Up, Up and Away

50.0 nm or bust!

I didn't blog on my flight of last Thursday. But it was a short dual-cross country to Beech River airport near Parsons/Lexington, TN (PVE). It was a perfect day for flying with little or no excitement in the trip. Here is my latest blog about my solo trip to the same place.... Enjoy.
jf

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I had been planning to fly my first solo cross country for over a week and finally it looked like the weather was going to cooperate. I had called Flight Service last night and gotten the lowdown on what the weather was going to be. The forecasted winds at 3000ft was for 270 at 10. So, I pulled out the trusty E6-B and figured my heading/time enroute and got the numbers over to Kary for his blessing. Once I had that, nothing was stopping me from making this thing happen.

I got to the airport around 7:30am and started trying to get the plane pre-heated. The airport AWOS was reporting that it was about 25 deg outside and I wanted to get some heat on the engine before I tried to start it. I called FSS again and got the updated winds (they had changed a bit) and refigured my heading. I had some issues with the preheater, but was still able to get about 25 minutes of good heat on the engine before I was ready to go (the outside temp had already climbed to about 30 as well).

I killed the heater, put it back in the hangar and jumped in to get the engine started before it cooled down again. With a couple of primer shots and 2 prop blades, the engine fired up and I was ready to go….cold…but ready. I gave Kary a call to let him know I was about to head out and began to taxi.

As I taxied out, I started pulling together all my paperwork/charts, etc and get my head wrapped around what I was about to do. I did my run-up, took the runway and took off. About the time I broke ground, it occurred to me….it had been 9 months since I had flown solo. My last solo flight was in April ’08 and then I “took a break” until about a month ago. Since then, all the good weather (and convenient times) has been used to fly with Kary. So, I had the immediate thought of “what the crap am I doing?!?!”. But, it didn’t last. A few seconds later, all was good and I was climbing out from 24. Since I had realized that I was doing this alone for the first time in a while, I stayed in the pattern and did a GREAT touch and go. With that landing and confidence restored, I turned west and headed to PVE.

I had intended on flying at 3000ft on the way over, but as I climbed through 2000ft, I realized I might have to keep climbing to get above the turbulence. I climbed through 3000 and opted to go on up to 4500 and see if things smoothed out. About the time I climbed through 3500, the air smoothed out and life was good. I settled in at 4500 and stuck my nose on 275 deg (course was 278, so not much of a change). This is when I figured out that weather forecasts (winds especially) are just really good guesses.

Looking out the window, I could tell that I was being pushed south of my intended track. And when I say pushed, I mean PUSHED. Over the next 5 minutes, I kept turning my heading north to see how much it would take for me to stay on the straight line I needed. I went from a heading of 275 to a heading of 290 before I finally could tell that I was tracking the course I needed to get to my first checkpoint. Even with all of this, I still hit my first checkpoint within a minute of my estimate. As I was making it to my second and third, I ended up increasing my heading more and more just to stay on course. I ended up flying a heading around 290 to be able to hit my checkpoints.

Being above any turbulence, I was able to fly hands off and make only small adjustments as I went. I kept a close eye on the engine instruments and tried to not fight my DG to keep me on my heading. I hit checkpoints 2 and 3 right on time. But then I lost it.
I had just crossed over Perry Co airport (off to my left) and was coming up on the TN river. I looked out the windscreen and NOTHING was where I thought it should be. From the Dual trip that Kary and I had taken last week, I knew that I should be able to pickup the destination airport by now, but it wasn’t out there. I started looking for some landmarks that I knew were there (a bridge near where we used to camp, etc) and nothing looked right. I turned around in my seat and could still see the Perry Co. Airport just behind me, so logic should tell me that I was close to the right place. But who thinks logically when you’re lost :). It didn’t take long for me to realize what was going on. Either the wind had died down in the last 15 miles or I had way overcompensated, but either way, I was about 10-12 miles north of where I should have crossed the river. Since I was at 4500 ft, I was further north of the Perry Co Airport than I should have been, but I really didn’t notice because of my altitude (if I had been lower, it would have looked further away than it did the higher I was).

So, logic prevails and I look off to my SouthWest and viola! There is the airport. All is well. I start my descent about 10 miles out and notice that the turbulence picked back up again as I dropped through 3000ft. I entered the downwind for runway 19 and make an uneventful landing at PVE. I taxied in, shutdown and spent about 20 minutes chewing the fat with a couple of locals (very nice guys, btw).

When I left PVE, I departed on rwy 19 as well, turned east and kept climbing to get above the bumps again. I climbed to 5500 on the way back and noticed this time that the wind wasn’t blowing me south near as bad as it had been on the way over, so I’m thinking that my mis-queue over the river was my lack of noticing my off-course track between Linden and the river. But hey, it was good. With my VOR’s acting flakey, I got to use my chart and some pilotage to figure out where the heck I was.

The flight from PVE to MRC covers quite a bit of area that is heavily wooded. There are a plenty of fields and places to put down, if needed, but I liked having more altitude to have more options when coming back. I was bored and the only people on the radio were folks going into Shelbyville, so I started playing a mind game with myself. I would try to figure out where I would put down if I had to. I looked for signs of the wind (smoke, ponds, etc) and then would pick out a field that ran that direction and then tried to figure out if I could make it to it. This got me to thinking about another option here. When picking out an emergency landing location, if you have a choice, you need to put down near people. I noticed several logging roads that could easily be used to land on if needed, but they were miles from any highways or houses. So, if things don’t go well in the landing, no one would even know you were out there.

