NY Approach

What is the world coming to???

Just a quick post here.  Apparently some people in Florida think its fun to take pot-shots at low flying airplanes.  This article eludes to the fact that some homeowners in the area might be annoyed by the aircraft and want to close the airport (at least that's my read of it).  To all the homeowners out there:  If you buy a home close to an airport, expect to hear aircraft!!!  That should go without saying, but time and time again people buy houses on the approach path to an airport and then try to close the airport!

This story reminded me of a flight on 4th of July when fireworks were going off all around the airplane...  I made a comment (to the others on board) that it seemed like they were aiming for us, maybe they were???

A feel good story

Need a feel good story to pick you up, try this one: http://forums.aopa.org/showthread.php?t=28695 (sorry if that requires a login).

 

Summary of it is a 20 year old college student/student pilot had his bike stolen from in front of his house. He used the bike as his primary form of transportation since he had sold his car to pay for flying lessons (yeah, we’re usually that devoted to flying). He had no way to get to the airport to take his flying lessons and was having trouble getting to class and generally around campus. The kid was pissed and just wanted to rant a little bit.

The end result is that the group of pilots on the board each chipped in a little bit and gave him enough money to buy a new bike (one guy even donated a backup bike for him). The net result is that the kid continues to fly and tells everyone he meets that the bike was paid for by pilots from around the country. Certainly there were some gripes and some people were upset that he used the board to make a profit, but I don’t feel that was his intent.

The lesson here is that pilots generally band together. We’re kind of birds of a feather, pun intended. I’ve been in random places where cabs were an almost impossibility and fellow pilots asked me if I needed a ride somewhere. Likewise, I do the same when the shoe’s on the other foot.

Maybe we’re the last true “brotherhood” (ladies included) in the US. Maybe it’s that feeling of camaraderie that pilots really enjoy. I know that I enjoy a good chat over a hot meal or cold drink after a long day of flying. To be able to sit down and recap the day with fellow pilots makes it just that much better.

Unbelievable

I simply can’t believe it. I have been a CAP member for 15 years now and never seen anything like this. Cadet Orientation Flights are what most CAP cadets join for, they really like airplanes. Let’s face it, besides the members (cadet and senior) with the over-inflated egos who just want to boss people around (generally about 90% of the Wing and Region Commanders included) most people join CAP to fly.

Part of the CAP cadet program allows cadets to go flying in an aircraft. They can’t be charged anything for the flight or anything related to the flight (we often try to cover their transportation costs to the airport) so that they have the best opportunity to fly. We only do the flights on good weather days and only with airplanes in tip-top shape. It’s a given that a fair number of flights will be cancelled due to weather. Some are cancelled due to aircraft issues (mechanical, geographic placement, or getting bumped for a higher priority mission), and some are cancelled because the funding is not in place.

Yesterday, I had a nice new Cessna 182 with the Garmin G1000 for the cadets to oooh, and ahhh for; I had money in place and the weather was cooperating with clear skies and light winds. We even booked two times for the cadets to take a tour of the ATC Control tower at the airport just to keep them excited. The unit promised me 6 cadets and we were ready and even had transportation for them to the airport. It looked like it was going to be an excellent day. I avoided scheduling clients for the day and tried to make sure my “to-do” list was clean so I wouldn’t be bothered.

I arrived at the designated meeting point at 0715 AM (cadets were told to arrive at 0700) to be ready to meet me. I found ONE cadet… one… Solo uno…. Obviously I tried to reach the coordinator of the activity. Through assorted sources, I got the skinny on the six scheduled cadets:

1)    He was there, good job Cadet Ou.

2)    MIA, told he/she was going to be 35 mins late. Creed I learned from the USNA: “If you’re early, you’re on time; if you’re on time, you’re late; if you’re late, you’re dead.” Learn it!

3)    Sick

4)    Family Issues???

5)    Membership paperwork hadn’t been processed yet

6)    Membership paperwork hadn’t been processed yet

The unit was responsible for the last 2, and shouldn’t have asked for 6 flights if they only had 4 members available. The 35 minute late cadet should be prohibited from flying for at least a year. The sick cadet should’ve called the night before, as should have the one with family issues.

