Climb and Maintain ...

Ready for Multi

2007-09-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of the week, two more multi-engine flights were left -- both basically simulated multi-engine checkrides, with the stipulation that if any maneuver was out of limits, we would practice it until it was within limits. But, since I had already done so well on the previous flight, Milen did not think that there would be any difficulties.

The flight with Milen, as anticipated, went quite well. Just about the only thing I needed a bit more work on that we repeated multiple times was the Vmc demo. I just could not seem to get the rudder pushed in far enough in order to induce Vmc at anywhere close to the published value of 65 knots. Instead, the plane began to be directionally uncontrollable at 75 knots or so. Granted, the published Vmc value is the value determined under a very specific set of conditions -- none of which were probably true at the time of our demo. But, at the same time, Vmc tends to go down in real-life, due to the fact that we rarely fly right at sea level and with the most rearward center of gravity, just to name a couple of the conditions. So, I guess the fact that it occurred at a much higher speed than published means that there's really a bit more rudder travel available, and I just needed to make sure to use it all.

The next flight went fine as well. This one was with another instructor -- he would check on my progress and make sure that everything was fine for the checkride. The dreaded Vmc demo seemed to go a bit better -- maybe the speed at which Vmc was occurring was the same, but the process was definitely a bit more smooth. But, as on every flight, there was a surprise! A circuit breaker was pulled on me, and as luck had it, it had to do with the landing gear system. I had to do an emergency extension -- but on retraction, I did not quite follow the checklist procedure, and I forgot to close the emergency gear extension dump valve. The gear wouldn't retract (duh!) It took me a while to figure out what's going on, but in the end, going back to the checklist ensured that I was able to complete the procedure successfully. Lesson is: use the checklist. And make sure you do not skip items.

Speaking of the landing gear -- time for an opinion. The emergency gear retraction on the Duchess is somewhere in the middle, as far as ease of use is concerned, out of all the retractables that I've flown (which, granted, is not too many). It's not as easy as the Piper Arrow, where you just hold an easily accessible switch, and the gear free-falls. But, it's not as hard as the Cessna Cardinal RG, where you have to hand-pump the gear down -- and it takes a considerable number of hand-pump strokes to actually do so. The Duchess, on the other hand, facilitates emergency extension by requiring the pilot to turn a dump valve a quarter turn to the left -- using a special "emergency extension tool." Couple of issues there: if you do not have the "emergency extension tool" handy, then extending the gear becomes much harder, if not impossible. Above that, the dump valve is located on the floor, between the pilot's legs. IMO, requiring someone to maintain heading and altitude in instrument conditions, with turbulence, while extending the gear using this method, would be challenging at best. But hey, I still think it's better than a hand-pump.

Anyway, the next flight in the twin will be the checkride. Both Milen and Dave (the check instructor) said that I am more than ready. I'll be taking the checkride with exactly 7.0 hours in the Duchess -- and less than a week after I had started my multi-engine training (I'm a bit behind with the posts, as usual). Wow!

Third Time's a Charm

2007-09-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

Waking up on Sunday about two weeks ago for my third and fourth multi flights, I knew that at least the first flight would have to be scrapped. From my condo in Seattle, I could not even see the tops of some of the skyscrapers -- they were engulfed in clouds. So, instead of heading to the airport early in the morning, I spent most of my time reviewing the Beech Duchess performance and systems descriptions. The Beechcraft POH's are expensive -- the Duchess one was over $100 from Essco -- but they are very well organized with regard to presentation of relevant information. In addition, Northway instructors put together a Multi-Engine Packet which provides a nice summary of the Duchess systems, together with accompanying photos so that you can really see, for example, where the heater overheat reset switch is.

During that morning I also did a considerable amount of "chair flying." What is "chair flying"? It's exactly what it describes: the pilot sits in a chair (or a sofa, in my case), imagines that he or she is in the cockpit, and goes through procedures while touching imaginary controls. From the last flight, I really needed to concentrate on engine-out procedures. Milen had said that I do them usually too fast, and sometimes in the wrong order. So, I practiced those over and over again until (almost) I could do them in my sleep.

Fortunately, as I chair-flew and read the Duchess technical information, the weather started lifting up. While it was still overcast around noon, the forecast was for continued improvement. So, after having checked with Milen, I headed up to the airport. We would only do one flight, but Milen was still confident that it was possible for me to take the checkride mid-week.

During the flight, we introduced the remainder of multi-engine checkride maneuvers, which basically consisted of a Vmc demo. Of course, we practiced engine shutdowns, simulated single-engine flight, and simulated single engine go-arounds (at altitude) -- all of which went much better than the day before. I can say I was much more organized and consistent. I "only" lost about 250 feet of altitude on the single engine go-around -- not because I was necessarily faster on the engine-out procedure, but because I was more deliberate about what I was doing. And overall, the entire flight went much better, period. Chair flying really works! Milen definitely thought I would be ready by end of the week. So, it was just a couple more flights until I would get my license -- one with Milen and one with another instructor to make sure everything was kosher!

Second Multi Flight

2007-08-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

After the first flight in a Beechcraft Duchess, I was mostly able to locate the required switches, controls, etc. for flight with both engines running. I even flew a couple of ILS approaches into Paine Field, which went very well. I still need to master the Garmin 430 in Northway's Duchess (while the 430 is similar to the G1000 in concept, it's not really enough to look at the 430 for five minutes and expect to be able to operate it at a level proficient enough for IFR flight), but overall, I think the flight went extremely well.

The second flight was when Milen and I started to work on engine-out procedures. We did some procedures for identifying the failed engine -- both visually and under the hood. Basically, Milen would pull the throttle back and I was supposed to say which engine failed. This was easy if the engine failed suddenly (lots of yaw), but it was not as easy if the engine failure occurred gradually; I think that was an important point in the demonstration, because in real life, engines do not fail instantaneously.

After I got the identification of the failed engine nailed down, we proceeded to do the actual engine failure procedures -- that is, practicing bringing mixtures, propellers, and throttles forward, cleaning up the flaps and the gear, identifying and verifying the failed engine, etc. We practiced these procedures on the ground before starting the flight; however, I must say that in the air, everything seems to feel differently. On the ground, the engine failure isn't quite "real". But, in the air, it just feels different -- at least to me. When you're losing altitude, and you've got to manage the engine failure and keep the plane upright at the same time, there is certainly a tendency to rush things. Rushing is obviously not good, and it takes a lot of practice to get the right pace -- not too slow, but not too fast, either.

The final maneuver of the lesson was the single-engine ILS. I can't say it went as well as the normal ILS: I was "all over the place." Fortunately, neither the glideslope nor the localizer went full-scale deflection -- so theoretically, it was within standards -- but it still looked scary. I like it much better when both needles just stick to the center. :-)

So, we've got our work cut ahead of us -- but Milen is confident that a couple more flights, and I'll be ready for the checkride!

Time for "Identify, Verify, ..."

2007-08-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

It's been almost 3 months since I got my commercial single engine license. And, the twin at Northway Aviation was something that I always wanted to try flying. Since the Seattle summer (and its associated good weather) are almost over, I figured "no time like the present." I called up my friendly CFI/CFII/MEI Milen and signed up for some twin time. Wow!

We basically figured I'd need around 7-10 hours in the twin. We split that over one weekend: two flights on Saturday and two flights on Sunday. Afterwards, I'd be going for a check flight with another instructor -- just to make sure everything was done well -- and then it would be off for the checkride later in the week. If this plan were to succeed, this would be my quickest rating ever. I guess I'm starting to believe in the "3 day multi-engine rating" advertisements featured in popular flying magazines. :-)

The first multi-flight was an "introduction" to the Beechcraft Duchess. By "introduction" we don't really mean straight-and-level flight: after departure, it was straight into procedures: steep turns, power-on and power-off stalls, slow flight, emergency gear extension, etc. I do have to say that the flight was not quite an easy one for me. Everything, and I mean everything, seems to be different in the twin. The switches are in different positions, the airspeeds are different, and because the Duchess has counter-rotating propellers, you do not need any right rudder on takeoff (which I applied anyway -- old single-engine habits die quite hard, I must say). But, at least I had a checklist in the format that I was familiar with -- that made it a little easier, but not by much.

In the end, I was able to land the Duchess OK after the lesson -- and we did a few touch and goes to make sure I got enough practice. I must say: the Duchess landing gear is quite durable. Don't ask how I know. :-)

Stay tuned for more updates as my commercial multi-engine add-on progresses.

Photo Flight

2007-08-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Neil at work is an avid photographer. And while I enjoy taking pictures as well, I'm a "point and shoot" kind of guy. Neil, on the other hand, takes it much more seriously: he's got several cameras (both film and digital), a complement of lenses, and when he needs that extra zoom telephoto, he rents it -- much like I rent airplanes.

Neil is one of those folks who wants to go flying without needing to be convinced too much. We talked for a long time about going up for a flight, partly (or mostly) because Neil wanted to take some pictures of freeway interchanges from up high. And, since we had the perfect weather for this last Monday -- sunny, with not a cloud in the sky -- we went.

I guess this flight with Neil was the first situation for me that might have been a real-life "flight for hire" that I might have been asked to do had I been a working commercial pilot. Of course, I couldn't really charge Neil, even though I have a commercial pilot's license -- my medical is over 2.5 years old, which means it's only good for third class private pilot operations. But, even though I wouldn't be getting any money, I still had a good excuse to go up flying. So, we headed up to Northway Aviation, the FBO that I rent from most often at Paine Field, boarded one of their Cessna 172's, and headed off.

Neil wanted to take photos on the East side of Seattle -- particularly the I-405/SR-522 and I-405/SR-520 interchanges. The first interchange, with SR-522, could be done easily, since the overlying Seattle Class Bravo airspace does not start until 5,000 feet. SR-520 required a Class Bravo clearance -- it's a bit closer to Seattle-Tacoma International, and Class Bravo starts at 2,500 feet there and even goes down to 1,800 feet at the point where SR-520 crosses Lake Washington (which Neil wanted to take pictures of as well). But, we got lucky! Seattle-Tacoma happened to be landing to the North that evening, and we had no problems getting a clearance into Seattle Class Bravo at 3,500 feet as long as we stayed north of the 520 bridge and east of Mercer Island.

This flight was my first with an open passenger window, and I anticipated a lot of wind and a greatly increased noise level in the cabin. However, I was pleasantly surprised. There wasn't much wind, and even though we did have an increased noise level, I could still hear air traffic control just fine over the radio. What I did not anticipate was that an open window would provide a bit more of drag, and the plane cruised just a bit slower than usual. However, that was not a problem: I chose to operate at a pretty slow airspeed to let Neil find the perfect shot.

An exact 1.0 hours and 3 rolls of film later, we were back on the ground at Paine. I finished off the flight with a nice greaser landing on Runway 29, which put us right next to Northway's parking spots -- no extra taxi time needed. The photos turned out great as well!

Trust, But Verify

2007-08-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

How much faith do you place in air traffic controllers? Typically, we, as pilots, expect controllers to provide services appropriate to the rules of flight and the airspace we are in. For example, when flying IFR, controllers are supposed to keep you separated from other traffic; when flying VFR and getting flight following, they are supposed to point out traffic to you on a workload permitting basis.

With the advent of GPS, controllers can do something that might not have been possible before GPS -- give us a "direct to" shortcut. Or, they may give a clearance not along airways but with a "direct to" segment. As a result, sometimes, if we are lucky, the "direct to" point will be far away, and we will get to our destination faster.

But, there's sometimes a hidden danger. Controllers do occasionally make mistakes; most of the time, they are not fatal, and they can easily be corrected if caught. I experienced these mitakes first-hand recently on a flight from Reno to North Las Vegas. Even though I was flying a G1000 equipped Cessna 182, I filed via airways (direct Mustang then V105 to HARLS then direct) -- that was done to avoid restricted areas around Nellis Air Force Range and the Nevada Test Site. Reno Clearance, however, had a different idea: they said they were explicitly told to give me a full route clearance -- which sounded an awful lot like my original plan, except one crucial part was missing -- the "V105" part.

I questioned the clearance on the ground -- I had that "nagging feeling" that I would be going through some restricted areas -- but I got nowhere. Reno insisted on sending me direct from Mustang to HARLS. Given that it was +45C on the ground, that the plane did not have air conditioning, and we had "severely clear" weather, I took the clearance and decided to straighten it out with Oakland Center: "Uh, Center, Cessna 716LR, I'm showing that my current clearance will take me thru R-4807A, R-4808N, and some others... Is that going to be a problem?" Their response was "Standby", followed by "Yes, that will be a major problem, fly now direct Beatty VOR."

I wonder what would have happened if I had not caught the problem... Or, what if I had't been flying an aircraft equipped with a moving map GPS -- it would have been considerably harder to plot the course on a paper chart (actually two charts). "Trust but verify", I guess.

Hot and High

2007-07-14T17:21:00.000-07:00

My recent trip took place during a heatwave throughout most of the Southwestern United States. The Reno airport, with an elevation of 4,400 feet, registered +45 degrees C at the time I landed. That equated to a density altitude of about 8,600 feet. While the runways at Reno are long enough to alleviate any density altitude issues associated with takeoff and landing (other than, of course, the airplane accelerating more slowly and taking up much more runway), consideration has to be given to climb performance after takeoff -- especially if one is piloting an aircraft under IFR.

Reno, as a major airport, is served by a number of standard instrument departure procedures. Controllers usually do not realize (or maybe do not care) that an aircraft may not be able to fly a certain departure procedure because of the required climb rates. For example, take a look at the Mustang Seven Departure. This departure requires a minimum climb gradient of 525 feet per nautical mile to 8000 feet, which at 75 knots ground speed translates to about 650 feet per minute. This is no small feat for a Cessna 182 -- even a lightly loaded one -- when the temperature on the ground is +45 degrees C (and even when the temperature is standard, a Cessna 182 might not be able to climb that fast).

