NY Approach

Apologies

I don’t know why, but Typepad has REALLY been acting up lately and, while the customer service folks have been extremely helpful, I keep running into issues with corrupted and irregularly formatted text and photos that won’t load properly. So please bear with me as I try to get some additional posts up. It’s been extremely frustrating, but I’m keeping at it!

Spring/Summer 2019 Snippets

The summer was full of a number of fun excursions—snippets and some photos below:

Gustave Whitehead Shed

Michiko and I decided to explore somewhere new on a May wekend and stumbled upon Captain’s Cove in Bridgeport. Besides some good seafood and outdoor seating on a beautiful late spring day (and aviation themed decoration), we found some sheds with little artisan businesses just starting to open up for the season. One was this Gustave Whitehead shed, which unfortunately was not open at the time.

I’ve written about Whitehead before: https://www.fordstreet.net/nyapproach/2015/04/im-just-sayin.html. He is alleged to have been the first to fly a heavier than air, powered, controlled flight in 1901, two full years before the Wight Brothers. The full story, and the Smithsonian’s secret contract with the Wright Family estate, is incredibly intriguing!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead

Fogged Out!

At the end of June, Milton and I wanted to get some flying in. Milton asked if his new bride Allison could join us, which was fine with me. Meeting them out at Bridgeport, we got settled in to Gwaihir and headed off towards Block Island for breakfast. As we headed east down the Connecticut shoreline, however, we could see some very low fog over the north and south forks of Long Island. Sure, enough, as we got closer to Block Island, we could see nearly the entire island was shrouded in a thin fog bank, very low to the ground. We stayed at altitude and flew a circle around the island, catching a glimpse of the runway, but also seeing the tops of the offshore windmills sticking up out of the fog.

Rather than trying to get into Block Island, which was saying it was marginal VFR (now way in hell that was VFR!), we decided to play it safe and head to Groton to the diner there for breakfast. Allison and I both got some cool pictures of the fog, including amazing bow waves of fog heading east towards us from Long Island—I’ve never seen fog doing that before and it was pretty cool!

On July 4th, I celebrated freedom by going for a quick solo flight, just punching some holes in the sky. Once I’d landed back at Bridgeport, one of the Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris jets I wrote about back in February 2016, landed and taxied in. It’s a LOUD jet when taxing, with a VERY high pitched engine whine.

7/27 trip to Block w Lisa and Patrick

It had been too long since we had seen our good friends Lisa and Patrick. As we tried to find some dates that would work for dinner, I offered that if we had nice weather, we could all fly somewhere for lunch or dinner. They took me up on it, so Michiko and I made the VERY short hop up to Meriden (KMMK) (about 8 minutes) to pick them up.

After a quick safety briefing, we taxied out for takeoff. Unfortunately, we found out that Lisa’s headset wasn’t functioning properly—she could hear us the three of us talking, but her microphone wasn’t working, so we couldn’t hear her. To say that Patrick was gleeful of Lisa’s dilemma would be an understatement!  He teased her mercilessly about the inability to talk as he gloated in the knowledge that he couldn’t hear her retorts. (They’ve been married a long time and we know that his teasing was with the utmost love, but we all had a lot of laughs (including Lisa).

 

Oh Canada! First International Flight - Bromont, Quebec

At the end of May, I finally was able to do something I’ve wanted to do for years—fly a plane to Canada!  As I started to get serious about learning to fly back in 2006 and began practicing flight planning techniques (the old fashioned way with paper charts, a plotting device (part ruler, part protractor, and an E6B calculator (aka “whiz wheel”) (for speeds, wind angles, fuel consumption etc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B ), one of the earliest flights I plotted out for practice was from Bridgeport up to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada. (What is normally a 16-hour drive would be an approximately 4-hour flight in Gwaihir!)

As a way to incentivize myself to make my first international flight, a couple years ago, I did some hoop-jumping to square away international requirements for the airplane, including getting the airplane’s radio station license re-filed in my name and getting a US Customs sticker for Gwaihir. Unfortunately that’s when the cardiac diversion happened, but I renewed the Customs sticker again for 2019 (in the midst of the government shutdown (seriously folks?!))