So my beautiful day with a perfect airplane and money to spend went by while I slept. My rest was disrupted by getting up, getting a weather briefing, driving to the meeting point, talking with one cadet for 15 minutes and driving home to return to sleep. (It’s recommended we don’t fly with just one cadet for legal reasons.) Meanwhile I lost out of a day for servicing clients, made no money and logged no flight time. Phooey on these irresponsible cadets. If this were still 1993 (when I joined) they’d be doing pushups for the 3 hour duration of the next squadron meeting!

A Grand...

My favorite Broadway play (ending soon) asks the question “How do you measure a year?” The premise of the question is, can a year really be measured as 525,600 minutes, or is it more substantial than that. For pilots it really is that easy, at least on the surface. We measure our experience and our social status (in the GA community, at least) by the number of hours we’ve logged in the air.

A pilot’s logbook is a very careful record of his/her total life in the air and every minute is carefully recorded as time spent flying a particular airplane in particular conditions. Milestones are celebrated and mean that the pilot has survived long enough to warrant praise by his comrades. Pilots have to contend with many things which cause them to stop flying: money, fear, family issues, medical issues, mechanical issues and the ultimate cause to stop flying, death. Let’s be honest, flying is not as safe as taking up knitting, for example.

Our logbooks contain a remarks section which is used to remind the pilot of the particular flight. Some people record just trip information, or passenger’s names, or financial information. On those flights when the pilot learned something very important, he/she usually records a short reminder. These would be overlooked by a careful observer, but not by the pilot. The pilot knows that the lesson he/she learned on that flight is one that they will carry with them for life and so it warrants at least one word in the logbook.

I’m not one to hide my experience from my students. Whenever I feel that my student would benefit from a story straight out of my logbook, I think back to those lines which contain one word entries and convey the story so that the student can learn. There’s an old saying: “Learn from other’s mistakes, because you’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself.” I hope my students all learn from my mistakes, because I sometimes wonder how I lived long enough to make them all.

Here’s a few of the one liners, I’ve got:

·         7/12/02 - Tire – A flight with my wife (then girlfriend) over NYC one night in a C172 with wheel pants (tire covers to make the plane go faster. When I landed, the left main tire blew out and we were stuck on a taxiway until we pushed the plane off to the parking area. Lesson learned: Check for tire wear by moving the plane forward a few inches.

·         9/20/02 – MVFR – A flight with my wife (then girlfriend) and brother to drop him off in upstate NY. All the weather reporting stations showed Visibility of 10 miles and clear skies, when we got about half way, we were under an overcast layer and skirting clouds, made for a hair raising “scud run” there and back. Too many pilots have been lost while “scud running.” Lesson Learned: then the temperature and dew point spread is only 1 degree, there’s going to be low clouds!

·         3/29/03 – L3WX – A flight in which another CAP pilot and I accidentally flew into a building thunderstorm while trying to get back from a meeting. After watching the altimeter spin up and down over 400’ each direction, we elected to divert to Orange County. Lesson Learned: Thunderstorms are impossible to deal with, information and technology are only the start of the solutions, fuel and a wide berth or a runway to land on are the answers!

·         8/29/03 – TS – Thunderstorms. This time I gave an appropriately wide berth to the storm, but an adamant controller wanted to send us back into it. It wasn’t until a 747 pilot refused the same clearance that the controller realized he would actually have to pick up the phone and call NY approach (all of ten seconds of his time) to get us a reasonable routing. Lesson Learned: The word UNABLE means exactly that. Don’t let a controller send you somewhere you don’t want to go.

·         5/29/04 – Fun Takeoff – A takeoff in which a wind gust turned the airplane nearly on its side when we were only 100’ off the ground. Lesson Learned: Keep the wing down and maybe stay on the ground until the wind dies down a bit.

·         7/11/04 – Deer – A flight with a friend in which we landed at an airport to get fuel, only to find that there was no self-serve pump and the fuel office was closed. On takeoff from this Podunk airport, a deer jumped out onto the runway for the sole purpose of scaring the hell out of us! Lesson Learned: Do a high-speed taxi to scare away animals

·         5/27/07 – After crash – A flight with a friend who forced me back “on the horse” after my Instructor died in a accident. Without this flight, I likely would have let fear get the best of me and would probably not be flying now. Lessons Learned: Experience is irrelevant when you take off too heavy and try to “showboat” doing slow flight too low to the ground. Always get back on the horse after you fall… ALWAYS.

