NY Approach

Spring 2020 Flying cont’d - In Flight Emergency — Because It’s 2020!

With Covid-19 shutting much of life down, I spent much of March and April also trying to work out how I was going to manage to renew my flight medical, set to expire at the end of May.  So there were doctor visits, lab work and a cardiac stress test to try to figure out. Luckily, reasonable heads at the FAA stepped in and announced a non-enforcement policy/extension time to renew medicals (as well as some variability for certain other training deadlines).  As I got all of those administrative ducks lined up for myself, I also wanted to ensure that I was on top of my instrument flying game, as I’d have to plan a visit out to Bolingbrook, IL to see Dr. Bruce, my Senior Aviation Medical Examiner (and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be flying out there commercially).

So at the beginning of May, I headed out to the airport to do a morning of instrument practice with Milton.  Unfortnately, in just the couple of weeks the plane had been inactive, birds had struck again, this time putting a nest (sans eggs luckily), this time in the tail cone of the airplane (where the rudder and elevator meet, so a lot of connecting wires there, not to mention the electrical wires for the red tail beacon and the white aft position light).  I had to actually unscrew ALL of the numerous screws and remove the tailcone to get access to all the grass debris lodged in there.  Sigh.

Milton and I knocked out a good number of approaches that morning, mostly out at Chester, CT, where you can perform a see-saw—come in from the south on the GPS 35 approach, make a low approach (pass) of the runway, and the missed approach takes you straight out and sets you up nicely for the GPS 17 approach from the north.  When you make the low approach and go missed from the GPS 17 approach, you end up perfectly set up for doing the GPS 35 approach all over again.  While it may seem a little boring, it is a timesaver and we varied it up a bit to keep it interesting.  On some approaches we would hand-fly the airplane and on some approaches were did a coupled approach, where the autopilot, linked to the GPS, is flying the approach. With the autopilot I have installed, Gwaihir will actually also fly the glide slope (descent) on an actual approach, so all I have to do is monitor the approach, manage the power, landing gear and flaps.  In a real-life/real world conditions, I would likely fly a coupled approach whenever possible.

Following that flight, Gwaihir went in for its annual inspection, where they again opened up all the inspection ports, took out all the seating and thoroughly checked the airplane over, fixing any little items (and luckily we didn’t have any major items this year!).  The plane came out of annual on the 11th and I did a shakeout flight on the 12th without any issues.  

Given the wear and tear on the alternator belt and the cracked spinner plate, both of which can be signs that something is slightly out of balance on the propeller as it spins, I had asked the mechanics about getting a dynamic balancing done on the propeller.  The specialist was able to come out on the 13th and do that, getting the “wobble” from 0.345 down to 0.001, which is nearly perfect.  Here’s a good article from AOPA on what the process looks like and why it’s important:

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/january/22/propeller-maintenance-balancing

On the 14th, Michiko and I planned a flight out to Block Island for a socially distanced walk around town and just to get out for a little while after being cooped up at home so long.  In fact, this was Michiko’s first flight with me this year!  After doing a careful pre-flight, I flipped the master switch and got the click of a dead battery.  Figuring maybe the annual inspection and the dynamic balancing had just worn the battery a bit, I was able to get a jump start from the line crew.  (There’s a little access door on the left hand side of the engine cowling, well behind the propeller, for an external power cable).  The plane fired up immediately with no issues, so I carefully ran through my pre-flight and pre-takeoff checklists, paying special attention to the electrical items, including the alternator to ensure the battery was showing that it was charging.

The wind was out of the east, so we taxied all the way around to Runway 11 and were cleared for takeoff.  I lined up on the runway, pushed the power in and we were quickly rolling down the runway.  At rotation speed, I eased back on the yoke a little and the plane leapt into the air.  

And as soon as the landing gear left the ground, the entire electrical circuit in the plane died!  The GPS, engine monitor and multi-function display screens went black, the radios and the transponder clicked off.  It was a complete electrical system failure.

The first and only rule of an emergency is fly the airplane.  I knew that the airplane could continue to fly without electrical power.  The engine powers the alternator which fires the spark plugs and the fuel system doesn’t require a fuel pump to feed the engine.  Essentially, the airplane didn’t care at all that the electrical system was down. So I continued climbing straight out along the runway heading and when I reached about 700’, I made a crosswind turn to the right to come back to land on Runway 11–figuring that the control tower guys would catch on that I was now staying in the traffic pattern rather than heading straight out as planned.  

I continued the climb to 1,000’ (pattern altitude at Bridgeport) and Michiko, who had figured out that something wasn’t right (and also because she couldn’t talk to me on the intercom), saw that the panels were all dark.  I reached behind me to my flight bag and grabbed the handheld radio I carry as a backup (because of course I do!), plugged in my headset to it and called the tower to tell them I’d had a complete electrical failure and was returning to land.  Calm as always, they immediately cleared me to land, but then also immediately offered me the option to land on Runway 6 if I wanted to (winds were light)(and it would save me time from having to circle all the way back around to Runway 11), so I took that option and made a normal landing on Runway 6, using the handheld to get the okay to taxi back to Three Wing.  