What's the solution? Refuse a clearance that includes a standard instrument departure (SID). Or, if you are already on a SID, and are unable to meet the required climb gradient, say so, and request a VFR climb to altitude while providing your own terrain separation. This may mean flying the route provided by the SID -- but at a lower climb rate -- or flying a different route altogether. Either way, the controllers will be glad you told them about your predicament. :-)

Cessna Fuel Selectors

2007-07-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine got married recently in Phoenix. And, what better way to gain more flight experience than go on a long trip? So, as soon as I knew the wedding date, I reserved the FBO's G1000 Cessna 182 for the flight. Milen and I actually made a very similar flight almost a year ago to date -- but we only went to Sedona, so not quite as far south as Phoenix.

The original plan was to go to Phoenix all in one day -- especially if there was tailwind en route. That would be just under nine hours of flying time; I thought I could certainly manage that, especially with a capable aircraft with a good autopilot. But, as luck might have had it, on the day I flew, I had excellent VFR weather, but no tailwinds. So I had to scrap the plan of making it to Arizona in one day, and I decided to overnight in Las Vegas instead. An en-route fuel stop would need to be made in Reno.

The trip to Reno required some thought about good fuel management, although with 87 gallons usable fuel, I estimated that I'd still have more than 30 gallons left at my destination. Usually, Cessna fuel management is brain-dead simple: just leave the fuel selector in the "Both" position -- which causes fuel to be burned from both tanks at an approximately even rate. Note that I said "approximately": sometimes, for one reason or another, things do not quite work exactly right. This time, on the way down to Reno, just on the east side of the Cascades, I observed a noticeable difference in the indicated fuel quantity between the left and the right tank. In my mind, there could have been several problems: faulty fuel gauge, plane not burning from the left tank, blocked fuel supply line from the left tank, etc. Given that I had enough altitude to restart the engine in case the problem was with the fuel line, I put the fuel selector valve on "Left". The engine continued running, and I was slightly relieved. Now: is it a faulty gauge? It would take a while to find out, because the fuel quantity indicators in G1000 equipped C182's only indicate up to 36 gallons per tank (the actual capacity is 43.5 gallons usable) -- so for the first 7.5 gallons (about 30-45 minutes of flight, depending on the fuel flow), the pilot cannot observe any movement on the gauge. Fortunately, somewhere between Bend and Lakeview, OR, the left gauge started moving as well. If it hadn't moved, my plan was to divert to Lakeview, in southern Oregon.

As I was considering my situation, I sure was glad that I printed out the JeppView approach plates not only for my departure and destination airports but also for most airpors en-route. What if the fuel gauge did not move? What if the engine did not continue running when I moved the fuel selector to "Left"? I probably would not have touched the fuel selector if I had been in instrument conditions, but I sure would have liked to make an instrument approach to the Redmond, OR airport. :-)

Making Money in Aviation

2007-06-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I referred to having a long way to go to catch Milen with respect to FAA certificates. Why? Because in the time it took me to get my commercial single-engine license, Milen got his: commercial multi-engine, commercial single-engine, CFI, MEI, and AGI certificates. Congratulations!!!

I'm proud to say that I was Milen's first dual instruction "victim" -- and hence the title of the post: Milen is now making money as a CFI! The opportunity for dual instruction came because I was out of currency in the G1000 Cessna 182, and I wanted to get current before I forgot too much about the G1000 avionics suite. I ended up learning a bit from that flight -- more so than from my other checkout or recurrency flights. We did slow flight descents (which I've never done before), and Milen failed the PFD and MFD on me and made me land with backup instruments only. This was not so much of a challenge -- but it did make for some stick-and-rudder practice, especially with regard to power settings: if you lose the PFD and the MFD on a G1000 equipped airplane, you typically have no tachometer or manifold pressure gauge to refer to for power settings. And, while you do not need these to land, it sure does give extra peace of mind to glance over at the engine gauges to verify that the power you have set is the power you're supposed to have for descent and/or landing. Milen also caught me on some sloppy checklist usage... Yikes! It's amazing what you can observe from the right seat.

I flew the high-wing Cessna surprisingly well -- during the day, at night, and under simulated instrument conditions. It turns out that I did not really forget all that much... If I could point out one difference, however, between the Cessna 182 and the Piper Arrow II, it would be glide characteristics. The Arrow II, with its Hershey-bar wing, does not glide well at all. It's a very forgiving airplane: if you're 5 knots too fast, it doesn't really matter that much. On the other hand, you can't try the same in a Cessna: you'll end up floating in flare as the runway disappears from under you.

In the end, I'm again current in the Cessna 182, and by extension, in Cessna 172's -- just in time for the summer flying season!

I'm a Commercial Pilot Now

2007-06-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

Let's celebrate! As of Friday, May 25, 2007, I'm a commercial pilot (single engine land). (And yes, I know I'm behind in blogging; it's been a busy couple of weeks at work with the end of the fiscal year). I'm finally starting to catch up to Milen in terms of certificates. :-) Although, I still have a long, long way to go.

The commercial checkride itself was quite uneventful, and much, much easier than I had anticipated. I guess that my CFI was right after all: I was for sure ready to be a commercial pilot. Here's what the examiner had me do:

Of course, the oral exam. I'm happy to say that I only missed one question on the oral; that had to do with light gun signals from the air traffic control tower. So far - great!
Normal takeoff from the airport -- to get established on course for my pre-planned cross country. That went quite well, but then again, there was not much to mess up.
Diversion to another airport -- basically get on course to the airport, verify that you are established on course, determine how long the plane is going to take to get there.
Maneuvers: my DPE picked steep turns and chandelles. Nice! I just nailed these!
Stall series - both power on and power off, with and without banks, in clean and dirty configurations.
Emergency approach and landing. This dreaded maneuver went just fine -- to my great surprise. It sure propped up my confidence for the performance landings, which were about to follow.
Performance landings. I messed up on the short field. I was told to land right on the numbers, which were right at the edge of the runway... I slammed into the numbers, and I'm happy that Mr. William T. Piper engineered a strong landing gear for the PA28 aircraft series. On the other hand, I excelled at the power-off 180. I landed right in the middle of the 1,000 foot markers on the runway!
Eights on pylons. Surprisingly, I nailed these as well. Even with some wind. :-)

And that was it! Wow! So much easier than I had ever anticipated.

We headed back to the home airport, and I was a commercial pilot. At the end, I was surprised that the DPE had a portable printer with him. He ended up printing my temporary commercial certificate -- so now I carry an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper in my logbook until my permanent certificate arrives.

Cool Super-Cooled Water Video

2007-06-08T11:01:00.000-07:00

Switching topics for a bit from the progress on my commercial: here's a cool video that someone forwarded to me: Super-Cooled Water Demonstration.

The phenomenon is this: let's say you are flying IFR, the temperature around you is below the freezing level, and you encounter visible moisture. What might happen is that the visible moisture is in the form of super-cooled water -- that is, moisture in liquid form (even though the temperature outside may be less than zero degrees C). Such moisture tends to remain in liquid state -- in fact, the more pure the water is, the more likely it is to exhibit such behavior -- unless it strikes some kind of surface that is conductive to crystallization, in which case it crystallizes (in plain language: it turns to ice). What's an example of such a surface? How about your aircraft!

This is how you may end up getting clear ice. For light aircraft, which often lack any kind of anti-icing or deicing equipment (save the Pitot Heat), this can be an extremely dangerous encounter. And unfortunately, the phenomenon shown in the video is all too common over the Cascade Mountains in the Pacific Northwest.

Well worth watching!

The Pre-Checkride

2007-06-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

So close! The day of the checkride was coming up on Friday, and Thursday evening we were out again practicing maneuvers. To say the least I was a bit anxious, especially given yesterday's (see previous post) failure on the simulated checkride because of a botched emergency approach and landing. The focus of Thursday's lesson was just that: emergency landing, together with a review of lazy eights, and of course, eights on pylons. This time, we north of Everett, and our practice area was between Paine Field and Skagit County Airport.

How did the first emergency approach and landing go? Well, I again overshot a bit... I was actually really disappointed in myself at this point, because I should have judged the distance to the field much better. And, there were no obstacles at the beginning of the field to provide any kind of excuse for the lack of good performance. The next one was not much better either -- all because I somehow insisted of flying the pattern too close to the field. Of course, that, combined with the fact that I was making the approach just like a power-off 180 meant that I was not losing as much altitude in the descending turn. And hence, the overshoot. Once I figured this out, and managed to get it in my head, things started going better.

Power-off 180 accuracy approach landings were still a bit dicey. Out of 4, I think I made two within PTS limits, although the other two were not too far off -- but they were off, and I was not feeling too confident.

Nevertheless, I was to meet my instructor tomorrow, at 10am, to get officially signed off. My CFI was confident that I would be a commercial pilot in less than 24 hours!!

Pre-Checkride Jitters

2007-06-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

(Note to readers: I'm a couple of weeks behind in posts, but I'm trying to catch up.)

I've been having pre-checkride jitters. The checkride was scheduled for less than a week away -- on Friday, and my maneuvers were not quite perfect just yet. My instructor seemed to think I can do them within PTS standards, but on every flight, there seems to be some maneuver that is out of standard -- or barely within it. That's not good, because it doesn't give me a feeling of consistency. And without a feeling of consistency, I cannot feel good about the upcoming checkride.

With that in mind, I've scheduled flights for Monday and Thursday after work (someone else has the Arrow on Tuesday and Wednesday). Monday's flight was a simulated commercial checkride. I guess it went semi-OK: stall series was good, and so were chandelles and lazy eights. We then climbed up to 5,800 feet (Seattle Class B started at 6,000 at the point where we were); on the way up, we went over slow flight as well as systems emergencies. The following emergency descent (steep spiral) went well also. So far so good.

Then came the dreaded emergency landing. For starters, I've been having a lot of trouble with this maneuver, probably because it's more difficult to judge distance between yourself and the ground, and also because without power, I tend to stay high on the approach and overshoot the field as a result. During this simulated checkride, I picked a field, and I thought I had it made... Unfortunately, the field that I picked had a slight problem, which I did not realize beforehand: there were trees at the approach end, which meant it was not only an emergency landing -- but an emergency landing with an obstacle! So, as usual, I stayed high -- too high. In real life, I probably would have made it into the field OK, by holding a slip almost all the way to touchdown. But, this was not real life -- it was practice -- and we have to recover by 500 feet. And in my instructor's judgment, I probably would not have made it. Yikes! That's a failure on the simulated checkride. :-(

We proceeded to do some eights on pylons, but there was too much low level traffic in our practice area... So we couldn't really do them, and there aren't too many other areas east of Paine Field to do eights on pylons at. Why? Well, strictly speaking, you have to be in a "sparsely populated" area to do this maneuver, because typically you will be less than 1,000 feet above ground level. For me (and for my CFI as well), finding this type of area within reasonable distance was tough, so we decided to head back to Paine to do some landings. The landings were OK -- we concentrated on shorts and softs; the dreaded power-off 180 would have to wait until next time.

Debrief was at Jack in the Box over some fast-food dinner. During the debrief itself, my CFI actually was far more encouraging than I had thought: he just said -- pick a field without obstacles (if you can), set up for a normal power-off 180, and execute the landing. I say: easier said than done, but I sure will try to do it on the checkride. :-)

So, the conclusion was: we'll continue working on these maneuvers next time! Since the weather for Friday looked good, I had better be ready by then! :-)

"Top Gun" Moments

2007-05-28T12:20:00.001-07:00

For one reason or another, whenever I strive to learn something new, I sometimes go through stages where things get worse before they get better. It's when the instructor demonstrates a maneuver, you do it by rote repetition (and it turns out semi-well, probably through luck), but in subsequent days, things are not going as well and there's lack of visible improvement. Or, worse: you've been doing well on a maneuver, and suddenly you find that nothing is going your way: the maneuver is outside of PTS tolerances, and perhaps the entire training flight has not gone as well as you might have expected.

I've had one of these moments recently in preparation for the commercial checkride (which, by the way, is already scheduled -- no backing away this time!) I call those events Top Gun Moments, because it seems like when they happen, I go home, watch Top Gun (again), and I tell myself that I can still do it! :-) For this recent flight, it had to do with my perennial problem -- eights on pylons. The maneuver just isn't going so well, and I'm wondering if I'm ever going to just magically "get it". I seem to choose pylons that are either too far apart, or too close, or such that I lose track of where they are altogether in the middle of the maneuver. The plane seems to go all over the place -- and even though I know what to do theoretically with respect to pivotal altitude, I can't seem to reliably translate this knowledge into physical flight control movements.

To add to the frustration, my power-off 180 degree accuracy landings are all over the place: I'm either short, long, or not within the 200-foot PTS limit. What's worse is that I seem to have done quite well on these before, and now for some reason they're not turning out as well. All this seems to be calling for me to watch Top Gun again. :-)

The checkride is coming up soon -- I've scheduled some additional flights to make sure that I'm all up to standard. On a more positive side, at least I'm up to snuff on my airplane and systems knowledge!

"I Fly IFR"

2007-05-08T21:06:00.000-07:00

Different types of flying currency tend to lapse if you do not fly often enough. For flying VFR, it's not so hard to maintain currency or to regain it: you need three takeoffs and landings in the past 90 days -- and that's only to carry passengers; for practical purposes, that means you can always get current on your own (if you haven't flown in a while, it may be a good idea to take a CFI along, though). There are additional requirements for flying at night, but these can be accomplished on your own as well.

On the other hand, for flying IFR, it's a bit different. In the past six months, you must have had, under actual or simulated conditions, six instrument approaches, a hold, and you must have intercepted/tracked navigational courses. If you let the six month currency lapse, you cannot file IFR, and you have six additional months to fulfill the requirements in VFR conditions - with a safety pilot on board. Easy enough thus far, with the caveat that you not only have very specific tasks to accomplish, but you cannot really accomplish them on your own, since you will most probably need a safety pilot: even when flying IFR, conditions at your destination airport have to be such that your approach is conducted under actual conditions. That rarely happens, so most IFR proficiency is accomplished in visual conditions while wearing a view-limiting device (also known as "under the hood") -- with either a pilot buddy (free!) or an instructor (paid).

Looking back at my logbook, I did three approaches, a hold, and I flew IFR cross country last September. Before that, I did six approaches, a hold, and some course tracking in June, 2006. What does that mean? Well, I was definitely out of currency for filing IFR -- but not only that! My additional six month grace period for accomplishing the requirements under VFR conditions was almost over. And, as nicely outlined by the FAA in 14 CFR 61.57(d), if you let this additional grace period lapse, you're up for an "instrument proficiency check", which is almost like an instrument checkride all over again. Yikes!