·         7/25/05 – OSHKOSH!!! – A flight with my wife (then girlfriend) and friend to the aviation capital of the world during the summer. To be there is amazing, to fly yourself there is the ultimate experience. We even got a pat on the back with a “nice job Comanche” from the controller when we landed on the near dot.

·         11/26/06 – She took it for 0.2 – A flight with my wife in which she took control of the airplane for about 10 minutes. She successfully made some turns and a descent before giving it back to me. Lesson Learned: Everyone can overcome their fears even if it’s just for 10 minutes.

Yesterday I added another little entry: “1000th hour!” I made the flight with a pilot which I have the utmost respect for and with my loving wife who was there to kiss me somewhere over New Jersey when my personal Hobbs meter clicked over the thousand marker. The wonderful event happened at position 74.869130W / 39.467490N at an altitude of 2960’ MSL and a speed of 166.4 miles per hour at 2239 UTC on 13 April 2008. We celebrated briefly before getting back to the business of flying and getting prepared for our descent and approach into Linden, NJ.

I have now spent just over 1000 hours in the air. Looked at another way, I’ve spent 41 and 2/3^rd continuous days in the air, but, like 525,600 minutes, it still seems like an inadequate measure of the last 6 years of flight experience. I’ve learned an enormous amount, but I know that I still have what seems like an insurmountable amount left to learn. My students have been my best teachers so Pete, Milton, Marc, Liz, Eric, Jill, Rocky, Ray, Bob, Max, Howard, Spencer, Sharon and most importantly Gloria, please keep teaching me those important lessons and I’ll keep trying to learn from you as best as I can so we can both benefit.

Wish me luck and a safe journey on my next thousand hours aloft.

Frustration

I seem to have hit some sort of block in my instrument training.  Whether it's mental, subconscious, a training plateau, or something else, I haven't been able to figure it out.  My instructor and another very experienced IFR pilot haven't been able to pin it down.  My wife, with her psychology education, hasn't been able to put her finger on it.  It's causing me frustration and consternation--I rarely fail at things and don't like the feeling at all.

With my IFR re-test scheduled for last Saturday afternoon, Dan and I did 90 minutes practice on the simulator the morning after Thanksgiving.  Dan threw in some turbulence for the first time and a 15-knot wind component.  It made the sim shaky, but I couldn't use that to explain why I missed little things that I shouldn't have done.  For example, after a VOR-A approach to POU, I went to do the hold for the missed procedure and overdid the wind correction a lot, throwing me into confusion of where I was.  I was mentally disoriented from my thinking I was south of the track I wanted, when in fact my turn had been so tight that I ended up on the northern side of the track--and not being able to figure out why my VOR needle wouldn't swing across.

I had other little mistakes throughout the rest of the sim time--nothing repetitive like forgetting to start the timer or not slowing down in time or something that we could put our finger on and say "ah-ha, there's the problem."  Rather, each approach had some little thing wrong with it--but never the same thing twice.

Dan wasn't feeling confident of signing me off to take the exam on Saturday.  He didn't want to set me up to fail a second time.  But it bothered him that I had nailed my ride with Paul last Saturday night as smooth as silk--so he didn't know if it was just an on-day for me or an off-day.  I wasn't feeling all that confident as well--I didn't want to fail a second time and I didn't want to fail Dan either.

We decided to do an hour's flying to see if the airplane was better than the sim.  It was a breezy afternoon, so conditions were  similar to the simulator with light turbulence and some gusty winds.  With only an hour to play with, we scooted up to Danbury and shot the VOR-A.  I did the same kind of boner routine, failing to twist the OBS dial on the VOR receiver to the final approach course as Dan vectored me right across the approach path.  Once back on track, however, everything went smooth on the rest of the approach as I descended and then held my minimum altitude as required.

On the second approach, we did the localizer to Runway 8 (horizontal guidance, but no glideslope).  I did it flawlessly.  My timer ran out smack over the field just as it should have. 