Overall, if you’re going to have an in flight emergency, that’s exacly the kind to have—the non-event kind.  I flew a mostly normal pattern, made a normal landing and tucked the airplane safely back in its parking spot.  I never broke a sweat and Michiko, though she knew something was wrong, never felt like there was something to be scared about and we had a laugh about it later.

I immediately let the maintenance folks know so that they could take a look the next day, Monday.  On Tuesday, the maintenance folks sent me a photo of the culprit.  The main battery connector, a 40-year-old original item, was fried.  That morning, I also had a friendly call from the FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO), asking about the incident.  Because of the nature of my immediate return to the airport, they had been notified by the control tower folks as a matter of course.  The FSDO guy then had a quick call with the maintenance head at Three Wing and everyone was happy.

 

Spring 2020 Flying - Cracks, COVID-19 & Birds

In March, the world started to go a bit crazy. At the very beginning of the month, I did a nice solo flight along the CT shoreline, doing some maneuvering flight, including steep turns and stalls.  

A week later, I flew over to Farmingdale to pick up Milton to do some instrument approach practice. As we took off to head northeast to Chester, CT and one of our favorite spots for doing approaches, the alternator light came on, indicating that we’d had an alternator failure and that all of the airplanes electrical systems were now running on the battery.  I recycled the master switch a couple of times (it’s a split rocker switch with a BAT side and an ALT side), but I couldn’t extinguish the light.

Given we possibly had only 30 minutes of battery time available before the radios, GPS and lights started going off, we decided to head straight back to Bridgeport, rather than try to land at Farmingdale, drop Milton off, and then wait in line to take off again back to Bridgeport.  If I was going to have a mechanical issue, I’d rather have it on the ground at Bridgeport where my mechanics could take care of a sick bird.  

We landed without incident at Bridgeport and I tried to help Milton figure out getting home on Long Island.  The folks at Signature were very helpful trying to line up a one way rental car, but at the last second it fell through on availability.  Ultimately Milton ended up having to Uber home...never a happy way to end the flying day.

When the mechanics went in to fix the plane, they found that it wasn’t a failure of the alternator—rather, it was the alternator belt that was slipping off its track and frayed, causing the problem.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that when they took the propeller off to access the belt and alternator, they found a hairline crack in the aft-spinner bulkhead plate. (The propeller assembly (broadly speaking, the spinner) is held onto the airplane by a sandwiching pair of bulkhead plates—a crack of that fast spinning plate could quickly worsen, separate and throw the propeller out of alignment, which can then damage the engine.). Of course, the bulkhead spinner is not a cheap part, nor one that the shop kept handy, so they had to find and ship one in.  They did quick work though, and a week later, I took Gwaihir up on a short shakeout flight along the CT shoreline, staying within gliding distance of the shore.  The plane performed beautifully.

And then the world shut down.  For a couple of months, starting in China with news of a mysterious illness quickly spreading, we’d been hearing more and more about Covid-19 and then its arrival in the US.  After seemingly starting out in the Pacific Northwest, Westchester County and NYC quickly became the epicenter and the Northeast region shut down.  A birthday party in Westport, CT, the next town over from us, at the beginning of March, before Covid was on people’s radar, turned out to be one of the first super-spreader events.

We were just starting to hear about Covid in mid-March when my wife came down with it.  We’re not sure where she contracted it, nor, because she was only symptomatic and not needing hospitalization, could we even get a test at the time.  Luckily her symptoms didn’t worsen too much, though she had some mild difficulty breathing for a few days, which was certainly worrisome.  So we hunkered down with the bit of toilet paper we were able to find and, like everyone else on the East Coast, started to try to wait it out, not leaving the house except for grocery shopping.

After a month of isolation, and as we learned more about what we could do to be safe, I ventured out to the airport to do a solo flight, carefully avoiding everyone and anyone.  However, I found that while all of us humans were hunkered down in our homes not going anywhere, nature had taken the opportunity to remind us of her supremacy.  A pair of Robins had managed to make their nest in the cowl flap (a U-shaped hatch under the engine that allows more air to flow over and cool the engine).    I spent the better part of 40 minutes removing the nest and, unfortunately, breaking some eggs in the process, since I couldn’t see them wedged up in there.  I actually took the two top covers off the engine compartment to ensure that nothing else was inside and borrowed a leaf blower from the line crew to thoroughly flush out any remaining straw debris.  (That kind of dry tinder, in an engine compartment, will catch fire in a heartbeat and cause all sorts of bad days, healthwise or financially!)