What to do? Take Milen along as a safety pilot, and get instrument current! We did that a couple of weekends ago in the Arrow. It actually went quite well -- better than I expected, probably because I did quite a bit of instrument practice in Microsoft Flight Simulator X (the game actually works quite well for practicing IFR procedures -- if you do everything exactly right, set the realism settings to most realistic, and get used to a bit of extra sensitivity on the yoke). We started off with an ILS 16R to Paine, followed by a VOR 16R, followed by a hold at the Paine VOR (which included tracking directly to the VOR). The Seattle Center controllers were not very busy, so we got vectors for a practice LOC 34 to Arlington, and then we did the ILS 16R approach to Paine again three times. After 1.6 hours of hood time, I'm instrument current. Note, though: current does not necessarily mean proficient. These are just the minimums so that I do not have to go through an instrument checkride in June!

Livin' la Vida JeppView

2007-05-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I mentioned that I bought JeppView electronic charts. Since I've had a couple of opportunities to use these charts in the "real world", it's time to give an update on how I'm doing with them.

JeppView comes with a license to install on up to 4 computers, provided that you do not use more than one copy of the software at a time. I ended up installing on two machines: my desktop machine at home, as well as my Toshiba M200 Tablet PC. The installation went mostly OK; however, since my tablet does not have a built-in CD-ROM drive, I had to jump through some hoops to install JeppView over the network. While the procedure was somewhat difficult (it does not help that Jeppesen's installation program does not detect that I inserted a new disk into the CD drive if the CD drive is used over the network), I do think that most people probably have internal or external CD-ROM drives available for their laptops.

The Jeppesen electronic IFR package comes with two main applications: JeppView, which is meant to be used from a desktop computer and allows for viewing, packaging, and printing charts, and FliteDeck, which is meant to be used as an electronic chart viewer in the cockpit.

While I have not flown an actual approach using the FliteDeck software alone (that is, an approach without printed-out paper charts), I did bring the laptop along when Milen was flying left seat. I made the following observations:

The display on my tablet, although not the brightest, is mostly readable in sunlight. Of course, it's more readable when there is no sun, but it's good to know that theoretically, I'd be able to read the plate even with the sun shining.
The software is, once you figure out the pictograms/icons, quite easy to use. And, it has smart features -- it's not just a simple single-screen approach plate viewer. While I won't go into detail on JeppView features, it is worth pointing out that Jeppesen's approach plate viewer is divided into two areas: a larger window that covers about 70% of the screen, and a smaller one below which covers the remaining 30%. Clicking on the big window alternates between viewing the whole chart versus a zoomed-in plan view. Clicking on the little window alternates between zoomed in Briefing Strip, profile view, and minimums view. If you want to zoom in even more on a chart, that feature is available, too. Essentially, you can view the entire approach chart, and zoom in/out, without having to click on clumsy (and little) scroll bars -- and I'm sure clicking on those in turbulent air would not be the easiest thing in the world.
The tablet, although with a small screen by today's standards (12-inch), is somewhat big and clumsy to use in a general aviation cockpit environment. In the Cessna 172, the control wheel gets in the way, and I'm sure it would be the same case in a Piper Arrow. There is not much room between the seats to securely store the computer when not in use, either. And, laptop screens tend to be delicate -- so you cannot just put the computer anywhere with the screen exposed -- it could get scratched, or worse, cracked.
I cannot afford to lose the stylus (pen) of the tablet in the cockpit. Since my tablet does not have a touch screen, I need to use the stylus to access the FliteDeck interface -- for everything from picking the airport to view terminal procedures for, to selecting the procedure, to navigating around the chart. It would be a good idea to invest into some kind of a tethering wire, such that if the stylus ever slips away, it remains within easy reach.
Overall, I still seem to prefer paper charts. :- For now, I'm going to stick to my planned mode of operation: print out the charts I anticipate I will need, and bring the charged laptop along just in case there is some procedure I need that I did not print out prior to flight.

FliteDeck's desktop cousin, JeppView, has a familiar interface if you've ever used AOPA's RealTime Flight Planner. In fact, it seems like JeppView uses the same basic interface as RealTime Flight Planner with some extra tabs and side windows tacked on. But, that's for another blog entry. I'll post some of the experiences with JeppView, as well as some things that I wish it did a little better. Stay tuned!

The Effects of Wind

2007-05-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

If you read the Commercial Pilot Practical Test Standards (conveniently provided by the FAA online), you'll find that for some maneuvers the FAA expects you to apply wind drift correction. And, while for others, there is no specific wind drift correction technique specified in the PTS, you're still expected to use good judgment and take wind into consideration. This was quite evident for me in a recent lesson.

As usual, we took off (this time westbound) from Paine Field into the practice area immediately to the west of the airport. That day, winds aloft were quite strong: around 30 knots from the south. We started off by doing chandelles. My CFI pointed out something I didn't quite realize before -- but in hindsight, it makes sense. Make the climbing turn into the wind -- that way, the airplane does not get blown away from the practice area in which you just checked for other traffic. Likewise, for lazy eights -- begin the maneuver with the wind either to your left or to your right. Beginning the maneuver in such a way not only will keep you more in the practice area, but it should also help you with maintaining the entry airspeed at the 180-degree point.

Where the wind matters even more, though, is during maneuvers performed with reference to the ground. For the commercial single engine checkride, that would be eights-on-pylons. And, although the FAA does not specifically classify it as a ground reference maneuver, a steep spiral is performed with reference to a ground point, and maintaining equal distance all the way around the point certainly requires correcting for drift. Needless to say, I found that while my steep spiral may have been coming along well in a no-wind situation, it looked much worse with wind than without. My CFI offered a hint , which we'll have to try out next time I'm doing steep spirals: try to do steep spirals over a point formed by an intersection of two roads rather than over one distinct point (like a tree). The reasoning is that with an intersection, you can approach the point along one of the roads. This will help you align yourself, and verify the alignment, as you're approaching the point over which the steep spiral will be done. We'll see how it goes next time on a windy day! And hopefully that really windy day won't be the day of the checkride. :-)

Commercial Update: In Full Swing

2007-04-29T00:32:00.000-07:00

It seems like I'm finally back in "full swing" on my commercial license. I've put myself on the schedule for Saturday and Sunday afternoons for the next month and a half (with the exception of one weekend -- seems like someone has the plane on both days), as well as on Tuesdays and Thursdays after work. The after work commute up to Paine Field will be tough, since I'll have to go up on I-405, which can be at a standstill during rush hour. But, during my days as a private and instrument student, I had to commute during rush hour on the 405 for ground school, so hopefully the knowledge of traffic patterns on the highway will help me out.

On the practical test preparation side, my landings seem to be getting consistently better. During the first after-work lesson, my CFI Kurtis and I went into Whidbey Airpark (locally known as "Langley") in the Arrow to work on short field technique. Langley is a quite difficult paved strip on Whidbey Island just across Puget Sound from Everett; the runway is 2470x25 ft, which on the surface does not sound all that bad. However, access to the airport is difficult because of trees in all four quadrants. In fact, at Langley, you land to the North and take off to the South -- even if the wind conditions would indicate otherwise. And, sometimes, you don't go there at all. Check out the AirNav Photo of the field to see for yourself -- but the photo doesn't really do it too much justice. Langley, by the way, is one of the favorites for Pilot Examiners for real-world short field testing: I had to demonstrate the ability to land there, in a Cessna 172, for my private checkride.

Aerial maneuvers are going OK as well. Historically chandelles have been my strongest maneuver, and I'm doing just fine there. Steep turns turned out most excellent as well -- not sure if that was just luck, or if I really did them quite well. :-) I'm getting better at lazy-eights as well, although these do need some work to stay within the PTS standards. And, during the next lesson, we'll be tackling steep spirals and eights-on-pylons -- the two things that I probably need the most work on (and incidentally have had the least practice on in the past).

Finally Back in the Air

2007-04-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's been a long time -- almost six months to be exact -- but I'm officially back in the air. I was going to go on April 7th, but alas there was some confusion over the scheduling system at the FBO. They're in the process of transitioning to a new and much better system, complete with electronic billing, but unknown to me, the old system was still in use. Of course, I made my aircraft and CFI reservation with the new system... The result? A scheduling conflict! I show up at the airport, even 15 minutes early so we could start right at 2pm, and there's someone else waiting for my airplane. And it turns out the CFI I booked had the day off.

Ouch -- what a mess. I go next door, to a different FBO that I fly with, but all of their airplanes are out flying. Plus, they seem to have a shortage of instructors, so even if there was an aircraft, there would not be a CFI to fly with me. Call me too cautious, but I was not about to go into an airplane by myself after a six month hiatus.

But, this past Saturday and Sunday, the Gods of Airplane Scheduling were kind, and I did get a chance to log some flight time! 1.2 hours on Saturday and 2.3 hours on Sunday. I was pleasantly surprised at my first landing in the Arrow on Saturday -- while my airspeed in the pattern was, well, "all over the place", the landing itself was not so bad. I floated a bit down the runway, but I did land the plane rather nicely. The subsequent landings got better, and by Sunday, I was doing just fine.

I'm really going to finish my commercial this time, I promise. :-) I've found a new instructor who is more available than my old one -- so I've scheduled the plane after work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, together with some weekends. Hopefully in a month or two I'll be a commercial pilot! (Of course, I've said that before, but this time I'm more determined...)

Back on the Schedule!

2007-04-05T07:53:00.000-07:00

Proud to announce - I'm going back up in the air this weekend! I've got NSA's Arrow and a CFI this Saturday and Sunday. Hopefully the weather will hold up! :-)

IFR Charts

2007-04-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

While I wasn't flying, my Jeppesen Northwest Airway Manual Express subscription expired back in February. And it seems like there are (at least seemingly) more options for charting than in the past. Both NACO and Jeppesen charts are of course available, but this time Jeppesen is really pushing their JeppView electronic charting product. I'm not going to go into the NACO vs. Jeppesen debate here, but needless to say, I've trained with Jeppesen, so I'm going to stick to that.

I must admit that I was more or less oblivious to the whole IFR charting business back when I was an instrument student (which actually was not that long ago!) Life then was simple. The pilot store next to the FBO where I trained carried the "Jeppesen NW Express Pack", and for around $30 + tax, I got a fresh set of plates every 56 days. Convenient, but expensive. A little later on, I found out you can get a "subscription service" for the said "NW Express Pack" for much cheaper - and they still send you a fresh set of terminal procedures every 56 days: for the price of being more careful with enroute charts, I got a much cheaper charting story.

In the meantime, I started to discover the limitations of the Express Pack: it only covers Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. That's enough for most of the time, but... I remember once going to Montana -- I had to print out the NACO charts from the web. For one the big trip down to Oakland, Milen and I split the cost of the Jeppesen Express Pack for California. For trips to Canada -- just a short hop across the border -- I ended up buying Jepp Trip Kits. But, they're expensive: I had to get the whole Western Canada edition for around $100 for each trip. And, they take a while to order: there's no spontaneous "let's go to Victoria for the day". On top of that, there were many times when I did not feel like spending $100 for a Trip Kit, so flying to Canada just didn't happen as often as it could have.

So what to do? I considered getting a greater coverage area for paper Jepps, but that comes with a price: the pain of revisions seems to increase exponentially with the increase in geographical area covered. Plus, the price is, uh, a lot. I really need charts for Western USA and Western Canada, so that would be $731/year payable to Captain Jeppesen. And let's face it: most of the airports that are included in the paper subscription I'll never fly to -- so I don't really care that a procedure changed in, say, Lovelock, NV (no offense to people there). Unless, of course, I end up diverting there for some reason, which means I still need to apply the updates "just in case".

Given all this, it seems like JeppView could be the answer. Electronic versions of the low enroute and terminal procedure charts for Western USA and Western Canada are available for slightly cheaper than with regular paper charts -- $524 (plus the initial $100 fee for the software). Updating with JeppView is a breeze, since you can just download the updates from the Internet every 14 days. And, you still get paper enroute charts, so the only truly electronic portion is the terminal procedures. So far, it seems like a win-win from the money perspective and the updates perspective.

I am, however, taking a big gamble on electronic charts: I don't have a dedicated flight bag laptop yet (although I do have a Tablet PC through work). So, the way I'm going to use the JeppView electronic charts is mostly on the ground: I'll buy the special paper for chart printing (already hole-punched, and according to the representative, it's of similar thickness as the paper for regular Jeppesen charts) at $15.95 per 1,000 sheets, and I'll print out the charts I need for any particular route of flight. Of course, I'll likely have to print out charts for airports along alternate routes, and for maximum safety, I'll carry my work-issued Tablet PC just in case I need to make an approach into that Middle of Nowhere Airport. Long term, I'll probably buy a Tablet PC with a special bright screen -- I doubt the Toshiba Portege I have now will be readable in bright sunlight.

Of course, all of the above is theory. The software is scheduled to arrive this Friday, so look for a "first impressions" post soon.

Capt. Al Haynes Speaks at Boeing Field

2007-04-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Milen and I went to see Captain Al Haynes, the captain of United Flight 232, speak at the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle. The museum theatre was filled to capacity, and I actually ended up in an "overflow room" where the presentation was televised. Not great, but as a pilot, I was just happy to get a chance to be there and listen to Capt. Haynes.

Imagine an aircraft with 3 independent hydraulic systems -- any one of which enabled the cockpit crew to fully control the flight surfaces of the airplane. The odds of all three failing at the same time were calculated as one billion to one. Yet, on July 19, 1989, all three failed, rendering the DC-10-10 unflyable... Somehow, and against all odds, the crew managed to "control" the airplane with differential power alone and put the crippled aircraft at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa.

There were 185 survivors out of 296 on board. Capt. Haynes spoke about the survival aspects of the incident, and why so many survived. Luck had a lot to do with it, but preparedness and adherence to Standard Operating Procedures played a major role as well. For example, Sioux City just completed an airplane crash disaster drill. In the cockpit, Capt. Haynes made the use of all available resources, including an off-duty DC-10 check airman, and the crew exhibited excellent CRM. They were prepared.