So we turned south and headed back towards Westchester.  Dan set me up for the VOR/DME-A to Westchester--the same approach I had done flawlessly in the dark with Paul a week earlier.  This time, when we crossed the VOR, I started my timer and descent....only to recall too late that the VOR/DME doesn't use a timer, it's all based on distances from the VOR, not time.  And the descent doesn't start from the VOR--in this instance, the VOR is not the final approach fix--the 9 mile distance marker is the final approach fix and descent point.  So I busted the minimum descent altitude right at the start of the approach.

It's little things like that--little things that are critically important to safely shooting an instrument approach--that are driving me crazy.  It's not one thing that I consistently do and can address--it's these various little things.

So after we tucked the plane away (I made a very nice crosswind landing to the numbers by the way), I called the examiner to postpone the flight test, explaining that I just wasn't being consistent enough and didn't want to fail it twice.  He was respectful of the decision and just said to give him a call when I was ready.  Ultimately, it was the right choice--the previous failure notice he gave me was only good for 60 days (which ran out in October), so I would have had re-do the entire oral and flight test, not just the approach portion I had failed.

I've got a few ideas to work with:  I need to come up with a good memory aid for reading the approach plates and picking up the altitudes, etc that I need (something like the TTTTT (turn time twist talk think) aid); I need to keep a highlighter with my kneeboard so that I can highlight the couple of key things I need to remember on the approach plates (altitude at final approach fix, minimum descent altitude, time/distance to missed approach point, and first step of missed approach procedure (usually climb!); and practice my tail off on the simulator some more so that every approach is flawless, consistently, all the time.

There's a lot going on in my life right now, and it's entirely possible that this is causing subconscious rumblings that are interfering with my instrument flying--but that's a fact of life and a real world scenario.  You can guarantee that it won't be a calm, nothing-happening-in-my-life kind of day when I have to shoot my first instrument approach in real conditions on my own.  So I've got to find a consistent way through this training/mental block to get me on the safe side of this.

Practice practice practice.

November flying

So November has been a whirlwind month, to say the least!  Work has been frenetic again (I can't believe it's November already--where did the year go?!) and the rest of life has been equally insane.

The good news is that I've been up flying three times this month for some great practice with Dan as well as a quasi-check ride with Paul, for a grand total of 8.7 hours (6.7 simulated instrument) and 15 approaches, including my first night IFR work.

On the 4th, I flew with Dan for 3.6 hours, hitting all the old familiar approaches at Orange County, Poughkeepsie and Sky Acres.  Dan threw in some partial panel, covering a couple of instruments to make sure I could still feel my way around.  We also did some landing practice at Sky Acres which has an upsloping runway that throws off your perception.  Dan also introduced me to NDB approaches (non directional beacon)--we think the appropriate piece of nav equipment was working since the approach came out right (no one seems to trust the one in the CAP plane we've been flying).  It's somewhat like flying a VOR, but really you just keep the needle pointed directly ahead of you or directly behind you as much as possible.  Needless to say, it's a non-precision approach.  The catch is that it's still on the tests, even though many of the NDBs are being decommissioned across the US as GPS and newer technology takes over.

On the 11th, Dan decided to hit me over the head.  He found 3-4 approaches in New Jersey at various airports and each one had a little trick/catch to it.  I did fairly okay with these new challenges but we practiced them a couple of times to make sure I worked out the kinks.  I still made some of the little problem mistakes that I always seem to make--I haven't been able to work out these issues--seemingly minor but always different.

After a quick breakfast/refuel stop at Blairstown, NJ (nice little airport cafe there), Dan decided to work on my instrument scan, so we went up and he first covered up virtually all the instruments except one.  Once I mastered that one (holding my altitude rock steady), we switched instruments (heading).  Then we started adding a couple more instruments to the mix.  Before long, my instrument scan was getting back into swing and my flying was steadier.

Last Saturday night, I did a check ride with Paul to see if I was ready to re-take my instrument test.  We talked through for a while what might be causing the little mistakes I was making and Paul offered a couple of suggestions.  Then we launched into a beautiful smooth night.

Since we didn't have a lot of time, we just worked around Westchester Airport.  We did the ILS 34 two times and both came off without a hitch.  Then Paul had me head northward and we shot the VOR/DME-A for Westchester and it was flawless.  We finished up by shooting three stop and go landings (to extend my night currency for another 90 days).  Paul felt the flight was smooth--I felt that way too--it had just felt really "on" for me and I felt good about it.