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Once the nest was sorted out and the rest of the airplane meticulously pre-flighted for any other feathered friends or rodents or bug nests, I was finally back into the air.  To say that it was exhilerating and refreshing would be an understatement.  The worry and dread and uncertainty of the last month and whatever the future held melted away as I focused on flying, breathing deeply and soaking in the fresh air.  I did some more maneuvering flight along the CT shoreline, just relishing the feel of the airplane going through its paces.    

 

Early 2020 Flying

January 2020 didn’t cooperate too much for flying due to weather.  I had a couple short solo flights in the local area, but nothing too exciting.  But even those flights are fulfilling in some way—whether just a chance to relax and clear my head from earthly issues, or views of pretty clouds below over the water or perfect parking jobs......!

In early February, Milton and I planned to do one of the kitten rescue flights down to North Carolina and back. I agreed to pick him up in Farmingdale and then we’d make our way south.  However, on just the hop over to Farmingdale, in what the FAA deemed Visual Flight Rules conditions (visibility of more than 5 miles), I was not a happy camper.  Yes, I could make out the Northport smoke stacks from 6 miles away, but I felt like I was feeling my way through thick air and certainly wasn’t going to be able to spot any other aircraft traffic out there!  When I landed at FRG, Milton and I went for breakfast, hoping the weather and low cloud would clear up....Because of the cold temps, we didn’t want to just file an instrument flight plan and try to fly through icy clouds, so we ultimately postponed the trip until later in the month.  The cat rescue folks were all understanding—always better to be safe than sorry.  I made a “VFR” beeline back to Bridgeport, and sure enough, the weather deteriorated through the day with a mix of ice and rain.  

In mid-February, I learned of the passing of a long-time family friend, Father Randall Blackall.  As far back as I can remember, Fr. Blackall had been a part of our lives, working with my parents in one of their church-related volunteer organizations, as well as celebrating numerous holidays and Catholic sacrament celebrations (baptisms, first confessions, First Communions, Confirmations, etc.) with our family.  He was always fun, quick with a laugh and a good story.  We also spent some time visiting him, and I particularly fondly remember visits while he was pastor of St. Bridget Church in Cornwall, CT.  For a while, he had a georgeous house on a beautiful hilltop that had been donated by parishioners for his use until a parish house was built next to the church itself.

https://www.courant.com/obituaries/hc-obituary-l-randall-blackall-20200216-story.html

 

So to honor him, I did a flight up to NW CT and over St. Bridget and Cornwall Bridge, remembering some of the fun times hanging out with him there.

Later in February, I got to do the postponed kitten rescue flight to North Carolina and back.  Unfortunately, Milton was unavailable, so I flew it solo, but I got a terrificly gorgeous CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited) day, with gentle winds, bright sunlight and smooth as silk air.  We had had some winter storms during the week and the previous day, including snow and ice, but this Saturday was the perfect aftermath!

As usual, my route south took me over the top of JFK, with large jets arriving and departing underneath me.  (It never grows old hearing departure instructions to these large jets telling them to watch for the small Cessna above them!). Then it was down the NJ shoreline, across DE and MD and the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (with fighter jets on the tarmac), on past Richmond and down into NC where there was surprisingly (probably moreso for the NC residents!) still snow covering the ground, despite the balmy temps in the 50s!

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The kitten rescue folks were waiting for me at the airport, and kindly fed me a sandwich and chicken soup while I checked weather (gorgeous) for the return flight and looked at the weird fish in the FBO’s fish tank!  They made their goodbyes to the kittens they’d grown attached to, and then it was off to CT to their new homes!

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The return flight was just about the same routing as the morning, and with the same gorgeous conditions.  As I approached Delaware, however, and was speaking with Dover Approach, I could see smudges of black smoke ahead in NJ.  As I got closer, it turned out they were large brush fires burning throughout the area.  Not only could I get occasional whiffs of smoke, but the fires were so large I could also make out the flames from my altitude, which means the flames must have been at least 10-20’ high!  

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Once past the fires, it was smooth sailing again, over the top of JFK and a descent back into Bridgeport.

At the very end of February, I attended a luncheon at The Wings Club, an aviation industry organization that brings together airline, manufacturer, finance, legal, media and other business folks involved in the aerospace industry.  This lecture was the annual “Sight Lecture”, one of the highlights of the year, and was a presentation by Virgin Galactics CEO, George Whitesides, discussing their SpaceShipTwo program.  It was a fascinating lecture and, to top if off, Ben, a friend, fellow R182 pilot and IP lawyer who was sitting at my table won the door prize raffle, a gorgeous model of SpaceShipTwo!

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Winter Flying 2019

On a balmy beautiful day in early November, I got to take the owners of our Pilates studio and their daughter out to Block Island. We had been talking about it on and off for a while, but Laura was a bit nervous about flying, but she eventually decided to give it a try. 

