« April 2011 | Main | June 2011 »
Well, we're off for another try. Tomorrow morning, Jill, Liz and I will depart Old Bridge, NJ in a second attempt to make it to Key West, the southernmost airport in the CONUS.
Our proposed departure time is 0530 (local) and we are going to try to make only one fuel stop (bladders being the prohibiting factor) near the SC/GA border.
Track our progress here: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0D52CfC2LZ9O6kyiAHNuQ8V3L0vgiZmZS
Posted by Dan Katz on May 20, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
With word that Len’s plane was ready at the avionics shop in Chester, Len and I arranged to get him out to Chester in order to bring the Cardinal home. We planned to do some instrument work on the way out there and then hop in the Cardinal once back in Bridgeport to do some more instrument approaches.
Someone had 988M booked for some practice, so I had one of the Archer’s for the morning. Without an operating GPS, it would be good practice with the VOR without any cheating and seeing where I was on a map!
Because it’s one of the maneuvers rarely given by ATC, but still a requirement for maintaining instrument proficiency, I did a practice hold at the Madison VOR for a couple of turns around. After proving that I could maintain the hold, I shot the VOR-A to Chester (which starts from the Madison VOR)(how convenient!). I didn’t quite get the ground speed fully stabilized at 90kts, so the timer was a bit off, but “broke out” just shy of the airport and was able to make an okay circle to landing.
Dropping Len off at the avionics shop, I headed back to BDR, since I had to pack up my airplane, do the paperwork and pick up Len’s car and drive over to the east ramp to meet him. Since he had the faster airplane, I knew it was likely he was going to beat me anyway. When I pulled into the parking lot at the east ramp, he was just taxiing in.
We decided to get fueled up back over at Three Wing. As we taxied over, we found that the passenger side headset jack wasn’t working (except for loud static in my ears) as well as a couple of other minor issues. So after Len cooled down and we fueled, we decided to ferry the Cardinal back out to Chester so that the avionics shop could fix the issues. I extended my reservation on the Archer and re-did the pre-flight and headed out following Len back to Chester.
On our debrief after the instrument approach to Chester, one of Len’s comments was that he felt I was a little low on the final approach to land. So as I approached Chester again, I consciously tried to stay a little higher on final—unfortunately, I ended up a little high and still a little fast and touched down late on the short runway. Not wanting to take a chance, I pushed in power and did a touch and go, climbing up and going around the pattern again.
On the downwind leg, I tried to get better established in my pattern. The speeds were looking okay on downwind, base and final until short final, when I again ended up high and a little fast—I bounced once and just poured in the throttle for a go-around.
The third try was the charm—I kept the speeds dead on this time and came in a slight bit lower and sure enough, it all came together with a nice landing and rollout. A little embarassing having to do two go-arounds, but better to have a ding on my pride than dings on the airplane and trying to explain to the NTSB/FAA why I tried to force a landing.
Len hopped in and we were soon on our way back to Bridgeport. New Haven tower patiently let us cut through their airspace and quickly handed off to Bridgeport tower. When we made contact with Bridgeport we had a fun exchange:
US: Bridgeport Tower, Archer 4317T is 8 to the east with information Golf for landing.
Tower then gave us a long straight-in approach to Runway 24 and cleared us to land.
We only got a little bit of instrument practice in, but it was a pretty good morning of flying—half of it solo time. Never a bad way to spend a morning.
Posted by PeteT on May 16, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The day after I played chase plane for Len, Saturday dawned a pretty morning as well, although weather forecasts predicted some cloudy skies on the way and a definite uptick in the winds in the afternoon. Today’s mission was taking a number of boxes of CAP Wing Historian related materials from our basement and delivering them to Syracuse (KSYR) to the new Wing Historian.
(Sidebar: Yes, after 22.5 years in Civil Air Patrol, I changed from “active” to “patron” status. Time commitments and other issues made it a good time to step back for a while from CAP. However, there’s another flying-related project that I’m working at that hopefully will take-off in the next couple of months (literally and figuratively) and I’ll fill you all in then.)