I hit my checkpoints within a minute on each and started down from 5500 about the time I crossed Hohenwald (16 miles out). I started listening to the MRC AWOS and each time it was reporting “calm” for the winds (more on this in a minute). As I closed in on MRC, there was an Archer departing on 24, so I opted to use the same runway. I crossed midfield as he was taking off and entered the downwind for 24. I misjudged my downwind entry and ended up getting parallel to the runway at the point of the pattern that I am usually ready to start the landing process (the numbers). The problem was that I was already fast and behind on the “norm”. I extended my downwind a little to give me time to get slower and lower. As I turned final, I had it in my head that the wind was calm, so this should be a simple landing. Just setup the final and let it land….no wind, right?

Well, not exactly. As I crossed the end of the runway, I noticed that I was getting pushed to the left. “that’s not right” I started thinking….after all it was “calm” on the AWOS. So, rather than let the plane tell me what was going on, I kept trying to force the “calm” issue into the situation. Rather than let logic rule my landing, I should have just dealt with what the plane was doing. So, with about 10 ft left to go, I got the nose straight and dropped the right wing. It was ugly, but I landed…too fast. I bounced a little, added power and landed on all three wheels, flat. Not hard, but VERY ugly AND I was mad. I was on the ground safe, but only after ignoring everything I should have been paying attention to. So, rather than going back up (my plan was to do a couple of T&G’s before I quit), I just pulled the power and called it a day.

All in all, a good trip. Got to deal with unexpected winds, screwy VOR’s and mark up my first Cross Country time. Cool enough.

posted by Jeff Franks @ 2:29 PM 0 comments

It's COOOOOLD outside!

Since I still haven’t gotten my student certificate renewed, (another story for another day…but it involves my growing disdain for Federal Employees who don’t realize who their “clients” are) I met up with Kary this morning to bore some holes in the sky and just see what we could get into. He’d told me after the last lesson that he was comfortable giving me my 90-day sign-off, but with no Student Cert…I can only fly with him. (hopefully all of the certificate issues will be resolved by the time you read this on Friday).

So, I scheduled an 8:00am flight time with Kary late yesterday. I got to the airport about 7:30 to try to pre-heat the plane using a new setup Scott and I have with a small ready heater. When I scheduled the flight, I didn’t realize it was going to be 12 degrees during the preflight. I got the hangar opened up and setup the ready heater to blow into the engine cowling and let it go. As I froze my extremities, I started realizing that this new heater wasn’t quite powerful enough to do this job efficiently. But it was doing it.

For those of you who might not know, piston engine planes need to be preheated when they are extremely cold to help prevent excessive wear inside the engine. The crank and bearings are made of steel, while the crank case and such are made from aluminum. These 2 metals shrink and expand at different rates, so when it’s cold out, you can damage the engine by not preheating and allowing the 2 metals to have less than expected clearances while running.

So, after about 30 minutes of heating the engine and freezing my toes, the inside of the cowling was fairly warm and seemed like we might be in business. Anyway, we pulled out 51F and fired it up without issue. I was concerned about the battery. Although sluggish, it managed to fire up without a problem.

We let the engine warm up for a good while and discussed what we were going to do. Basically, we decided that we’d do a few laps of the pattern and then just see what happens. Since I only had an hour under my belt in the last 9 months, I figured a few more supervised landings couldn’t hurt. So, we taxied out to Rwy 6, did our runup and took off. As soon as the wheels left the ground, I realized that the “calm” part of the weather report on AWOS really meant “right crosswind”. But no problem, we climbed (“climbed”? “Clumb”? “Clumbed”?) out much faster than we do in July and made the pattern to do some Touch and Go’s.

The first approach reminded me of the “good ole days” of my flying. Too High and Too Fast. What was interesting is that I could tell from the time I turned final that we had a bit of a right-quartering head/crosswind. The plane weather-vaned into it enough to be noticeable, but I had just listened to the AWOS again and it was still reporting “calm”. The “interesting” part is how I had it in my head that “calm” meant this was going to be a straight in final, no crosswind adjustment, just fly it down. Even though I noticed the crosswind when we took off and now the plane was crabbing it’s way down, my “logic” kept trying to do away with what the plane was actually doing. Needless to say, the first landing was not pretty. Kary didn’t say much other than I wasn’t on the rudders enough. It wasn’t horrible, other than I knew that I had totally discounted the fact that the plane was telling me there was a slight crosswind and my mind refused to deal with it. Oh well, lesson learned…apparently AWOS isn’t always right :)

We managed another 7 landings and they did start getting better. We played with some Soft/Short field setups and Kary had me do a soft field T&G without letting the nosewheel touch the ground. Attempt #1 wasn’t great, but then Kary took a turn and showed me up, so I had to come back and do a better one. Gotta let the instructor win sometimes, I guess J
After the last landing, we taxied up to the gas pumps and line guy asked me if we’d been transmitting during the flight. I told him we had called at least twice per lap. Apparently, he could occassionaly hear a mic click, but never heard a radio call. After a quick look, I realized that my headset was plugged into the passenger side of the intercom, but my Push To Talk switch was hooked into the pilot side. So, every time I was transmitting, I wasn’t. So there is one more thing I need to check in preflight.

Overall, I was glad we spent the time to just “get back in the groove”. We discussed the next steps in my training and it sounds like we’re ready (again) to hit the cross countries, so maybe I can hit it hard for the next several weeks and get this thing wrapped up! We’ll see.

posted by Jeff Franks @ 9:47 PM 0 comments