The weather was cooperative, not too breezy or bumpy. We did a thorough walk around the airplane for pre-flight and I explained all the moving parts and then some of the instruments in the cockpit and the safety briefings of headsets, seat belts, sterile cockpit and watching for other planes. Then we got in and fired up and were soon climbing out to the east along the shoreline.  I pointed out some of the landmarks along the way, including the Thimble Islands in Branford and the shoreline home there with the Stonehenge replica and go-cart race track in the yard.

Tara did some of the flying and did a great job keeping steady and straight as we flew down the shoreline to Westerly, RI, before we cut southeast towards Block.  Descending towards the island, there was actually very little traffic, which was very surprising for such a beautiful fall day.  Within a few minutes, we had landed, taxied in and shut down and then walked to Bethany’s Airport Diner for a quick lunch.   

The flight back was just as easy, this time with a better view for Tara and Sophie on the right side of the plane.  Bridgeport came again quickly and we were soon on the ground back to the parking spot.  While all three enjoyed the flight, there was some motion sickness coming on, so it may be a while before they look to fly again.

(I don’t know why, but I’m having the problem loading photos again...once I get that figured out, I’ve got some good shots that Laura took before and during the flight.)


At the end of November, I did another kitten rescue flight, meeting Dan and his family at Old Bridge in NJ and taking crates of kittens up to Pittsfield, MA.  It was another gorgeous fall day, with the last of the foliage browning on the leaves below, but a very smooth ride.  

As I climbed out of Old Bridge, I steered a little west of a direct path in order to stay out of the Class B airspace for Newark and New York.  Despite that, I still had some traffic at my altitude, inbound to Newark, including a couple of passenger jets, and one corporate jet heading southwest from Teterboro airport.  I enjoyed a snack while we headed northeast and every once in a while I would chat with the cats, or look for the little paws darting between the carrier bars trying to get at me. 

Having been there only recently, finding Pittsfield was even easier this time and the drop-off of the kittens and their paperwork was a quick event.  Winging home with a little tailwind, it was a very easy hop back to Bridgeport before the dark set in.  

 

For Christmas, Michiko got a new headset.  Even the Bose headset she normally flies with, which is light, pinches her head a bit on long flights and is heavier than she’d like  So I got her the new Bose Proflight Series 2.  It’s designed to essentially be two molded earbuds with a small headpiece for the boom mike, and it’s super light and active noise cancelling.  We did a short trial flight on Christmas Eve and while she’ll have to make some small adjustments to get it perfect, she really liked the lightness and lack of clamping on her head, although she admits it’s not quite as quiet as her older bigger Bose headset.  That’s not too surprising as the Proflight is designed for quieter airplanes, such as corporate jets and turbo-props.  (Post script: the longest she’s worn them in these Covid days, is a 90 min leg and they really worked well for her!)

 

 

 

October 2019 Flying

After the excitement of flying in Europe, I got back to more routine East Coast trips, including a couple local flights to enjoy the brilliant foliage changes occurring in October throughout the region. In mid-October, I meandered up the Housatonic River Valley in western CT and MA to view the colorful mountains as they changed hues. Mt. Greylock, in northwestern MA in particular was brightly clothed in blazes of oranges, yellows and even some reds and browns as I did a circuit around the mountaintop, wagging my wings at all the leaf-peepers at the top. 





I had a quick business trip to Toronto and Montreal to meet with some clients. In traveling between cities, I had the chance to fly out of Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, situated on an island just off downtown Toronto. The airport is named for Billy Bishop, Canada’s World War 1 flying ace and later Air Marshall during World War 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Bishop_Toronto_City_Airport  There’s a statue of Bishop I came across in the terminal. One of these days, I’ll get a chance to take my own plane up there!

At the end of October, I helped Dan out with the second half of a kitten rescue flight for Pilots N Paws (https://www.pilotsnpaws.org). Dan and his family brought bunch of kittens and their mamas up from North Carolina. As they flew north with their rescues, Intook off from Bridgeport and got clearance over the top of JFK on a beautiful crisply clear day, with a couple airliners flying below me as they arrived and departed from JFK. Then I made my was to the Colt’s Neck VOR in northeastern NJ before taking a heading to bring me to Dan’s home airport, Old Bridge. I made a nice landing on the narrow strip and shut down to wait a little while for Dan to arrive with the kittens. 

We got to chat for a few minutes cathcing up while we transferred the travel cages of kittens and cats between airplanes and making sure we had all of the paperwork sorted for each cat—as I was making two drops, I ended up taking pictures of their folders with their crates to ensure I dropped off the right kittens with the right people!  Dan also warned that one of the mama cats had meowed nearly constantly during the northbound trip. 