I learned about Capt. Haynes coming to town from faasafety.gov (well, actually Milen did, and he forwarded me the info -- thanks!) If you hear about Capt. Haynes coming to where you live, make sure to go and see him - it's well worth your time!

User Fees: An Eye-Opening Article

2007-03-24T15:55:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of AOPA Pilot came in today. There's always a lot of interesting stuff in Pilot each month, but the one article that caught my attention was on European-Style User Fees. How the Euro user fee structure works, and the consequences it brings to the GA community, is particularly relevant to all US general aviation pilots, because the Bush Administration, together with the FAA, is pushing for a possibly similar fee structure here.

So what do user fees cost in real life? To find out, AOPA went on an IFR flight from London's Biggin Hill Airport to Frankfurt. For this flight, in a Twin Comanche, the user fees alone totaled up to be over $200! And that doesn't even include talking to a preflight weather briefer -- it's cheaper to obtain weather information over the Internet (for which you pay a separate $100/year subscription fee -- there's no free aviationweather.gov in Europe). Anything and everything is pay-as-you-go. For example:

A missed approach, even though you didn't land, still results in an Eurocontrol charge of about $20.
Weather didn't turn out as expected, and everything near a major airline hub airport is "fogged in", but you still have to land (maybe you're low on fuel)? Eurocontrol bureaucrats in Brussels say: "hmm, too bad for your pocketbook..." If it happens near Frankfurt/Main, with no other options available, that'll be about $1,000+ for landing fees and penalty fees because you showed up out of the blue without a reserved slot.

There's another side to the user fee debate that's a bit less obvious: I always wondered why there were so many US-registered aircraft operating in Europe. The AOPA Pilot article provided an explanation: flying a US-registered aircraft means that you do not have to have an European license. Since the cost of obtaining a US license is so much less -- with more opportunities for practice (after all, we don't pay for touch-and-goes or missed approaches in the States) -- many European airplane owners opt to get their licenses in the USA and register their aircraft there. After all, that little plastic card from the US Department of Transportation allows a person to fly an N-registered airplane pretty much anywhere in the world.

There's an eye-opening 8 minute user fee video on AOPA's website (accessible to everyone, not just members) that details the London-Frankfurt experience. Well worth watching.

The Flying Doctor

2007-03-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

Back in June, I started this blog with a post entitled "Convenience of an Airplane" -- it was meant to highlight how I actually got to use an airplane for something other than training or flying from Point A to Point B for the sole purpose of conducting the flight.

And, recently, NBC's Today Show featured an "American Story" on exactly that topic. It profiled an Idaho doctor who flies a Cessna 210 out of Hailey to some of the most remote areas of Idaho to see his patients. You can watch the story here. Now, that's a powerful video story detailing how General Aviation is Serving America! It's one of the few stories in the media that portrays GA in a good light -- a portrayal which it desperately needs now that there is talk in Congress of user fees, avgas tax hikes, etc.

Long Time, No Flying

2007-03-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been a long time since I blogged. Coincidentally, it's also been a long time since I've last sat at the controls of an aircraft. :-( But for me, as I think for many private pilots, the winter season is the "low" season for flying. While you'd think that with an instrument rating, I could venture "out and about" during the winter, it's just not always so. The aircraft I fly lack anti-icing or de-icing equipment, and the nearby mountains around Seattle are justly called the Cascade Ice Machine. And then, there's the winter sports in the Pacific Northwest. I'm an avid skier, and going skiing on a weekend means no flying that weekend. On top of all that, I was busy renovating and moving into my new condo in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle.

But, now that's done. The winter season is almost over. I've already been hitting Microsoft Flight Simulator X to brush up on instrument procedures. Time to go back to the airport, refamiliarize myself with the aircraft, do some landings, and start working (yet again, this time for real) on that commercial ticket! (Milen, BTW, is far ahead of me - he's now a commercial pilot for single and multi-engine -- congrats, Milen!)

PS: wow, what happens to an unmaintained blog. The number of inappropriate comments had me deleting them for a good 5-10 minutes. As a result, I've made it so that only registered Blogger users can comment. Sorry for any inconvenience... :-(

Another Commercial Update

2006-10-30T21:31:00.000-08:00

I haven't flown this past weekend. The weather has not been very cooperative... Saturday the plan was to go out, practice some maneuvers, including steep spirals, and then come back and work on spot landings. Then, I was going to take the plane to Hoquiam for a $100 hamburger and potentially fly around the Olympics while practicing maneuvers on my own. To finish it off, I'd practice spot landings.

So, what happened? Well, even though most of the Puget Sound was SKC by early Saturday afternoon, Paine Field was reporting 300 overcast. Normally this would not be a problem, since we could get out IFR and find SKC weather just several miles away, and then get back by shooting an ILS approach. Normally. Of course, as luck would have it, the glideslope at Paine is out of service until early November. So we could get out, but we couldn't get back in... Not good.

In slight dismay, I scheduled a flight for Sunday. But that was not meant to be, either. Initially I was encouraged by the weather: 3,900 scattered, and broken above -- plenty good for maneuvers. Alas, when I got to the airport, it went down to 1,400 broken (although it cleared up a bit later -- the forecast for "SKC" never quite came close to being true). What's even more important is that there were numerous PIREP's in the area about moderate and greater turbulence. And, folks were going up to fly only to return after one turn in the pattern... Certainly not ideal weather for flying a small airplane on a training mission.

On the other hand, I did make progress towards the certificate. Mark, my CFI, and I used a portion of the scheduled time to go over the Arrow, pointing out various features, antennas, etc. I now know which antenna on the bottom of the fuselage is for DME, and which one is for the marker beacon. We didn't have a "systems cheatsheet" for the Arrow, but I decided to make one up, basing the formatting on Mark's sheet for the Piper Seminole. We also took off the cowling, and that was really the first time I got to look "up close and personal" at an aircraft engine.

I'm out of town this upcoming weekend for a trip to Boston, but after I get back, I'm planning to do some mid-week flying. I'm also taking the written that week, and Mark says that I should go ahead and schedule the checkride for November 11th! I may be a commercial pilot this year after all!

Commercial License Update

2006-10-22T10:22:00.000-07:00

Finally! I got to be in the left seat of the Arrow, N5250T. During yesterday's lesson, we practiced chandelles, lazy-8's, steep turns, and eights-on-pylons. I was surprised at how well these maneuvers were going for me! The first couple of chandelles were definitely not up to standard, but I steadily improved. Lazy-8's, the maneuver that gave me the most trouble before, seems to be within PTS standards now. Steep turns are looking good! Eights-on-pylons could still use some more work -- I'm having the most trouble selecting appropriate pylons, but that will come with practice.

From talking to the owner of the flight school, the repair bill for the damages was around $30,000. That doesn't include the new engine, a new ignition system, and some service bulletins that needed to be complied with anyway -- so the grand total came out to be around $65,000. Ouch. Gear up landings are definitely expensive. But, this bird now flies perfectly, and at least from the initial flight, I cannot tell that there was any damage history at all. The engine also seems smoother when at idle power.

For now, the plane is still going to be at the same rate -- $99/hour dry (which, with Paine Field fuel prices, works out to be about $135/hour wet). Soon I'll find out if the rate is going to be increasing because of the accident -- the FBO's insurance policy is up for renewal in November.

I'm going up again today to practice the maneuvers. I'll probably be doing more chandelles, a lazy eight, and then I'll try to finish up by selecting (by myself) some suitable pylons. After the lesson I might go somewhere longer, since I need that engine broken-in quickly so that we can start doing steep spirals and pattern work!

I might be a commercial pilot this year after all!

The Arrow is Back!

2006-10-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

Great news! The Arrow is back on the flight line, although the engine still needs to be fully broken in. As a result, the FBO wants to avoid rapid temperature changes to the engine, so we're restricted from practicing some of the commercial maneuvers like power-off landings, stalls, and pattern work. But, I'm told that other maneuvers that require more constant power, e.g., chandelles, steep turns, lazy eights, and eights on pylons, can be done! Since I'm anxious to get back to the commercial training, and since the weather this weekend is looking quite good, I've postponed my DA-20 checkout in favor of getting back on track with my commercial license!! Stay tuned for a report on how I'm doing after a 3 month hiatus from the maneuvers. :-)

Flying Something Different

2006-10-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

If you read today's aviation magazines, you cannot articles about "new" piston single aircraft designs, such as Cirrus or Diamond, vs. traditional designs such as Cessna or Piper. Other than sitting in a cockpit of a brand-new, well appointed Cirrus SR-22 (complete with TKS anti-ice, ah, I wish I had one of these at my disposal), I have not had any first-hand experience in these "new" aircraft.

Conveniently, it turns out that a FBO at Boeing Field, Galvin Flying, has a sizable fleet of Diamond DA-20 and DA-40 series aircraft (a couple of the -40's are even equipped with a G1000 cockpit!) They're somewhat expensive to fly (cheaper if you join their Diamond G discount program), but I figure that after my latest gallivanting around the West Coast, I can probably spare a few more bucks to fly a different design airplane. Galvin's price for the DA-40 is actually comparable to what I pay for a Cessna 182 -- and since the DA-40 cruises slightly faster, it might work out to my advantage after all. We'll see...

For now, though, I'm getting checked out in the -40's less expensive cousin - the DA-20. Weather permitting, this will be in a couple of weeks (I wish I could do it sooner, but alas I'm out of town for a business trip next weekend), plus I need to complete an aeronautical knowledge exam, a POH exam, etc. ahead of the checkout appointment. Stay tuned to the blog for a report!

FAA Humor

2006-10-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

To many, the FAA is a love-hate relationship. Never mind that in general, the folks at the FAA will hopefully be helpful, albeit they themselves have to deal with a tremendous government bureaucratic machine. Perhaps we've all read stories about a pilot landing at an airport, and some guy from the FAA opening the door to the FBO for him and saying "Hi, I'm Bob, I'm from the FAA, and I'm here to help."

But, I do think there's a humorous side to the FAA and the airspace system. And that's got to do with intersection and arrival/departure procedure names. Take the following examples from around Las Vegas:

In case you don't know where to stay after you land in Las Vegas, maybe the Luxor Two arrival will clue you in. And maybe Grandpa One was created for the lots of older folks in the casinos playing slots...
Waypoint names can be fun, too. KSINO, pronounced "casino", says you're almost in Vegas. This one works well with the Luxor Two example above - "Airliner 123, cleared direct KSINO, then Luxor Two arrival"). On the other hand, if we're not satisfied with the generic casino, then Caesar's Palace has a CEASR waypoint (but apparently they are not as cool as Luxor, since they don't have a departure or arrival procedure associated with them). In fact, Luxor must be really cool in the eyes of the FAA, because they get a PIRMD waypoint, too.
Casino games: poker is immortalized through the HOLDM intersection and POKRR/CHIPZ waypoints, while blackjack gets a HITME waypoint.

If you have examples from other areas, post them here!

Totaling Numbers

2006-09-29T18:40:00.000-07:00

I've read somewhere that those first few "hundreds" of hours can generate memories, and that sometimes pilots always remember when they got the 100th, 200th, etc. hour. But, I've never specifically computed that information from my logbook. So, today, while my car is getting all new tires at a local Discount Tire, I decided to pull my logbook out of the trunk and do some totaling. Here's what came out:

19.8 hours: 10/28/01, Cessna 172, N6353E, PAE, First Solo!
62.6 hours: 4/6/02, Cessna 172, N738SE, PAE, Private Certificate Issued!
100 hours: 2/21/04, Cessna 172, N738BU, PAE-BLI-PAE. This came during one of my instrument rating cross country training flights.
142.9 hours: 5/11/04, Cessna 172, N51380, PAE, Instrument Certificate Issued!
200 hours: 5/28/05, Cessna 172, N24529, OAK-OTH, cross country IFR flight. Not much to remember there, except that it was the furthest away I've been from my home base to date.
300 hours: 7/29/06, Cessna 172, N863CP, ALW-SUN, trip to Hailey, Idaho.
400 hours: uh, not there yet...

6353E was sold to someone in Alaska since I soloed in it. But all other aircraft are still flying out of Paine Field, and they have not changed ownership since I set my milestones in them.

I also thought I got my private license a bit sooner than 63 hours... Oh well, it's not like the skill of pilots is judged on that, anyway. And, all my milestones came in the good old 172. No 182's or the Arrow.

Hmm, I wonder what other things I can dig up by totaling up numbers in the logbook...

Home, Sweet Home

2006-09-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning it was time to start heading home "for real" -- meaning no more looking for places to go. The weather for the trip home was absolutely beautiful, with clear skies over the entire Western US. The tailwinds that helped us on the way to South Lake Tahoe died down completely, so there was no headwind to contend with at altitude. We also confirmed that we missed Colorado by one day: had the good weather come in the day before, we would have been in Aspen on Sunday instead of Salt Lake. Oh well, next time. When travelling in a small airplane that is not approved for icing conditions, you have to be flexible in where you go and what time you get there.

For the flight home, we planned two legs: Salt Lake City to Boise and Boise to Paine. The takeoff and departure from Salt Lake City, a Class B airport, was quite uneventful. We got our IFR clearance and release to Boise much quicker than at North Las Vegas -- perhaps that's because the Vegas airspace is rather busy with folks arriving to gamble (it is, after all, Lost Wages, Nevada!) Enroute visibility was excellent with no haze whatsoever: even though we were quite a bit south of Hailey, Idaho, we spotted without difficulty the valley in which Sun Valley airport is located. And, from 12,000 feet, we saw the Boise airport from over 40 miles away. To lessen the time we put on the aircraft, we took a straight-in visual for runway 28L, even though the winds were favoring runway 10. I'm not saying I recommend landings with a tailwind -- but, if the winds are light and within airplane limitations (they were), and if the runway is sufficiently long (it was), and if you're up to the challenge, then it's certainly an option.

Our stopover at Boise was at the Turbo Air FBO. It's a first-rate facility, with excellent service, and they happily loaned us their crew car to grab lunch in town. Speaking of food in Boise: I highly recommend Buster's Bar and Grill: from the I-84 freeway, take the Broadway exit, and head north a couple of miles. Buster's will be on the east side of Broadway. Excellent food and atmosphere, and reasonable prices, too! For all you football fans, they've got several big screen TV's showing live games.