One of Paul's tricks was exceedingly helpful--set the throttle and then take my hand off it--rest my hand on my knee or on the trim wheel and use the trim wheel to make tiny corrections.  The other trick fit right in with the first--once the plane was trimmed out, Paul would have me take my hands off the controls and put my head down to count aloud--count as long as I felt comfortable for and then look up.  I would be able to go 15 seconds or so before having to look up--only to find the plane was still flying straight and leve.  Paul said the purpose of this trick was to get me to trust the airplane.  If it's trimmed out properly, it will continue flying straight and level, hands-free, for a while.  It gives you more time to a) stay ahead of the plane and b) do other things that need doing (glancing at the approach plate, folding a chart, check ATIS at the airport you're approaching, etc.).

A Little Quiet...

Sorry that it's been a little quiet on the flying front but there have been some non-flying activities (believe it or not!) that have been sidetracking me for a couple of weeks, hopefully only temporarily.  I'm not going to go into any detail, but it's been a perfect storm of activities and issues circling around--some good, some we don't know yet.  October at work, for one, has been the single busiest month I think I've had in almost 13 years with the company, at least in terms of my caseload. 

Then too there's been some travel--got to go to Boston for some work and then a long weekend, including game 6 of the ALCS at Fenway--awesome time!  And just some downtime to spend with my wife--hanging out together after errands are done--just a nice luxury we don't usually get too much of.

But I haven't forgotten about the flying (not by a longshot!).  I got my new IFR charts (now that they've redesignated the chart numbers to correspond with new geographical areas--but I got all the right ones I needed) and approach plates a week ago (the IFR charts, approach plates and some other publications are updated every 56 days to keep things current) and have already started practicing with them on the simulator in the basement.  While Michiko was working on our computer updating some iTunes, I shot 5-6 approaches at Poughkeepsie, Sky Acres and Bridgeport, including VOR-A, VORs to a specific runway and ILS.  It was some good practice and I found that for the most part I was remembering to do all the little things I was supposed to do.  That means the couple of long training days with Dan really paid off by ingraining things into my head.

Also, I've been trying to do a lot of reading--I recently got some back issues of Flight Training magazine, which I enjoy reading cover to cover.  I also finished a recent biography of Jimmy Stewart, though it barely touched upon his flying career. (Note to self--if interested in writing a nonfiction work, Jimmy Stewart's flying would be a great topic--while there's a book about him as a bomber pilot, there's very little about his private flying and his Air Force Reserve career after WWII.)  I just started a flying classic, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars, which I've never read before.

And I'm scheduled to fly with Dan on Sunday morning for a few hours to continue honing....can't wait to get back into the air!

Long Days of Practice

A little overdue for summarizing some instrument training, so I apologize.

The last day of September I did my CAP Form 5 annual check ride (a requirement to ensure that pilots are maintaining safe flying proficiency and adherence to CAP flying regs).  It was a nice afternoon of VFR flying out to Orange County airport and back to Westchester.  Along the way we did stalls, slow flight, short and soft field landings and takeoffs, talked through emergency procedures, night flying, paperwork, etc.  It was a pretty engrossing task, with a couple hours of talking and 2.4 hours of flying, but yet another good chance to fly with another instructor to pick up little hints and best practices.

Newly endorsed to fly CAP airplanes for another year, Dan and I decided to make the best of it with the instrument training.  We've found that I continue to make little niggling mistakes with my instrument flying, but nothing major.  So we decided to take a couple of days to do multiple hours of practice, planning to do repetitive approaches to hammer home and hone technique.

To that end, I took off work on a Friday afternoon and met Dan up at Westchester.  After waiting 20 minutes in HPN Friday afternoon traffic, we started by flying up to Sky Acres (44N) to shoot the VOR-A approach, circling to land on 17 in order to grab a quick lunch.  Afterwards, we did a few touch and go landings, trying to smooth out some basic landing hiccups I was having (primarily being too fast in the pattern).  Sky Acres has an upsloping runway, so it gives you the illusion of being too high--so it was good practice on paying attention to the numbers.