Out at the airport, I pulled the POH (pilot’s operating handbook) for 988M so that I could get accurate information on the current weight and balance and useful load stats for the airplane. I also checked the fuel tanks to find (unfortunately) the tanks were fully topped off. While normally a good thing, a full fuel load meant that we would have less useful load available for the flight. (Useful load is defined as the weight of the pilot, passengers, baggage, useable fuel and drainable oil. The maximum allowable gross weight – basic empty weight = useful load. For 988M, useful load is approximately 1200lbs.) But full tanks (88 gals useful ) is 528 lbs. Michiko and I make up another 330lbs or so…Therefore, the actual useful load starts quickly diminish when you’re adding a good number of 30lb boxes.
After calculating the weight and balance and ensuring we were well within the center of gravity limitations (eg the airplane would remain balanced in flight) by a solid safety margin, I filed our VFR flight plan and got my briefing.
The linesmen let us bring the car out onto the ramp to pack the airplane, which I did carefully, ensuring that things were snug and secure, even putting seatbelts around the boxes on the back seat! We had weighed and marked each box, so Michiko triplechecked the number and weight of each box as I loaded them to ensure we only took what the plane would handle with generous margins for safety. I then did a very careful and thorough pre-flight.
Soon we were lined up and departing Runway 29 with a slight turn to the right to put us on our course towards SYR. We had filed for 4,500 feet and our intended route was IGN (Kingston VOR)(northeast of Poughkeepsie) to DNY (De Lancey VOR (east of Walton NY in the Adirondacks) to GGT (Georgetown VOR)(southeast of Syracuse) and then direct to SYR. Instead of staying at 4,500 though, we ended up climbing all the way up to 7,000 feet to stay above the clouds. We had flight following, so ATC was happy with us staying at that altitude, even though it wasn’t the proper one for our direction of VFR flight (technically we should have been at 6,500 or 8,500, but 6,500 would have been too near the clouds).
The flight was uneventful—Michiko was bored pretty quickly. We didn’t really get to see much of the ground for good chunks of the flight because the cloud layer was broken to overcast. About 20 min out from Syracuse, the clouds starting breaking up a bit, and I found a good sized hole we could get safely down through, so we desceded to 3,500 feet. Under the clouds, it was a bit of light turbulence, so Michiko was less bored and less happy with the bouncing around. As Syracuse Approach vectored us a bit to make priority for a Lifeguard flight (air ambulence jet), Michiko muttered they should stop vectoring us around as we got bumped along. Soon we were cleared to land on 9,000 foot long Runway 28 which worked out perfectly, as the FBO is just on the left side at the other end of the runway.
The folks at Landmark were terrific, bringing a dolly out and unloading the boxes while I called CAP contacts to meet us at the FBO. The trip up had only been about 1.5 hours, so since fuel was $7/gallon and we still had a solid 4+ hours of fuel on board, I decided to skip buying fuel. The woman at the desk was kind enough to waive the steep ramp fee as well, since we were doing a quick turn trip (leaving as soon as the boxes were picked up) and it was in support of CAP—that was a very kind gesture and will certainly have me returning to Landmark facilities when I travel!
After a quick handoff to my CAP colleagues, I filed the VFR flight plan for the return. It lead to an interesting discussion with the briefer who said the tower had only closed my northbound flight plan 8 minutes earlier (despite being on the ground 35 min). He laughed and said they had recently had a tower guy come around for an orientation of what the flight service briefers do. The tower guy had commented that he had NEVER in his career closed a VFR plan for pilots…wow. He just assumed that when pilots asked him to cancel/close their VFR plan that they meant cancel the flight following. No wonder there’s always some confusion.
Knowing what conditions had been like on the trip up, I filed for 7,500 feet for the flight back. Calling up ground control, I gave them my info and said we’d request an initial departure to the east (where there weren’t any clouds) in order to climb up to 7,500 before heading south. Cleared to taxi, we passed the NY Air National Guard ramp, where I was surprised to see a MQ-9 Reaper (an unmanned aerial vehicle “UAV”)(smaller version of the attack UAVs being used in Afghanistan/Pakistan and other locales) being prepped for a flight. Apparently, the unit at Syracuse recently shifted from the F-16 to the Reaper—what a sad day that must have been for the pilots especially!!