The flight back to Paine Field was direct VFR at 8,500 feet, with some dodging of restricted areas near Yakima. Not much to report there; we've done that route a number of times.

And so the "big trip" was complete. We logged 17.5 hours on the airplane, visited 6 airports, and talked to 5 air route traffic control centers (Seattle, Oakland, LA, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake). Tons of fun on every leg. Here are some cool links that illustrate where we've been:

A video that Milen made of me approaching into Medford, OR.
Another video (also by Milen) of me landing in Sedona, AZ. Sorry for the shaking on the two videos -- it was taken with my digital camera with no advanced "shake reduction" capability...
Pictures from the trip.
Tracks from FlightAware: PAE-MFR, MFR-TVL, VGT-SEZ, SEZ-SLC, and SLC-BOI. The flight from Tahoe to Vegas did not get recorded for some reason, and Boise to Paine was VFR. (You may have to be a FlightAware registered user to access these links.)

P.S. Overall, I lost $100 in Nevada... I was hoping to win some money to recoup the cost of the trip, but it wasn't so (this time). :-(

Class Bravo, Here We Come

2006-09-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

This is a fourth post in the series of the longest trip I took in a small airplane to date. If you're just coming across this post, you should probably start your reading here to get the full context.

After our "detour" to Sedona, it was time to start heading home to Paine Field so we could be back on Sunday afternoon. The weather for going to Aspen was still not very good, so we decided to go to Salt Lake City. We figured that SLC was a good overnight stop, given that it was an airport that we haven't landed at before, and that it was a Class Bravo airport -- landing at a Class B primary airport would be the first for both Milen and I. So, after a quick lunch stop at the Sedona Airport Restaurant -- which, by the way, has an excellent view of the runway -- we were off to Utah.

By far, this leg provided probably the best aerial views of the entire trip. We again saw the Red Rocks near Sedona, and we flew directly over the Grand Canyon at 14,500 feet. Fortunately, the skies were clear over Northern Arizona, which greatly facilitated picture taking!

For a Class Bravo airport, SLC is extremely accommodating to GA. Much like Metro Oakland International, it's almost two airports in one. Airline operators use runways 34L and 34R, while general aviation uses runway 35. This is a very good arrangement, IMO: it saves GA pilots taxi time, since runway 35 is located next to the FBO's on the field, and it also reduces problems created by wake turbulence from large jet aircraft. Runway 35 is not a little runway - in fact, it's almost the same size as the other two. And, like 34L/R, it is served by an ILS approach. Salt Lake approach controllers seem to know GA as well: initially, we were asked to join the localizer for runway 34R, but the controller quickly offered us the localizer for runway 35 instead, which we gladly accepted. In short, landing at SLC was comparable to landing at a smaller Class C or D airport. And, SLC has no landing or ramp handling fees! Other large airports should definitely take note of this arrangement.

A useful note for those landing at Salt Lake: there are two FBO's on the field - Salt Lake jetCenter and Million Air. If you choose jetCenter (which we had to - Million Air does not offer portable oxygen services), make sure to taxi to the correct building. The northernmost building with a "jetCenter" sign on it is not actually the FBO... That is located a couple of buildings down. No wonder that no lineman met our aircraft to direct it to a parking spot -- we were at the wrong location. Fortunately, the mistake was easily corrected by the jetCenter staff; they came out to the aircraft with an airport vehicle, collected our luggage, and gave us a ride to the FBO! Overall, it was first-rate service. Although we were crewing a small piston single, they treated us as if we were corporate jet pilots.

Coming up next - the final two legs home.

Red Rock Country

2006-09-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

The original plan for today was to go "skiing" in Colorado by visiting some ski resorts such as Aspen, Vail, and maybe stopping over in Denver. But, alas the weather system that carried us so quickly to South Lake Tahoe also brought bad weather to Colorado. Having looked at the weather, the icing potential (the skies over Colorado seemed like an ice machine on Saturday), we decided to skip Colorado this time and head down to Sedona, AZ instead.

Sedona, just a bit south of Flagstaff, AZ, is a spectacular town, surrounded by red rocks - hence the nickname Red Rock Country. The scenery is nothing short of breathtaking from the ground, and it's even more spectacular when flying in. The airport is situated on a 500-foot mesa over the city. At 4,800 feet, density altitude can be a problem for smaller aircraft, but the 182 had plenty of performance, and plus the temperatures were not the summertime Arizona highs that everyone talks about. However, you do have to watch out for downdrafts near the approach ends of either runway. Fortunately for us, the winds were pretty insignificant, and the approach was generally smooth and uneventful, at least as far as approaches in mountain terrain go.

It turns out the Sedona airport was quite busy that day; it was Airport Day with an airshow and a car show. We saw a V-22 Osprey perform some maneuvers over the airport - but alas part of the maneuvering was done while we were trying to find parking on the transient ramp... So unfortunately no pictures of that.

By the way, on departing out of North Las Vegas: for some reason, our clearance wasn't quite ready by the time we called up. No problem - I thought - I'll taxi over to the departure end of the runway (it's a rather big airport) while they get the clearance. We ended up getting an almost "as filed", but it was rather complicated since it involved the North Town One departure with some altitude and crossing restrictions. Again, no problem - Milen copied it during taxi. The big issue came at runway 30L. It turns out that our IFR release was not quite ready, and we ended up waiting almost 20 minutes for release. In the meantime, winds shifted, favoring runway 07 -- that made for an interesting takeoff with a quartering tailwind.

Alas, we didn't have that much time to spend in Sedona, since we had to hurry to our next destination. Where was that? Come back soon to find out! :-)

Almost in the Flight Levels

2006-09-23T21:30:00.000-07:00

I must apologize; I'm a day behind in posting stories from the big trip. :-( But not to worry, details are still fresh in my mind.

After an overnight in Tahoe and the requisite breakfast at Starbucks (coffee + bagel), we went across the street to check on the Heavenly Ski Resort Gondola. You can actually get a much better view of Lake Tahoe from the airplane on approach into the South Lake Tahoe Airport, but we thought we'd go up for a ride anyway. Alas, it turned out that the gondola was "on hold" for high winds, with no ETA for a re-open time. So, alas, we did not get to go on the gondola ride. But that's OK. Maybe I'll come down to Tahoe once the ski season starts, and I'll take the gondola then.

Our next stop was going to be Las Vegas (er, Lost Wages), with a landing at the North Las Vegas Airport (we did not land at McCarran due to the broad daylight robbery on avgas - almost twice as expensive there than at North Las Vegas). The TAF's that day did not look great as far as surface winds were concerned: gusts up to 30 knots or so. And a 30 knot wind at 30 degrees produces a crosswind component of 15 knots - quite a lot. Normally, crosswinds wouldn't be that challenging if the wind would just keep blowing from one direction. But, that never happens in practice; you get something like "there was wind coming from the left, there was wind coming from the right..." So, we elected to stay in Tahoe a bit longer, and to arrive in Las Vegas at dusk, when the winds were forecast to calm down a bit. As a plus, we'd get to see Vegas all lit up.

What do you do in South Lake Tahoe for several hours? We rented a couple of bikes and biked around. The city is actually wonderful for biking - relatively flat, and there are a lot of scenic bike routes. Trouble is, these bike routes aren't always well marked, and the maps that depict them are not very detailed. Since this is an aviation-related blog, I'm going to say that it's kind of like flying around complex airspace with only a WAC chart. :-) Except that if you stray from your intended path when biking, nothing bad will happen -- unlike like flying when you go somewhere you're not supposed to. Speaking of going where you're not supposed to, check out Sam's post on a pilot who wandered around Southern California's airspace, and even flew into Mexico and attempted to land at Tijuana.

We left Tahoe around 5pm. Since South Lake Tahoe does not have an operating control tower (operating is the key word -- they have a tower building, beautifully blended into the landscape, but the tower is no longer operational), we left VFR and called up Oakland to get the clearance. Turns out that apparently Oakland Center did not have our flight plan on file... Hmm. Maybe it's because we refiled with an amended departure time (I tried to call FSS instead of refiling via DUATS, but alas I was on hold for over 4 minutes and just hung up - thank you Lockheed Martin). But in any case, that wasn't a problem, and we got the clearance after a couple of handoffs. :- We went up to 15,000 feet -- the tailwinds were not as spectacular as on our trip from Seattle to Tahoe, but they still yielded a respectable (for a straight-leg Cessna 182) 150 kts over the ground. That's only 3,000 below the flight levels, hence the title of this post.

That's not it, though - we had to climb to 16,000' to avoid some VFR traffic at 14,500'. The 182 managed to pull it off, and with density altitude factored in, we were almost at the service ceiling of the airplane.

Flying up high has the added "advantage" that you may be assigned a STAR for arrival, if one exists. And indeed, Los Angeles Center gave us one -- "after Beatty, cleared FUZZY SIX arrival into Las Vegas". This was actually the first time that either Milen or I flew a STAR procedure. They say that every flight should be a learning experience, and I learned a thing or two about Jeppesen plates on this flight. It turns out that for North Las Vegas, all STAR's are filed with McCarran's STAR's. We almost reported that we didn't have a plate for FUZZY SIX, but fortunately we thought of looking at the plates for McCarran before we embarrassed ourselves on frequency. I also learned about the G1000; when you put in a STAR, it apparently does not "fix up" the waypoints for you automatically. We had to delete some enroute fixes in order for the flight plan in the GPS to make sense.

Folks flying around Las Vegas may be familiar with the "Janet" callsign. There's a webpage on it here, and Wikipedia has an article on Janet Airlines as well. We got to hear "Janet 221" on Las Vegas Approach frequency - it sounded like he just took off from McCarran into a direction unknown. Speaking of this direction -- Groom Lake is prominently marked on the Las Vegas Sectional, and it lies inside restricted area R-4808-N; that's the approximate location of the Area 51 USAF installation. While flying between Coaldale and Beatty VOR's, we saw an airport-type circle with a "R" displayed on the moving map of the G1000 (photos coming soon); it looked like it was in the same place as Groom Lake. The identifier was KXTA, and the G1000 displayed it as a private airport - Homey, NV - with runways 12-30 and 14-32. Hmm... Looks awful lot like the Google-provided satellite photo of Area 51.

In any case... We arrived at North Las Vegas after about 2.5 hours of flying. I had a bit of trouble finding the airport initially - it's "swallowed" by the city lights nearby. Good thing I had that big MFD on board - that made finding the airport, and getting positioned for the visual approach, easier. :-)

Where did we go today? Well, I'll blog about it in my next entry!

Winds at Altitude

2006-09-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

I said in an earlier post that Milen and I would be going somewhere to a "far away destination" this week. Perhaps I gave too much away by talking about oxygen systems in my last post, but I really tried not to. :-) And I'm still not going to give away where we're going next, although I am going to say where we went today. You'll just have to stay tuned to the blog and come back for more updates.

Today's leg took us to South Lake Tahoe (KTVL). We took off from Paine Field and filed via airways to Medford (KMFR) where we would switch seats, grab some food, and continue on to Tahoe (we flipped for legs the day before; I ended up getting Paine-Medford). Although I was slightly afraid of icing, we did not pick up any ice on ascent to our cruise altitude (9,000 feet), and in fact, the cloud tops were only at 8,000. We ended up making it to Medford in 2 hours, 20 minutes - not necessarily because we had a super-fast airplane (we took the G1000 Cessna 182), but because of very strong winds aloft. We consistently ended up with about a 35-40 knot tailwind!!

Medford had a 4,000 ceiling, so we had to get out of there IFR. And as far as getting to Tahoe from Medford, one can do it in a couple of ways. The first option is to go south towards the Fort Jones VOR, then south through Red Bluff and finally swing east at some point. The second option is to go east to Klamath Falls, and then go south towards Reno. The advantage of the first route is that it doesn't require oxygen at the MEA -- the second route, on the other hand, has a MEA of 14,000 feet.

Which brings us back to the oxygen post. There was a reason that I posted it... Milen and I realized that for maximum flexibility, we needed a portable oxygen system. Since we could not rent one, we called up MyPilotStore, and we had a nice 9 cubic-foot system shipped overnight ($68 extra, ouch). Using cannulas (approved for use up to 18,000 feet), this size system gives approximately 4 hours of endurance to 2 people. Of course, as we learned from the guy who filled the tank, you don't want to run the tank dry because tanks that have been run dry have to be purged by a specially qualified technician (who usually is not your typical line guy who does oxygen system fillups). So it's really perhaps 3 or 3.5 hours of endurance for two.

We got oxygen to get us more flexibility, and we needed it on this trip! It wasn't because we chose the Klamath Falls route on purpose. Rather, the winds aloft were extremely strong today. Recall that between Paine and Medford we got a constant 35-40 knot tailwind; between Medford and Reno, the winds were forecast to be in the 50 knot range. You certainly do not want to fly low over the mountains in such winds: turbulence and downdrafts often exceeding the climb capabilities of a small piston-driven airplane may be encountered. However, if you climb high above the terrain, the danger of downdrafts lowers. Therefore, we decided that 15,000 feet via Klamath Falls and Mustang VOR's was the best way to go. The terrain in that area is just over 8,000 feet or so for most of the route, so we would have an adequate safety margin. (Of course, the winds were stronger than forecast -- we've seen as high as 61 knots on the GPS display -- which also translated into more than 200 knots on the groundspeed; overall, that leg of the trip was a little under two hours).

Where are the pictures? There aren't that many yet - but, we've got a full video of an approach to Medford, and a video of landing at South Lake Tahoe. I'll be uploading those to YouTube as soon as I get back to Seattle! Of course, I'll post a link on the blog as well. :-)

Come back tomorrow for another installment from our trip! (Hopefully the net connection will work as well tomorrow as it did today!)

