Landing on a Cloud that Flies?

Recently, I was able to accomplish the long cross country required for the commercial certificate.  It was a LONG day. 

As a reminder, this requirement means that you must be the only occupant of the airplane, that you land at a minimum of three points, and that there be at least 250 nautical miles separating two of those three points.  Of course, when one is actually going somewhere would be the best time to accomplish these tasks, but alas that was not to be for me. 

My trip for the day included a flight to Flying Cloud Airport in Minneapolis, Minnesota (KFCM), a return to Rochelle, IL (KRPJ) and then finally back to home base at DuPage (KDPA).  On the day of the flight, an AIRMET-T was issued for turbulence below about FL010 until about 50 miles west of my departure airport.  To make matters more interesting, the headwinds were out of the west at a solid 40 knots.  FUN!

To Flying Cloud

I took off from DuPage in VMC but on an IFR flight plan.  It was VERY cold that day, so I had no intention of spending much time in the clouds if I could avoid it.  Because the headwinds were a solid 20 knots faster 2000 feet higher, I filed for 4000 for the trip to Minneapolis.  In retrospect, I'm not sure I gained much.  That AIRMET should have extended to just short of the border of Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and the bumps were so big that I slowed to maneuvering speed.  I think that climbing and taking the additional headwinds would have been a wash with respect to ground speed, but far more pleasant a trip.  

The views of course were beautiful as I approached the Mississippi River:

These views never get old.  However, they do come close when your ground speed barely breaks 90 knots on a TAS of 120.  Just saying.  

As expected, Flying Cloud was severe clear and very cold.  I was initially cleared to land on 20L, but then was switched to 20R.  Turned out that 20R had a bit of ice and such on it, but I had a nice smooth landing just past the numbers (as expected).  Reminded myself to stay off the breaks and slowly increase elevator pressure to break.  

Total flight time: 3 hours and 25 minutes.  No wind time would have been 2 hours 15 minutes.  Sigh.  

Bet They're Not Jumping Today

I initially planned to park the plane and head to nearby Punch Pizza, a favorite of me and my psychology department colleagues for their AWESOME wood-fired pizza.  It's really my favorite place to get pizza, but time was ticking.  Instead, I taxied back to 20R and picked up my clearance to Rochelle.  I was off shortly thereafter and on my way to more enjoyable flight conditions and a rockin' ground speed.  

As you can see from the Aspen panel, level at 7000 at 65% power settings, I had a true airspeed of 135 and a ground speed of 170.  It hit 181 at one point with no intervention from me.  This was much more like it, and sort of made me feel better about my trip up. 

When I find myself off doing these kinds of things, I usually try to land at new places.  However, I have been to Rochelle a number of times as the Flight Deck is a favorite $100 hamburger stop for members of my flying club.  I needed to stop by as they were kind enough to donate a gift card for our flying club's holiday party raffle.  They have quite a large skydiving operation on the field, and I started to plan a strategy for dealing with this given that I was going to be landing on 25.  It would have been a beautiful day for skydiving... except that it was about 10 degrees outside.

I doubt they are jumping today.  A pretty quiet CTAF supported my conclusion.  A smooth landing and taxi over to the ramp. 

By the time I shut down the engine, I had been in the plane for about 5 hours and 45 minutes or so.  I was so ready to stand.  I got out of the plane and stretched, and then "Oh, crap!  That's cold!!!."  I was not happy about the walk over to the Flight Deck, but a kind man from the FBO drove me over there in a very warm car.

I was getting hungry, but it was also getting late.  This stop took longer than expected as there was a communication SNAFU that needed to be resolved.

