearance, and made a rapid final approach (120 kts on final) with a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 close behind.  Fortunately, having started to fly at Love Field, and finishing at Addison with a lot of business jet traffic, I was fairly used to that!

We had a good time in San Antonio, dining on the River Walk and drinking margaritas and Corona beer outside the Alamo.  Sunday morning dawned wet and drizzly.  The sky was 700 to 800 overcast, with light rain, the cloud tops reaching to 3,000 feet, and extending to 30 miles North of KSAN, beyond which CAVU reigned supreme all the way to Dallas.  Having only a fresh PPL, I was grounded.  We waited in the FBO lounge, and watched the NFL on the FBO’s TV.  And waited.  And waited.

Around 3pm, the ATIS finally stated that the ceiling was 1100 feet and 5 miles visibility.  VFR!  We loaded up the Cessna, and took off, along with 3 or 4 other VFR airplanes that had also been waiting.  800 feet AGL, and we were at the cloud bases again.  Not familiar with the area, and not having GPS (no-one did in 1992), I headed North(ish).  Trying to keep 500 feet below the clouds put me uncomfortably close to the ground, climbing put me too close to the cloud base, and seeing radio towers ahead on the sectional, I decided this was not safe and started to do a 180 turn to the left.

I made a radio call to approach to let them know, but I couldn't get a response with the poor radios in 38H.  I glanced at the AI - 60 degrees of bank, and a lot of descent - a real world, honest to goodness unusual attitude in IMC!  I leveled off in some random direction, very unhappy now, somewhat scared.  I was a disoriented, low time VFR  pilot in IMC conditions, without a working radio, in class C airspace, near a large airport.  I knew this was often how accident reports began - or ended.

Finally I raised approach, and got vectors back to the airport.  A wiser pilot.  An unhappy pilot.  A pleased-to-be-on-final-approach pilot.  An alive pilot on the ground.  We called our friends, stayed an extra night, and flew home on Southwest the next day.

A week later I flew on my own using Southwest Airlines down to San Antonio, picked up 38H, and flew it back to Addison in the normal severe-clear Texas Autumn skies.  Unable to raise DFW approach, I flew around the Class B, under the Eastern-most shelf over White Rock Lake, and landed at Addison.  A few days later, I was on the ground in my normal 152, and I saw 38H on approach, with the pilot complaining that he couldn’t hear the tower, and the tower complaining that 38H wasn’t responding to his calls.  I had told the school about the radio issues, and previously I hadn’t seen bad maintenance from them.  The school went out of business soon afterwards – maybe the rot was just setting in.

Lessons learned? 

1) Get there-itus caused me to continue the flight with a sub-standard airplane at night, and again on the way back in conditions I wasn't ready for.  The fact that it was only 15 minutes to clear skies influenced my decision.  I didn’t think about the fact that 15 minutes is enough time to die. 

2) My training was good (I got out of an incipient spiral dive essentially on instruments. But my judgment was not.  I learned to stay well inside the envelope! 

3) I had never had to face a maintenance issue with an airplane I was flying before.  The school’s aircraft were generally well maintained, and I had never seen anything worse than a low tire or fuel.  The next time I didn’t like something, I would (and did) abandon the trip. 

4)  ATIS or AWOS may not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Presumably it happened to measure the ceiling as a higher patch went over the field. 

5) Get Instrument Rated!!!!!!!!  I stopped flying for several years due to work, young children and other things, and started again in 2006 when I bought my Beechcraft Sundowner, which used to be an instrument trainer and has 1 of everything, and 2 of some things. 

Learning to fly

Not me.  Her.

I'm practicing for becoming an instructor by teaching my oldest daughter, Thing 1 how to fly.  We're only on lesson 3, and already she can climb, descend, speed up or slow down and trim, and perform level turns without gaining or loosing more than 100ft.

Next time - take offs and circuits.  Stay tuned!

Hudson River Approach

Those of us who fly respect Captain Sullenburger, who successfully ditched his Airbus in the Hudson River last year, after a double engine flame-out caused by geese, but we do not worship him.  We realize he did what he was trained to do, with a high degree of competency, but that many other pilots could have done the same.  So we applaud the demonstration of skill, and understand the "oh shucks" attitude, mistaken for modesty by the press, as actually being a form of embarrassment at all the fuss.

In instrument flying, we use approach plates to describe the horizontal and vertical maneuvers need to end up safely in the touchdown zone - this gag version shows what would be needed to replicate Captain Sullenburger's Hudson River Approach.

BTW, has anyone else, other than me, noticed that the cause of this was CANADIAN geese?  Were they in this country illegally?  Were they Muslim suicide geese?  Why is no-one else crying "FOWL" over this?

Turn hard right, mind the trees (and the hill)

Time to leave Gaston's. 