Then we headed north and Dan introduced me to NDB (non directional beacon) approaches.  These are a form of non-precision approaches that are quickly disappearing. (Apparently many airports, in order to have an instrument approach, went out and bought relatively cheap NDBs to place on the airport.  With GPS on the increase and VOR navigation covering the area, NDBs are falling by the wayside.) We shot the NDB-A approach at Columbia County (just southeast of Albany) and it sort of came together--but requires some math in your head, which has never been my strong point.  Something to continue practicing on in the future.  After getting some fuel at 1B1 (nice and cheap!), we headed down the Hudson River towards Orange County again.

(Side note: A non-precision approach such as a VOR or NDB that has the designation "-A" after it means that only a circling approach is allowed; a designation with a number (eg VOR 6 means that the VOR approach is to Runway 6).)  In a circling approach, you come down to the minimum decision height and have to visually spot the runway environment--then you've got to stay within a mile of the airport as you circle to land on the appropriate runway.  The VOR or NDB may be aligned with the runway, but for some other reason (such as short distance to get down from cruise altitude to the airport approach, or terrain in the way), it doesn't allow for a safe straight-in approach.  At 1B1, the NDB is only 1.9 nm from the runway--a pretty short distance to drop 1200 feet!)

At Orange County, we shot the NDB-3 for some additional NDB practice and then did the ILS-3 approach 4 times, including once with partial panel (simulating instrument failure).  For the most part, they were all pretty good--ILS approaches are pretty straightforward since you have both vertical and horizontal guidance--it was a matter of keeping the instruments showing a perfect "+" sign to show I was on the right glide slope and straight flight path.

The sun was setting as we made our final approach into Orange County and decided to land to get some fuel.  The other draw for landing were three large planes on the ramp--a B-24, B-17 and B-29--that had apparently landed that day as part of a traveling tour of these rare birds.  Dan and I walked around each, looking at these massive flying artifacts so lovingly restored and maintained.  Looking at the engines you could see gleaming metal that was kept pristinely polished.

On getting our weather update, we found that Westchester was calling for marginal VFR conditions and LaGuardia was IFR with low fog and clouds.  So we filed an IFR plan for the hop back to HPN and could hear VFR flights heading into the area calling for pop-up IFR clearances as they ran into the ugly visibility. 

Coming into HPN, the controller asked us to keep our speed up (we were maxing out at 110-115kts) as long as we could.  We raced down the ILS 16 approach and Dan showed me a trick for losing the speed quickly, including pulling back the power, keeping the plane level, adding flaps as quickly as the speed would allow and then settling to the runway.

Overall, we flew 5.0 hours, with 6 day landings and 1 night landing.

The following Monday, being a floater holiday at work (we get three each year--use 'em or lose 'em), I took the day off to fly with Dan again.  It promised to be another scorcher of a day (Friday was spent sweating in the cockpit with unnaturally high temperatures; Monday was more of the same), so I made sure I brought a couple of bottles of water to keep hydrated.

We started the morning with a quick IFR flight over the top of JFK towards eastern NJ.  The clouds were overcast below us at about 3,000 feet, and as we passed over JFK we could see jets popping up as they headed out of NYC.  Dan got to see a JetBlue flight come up through the clouds and leave a beautiful vortice (swirling clouds) behind as he climbed out.

We did the VOR-A approach into Belmar/Monmouth Executive Airport (KBLM) four times, mixing it up between full approaches with procedure turns and holds and receiving vectors from the Air Traffic Controller from McGuire AFB.  Each time, we broke out of the clouds at about 600-700 feet, so it was good practice to ensure doing it right.

We never touched ground at BLM, instead heading south to our alternate airport, South Jersey Regional (KVAY), shooting the VOR-26.  Luckily, I kept right on course, because as we came gliding in, Dan pointed out Flying W airport, literally a couple of miles to the east of VAY--one could get really confused that way! 

Breakfast at VAY was great (another terrific little airport cafe) and we topped off the tanks.  Dan then steered me over to Tom's River (KMJX) for the balance of our work for the day.  With a break in the middle, we shot the ILS-6 three times, the VOR-24 two times, the VOR-6 two times, and the LOC-6 approach.  Flying over the Jersey pinelands in the high heat, we were bounced all around the sky by turbulence, which made shooting the approaches a little more challenging!