Portable Oxygen

2006-09-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

Assuming an unpressurized aircraft, the FAA rules for oxygen use state that you must use supplemental oxygen from 12,500 to 14,000 feet if you're at those altitudes for more than 30 minutes. If you go above 14,000 feet, you must use oxygen continuously, and above 15,000 feet, oxygen must be made available to passengers (although you're not required to make sure they use it...) Our neighbor to the north has a bit more stringent rules: oxygen is required between 10,000 and 13,000 feet if you're there for more than 30 minutes, and it is required continuously above 13,000 feet. IMO, Canadian rules, although more stringent, make more practical sense. After flying at 11,000 feet for an hour or so, I was definitely able to "feel it".

So, it sounds like if you fly around (or over) the mountains, it would be good to have supplemental oxygen. For me, the main factor is the Cascade Mountain Range, just east of Seattle. It's very possible to cross the Cascades without oxygen, and I've done so several times. But, without oxygen, many IFR routes in Eastern Oregon are unavailable, with MEA's in the 12-14,000 foot range. While that's too high for a Cessna 172, it's doable in the 182 - the service ceiling is 18,100', and perf charts go up to 14,000' (why not higher??) And, if I ever decide to go up the BC coast IFR, I'd need oxygen there as well, since MEA's around Vancouver Island force a cruising altitude of 10,000' westbound and 11,000' eastbound.

So, what are the options? Obviously none of the aircraft I fly come with a built-in oxygen system, so besides oxygen altitudes, the only option is getting a portable oxygen system. SkyOx manufactures such systems, but they're priced in the neighborhood of $500-$600. Mountain High Oxygen also makes similar systems; they're slightly more expensive than SkyOx.

I figured maybe I could rent such a system... But, alas, calls to FBO's around the Seattle area did not yield anyone who would rent me an oxygen system. Moreover, nobody had any idea as to whether such systems are even available for rent. A call to SkyOx and Mountain High did not produce any more information, and neither did calls to a couple of FBO's in Colorado (I figured maybe in the high country, where oxygen use must be commonplace, they'd know more about renting portable oxygen systems). Everyone in Colorado had oxygen available for their own aircraft, but nobody offered oxygen bottles for rent.

So, the conclusion: it seems like the only option available if you want to fly on oxygen is to buy your own... :- Or, maybe if you have a friend who already owns a portable oxygen system, you could twist their arm into letting you use it for that occasional flight or two.

Systems Management

2006-09-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

Some folks say that pilots flying modern glass cockpits are mere "button pushers". They engage the autopilot after takeoff, and they do not disengage it until it comes time to land. Or maybe the plane is equipped with an auto-land system, in which case they may not disengage the autopilot at all: the plane just lands itself -- and flares perfectly at the same time. There's nothing for them to do in cruise, right? Well, I think pilots aren't just button pushers - they're systems managers. There's a lot to do in cruise, including monitoring the aircraft systems and being alert/prepared to respond to any emergency that might come about.

Why am I writing about this? Because I went for some dual today in the G1000 Cessna 182. I haven't flown this plane in a while, and I wanted to make sure I was still competent in "button pushing" in IFR conditions - especially since Milen and I are planning a trip to a far-away destination next week (stay tuned to the blog to find out where we went!) At least to me, flying a glass cockpit is much more about managing the avionics to get them to do what you want them to do, rather than plain stick-and-rudder flying. After all, you don't want to be caught in hard IFR conditions wondering "uh, exactly how do I get it to do THAT".

To make sure this type of wondering doesn't happen, we went over to Port Angeles (KCLM), shot the ILS approach (and circled to land - my first time circling in a 182), and then went back to Paine Field to do the LOC 16R, GPS 16R, and VOR 16R approaches. I got a hold in there, too, so I'm now even more current "on the gauges." And, I've got the confidence that I can still push those buttons! (Surprisingly, I found that I pretty much remembered everything there was to flying the G1000!)

Update and a Little History

2006-09-10T23:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, I haven't posted in a while... I haven't gone away - just not much flying has been happening lately. :-( So, for a bit of history, I'll blog about the first time I sat in the cockpit of an airplane.

Back in Poland, in third grade, our class took a field trip to the Warsaw Okecie Airport. We went through the airport's domestic terminal like a regular passenger would, complete with checkin, luggage check, and a tour of the gate areas. (Of course, back in those days, few people flew domestically within Poland, so that type of a field trip was actually possible.) But, the best part of the trip was yet to come: our entire class got to board a LOT Polish Airlines Antonov An-24 aircraft, where we sat down in the cabin and got a safety briefing. Then, in groups of three, we got to go into the cockpit where I sat in the first officer's seat. One of LOT's pilots was on hand to explain what was going on there, but unfortunately all that I remember was that it is really important for pilots to keep an accurate track of time, so that's why there were multiple clocks in the cockpit. Our group didn't have too many questions, so we didn't get to stay in the cockpit for that long -- I wish I had gone in with the teacher; that group seemed to stay in the cockpit forever, because apparently the teacher was asking all sorts of interesting questions!

So that's when I decided I someday wanted to be a pilot, too. I fulfilled that dream in April, 2002, when I got my Private Pilot Certificate!

New Flyers and Where to Take Them

2006-08-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that more and more these days I'm approached by friends, some of whom might have previously been reluctant to fly in a small plane, who want to go up in the air. I usually take them to Friday Harbor for lunch, which is a fairly short flight, but sometimes people don't want to go for the typical $100 hamburger (well, in Friday Harbor it's usually seafood, but we'll call it "hamburger" to keep with the tradition). So I take these folks somewhere else. But where? I thought I'd share some of the itineraries, including the Friday Harbor one, on the blog. Maybe some of my readers (uh, hopefully I've got some readers...) will comment and post the stories of where they took first-time flyers... Ok, here we go:

Friday Harbor lunch. This is a 49nm flight which I usually do VFR, although there has been one instance where Paine Field was at 800' broken, so I had to depart IFR (the weather forecast said it would clear up for the flight home, which it did). We usually end up departing around noon, and we're back at Paine Field at 5pm or so. The total flight time is around 1.5 hours, including ground taxi time. This flight can be either strictly a "lunch only" flight, or we can do some flying around the San Juans (show Orcas Island, circle to the West of San Juan Island to see Victoria, BC from a distance). On the way back, I've flown down Puget Sound to show the Seattle skyline from a bird's eye view. This usually excites folks, and it provides a good opportunity to take pictures.
Around the Olympic Peninsula. Strictly speaking I haven't done this flight with first-time flyers, but I've done it myself a couple of times. On a sunny day, you can see the Pacific Ocean beaches along the Washington shoreline, and in the wintertime, you can admire snow-covered peaks of the Olympic mountains. This can also be combined with a stop at Hoquiam and a visit to Lana's Hangar Cafe. Total flying time in a Cessna 182 is around 2.5 hours.
Mount Rainier Tour. This is probably best done in the late evening, such that we arrive at Mount Rainier almost at sunset. On the way there, I fly under Class B airspace until around Redmond, at which time I hopefully will get a Class B clearance at 7,500 or 9,500 feet. After hanging around Mount Rainier, we head up to Tacoma Narrows (avoiding the restricted areas south of KGRF/KTCM) and proceed to see Downtown Seattle, where we arrive right after dark, such that all the buildings are nicely lit up. Sometimes, when the controllers are nice, you can really show off Seattle from an airplane! One thing: this time of year, you have to watch out for fire-related TFR's, so it may be wise to use your GPS and program a route which will keep you well clear of them (the flight plan I do is KPAE-TAGOR-2W3-KTIW-KPAE). Total flying time is around 1.6 hours.

Where do you take first time flyers? Post a comment and share your experience!

Commercial License: Not Meant To Be

2006-08-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

My commercial license work seems to be delayed, again. I guess I'm starting to believe those American Flyers printed adverts that say "whoever said it was always something... must have been taking flight training." If I'm not sick, the instructor is sick, if we're both not sick, the plane is reserved for the whole weekend by someone, and if it's not that, then someone lands the plane without putting the gear down...

The Arrow was originally scheduled to be back on the flight line on September 1, but alas, there seems to be a problem with the engine mounts, and the latest word is "it probably won't be back on the line by 9/1." That's a double whammy. First, because I had the plane already reserved for 9/1 (we get the day off in the office for an office move!), as well as for some subsequent weekends. Second, I think September is probably my last chance to get the commercial done before the weather in the Northwest worsens for good -- and I can see it worsening almost every day as I look out the window... :-(

Fun Flight, Helpful Controllers

2006-08-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

This evening, I took a couple of our interns from work on a sightseeing flight - over Lake Sammamish, down to the Mount Rainier area, over to Tacoma Narrows, and back up to Paine Field. I was surprised on this flight: the controllers were extremely friendly. I've never gotten such friendly approach controllers before. I was cleared through all the Class Bravo airspace I wanted, and on the way back, the controllers worked me around traffic to let me see the Seattle skyline closer, and even fly over the north portion of downtown at 2,500 feet -- even though SeaTac was landing on runways 16, and there was incoming jet traffic on final. Wow! We then proceeded northbound over Lake Union and Greenlake. The kids (eh, interns) loved it! This was by far the best sightseeing tour of Seattle that I have ever done.

1.6 hours in the airplane, and we got beautiful shots of Rainier, downtown Seattle, and we finished it off with runway 16R lights at high intensity, complete with the "rabbit". :-) Hopefully the photos will come out well!

Done With Night Requirements

2006-08-19T00:44:00.000-07:00

I thought I had the solo night requirements for the commercial certificate met... But, there's a catch. It turns out that technically, flying at night, in VFR conditions, but under an IFR flight plan doesn't count towards the solo night requirements in "VFR conditions" for the commercial certificate. Why that is, I don't know, because most trips at night are navigated mostly by instruments, or at least strongly backed up by instruments anyway. So, technically I was missing 0.8 night hours, until tonight.

Clear skies, unlimited visibility - it probably won't be like that for much longer in the Northwest. So, I hopped into the airplane tonight, went up to Bellingham and back (what an easy cross country - just point the plane at Bellingham and go!) 4 landings (the controller at Bellingham didn't let me do a stop-and-go because of regional jet traffic behind me - and I found out about it after I touched down), and I've not only fulfilled the night commercial requirements, but I'm also current at night for another 90 days. That's going to come in handy as the days get shorter this time of year!

Owning?

2006-08-14T23:56:00.000-07:00

Probably like all (most?) renters, I've been toying around with the idea of purchasing a plane of my own... Of course not a brand new one, because I can't afford that - but with a couple of people, I figure I could probably get a nice mid- to late-1970's Arrow. Certainly not the fastest plane out there, but it gets you from Point A to Point B in a reasonable amount of time, and it has good payload, too. And the maintenance on it supposedly won't break your pocketbook. But, I seem to be having trouble finding enough partners who are willing to take the plunge.

But then again, I'm confronted with those who are skeptical about owning because of maintenance... And looking back at it, I've had quite a number of problems with rental airplanes:

Nosewheel steering bungee broken on a Cessna 177RG; had to get towed back to the ramp from the taxiway (too bad I didn't have a digital camera back then, because that was probably the only opportunity to get out of the airplane parked sideways on A4 taxiway right next to runway 16R-34L).
An aborted takeoff due to a badly indicating tachometer.
Attitude indicator not working correctly on my last trip to Hailey.
Flight delays due to flat tires, leaking oleo struts, etc.
A plane where the ADF needle never works quite right.
COM2 going dead.

None of these problems were too serious, and all of them occurred at Paine Field where I'm based out of. Nonetheless, I'm thinking: what if these didn't occur at Paine? Milen was flying back from San Diego, and he had an alternator problem south of Medford, Oregon (can you say: "uh, exactly how long has that VOLTS light been on?") He made it to Medford, and he was delayed while waiting for a mechanic. But, it wasn't his plane, so all he had to do was call up the FBO, and they took care of the problem - even sending a mechanic down to fix it.

And, it's also good to mention that most of my flying is done outside of the normal Mon-Fri, 8am-5pm timeframe. Why does that matter? Try finding a mechanic on the field on Saturday or worse, Sunday.

Call me crazy, but even with all this, I still want to have an airplane of my own! :-)

Friday Harbor Again

2006-08-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

Up to Friday Harbor again, this time with another first-time small plane flyer. Fortunately the air was quite smooth today with good visibility throughout the route, so they got to see some scenery around the San Juans. On the way back, we went up to Orcas Island and then turned West to fly around the western edge of San Juan Island. You could see Victoria quite well in the (short) distance. In fact, Victoria is probably 10 more minutes of flight time from Friday Harbor! I've got to go there at some point...

I can say that I learn as much about the scenery from passengers as I do by watching it myself. My friend pointed out that the ground around the San Juans is mostly yellow, meaning that there is not much greenery except for the trees. I've never paid attention to that, but I guess it's true: even with the copious rain we get here in the Northwest, it's still not enough to keep the grass shining green everywhere.

Not much in terms of eventfulness on this flight, except that it was exceptionally busy at KFHR today. I don't think I've ever seen it that busy - when we were walking back to the airport, planes were taking off one after another, kind of like jets do when they depart a busy hub!

Congratulations!

2006-08-12T23:21:00.000-07:00

Congrats to Milen - the newest commercial pilot in the country. Milen passed his Airplane Multi-Engine Land commercial checkride today!! Hopefully the Arrow will get fixed soon, so I can start catching up in aviation achievements. :-)

What's with the Name?

2006-08-07T23:56:00.000-07:00

No flying this weekend... :-( I spent too much money flying to Hailey and back. Hopefully next weekend I'll be able to get out for a short flight to the San Juans, since I've been neglecting some of my friends who want to go up for a ride to Friday Harbor.

So instead, I thought I'd take a post and explain what the name of this blog is, for those reading who are not familiar with air traffic control. "Climb and maintain" is an instruction issued to an aircraft by air traffic control to climb to and stay at a specific altitude. Typically, it would be something like "Cessna 123, climb and maintain 8,000", which in the IFR environment means commence a climb from your present altitude to 8,000 feet. It's assumed that you'll do it at your best climb rate, which should be at least 500 feet per minute. If you're unable to maintain 500 feet per minute, you should advise the controller.

So now, hopefully the origin of the name of this blog should be a bit more clear!

Heard on the Radio

2006-08-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we hear funny things on the aircraft radio, and sometimes we hear things that mean very different things depending on the word order. Here is an example that I overheard while departing from Seattle on one of my recent flights:

Pilot: How's the ride on the arrival?
Controller: Occasional reports of light chop. Uh, let me rephrase that: reports of occasional light chop.