Sure enough, shortly after I fired up, I could hear a repeated meow coming from behind me, even with the engine going and my active noise cancelling headset working!  It reminded me of the hours and hours Dan, Liz and I had spent over the years chasing Emergency Location Transmitters from airplanes and boats! For those that have never had the “pleasure” here’s a sound clip (http://www.7-6aircav.com/elt1.wav) On a typical mission, we would spend hours driving or flying listening to static and waiting for the first little hint of the ELT signal to be heard. Then we would home in on the signal’s strength to find the (almost always accidentally set off) offending emergency beacon on a specific boat or airplane (or occasionally a car or shed or UPS truck—-ahh, the fun stories we could tell you!). 

Upon departing Old Bridge, I stayed a little west outside of the NYC Class B airpace before cutting northeast towards my first destination, Pittsfield, MA in the Berkshires.  It was a nice smooth trip of about an hour, so I was able to listen to some music and occasionally have one of the kittens in the crate next to me poke a paw through the opening and swat at me or give me a gentle scratch.

It had been a number of years since I flew into Pittsfield.  It was formerly a towered airport, but now an uncontrolled field with a good sized mountain immediately adjacent to its northern side, amd easy enough to find, even in the darkening dusk. I flew the pattern as the lights on the runway and taxiways came up and made a good landing before taxing in to the terminal to find Jennia, who runs a local adoption service, waiting for her load of cats!

After a quick leg stretch, it was time for the next leg, a short 20 minute hop south to Danbury, CT for the second dropoff.  While I’ve done pactice instrument approaches into Danbury, I had never actually landed there.  The airport is a little bit of a tricky one, situated in essentially a bowl with big hills all around it.  To add to the challenge, I was going to be landing at full night...such fun!

Ultimately, it turned out to be not a problem.  The winds were light out of the west so the tower set me up with a left base to Runway 26, which comes right over Route 7 on a hill overlooking the airport and then you sort of dive for the runway!  But with the Danbury Fair Mall off to the right side, there’s plenty of ambient light to ensure you’ve got good visual clues.  I made the quick dropoff of the last kittens and was soon back at to Bridgeport.

 

Flying in Netherlands & Germany (September 2019)

At the end of September, I had a business trip to Dusseldorf, Germany, for a global partners’ meeting at Schloss Krickenbeck, a 13th-century country house/castle and grounds that has been turned into a conference center.  Trying to save the company a little bit of money, I did a pair of overnight red-eye flights from Hartford to Dublin and Dublin to Dusseldorf.  While it was convenient going out of Hartford, it’s still a tough haul of a red-eye flight!  When I got to the castle late Sunday morning, I really just wanted to grab some lunch and take a nap, but I’d already made some other plans!

As soon as I knew I was heading to Germany, I’d started doing some research about opportunities to fly while there.  I found that the castle was situated very close to the Netherlands border and that literally on the Dutch side of the border is a glider field with a club just east of the town of Venlo. On the German side of things, I found the Verkehrslandeplatz Grefrath-Niershorst airport about a 10 minute taxi drive east of the castle, with a flight school.  I made contact with the respective entities and made some plans for my visit.

The chef at the castle was super kind and she made me a picnic lunch of a couple of sandwiches, granola bars, bananas and some water, so I was able to munch while walking about 30 minutes west on some beautiful paved nature trails and walking across the border into the Netherlands.  As I approached the field, I started to see (but not really hear) some sailplanes overhead and occasionally, I was hearing a weird high pitched whining sound that I couldn’t quite make out.  As I got to the western end of the field though, I could see large tractors parked and figured out the sound—they were high speed tow winches that tugged (yanked) the gliders across the field and launched them into the air.  When they reached altitude, the tow lines were released and little parachutes opened up as the cable fell to the ground to be wound into the tow machine.  The odd sounds was the combination of the high pitched whine of the machines as well as the whistle of the tow line slicing through the air.

Side note:  The history of the Dutch airfield is quite interesting, having been a Dutch airfield as early as 1913 and then being taken over by the Germans in 1940, when it was converted into a major Luftwaffe air base flying Heinkel He111H bombers (a fast twin-engine medium bomber) and even an operational unit of the Luftwaffe’s rocket powered interceptor aircraft, the Me163 Komet.  The Allies bombed the field incessantly and finally took it out of action in September 1944 and it was taken over by the Americans who repaired one of the three runways and flew P-47 Thunderbolts and B-26 Marauders (twin engine medium bombers).  (Apparently I didn’t do enough exploring of the area, as some of the old infrastructure and bomb craters can still be seen.) (www.forgottenairfields.com/airfield-venlo-478.html)

I walked along the path at the southern end of the field towards the eastern end, and climbed up stepladder over the barbed wire fence and met my contact Frits by the control van parked nearby.  He explained that there wasn’t much going on in the way of thermals for the today, so most gliders were going up, making a circuit of the pattern and then landing.  He introduced me to Roland, who is one of the club’s instructor pilots. 