The flight home was uneventful until we got down to the Adirondacks. For the first time, I experienced a mountain wave on the windward side of the mountains. Despite being trimmed out, the plane started to climb on its own and the airspeed started to drop off. I quickly re-scanned the manifold pressure, rpm, oil pressure and temps to ensure the engine was running smoothly—it had almost struck me as a sudden power loss—but all was good. Then I figured out that it must have been the tailwind we had, getting pushed up by the slopes of the Adirondacks. Freaked me out for a second.
Just southeast of the Adirondacks, the clouds looked to be thickening, so I found a hole on the lee side of the mountains to descend below the cloud deck. Unfortunately, it again meant that the last 20 min or so of the flight was pretty bumpy for Michiko, but she was a good sport about it, though she did say that I owed her a very good lunch or dinner for the discomfort I was causing.
Happily, I made a soft landing for her and we were quickly tied down and made short time of the paperwork and were soon on our way. (Ironically, the “good lunch” turned out to be a trip to Super Duper Weenie, one of the country’s best hot dog stands, which just happens to be in Fairfield!)
Posted by PeteT on May 13, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Friday dawned one of those crisp, sunlit, blue sky spring days with a promised amazing flying weather. I was providing chase plane duty for Len this morning—he needed to drop the Cardinal off for some avionics work at Chester Airport (KSNC) and I would follow in N988M to bring him back to Bridgeport before we both headed off to work in the city. Dressed nattily (khakis, dress shirt, brown check blazer), I got a weather briefing and then headed to the airport with Len. After dropping him off at the East Ramp, I headed over to Three Wing to pick up 988M.
Unfortunately, when I checked the squawk sheet, I found out the transponder had failed and there was no loaner/replacement unit available. So I quickly updated Len and scrambled to book on of the Archers. Without too much delay, I had the Archer carefully pre-flighted and did some quick mental re-calculation and re-sets. I didn’t want my mental preparation for making the flight in the 182RG to impact my decision making in the Piper, so I doublechecked everything I did.
Soon after Len took off, I had the engine warming up and called for my clearance to taxi. The winds were calm, but I had seen a jet take off on Runway 11 and had seen another plane take off on Runway 24, so I didn’t know what to expect. Ground Control laughed when I requested taxi to the active and asked if I wanted Runway 6 (right next to Three Wing). I replied that would be terrific; it would launch me essentially in the direction I wanted to go towards Chester. Ground Control came back saying “No problem. We’re Burger King this morning—“have it your way!””
With that cheerful start, I was quickly in the air and climbed up to 1500 feet. As I approached the edge of Bridgeport’s airspace, I requested to switch to New Haven tower. New Haven graciously approved my transition through their airspace and I homed in on the Madison VOR. The Archer I was flying, N4317T, didn’t have a GPS (note to self, bring the silly Garmin 496 always—that’s why you have it!!!), so it was the old fashioned follow the outbound VOR radial that would take me right to Chester. Sure enough, without too much difficulty, I made out the long line of hangars well before I saw the small runway between them.
My approach left me perfectly positioned to join the downwind for Runway 35. I came in a little hot, due to the different descent view of the Archer (haven’t flown one in a while), and I had been warned that the final into 35 sometimes had some drafts to contend with. The approach end of the runway has a significant drop off, so you can’t land short, ever. Instead, I ended up floating more than I wanted, but got the airplane squarely down and slowed up in time for the turn off and taxi back to the FBO.
Shortly after 8am, the avionics shop guy walked across the field to Len and I. They discussed the different items Len needed done and agreed Len could retrieve the plane next Saturday. Then Len and I bundled back into the plane and were soon launching back off Runway 35 and pointed back to Bridgeport. With the morning still glorious and quiet, New Haven again let us cut through their airspace and Bridgeport gave us a long straight-in approach to Runway 24, with a squeak of a landing.
Once we tucked away the airplane, I popped into the hangar to check on whether 988M would have a transponder available for the next day, as I had scheduled to bring a lot of CAP historian files to the new Wing Historian in Syracuse. One of the techs didn’t believe they’d have the transponder or a loaner, so I resigned myself to a VERY long day of driving to/from Syracuse.
Luckily by the time I got into the office, the avionics shop had left a message that they had found a loaner transponder and I was good to go for my flight Saturday. Well done!
Overall, a great way to start the day, with a short flight on a gorgeous day. Wish I could start every day like that!
Posted by PeteT on May 03, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