Radio conversations sometimes make you laugh, too. Aviatrix, over on Cockpit Conversation, has a link to this thread on AirlinePilotCentral: "What's the funniest thing you ever heard over the radio?" Check it out!

Hailey, Idaho

2006-07-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

Milen and I are running out of (interesting) destinations nearby, so most of our trips lately have been taking a bit longer. This weekend, we went to Hailey, Idaho (aka. Sun Valley). I've always wanted to go to Sun Valley to go skiing, so going there in the summer to check the place out seemed like an excellent idea.

Going into Hailey in a small plane during the summer requires some advance preparation... First and foremost, density altitude. At Hailey there is a 7,000 foot runway, so takeoff and landing distances are not a problem. However, what happens after takeoff? Your climb performance will be reduced. Second, how's your crosswind technique? Or, have you landed with a tailwind? But more on that later...

I may be tempted to say that some things didn't go our way on this flight. Let's list some:

First, equipment change at Paine Field. The attitude indicator decided to fail - fortunately on the ground. Time to go swap our 180hp Skyhawk for a 160hp, since that's the only one that was left. Hmm, even less climb performance than I previously thought. Quick weight and balance said we're still OK, but we decided to load as much as possible into Baggage Area #2 to get the center of gravity further aft.
Density altitude... The IFR report "Salt Lake Center, Cessna 863CP, 6,900 for 9,000, 300 feet per minute" says it all.
Turbulence on approach and wind shear. "Attention all aircraft inbound to Sun Valley, a Hawker jet reported windshear on approach, loss of 20 kts passing thru 100 feet AGL" also says a lot. We decided to fly the final approach at 80 knots instead of the usual 65 to provide for a more adequate stall margin. Since I didn't actually get any windshear during landing, I reported "negative windshear" to Hailey Tower for the benefit of the Cirrus landing behind me.
Possibility of a tailwind landing - Hailey seems to always land on Runway 31, even when winds are 170 at 10. Fortunately, when I landed, the winds were a very nice 280 at 4.
Headwinds when coming back... We barely got 95 knots ground speed - and that was at 1000 feet above ground level. Needless to say, we decided to come back VFR, at least to our refueling stop at Pendelton. We got beat up with continuous light chop during that leg of the trip...
Lower than expected freezing level, plus a somewhat worse weather picture than actual painted by a FSS briefer forced us to go through Portland on the way back, adding 1 hour to the flight.

Hey, you might say - what's this about crosswind landings then? Well, the next day, when we departed, winds were in general about 220 at 10 gusting 15 knots. Hailey has a single runway 13-31, with runway 13 used for departures and 31 for landings. If you look at this photo, you can see why: Hailey is surrounded by mountains to the north, west, and east, and there is an open valley to the south. In fact, the mountains are so close to the airport that the valley in which the airport is located is only about a mile wide, and pilots are warned not to use the airport at night unless they are familiar with the area.

So, while we were number one for departure at runway 13, there was a small plane landing on runway 31... After I hear "cleared to land" over the radio, the next thing I hear is "sir, do you need any emergency equipment out there?" I looked up, and sure enough, there was a lot of dust at the other end of the runway. Hmm... Turns out the guy ground-looped because of the strong crosswind (although it probably wasn't too bad, since he was able to taxi to parking on his own)! The crews took about 30 minutes to inspect the runway, and during that time, it got crowded with a line of airplanes waiting for takeoff. Inbound aircraft were stacked up over the Hailey radio beacon while waiting for the airport to reopen. [We took off without incident].

And, that wasn't the only incident at Hailey that day! While in contact with Boise Approach, we overhead the following exchange:

Controller: Cessna 123, be advised, the Sun Valley airport is now closed, say intentions.
Pilot: Hmm, that's probably because of the winds out there... We might go to Twin Falls. Let me talk to my passenger and see what she wants to do.
Controller: Roger, I can find out for you exactly why it's closed if you'd like.
Pilot: That would be great, thanks.
[Pause]
Controller: Cessna 123, it appears they've had a couple of aircraft groundloop at Hailey today, and the second one will take a while to get cleaned up. The airport right now is closed, and they don't know when they're going to reopen.
Pilot: Uh, in that case, we'd like to return to Boise and go shopping instead.

So, the lesson is: be careful out there during crosswinds, especially in taildraggers!

Anyways, 11.9 hours on the airplane and we were back at Paine. Those were some strong headwinds on the way back! More photos from the trip can be found here.

Aircraft Engines

2006-07-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Everyone says that fuel injected aircraft engines can be harder to start than carbureted ones. Is that really so? I think that depends on the engine. I've flown carbureted Cessna 172's, fuel injected 172's, a fuel injected 177RG, a fuel injected 182, and a fuel injected Piper Arrow, so I figured I'd do a quick comparison:

Carbureted 172's: generally easy to start. However, if the engine is warm, they recommend you don't prime the engine. That can sometimes result in rapid opening and closing of the throttle because the engine is under-primed. Then again, that depends on the engine. The 150hp's were always easy to start, and on the 180hp's the rule was always give it a shot of prime no matter what. 160hp's were the most finicky.
The fuel-injected 177RG: this 200hp engine gave me the most trouble out of them all (when hot). One time, while at Hoquiam, it wouldn't start no matter what I did: normal start, hot start, flooded start... I figure it was due to vapor lock. I had to get someone to start it using the most unorthodox method possible: throttle/mixture pumping, aux fuel pump on, etc. Maybe it was poor pilot technique, or maybe the Cardinal is just hard to start.
The fuel-injected 172's: this is probably the easiest fuel injected engine to start in my experience - both 160 and 180hp models. Cold - prime until the fuel flow starts indicating, then start. Warm - quick wiggle on the mixture to prime, then start.
The fuel-injected Piper Arrow: this one is also very easy to start. Just don't use the same warm start procedure as for the 172 - meaning don't wiggle the mixture! Otherwise, it will probably flood, and you'll have to do a flooded start.
The fuel-injected 182: this one requires some care. If in doubt, don't prime. It will usually start without any priming if the engine is hot, even if it's been a couple of hours on a toasty airport ramp. In the worst case you can do a flooded start - works every time. Just make sure you push the mixture in when you're done starting, otherwise the engine will die, and you're back to square one (gee, don't ask me how I know).

So there you have it; of course, your mileage may vary. I'm not responsible for any fires from the exhaust stack! :-)

Northern Idaho

2006-07-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a trip to Northern Idaho, specifically to Sandpoint. Milen and I went for no particular reason... We just like to fly, and we sure had a great day for it in the Northwest today! And the flight was as perfect as the weather. Just about the only thing to deal with was the smoke from a wildfire near the north end of Lake Chelan. And that smoke did reduce the visibility enough to where we had to deviate slightly around it.

It turns out that Sandpoint is not super-close to town. But, folks at small airports are so nice sometimes!! There was a guy sitting in the FBO who offered us a ride into town, but because we thought it was a 10 minute walk, we thought we'd just walk along the road. Big mistake... It was hot, and the walk was much longer. After 20 minutes of walking we were nowhere close to the town. It turned out that just about that time, the guy from the FBO drove by, lowered his window, and said "are you still up for a ride?" We gladly accepted! Not only did he show us where the restaurants were - he also drove us to the City Park which hosts a nice beach on Lake Pend Oreille. The water was warm, and I couldn't resist getting my feet wet!

Check out the photos from the trip!

4.1 flying hours from Paine Field in Everett to Sandpoint - not bad! Airplanes sure beat driving - by car, that would have been a ~12 hour round trip (plus a chance of getting caught by the omnipresent Washington State Patrol.)

What if you don't have G1000?

2006-07-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

If all this reading on G1000 has you wanting new digital technology in your old cockpit, then Garmin, among others, may have a solution: a powerful handheld. These nowadays feature goodies such as XM Weather right in the box. Although these boxes are VFR-only, they're still quite powerful from what I can tell. I haven't flown with one, but I keep thinking about buying it for increased situational awareness...

In fact, Garmin a couple of days announced that they're releasing a GPSMAP 496 - which probably means prices for the 396 are going to come down in the near future! Check out the press release; it's mindblowing what you can get in a portable GPS nowadays.

Trip to a Big Airport, and more G1000 moments

2006-07-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks back, my flybuddy Milen and I took a trip after work down to Portland for dinner. The weather has been beautiful, with nothing but clear blue skies pretty much everywhere in the Western states. Although it was a bit warm, it was still a perfect evening to fly. We took the G1000 equipped Cessna 182, which I got checked out a couple of weeks before. Milen would fly the trip down to Portland, and I would fly back (Milen's single engine night currency ran out a few days before).

I always wondered what it'd be like coming into a big airport - meaning one served by big jets. Will we get squeezed in for an approach? Will they ask us to keep the speed up on final because a 737 was right on our tail? What about wake turbulence because we could get sequenced in between two 737's, or maybe a 757, which is infamous for the wake it produces? Well, none of that happened. It was as simple as "Cessna 716LR, enter right downwind, runway 28R, cleared to land." The only reminder that we were flying into a big international airport was that there was jet traffic landing on the parallel runway. That traffic actually provided the first, and so far only, experience with the traffic feature on the G1000. Right as Milen turned base-to-final, the system announced "Traffic", and the jet's position and relative altitude was highlited on the MFD. (Sadly, around Seattle, even though the traffic feature is supposed to work because we supposedly have appropriate radar coverage, all I ever see on the display is "Traffic Unavailable.")

The FBO at PDX is FlightCraft, and these folks couldn't be nicer. They give a free ride to/from the excellent Tri-Met light rail system, and 20 minutes later, you're downtown. They even waived the usual $10 or so handling charge - and we didn't buy any fuel, either.

The return trip was flown IFR, since it was night time - and I wanted some practice with the G1000 button pushing in the IFR system. Surprise, surprise... In the left seat, I was a bit rusty on the buttons, and it's only been two weeks since my last flight! I had the flight plan already put in, but Portland Clearance blessed me with a different routing. So, there I was, sitting on the ramp, reprogramming our flight plan. Forever I couldn't make sense of the comments that others have made about the G1000 system not understanding airways. But, I immediately understood why these comments were right on the money: when you're given "716LR is cleared to Paine Airport via the Portland Five Departure, vectors to Battle Ground, V287 Paine", and when it's night time - so you have to juggle the chart, flashlight, and the GPS buttons - it sure would be helpful to enter that clearance into the navigator and have it figure out that from Battle Ground VOR (BTG) to Paine VOR (PAE) via V287 it's actually BTG-OLM-ARPEE-PAE. Nevertheless, I got the route figured out and put into the GPS. But I still wished for at least two things: (1) for the G1000 to be airways-aware, because not everything is "direct to", and (2) for the Cessna 182 to have some glareshield lights so that I wouldn't have to fumble around with the flashlight while trying to reprogram a GPS.

In any case, prior to departure, Milen suggested, rightfully so, that I should probably put in the BTG VOR just in case ATC had me intercept V287 prior to BTG for some odd reason (V287 extends past BTG and goes down thru Oregon). We did that, and we switched the HSI pointer to be driven off the #1 VOR.

As you probably suspect, I'm setting up for a "I learned about the G1000 from that" moment. And here it comes: after takeoff, ATC issued an instruction to proceed direct to Battle Ground. What do I do? Well, I get confused! I'm thinking: the green arrow thingy is the RMI pointer to BTG, so I'll just turn to where it points. Of course, that's completely wrong. The green arrow thingy is the course pointer on the HSI! And, since it was set to something like a 040 heading, it actually made me believe that BTG was in that direction. Ouch. Fortunately, Milen pointed out the error by looking at the huge MFD moving map right in front of him.

I asked myself: was any of this due to the G1000? My answer was, unfortunately, "yes". In a "normal" airplane, I'd tune in the VOR, and when I'm told to go directly to it, I'd center the CDI with a "to" indication, and turn to the appropriate heading. No need to figure out what the pointer means - because there's only one needle, and that's on the CDI. One might notice that often the #1 CDI is coupled either to the NAV1 radio or to the GPS, and that there is a separate NAV/GPS switch that controls the coupling... Yes, you could make the mistake of not pushing that switch. But, if the coupling is to the GPS (in leg mode), the needle won't move no matter how much twisting of the OBS knob is done. That's a pretty obvious mistake to spot, and if I ever see that happen, I've got enough experience to tell immediately that it must be the NAV/GPS switch that is not set correctly.

So now, the error is figured out. How do we go direct BTG? Hmm, center the CDI needle. Uh, how do I do that? Where's that knob for changing the HSI course? I realized suddenly that I haven't really done much flying the "old fashioned" way with the G1000 system... Everything was off the GPS, with strong reliance on the "direct to" button. Uh-oh. I ended up switching the CDI source to GPS, punched in direct BTG, and off we went. It all happened rather quickly, and I doubt that anyone in the radar room even noticed that something was amiss.

Which brings us to the conclusion: the only "old fashioned" flying on the G1000 that I ever did was a VOR approach. That wasn't enough. Fortunately I realized this omission early on, in visual conditions, with a more experienced G1000 pilot on board.

Speaking of the G1000: John over on AviationMentor has some excellent tips for flying with this wonderful new system. Check out his blog!

Gear Down?

2006-07-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

My commercial training has been placed on an unexpected hold... Turns out that the Arrow I'm training in (the only one at the flight school) had a gear up incident yesterday. While I don't know whether it was due to mechanical difficulties or pilot error, I thought I'd take a moment to re-emphasize the importance of checking that the gear is down and locked, and, even though I'm not a CFI, point out some strategies that you can use to avoid the dreaded gear-up landing.

John & Martha King actually outline these strategies very well in their Practical Risk Management for Takeoffs & Landings video. In particular, they mention that you should put the gear down at standardized points during your approach to landing:

On downwind, abeam the numbers. This is where you can perform a GUMP check: (G)as, (U)ndercarriage, (M)ixture, (P)ropeller.
Whenever leaving the pattern altitude. This rule may seem like a repeat of #1, but consider that probably the most common cause of a gear up landing is a distraction. Maybe the tower asks you to extend your downwind, and you don't put the gear down abeam the numbers as a result. Or, maybe you're flying a non-standard pattern, like straight-in or base-leg entry.
On an ILS, do the GUMP check when you're about to intercept the glideslope - maybe within a dot. In some airplanes, like a Cessna Cardinal RG, if you reduce the power to the recommended setting (17" or so, if I remember) and simultaneously put the gear down when you're one dot high on the glideslope, you'll get a nice glideslope capture combined with an approximately 500 fpm descent - perfect for flying the ILS.
On a nonprecision approach, do the GUMP check as you cross the final approach fix (FAF).