After chatting airplanes for a few minutes (most everyone hanging out at the field spoke proficient English), Roland brought me over to a Shleicher ASK-21 glider, PH-714 (also marked with YY on the tail).  We put our parachutes on and I strapped into the front seat of the glider while showed me the controls (pretty simple!) And then strapped himself in behind me.  Wing walkers connected the tow cable to the nose of the glider and then held the wing level, signaling the tow tractor across the field to slowly take up the slack on the line.  Then it was time to go.

In a very minute way, I quickly got just a sense of what a catapult launch from the deck of an aircraft carrier must feel like!  I was thrust back in my seat and we were airborne in about 25 feet, climbing like a bat out of hell at something like a 45-degree upwards angle!  Within seconds we were at pattern altitude of about 1,000 feet and the cable was released.  Ahead of us, I could see Schloss Krickenbeck and the grounds around it.  Roland gave me the controls to get a feel for how very sensitive the control surfaces are.  (Like the Spitfire and the Mustang, you fly the glider just with fingertips.). Then he guided me through some gentle turns and hitting the right pitch for the glide and I worked us around the right-hand pattern thru to short final, where he took over and made the landing.

After we clambered out, an actual farm tractor pulled up and towed the plane in while we walked along holding the wings up to ensure they didn’t drag on the ground.  A few minutes later, Roland came by again and said that, as a club member, he also gets a currency ride and asked if I wanted to go up again!  So we chuted up again, this time in a different, more high-performance trainer glider, a Schempp-Hirth Duo Discus T, PH-1322 (marked MCT on the tail).

We had another exciting tow launch to pattern altitude and then I let the tow rope go.  With the better performance on this sailplane, we had a little extra time in the air and Roland had me do a lazy 360-degree turn to left before rejoining the pattern.  As we turned onto downwind, we had another glider fly right over us only about 50-feet above, seeking out the weak early afternoon thermals.  I made the turns to base and then final and Roland took over at the last second for the actual touchdown.

After walking the sailplane back in, I hung out near the control van (a sort of canteen van where the entire side opened as a giant window, with a bench so that the operations folks could keep an eye on the launching area and radio down to the high speed winch tractors.  I chatted with a couple of club members as they sat around munching on plums and apples brought from someone’s garden and engaging in hangar talk.

After watching some additional launches and landings, I gave my profuse thanks to Frits and Roland (and the Venlo-Eindhoven Zweefvliegclub)(www.vezc.aero) for a terrific afternoon of international flying camaraderie and enjoyed the beautiful walk back into Germany for a well deserved quick nap at the Schloss before the start of the conference.

On Thursday, after the conference concluded, I met up with Stefan, the CEO and chief flight instructor of a local German flight school, Follow Me (www.flugschule-followme.com), who graciously picked me up at the castle for the quick drive to Flugplatz Grefrath-Nierhorst, a little southeast of Krickenbeck on Route 509.  There was a low overcast of clouds at about 1400 feet, but we planned to do about an hour’s sortie to fly in the area. 

I had booked a Cessna 172 with Stefan, a purple and white aircraft (PH-YSF), so when we got out to the airport, we headed over to the hangar, pre-flighted and pulled her outside.  However, after taxing out to the grass runway, during our run-up, we found that the left mag was dropping about 300-400rpm (it’s only supposed to drop about 75rpm), so we taxied back in and switched to another plane.

This was a Remos G-X, a German high-wing, two seat single engine light sport aircraft (in Europe, it falls into the ultralight category).  It’s got a very simple glass panel with three screens, and all of the other instrumentation is very simple/clean on the panel.  It’s operated via a control column and the throttle is between the pilot and co-pilot.  The partially reclining bucket seats were pretty comfortable as I strapped into the four point harness system. 

After an easy start, Stefan taxied us out to the grass strip and let me do the takeoff.  Despite the small 4-cylinder Rotax engine, we were pretty quickly in the air and climbing to altitude.  It only takes a very light touch on the control column to maneuver and I quickly had the plane trimmed up.  We first headed to Krickenbeck to fly over the castle and I got some good pictures, as well as doing a quick turn over the courtyard to see a few colleagues shooting basketball hoops below.  Then we meandered south for about 20 minutes over the lush green fields below, passing over beautiful tiny towns with gorgeous churches and winding streets before quickly popping over farms and greenhouses and fields of flowers and produce.  Windmills were omnipresent, so I paid close attention, since we were limited to 1,000 feet to stay clear of clouds.

Stefan put on some “American music” which as some old bluegrass stuff and we chatted about what it’s like to fly in Europe.  As he had to pick up his child at school at 4pm, we eventually had to turn around and head back to the airport.  Joining the pattern, I managed the throttle and the controls and ended up making a squeaker of a landing on the grass strip—so nice that Stefan even complimented me on it!  (Not bad for only my 3rd or 4th landing on a grass strip and in a completely new model of airplane!)