Dan offered to teach me and another pilot friend of his, Justin, the ropes in how to do the border crossings correctly and easily. Having an experienced hand to guide was a terrific boon as the process is a bit daunting in terms of paperwork/process. Dan’s guidance made it pretty logical and straightforward...we even did a conference call run-through a couple of nights before the flight.

In essence, the process starts with filing flight details and crew and passenger manifest with US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) via their e-APIS system (Electronic Advanced Passenger Information System) for each US EXIT an ENTRY. They confirm receipt and give you a confirmation number...the confirmation includes a statement whether the travelers are cleared for the flight. After CBP approval, you call CANPASS (Canadian Passenger Accelerated Services System) for Canada’s Border Services Agency and provide them with your entry details and passport details for each traveler. CANPASS then gives you a confirmation number.

The plan was for Dan and Justin to fly up from Old Bridge, NJ in Dan’s Bonanza and meet me at Bridgeport. We would then take Gwaihir on the trip north to Bromont, Quebec, just across the Canadian border north of Burlington, VT. So first thing in the morning, I submitted both my outbound and inbound e-APIS manifests and printed out the two confirmation emails. Then I called CANPASS and had a very brief and pleasant conversation with the Border officer and jotted down the confirmation number she gave me. Finally I filed an IFR flight plan to Bromont and headed out to the airport to meet Dan and Justin.

Dan and Justin had just taxied up when I arrived, so after quick introductions and a thorough preflight of Gwaihir, we fired up and copied our IFR clearance to Bromont (CZBM). The routing was almost nearly due north to our destination. Our flight was uneventful, pleasantly chatting amongst ourselves and popping through one little layer of cloud so that I could actually log 0.1hours of actual instrument conditions! There were some pretty mountain vistas of the Adirondacks as we got north and somewhere near Burlington, the ATC controller gave us instructions to head direct to Montreal, which was north and west of our actual destination. As soon as we were handed off to the Canadian controller, however, we were routed direct to Bromont.

We took some photos of the GPS to celebrate as we crossed the Canadian border and soon were descending towards the airport. They were landing on Runway 23, and there was some glider activity in the area, so I stayed west of the airport until we were just past the airport and then joined the pattern for landing. Touchdown was pretty smooth and as soon as we shut down, before opening the doors, we called CANPASS on the cell phone and I gave them the confirmation number. The border officer asked if there had been any changes to our passenger manifest and whether we had brought any illegal substances, including cannabis. After confirming we had no changes and no contraband, she wished me a pleasant stay and that was it!

As we headed into the FBO, we called the US CPb office in Burlington, VT where we were foing to clear US customs on the way back  One of the US requirements is to call the airport you’ll be landing at no less than 2 hours before you land so that they know you’re coming (even though they have youe e-APIS info with details already).  After the call, we enjoyed a great meal at Bistro M, tight there on the field, with the menu in both French and English.  They specialize in numerous variations on eggs benedict and omelettes, although I did not see any poutine on the menu (probably a good thing for my heart!)

We picked up our IFR clearance from Montreal Flight Service hand prepared to head back. Justin took most of the short second leg as we left Bromont to head to the US. Some weather had moved in on us from the west, with some moderate rain coming down and Justin was rock solid on the controls as the controllers navigated is around some of the heaviest rain and vectored us into position to shoot the ILS 15 approach into Burlington. He handed the controls over to me as we neared the approach fix, as he was flying from the right seat in an unfamiliar plane, so I handled the approach, which came off nicely.


We taxied over to the Customs office and parked as instructed within the red box painted on the tarmac and shut down. We stayed in the airplane, with the windows and doors shut, until the CBP officer came out and gave us instructions. He ran a Geiger counter around the airplane and inside as well and then we followed him inside to do the immigration kiosk just like you would at any international airport. He asked us a couple questions about our trip and that was it. Then we headed next door to Heritage Aviation FBO where we were treated to fresh cookies, coffee and given little bottles of maple syrup to bring home!

By the time we left for Bridgeport, the rain was a little lighter, though we hit more instrument conditions through VT before the clouds started to open up a bit more. The flight was smooth though and we got a straight in visual landing for Runway 24.

We had a great time checking off this accomplishment and, now that I know the process, I look forward to doing it again, hopefully soon, with Michiko.

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