When you're on final, it also wouldn't hurt to reconfirm once more that the gear is indeed down, together with other items such as mixture and prop settings. I can say from experience that this little check has saved me once on an instrument approach, already past the FAF: "fuel pump is on, gas is on fullest tank, mixture is set, prop is full forward, gear is ... oh, darn, the gear!!" I had a CFII in the right seat, who saw the whole thing - but didn't say anything so that I could spot my own mistake. I probably learned more from that one flight than from all the times I heard people say "put the gear down".

You can have other methods, such as flows, for ensuring that the gear is down. But whatever method you develop, use it, and help eliminate the saying: "retractable pilots fall into two categories: those who landed gear up, and those who will."

Back in the Arrow

2006-07-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today I was back in the Cherokee Arrow practicing for my single engine commercial ticket. We did steep spirals, eights-on-pylons, power-off 180's, and some landing practice. Things went pretty well; I think I'm doing OK on the maneuvers, but they still need some finessing. During the week I'll hopefully be able to go after work on my own to practice some of these.

Some joking was happening on the frequency after landing: the tower at Paine Field actually asked us to make a short approach because they had traffic on final. We did, and it gave me one more chance at a power-off 180 (which I landed slightly short, yikes!) Tower actually said "thanks for your help today," to which I replied "no problem, it's helping me with my commercial." They laughed, and said "good luck!"

G1000 Transition, Part 2

2006-07-14T22:27:00.000-07:00

It was perfect VFR weather for my first IFR flight in a G1000 airplane, so I went under the hood. The plan was to fly from Paine Field down to Shelton (ah, that precious cross-country time), then to Tacoma Narrows, and then back to Paine. Originally this was scheduled for a Saturday, but I ended up doing it one evening after work, as I didn't remember that promised to take some folks to Friday Harbor that Saturday... Anyway, after 10 minutes on the G1000 simulator to show that I remember how to enter flight plans into the GPS, it was off to the airplane! My turn to do the button pushing, this time in an IFR environment (I did a basic VFR maneuvers flight in the airplane the week before).

It took what seemed like forever to put in the flight plans in the runup area. I put all 3 in, as opposed to putting in the one for Paine-Shelton and then putting in the rest while in flight (although that did result in some added time on the engine = more $$$ spent). I figured I should learn all the buttons and stuff on the ground, so I could concentrate exclusively on the MFD. Looking back at how long it took me to put in the flight plans, that was definitely the right choice!

Straight-and-level flight was no problem. I heard that it's hard to maintain altitude on the G1000, but if you just set the altitude bug, it's much easier: you watch the bug move instead of watching the numbers change. On the other hand, climbs and descents were sloppy at first - especially descents. For some reason, I just had a hard time maintaining a 500 foot-per-minute descent into Shelton. Maybe it was the C182, maybe it was the Garmin, or maybe it was just me... In any case, I did learn some first important lessons on the leg to Shelton. (1) Even if you set the altitude bug, write down what altitude you were cleared to. It's far too easy to move the bug by mistake, and if you do it in a climb or descent, then you invariantly ask yourself "uh, was that 3,000 or 4,000 feet that I was cleared for?" (2) As a corollary to #1, look at which button you're pushing or which knob you're twisting before you push/twist it!! (3) Lesson #2 goes double for buttons that have an inner and outer knob... I found myself changing the barometric pressure when I intended to change the course on the HSI. Oops!

Approaches themselves are a piece of cake if you've flown any GPS approach before. The G1000 makes everything so easy with the big moving map on the right, and a mini moving map right on your PFD.

On the leg from Shelton to Tacoma Narrows, we tried out the autopilot. In this installation it's the Bendix/King KAP140 system, and I can finally say that I think I got this autopilot, at least for enroute operations. It seems like the autopilot gets skipped on a lot of aircraft checkouts, and it shouldn't be that way. At Tacoma, it was another GPS approach, followed by a missed and vectors back to Paine Field.

We terminated the lesson with an ILS 16R approach into Paine. Surprise there? Of course. We forgot to "activate" the approach in the GPS, and although strictly speaking it's not required, it does make it easier to shoot the missed, since in this case, the missed procedure calls for intercepting a bearing to the locator outer marker. We ended up following the moving map instead. If we had to shoot the missed, we could always have put in the identifier for the LOM manually into the GPS and then switched it to OBS mode to intercept the required bearing to the NDB. But, if you do it "right" by loading and activating the approach first, it's much easier.

The next flight was local approaches into Paine Field. We did the VOR 16R full procedure, VOR 16R from a DME arc, and then an ILS. This flight went much better than the flight to Shelton and Tacoma. For some reason, I seem to have gotten how to make steady rate climbs and descents in this airplane. The scan was noticeably better, too. BTW, flying a DME arc with the G1000 couldn't get any easier. Not only does the CDI needle move to indicate where you need to go (just keep the needle in the center, and you'll fly a perfect arc) - but if you get a bit off course, the G1000 suggests a heading to get back on track!! So much for the old "turn 10, twist 10" technique that I learned when I got my instrument rating.

So, after about 3.5 hours in the airplane, I was checked out in the G1000. Am I going to take it into the soup? Maybe, with a more qualified pilot. But for now, I'm going to get some hood time to get more comfortable with the buttons! :-)

G1000 Transition, Part 1

2006-07-09T17:10:00.000-07:00

I promised before that I'd write about my training experiences in a G1000 equipped aircraft... Time has come for the first installment.

The first step in getting checked out in the technologically advanced 182 was G1000 Ground School. It was just over 5 hours in length, and it ended up with a 1:1 student to instructor ratio, as there were two instructors and only two of us in the class (I'm told that normally the ratio provides for a good learning atmosphere, but it is not THAT good). The syllabus covered the G1000 systems, and then it focused on scenario-based training on the PFD and MFD. It was great that we got to use computer simulators for the G1000, as this made scenario-based training much more realistic. On this system, it's one thing to watch the buttons being pushed, and entirely another to do the button pushing yourself!

Some interesting quirks about the G1000 came out during the class - some are specific to the Cessna 182 and some are not. For example, why is the active frequency for the NAV on a different side from the active frequency for the COM (yes, people will be quick to point out that it's always the "inside" frequency that's active, but to me it doesn't make that much sense as the traditional active/standby arrangement on the Bendix/King KX165 radio). Why is the glideslope indicator up on the attitude indicator portion on the PFD, and not on the HSI display, like in a traditional HSI instrument? And, why is the audio panel's split-com (where the pilot talks on COM1, and copilot on COM2) functionality disabled on Cessnas? I'm told that Cessna blames Garmin for not engineering the COM boxes correctly, thereby causing bleed-over from one radio to the other. Garmin blames Cessna for placing the COM antennae too close. Go figure... But in the meantime, split-com is disabled. Not that you need split-com that often, but it does somehow drive me crazy that the standard Bendix/King KMA28 audio panel in our 172's allows for this functionality, while the advanced Garmin boxes do not.

An interesting fact about the Cessna 182 installation is that it still uses a Bendix/King KAP140 autopilot, as Garmin's autopilot unit was not yet certified at production time. This particular autopilot is a rate-based unit, meaning that it needs a turn coordinator to derive its input from. So, if you take out the Garmin MFD display from the Cessna 182 panel, what do you see? You guessed it, a turn coordinator! Not a big deal, just an interesting piece of information to know.

Next time I'll cover my first IFR flight and some approaches! Stay tuned. :-)

Around We Go

2006-06-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, I took a couple of friends for lunch in the San Juan islands - specifically to picturesque Friday Harbor. That town is one of my favorite destinations in the islands because the airport is just a short walk away from waterfront restaurants, shops, the marina, etc. The 3,400 x 75 foot paved runway is more than adequate for safe operations in most piston singles, but, as always, you have to be careful and prepared for immediate corrective action should things not quite go as planned.

And that day things did not quite go as planned on landing. I like to say that I usually make excellent landings, and that doesn't just mean that the pilots and plane both walk away. :-) (During my commercial ticket practice, I learned to put a Piper Arrow exactly on a given spot with very little float). But then again, it's been a while since I've done that, and that day I was flying in a Cessna 172, not an Arrow.

To add to the situation, usually I operate into runways with an ILS, and that means a wide, long runway, and a somewhat shallow descent gradient on a long final. Of course, Friday Harbor has no ILS, and the noise abatement procedure for runway 16 calls for being at or above the PAPI for as long as possible. This for me usually means a steeper approach. And, the 172 doesn't like to lose that much altitude in a hurry (unlike the Arrow, which tends to sink with no power and a dirty configuration). So, there I was, on short final, with a bit of extra airspeed; I think I even ended up doing a slip to lose some altitude.

What was the result? Well, it's been said that a Cessna 172 will quickly put a pilot in his/her place if not flown properly. Too slow? It may stall on arrival. Too fast? It will float. Or, it will result in a bounced landing. Guess which one happened... That's right, the 172 put me exactly where I belonged: in a place for more landing practice. We greeted Friday Harbor with a bounce. Not just one, but two, and the airplane wasn't quite slowing down. What to do now? With two first time passengers?

Instantly the NTSB articles reports bent firewalls, broken landing gear, etc. came to mind, together with the knowledge that recovering from a bounce usually makes the problem worse because you're always behind the airplane. So, in an instant, it was full power, flaps 20, and the words "we're going around" were transmitted on the CTAF.

The next landing was a greaser now that I paid a bit more attention to the airspeed and the flying characteristics. When we landed, I felt really bad about the landing, and I even said so to my friends (this was quite possibly the worst arrival I've made in the entire time I was flying). I kind of expected nods and them being scared. But I didn't get that. Instead, I got complimented on good and quick decision making to prevent the situation from getting worse. (Either that, or my friends were too nice, but at the end of the flight, they wanted to go up again.) :-)

So, the lesson here is the same lesson that we've been taught many times: when something is not going right, don't try to fix it. Go around!!!! You can always try again, and you'll have lower chances of becoming a statistic for the National Transportation Safety Board. And practice, practice, practice. The next day I took a 172 for some touch and goes, and I ended up having a bit of unintended crosswind at the same time. It was good practice, and it helped me regain the confidence level I used to have with the 172 when I flew that type more often.

Here Comes the Garmin 1000

2006-06-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

More and more general aviation airplanes are what's known in the industry as Technologically Advanced Aircraft (TAA's). Not too long ago that meant you just had a moving map GPS, like a Garmin 430 or maybe its bigger cousin, the 530. If you flew a new Cessna single, you probably got exposure to the Bendix/King family of GPS navigators, like the KLN89B or the KLN94. Combine either of those units with a multi-function display, and you had yourself a TAA. I logged a number of hours in airplanes with the KLN series units, enough to where I'd be comfortable shooting a GPS approach in the soup.

Oh, how things change, and how quickly. Garmin came out with the G1000 integrated avionics system for general aviation airplanes, and it's a completely different system. The traditional instruments are gone, and they're replaced by two LCD screens that combine yesterday's flight instruments and today's moving maps, GPS navigators, satellite weather/radio, and lots of other goodies. Now, that's a TAA that makes yesterday's TAA's seem pale in comparison. With the two LCD's comes an array of buttons and knobs - sometimes even knobs within knobs - that the pilot has to push in just the right order to get the units to do the right thing. So, of course, additional training is required to fly those aircraft, and even more training is required to fly the aircraft safely under IFR, where there most of the time, there is little margin for error.

The FBO where I fly out of had a G1000 Cessna 182 for about a year now, but the fact that it costs significantly more than the Skyhawks and the Piper Arrow that I usually fly has deterred me from getting a checkout. That, plus the knowledge that a lot of my flying is IFR - and from the literature I read, it seemed like one has to fly the plane pretty often to maintain a suitable level of proficiency.

But, one day, I actually took the right seat on a flight in the G1000 Skylane. It was kind of by accident. A pilot buddy of mine and I were going to split some Cessna 172 time, but it happened that we got to the airport early, and the 172 wasn't back from its previous flight yet. Of course, the Skylane was there, and my friend was checked out in it, so we hopped right in...

First impression in the cockpit: "wow, I'm sold!!" The amount of situational awareness was impressive - with a 10.4" moving map to supplement the paper charts, nobody should be getting lost, at least not with the system fully operational. The number of buttons on the LCD displays and the audio panel was, let's say, more than what I was used to. Plus, the fact that we could listen to XM radio as we were cruising on the West side of the Olympic Peninsula at 7,500 feet... So, after that flight (now about a month ago), I bit the bullet, signed up for the required one day G1000 ground school, and decided to get checked out! Stay tuned for a blog entry (or two, or three...) describing that transition!

Convenience of an Airplane

2006-06-27T02:27:00.000-07:00

It's been 5 years or so that I've been flying! ~280 hours later, and I've only had two chances to demonstrate the worth of a small airplane as more than a toy to take people to lunch to San Juan Islands, or to fly around to maintain proficiency so I can actually take people to the San Juans and they don't get scared in the process... :-) Wow! Only two times, so it's amazing how sparingly those opportunities seem to arise.

The second opportunity came just a couple of days ago. A friend of mine was going up to Orcas Island for some camping, and then they were going to take a ferry to Victoria, BC. Trouble was that they left their passport at home. And today, no passport = no crossing the border (or at least no getting back into the States)... So, what's a good friend like me to do? I swing by their apartment, get their passport, fire up the IO-360-L2A in a Cessna Skyhawk, and fly up to Orcas Island Airport (KORS)! Especially on a beautiful weekend day like we've been enjoying lately in the Northwest.

1.5 hours on the Hobbs there and back, passport delivered, and a vacation saved! Plus, I got to spend some time on Orcas Island as well, which was a big bonus, since that's actually a place where before I never set foot outside of the airport. How cool is that?