We taxied in and tucked away the Remos in a hangar with a couple other airplanes, including what looked to be a Yak-52 (?) and a Piper Cub.  Stefan snapped a couple photos of me (I stand taller than the airplane does!) before he headed to pick up his child.  I wandered over to the “control tower” and he graciously called a cab for me to get back to the hotel.  While we waited, we had a friendly chat.  He’s a retired Dutch electrical engineer who worked on major infrastructure projects and now volunteers in the tower to help with the flying club operations.  The squat tower actually doesn’t provide traffic control services, but rather advisory of aircraft in the area and weather.  It seems to also serve as the location to file your flight plans although I didn’t get the full gist of what he was describing.

But it was a fun trip to the Netherlands and Germany, getting a chance to get airborne and see a little bit of it from a different perspective!!

 

September (2019) Musings

After the excitement of the NY International Airshow, it was fun to get back to some fun flying for myself! 

Michiko and I snagged a quick Labor Day vacation at one of our favorite places, the White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport (terrific place for relaxing, outstanding food and really friendly people).  The icing on the cake was that Michiko let me fly us to vacation!!  The flight up was IFR, especially as we got up to Massachusetts and New Hampshire and I ended up shooting the ILS 07 approach to get below the clouds at Sanford Seacoast Regional (KSFM), then circling to land on runway 32.  The line crew had the rental car ready for us and we were quickly loaded and off on vacation. 

The trip home was even easier, though there was some threatening rain.  We climbed up out of the airport and just hit our cruise altitude of 6,500’ when the broken clouds thickened below us and we were flying on top of a white carpet.  The clouds were kind enough to break up as we got back into Connecticut, and we were able to do a straight-in landing to Runway 24 back at Bridgeport.

 

My wife and I share a great Pilates instructor, Annick and got a chance in early September to take her flying for her birthday.  We got a gorgeous day for weather and flew out to Block Island for the day.  Annick did some of the flying and was great at it!  We did our regular visit to Ballards for lunch—unfortunately, being a gorgeous day, tons of other people were sitting outside as well AND there was some sort of rock festival, featuring an AC/DC cover band who were VERY LOUD! 

Walking through town later, waiting for our ears to stop ringing, we stopped in at the hat shop for Michiko and Annick to poke around.  Down in front of the store, I turned around and literally bumped into my cousin Austin and his girlfriend Sarah!  They had decided to come over from their college in Rhode Island for the weekend.  Even more surprising was Austin saying that his parents, Jim and Lisa, were on the Island as well, doing a spur of the moment weekend at their friend’s condo!  So we met up with them and got ice cream before piling into Jim & Lisa’s car and doing a quick tour of the island, including a steep staircase down to the beach, a lighthouse under renovation and some meandering roads.

It was a really fun day of serendipity and flying!

 

In mid-September, I did a quick work trip to Houston, returning on the evening of 9/11.  The flight route took us directly over Manhattan, and I got a beautiful view of the Twin Towers lighting tribute, albeit bad photos.  I’ve seen it from the air before, but it’s always an amazing sobering reminder.

 

For my birthday, Michiko and I decided to fly to Maine for the day.  We had an errand to run in Kennebunkport (a repair on a wind sculpture we had purchased there), and wanted to take advantage of one more visit to Red’s Eats before it closed for the season.  The weather was a bit rainy, but I was IFR current and proficient, so I filed an IFR plan for the trip north back to Sanford Seacoast Regional (KSFM).

Taking off from Bridgeport, we climbed up through some thin clouds and our cruise altitude put us right on top of another white carpet of cloud virtually the entire flight.  It felt wonderful skimming along the surface like that, in and out of cloud wisps!  The clouds started to break up a little bit towards the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border and by the time we got close to Sanford, we could make out the field from about 15 miles out.  The landing was an easy one and the line crew had our rental car quickly pulled out for us, which made loading the gangly sculpture much easier!

After a quick drive into Kennebunkport to drop off the art piece, we headed back north, stopping in Scarborough at Holy Donuts for a breakfast treat of delicious donuts before heading off to Red’s Eats for birthday lobster rolls!  Too stuffed from great food, we barely made it back to the art gallery in time to pick up our fixed sculpture and then back to the airport right after the FBO had closed. 

Our flight home was all instrument conditions again, again mostly skimming the tops, but much more punching in and out of clouds, especially as it got darker (always a bit freaky to see through the landing light rushing up to and through a cloud!). The overcast stayed thick this time all the way home and we ended up shooting the GPS 24 approach, at night, back into Bridgeport—possibly my first night approach without another pilot in the plane?