On our fuel/rest break at MJX, we found a mom and her four kids enjoying a picnic lunch just outside the airport fence.  We invited the kids over the fence to come sit in the airplane and ask questions.  Three took us up on the offer and loved it.  With any luck, we've helped them get bit by the flying bug a little more!  The mom was very appreciative that we took the time for the kids.

After the other half of our approaches, we decided we were both hot and getting tired, so we dialed up NY Approach and got flight following and permission to enter the Class B.  They cleared us up the Hudson River at 2,000 feet, which provided us a terrific view of the NYC harbor and Manhattan as we flew.  There's something about the bird's eye view of downtown, MSG, all the little people sunbathing on blankets on Central Park, etc. that is just fun.

Our totals for the day was 5.7 hours, including 1 hour of actual instrument time, 3.2 hours of simulated instrument time and 3 landings.

So a good couple of days of training.  I think the repetition really helped in ironing some of the bugs out of my instrument planning.  I was getting better at trimming the airplane out, holding altitudes a little tighter, using the power for altitude changes, etc.  It's definitely all coming togther--slowly but surely.

Unfortunately, due to work travel and some other factors, it's going to be difficult to fly the next couple of weeks, so I'm going to have to do most of my practice on the simulator to keep from getting rusty. 

New Incursion Definition

A few folks who read the blog are pilots, so I thought I would pass along this tidbit received from a local pilot's group I subscribe to.  The FAA has aligned it's definition of runway incursion with that of the ICAO (the international body responsible for standardizing anything involving flight).  In short, it will now hold US pilots to a tighter standard--stay clear of the runway if you don't have permission to be there!

The following is copied from the FAA's website:

FAA Adopts ICAO Definition for Runway Incursions

Effective immediately, the FAA will use the definition for a runway incursion that has been adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The FAA is making the change so the worldwide aviation community will have a single runway incursion definition, which in turn could help in the search to determine common factors that contribute to these incidents.

The biggest difference between the two definitions is that ICAO defines a runway incursion as any unauthorized intrusion onto a runway, regardless of whether or not an aircraft presents a potential conflict. For the FAA, an incident without an aircraft in potential conflict — such as an unauthorized aircraft crossing an empty runway — was defined as a “surface incident” and not a runway incursion.

The new definition means that some incidents formerly classified as surface incidents will now be classified as C or D category runway incursions, which are low-risk incidents with ample time and/or distance to avoid a collision.

The FAA has always tracked surface incidents, in addition to runway incursions. The new definition simply means that certain less severe incidents will be classified differently. All incidents tracked in the past will continue to be tracked.

The classification of the most serious kinds of runway incursions, Categories A and B, remains unchanged. The total number of Category A and B incursions has fallen from 53 in fiscal year 2001 to 31 in FY 2006. A and B incursions are on track for another drop in FY 2007, with 24 recorded through Sept. 9.

The FAA helped ICAO come up with its definition, which was adopted in November 2005. Before that definition was developed, countries around the world used at least 20 different definitions for a runway incursion.

FS21

Last month Pete wrote about the trouble we had getting a preflight briefing from New York Flight Service (ISP) as we were planning on departing FRG for our trip to Yellowstone.  At that point we called the help line to let them know.  When you call the help line, you leave a message for them, and they call you back.  Well today I got my call back from Lockheed Martin (the FSS program's new owner).

The gentlemen apologized for the hold time, agreeing that 25 minutes was unacceptable.  He explained that ISP FSS has not been transitioned to the FS21 system (www.afss.com) and that has meant severely reduced staffing while they prepare for the transition.  He referred me to the web site which specifies a transition date of 11/5/07 for the ISP FSS.  After that time, the calls will be routed down to the Washington hub.

I explained that they needed a non-800 number so that people could use their cell phones to call into the FS21 system now.  When we were traveling, we had to rely on pay phones to get briefings, because if we dialed 800-WX-Brief, we'd be routed back to ISP FSS; not very useful when your standing in Wall, South Dakota!  Of course, once ISP transitions, it will no longer be an issue because you'll be into the FS21 system.

Also, a trick I learned is, when filing or closing a flight plan you can say "any" when the computer prompts you for the state you're departing from.  That makes for a shorter hold time.  A few months ago ISP FSS thought I was missing because I hadn't closed my VFR flight plan...  Unfortunately, I hadn't closed it because I was sitting on hold for 20 minutes!