Where I normally fly from, McKinney airport in Texas, we have a 7,000 foot concrete runway with no building or trees within 1/2 a mile of either end of the runway.  I have room to take off and land 3 times on the runway without turning, and I'm at 500 feet or more before crossing over an obstacle.  So the departure from Gaston's was a new experience.

We loaded up the airplane with all four of us, plus luggage and the fish.  With 30 gallons of fuel in the wings, the Sundowner was just under it's maximum gross take off weight, and within the center of gravity limits ( I know because I had previously run the numbers).  I did a careful check of the airplane and engine, and taxied to the end of the runway as far back as I could get.  3,000 feet on dry, short grass is plenty, but nothing is less valuable than runway behind you.

Running up to full power, with 15 degrees of flaps and brakes hard on, I checked I was getting full RPMs and let her roll.  It seemed to take a long time to get the airspeed needle alive, but finally we had 60 kts and I eased Charlie into the air.  I stayed low in ground effect to let the speed build up until I had 75kts (best climb speed), and reached for the sky.

Best climb with full gross weight was not going to clear that trees covered hill, so I started a long curve to the right, intending to get into a downwind position where I could land back on the field if anything went wrong as soon as possible.  Did I say that I'm not used to trees?  Or hills?  It was a perfectly normal take off if you are used to such things, but I felt crowded.  Simulating a short field, max climb take off and doing one for real are not the same experience at all.  But they are the same to actually execute the movements and configuration, so all was well.

Continuing the climb on the downwind, I immediately felt better - I knew I could S-turn onto the grass if I had to glide in; I was visualizing the maneuver in my head.  Non-pilots would probably be surprised at how much we think about emergencies and "what I would do now if the engine quit", but this is actually normal.  Both guys in the front of your airliner are doing the same thing - only they have more procedures.  They calculate how much runway they need to accelerate to takeoff speed and then emergency stop - and based on that they call out V1 and V2 airspeeds on the take off run - V1 means you have to go - there isn't room to stop.  I do the same, only for me I make the decision to fly just before using 50% of the runway.  And yes, I have abandoned takeoffs if something wasn't right at that point.  But not this day.

Thing 2 wanted to fly over the dam, so having more than 1,000 feet at this point, I left the field and flew over the dam, then turned on course.  Fuel was too pricey at Gaston's, and I was already near max weight, so I had checked fuel prices on www.100LL.com, and selected Mt. Ida as my fueling stop.

Mt. Ida was just over an hours flying time away.  Fuel there was $3.85 a gallon, instead of over $5 at Gaston's, and nearer to $6 at my home airport.  It also has a 4,000 foot concrete runway, and was right where I was planning to turn to avoid the Hog MOA (Military Operation Area).  It was a Sunday, so I was sure the MOA was not active, but I don't like the high ground and lack of airports under it, so I determined to go around, expending the extra 10 minutes of so for additional safety margin (there we go again....).

After partially replenishing the fuel ( I couldn't just fill up like in a car - that would have made the airplane too heavy with all of us and our luggage), I took off from Mt. Ida heading west.  Once again it became clear that I couldn't get over the ridges with our heavy load on a straight climb out, so I made a right turn and did a spiraling climb over the airport.  Thing 1 thought we were like a big hawk looking for a large mouse!



Once above the ridges, I turned on course.  The air was becoming bumpy in the hot afternoon air, so I climbed (slowly) above the clouds to 8,500 feet where it was smooth, and slaved the autopilot to the GPS, pointing straight home.

4 Arrived, 10 Left

The water at Gaston's Resort is COLD!  It used to be a warm water river, typical for Arkansas, until they built the dam and hydo-electric plant.  Now the water comes from deep in the lake, and it's 45 to 50 degrees year round (7 degrees C).

While bad for the native river flora and fauna, this was good for tourism, and the State of Arkansas, smelling gold, stocked the river with Brown and Rainbow trout, and the occasional Cutthroat.  Outfits like Gaston's sprang up on the shore, and the rest is history.

The cabin we rented came with a free boat - but we had to rent the motor, chain, and chairs!  We didn't hire a fishing guide, and so for the first 2 hours, we caught nothing.  After breaking for breakfast, we talked with the dock guys, and followed their advice on how to load up the hooks, and where to cast.  Perhaps it was also that the river started to run, as they opened more generators at the dam, but soon we were catching fish!  Since we declined to pay for fishing licenses, only the 2 Things could fish, but I manned the motor and Sally de-hooked our catch and put them in the wet well.  The fishing limit was 10, and we caught 11, putting the littlest one back to gain some weight.

The dock guys killed and gutted the 10 keepers, for a small tip. 4 we ate for dinner, the other 6 went into the freezer and came home with us.