The day after my birthday, I got to fly with Milton, acting as safety pilot for him while he shot a couple of practice instrument approaches.

 

2019 NY International Airshow - Blue Angels & UK Red Arrows

In late August the US Navy Blue Angels came to Stewart International Airport, just north of NYC. Their special guests this year was the UK’s flight demonstration team, the Red Arrows, making a rare summer tour of the United States and Canada. Having never seen the Red Arrows, I was super excited to see the show.

The last time Michiko and I had attended a show at Stewart (9/2016 https://www.fordstreet.net/nyapproach/2016/10/air-shows-chicago-new-york-stewart-intl.html), it had been a MISERABLE experience between traffic/parking nightmares, both on coming in and getting out, and the food had been horrible as well. So this time, I decided to fly over to Stewart. Because I knew the ramp space was going to be tight and first come, first serve, I planned an early flight over, to arrive shortly after 8am. It was a nice morning to fly and the trip over from Bridgeport was very easy, popping over the hills along the Hudson River to be lined up for a downwind entry to Runway 09, the 11,817’ runway! (The NY Air National Guard flies giant C-17 Globemaster III cargo jets there.). After taxiing in to the ramp, I found that I was a little early—I was only the second plane on the ramp at the Signature FBO. I checked in with the kind folks there and made a quick pitstop (last non PortaPotty for the day) and was out the door.

I walked over towards the entrance gates to the viewing area, arriving just as the gates were opened. I got to stroll leisurely down the flight line and picked out a prime viewing spot near show center and just to the right of the announcers’ stage.

Shortly after setting up my chair and putting the camera lenses together, the Red Arrows’ support aircraft, an Atlas A400M (looks very similar to a C-130, 4-engine propeller transport plane) took off.

The show got started with a US Army helicopter demos and then the US Military Academy (West Point) student parachute team jumped with the American Flag while the National Anthem was sung. It was a fun show throughout the day with Sean Tucker in his Lucas Oil biplane, some crazy flying by the Jelly Belly plane, including performing aerobatics with a missing aileron. A World War 2 B-25 bomber named Panchito made a number of passes just before the Red Arrows took to the skies.

The Red Arrows put on a great show with their BAE Hawk T1 jets! Like the Canadian Snowbirds, they fly a slower speed show than the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds, but with twice the number of aircraft!

After the Red Arrows finished, the B-25 Panchito came by a few more times, followed by the GEICO Sky Typers in T-6 Texan trainers from World War 2. They were followed by the Embry Riddle aerobatics team and then a demo by the NY State Police of their helicopter in action (and motorcycles).

The Jelly Belly guy came back out and tried some attempts to land on the roof of a truck speeding the length of the runway.

Once he landed, the noise level and speeds shot back up with the F-35 Lightning demonstration, including some crazy aerobatics, speed passes and tight radius turns with afterburner flaring! The announcer warned that since this was a public show, they were only demonstrating 70% of the Lightning’s capabilities!

Sean Tucker performed again and then there was a short demo by a Czech military trainer jet, an Aero L-39 Albatross, owned and flown by a local Westchester County landscaper.

Next up was the Whelan Aerospace Technologies aerobatics team, with a very cool gold paint job that shimmered varying color tones depending on how the sunlight was hitting it.

Finally, the airspace was cleared at the end of the day and the Blue Angels took to the air and put on their always-fantastic demonstration, including head-on passes, super tight formations, slow and fast speed passes, and the always fun “Holy BLEEP, where did he come from?!” sneaky high speed pass from behind the crowd!

About halfway through their show, Blue Angel #6 had an equipment issue and had to land. Without too much delay, he swapped into #7 and was back in the air for the rest of the performance.

Because of where I was positioned, one interesting aspect for me was watching the Blues support team using light guns and signal mirrors to guide the formations back to show center.

Once the show was over, it was a long haul getting out of there. I slowly ambled back down the flight line to Signature and decided to hang out a bit in the air conditioned FBO with clean bathrooms and fresh popped popcorn while numerous other folks tried to get a jump on flying out. Many of them ended up spending an hour or more sitting in their airplanes with the engines going but not moving. After about a 2 hour delay, the airspace started to clear a bit and the long line of planes out on the taxi way eased a bit. I ended up nearly one of the last to leave—the major delays had been the fact that they were taking off on Runway 09 and, since the airshow viewing area WAS the normal taxiway, all the planes had to back taxi about 3/4 the length of the runway, then turn around and take off. Once off the ground though, I had a short hop back home with a lovely sunset behind me.

Overall for the day, I shot about 900 photos, so had to spend quite a bit of time ruthlessly winnowing them down to some of the better images. I was very pleased to find that with both the Red Arrows and with the Blue Angels I was able to capture some great shots, including the ever-difficult knife edge passes, trying to capture the two opposing airplanes in the same frame.

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).