Back to Base... in the Dark

By the time I was ready to return to DuPage, the sun had set and it was getting dark.  I back taxied to 25 and blasted off for home.  Although not exactly smooth, the worst of the bumps had died off.  Given that the short distance and KORD's Bravo airspace demanded a cruising altitude of 3000, I was grateful for that.  I dialed up DeKalb traffic as I would be passing just south of the field, and it was a good thing as it was a pretty busy pattern.  There were two planes departing and two more in the pattern when I went by.  I had to do some maneuvering as it seemed that at least one of those two departing aircraft was going to hit me.  One of them ended up behind me and I could no longer see it, which honestly was a bit unnerving because he seemed to be going the same direction and had one more engine than me.  That is unnerving, and I could not see him on Foreflight/Stratus either.  

I approached DPA and was cleared to land on 28, and I executed a very nice landing.  Couldn't really ask for better.  And since it was after dark, I could take a night landing.  Since I needed one more at a controlled airport this worked out well.  

Total flight time today: 6.3 hours.  Miles flown?  Roughly 580.  

Lessons and Training Status

I think the first lesson learned is that when things are pretty bumpy, it might be worth it to go ahead and request a climb for smoother air.  The trade offs might be worth it.  In this case, my need to slow to maneuvering speed may have made the difference in ground speed due to stronger headwinds at higher altitudes a wash.  I certainly would have been less tired from the bumps.  

Second, maybe it was not the best day for this flight.  I had a bit of "git 'er done-itis," and while that really didn't compromise safety in this case it did affect my comfort and a need to abort plans for a nice lunch.  I need to pay attention to this for when safety does matter.  

Finally, it's good to keep track of the fuel burn.  I was confident that I could make it on full tanks, and found myself marking where I was in my tank switching.  Upon landing, I figured I burned about 54 gallons.  Fuel truck to tabs plus the remaining capacity was 54.8.  Not bad.  

Not so much a lesson, but flying a plane without traffic really stinks.  I really don't understand why the FAA will not give any pilot with a portable ADS-B solution access to traffic information.  It is STUPID.  No, having that on board does not really absolve the pilot of see-and-avoid responsibility.  But it sure would help to have that information in those situations where the traffic has moved behind you. and improve situational awareness.  I sure would like more available to me than "I pray that guy sees me!"  

As for training toward the commercial, I'm getting close.  Updating from a few posts ago:

So, what's left?

- Tighten up all maneuvers

- Day VFR XC with instructor on board (at least 100 miles between two landing points)

- Night VFR XC with instructor on board (at least 100 miles between two landing points)

- Long solo XC as detailed above.  Sigh.  Would have been nice to knock that out last weekend.  

- 1 more solo night landing at a controlled field.  

- Study for the oral. 

Given the weather, I'm not sure that I can wrap this up before year's end.  It would be challenging.  However, I have made significant progress in some of the hardest maneuvers: Eights on Pylons, Lazy 8's and Chandelles are all to PTS or pretty darn close.  Steep spirals are close.  Stalls are all fine.  Need to tune steep turns, I think.  I tend to lose some altitude as I figure out just how much power to add.  Performance maneuvers are all pretty good.  I need to go fly the Arrow some more to tighten them up - particularly the 180-degree power-off accuracy landing.  

Soon, very soon.  

Do you even fly?

It has been a strange year.  As of this writing, I have less than 70 hours in the log book for the year.  This is pitiful.

Most recently, I was scheduled to fly from DuPage/Chicago (KDPA) to Burke Lakefront (KBKL) in Cleveland for my sister's wedding.  Depending on timing, I was planning to use one direction of this trip to satisfy the long cross-country requirement for the commercial certificate.  This requires the pilot to be the sole occupant of the aircraft, for there to be at least three points of landing, and the straight-line distance between two of those points has to be at least 250 nautical miles.  I have a number of flights where I am missing just one of these requirements, including this one where the straight line distance between KPWK and KISZ was 239 nm (GRRR). In this case, though I was planning to just jog south and then to destination. 

Well, except for the weather.  Since I had been watching the forecasts all week, it was no great shock to me on Friday morning that I was going to be driving.  DuPage was IFR and raining, but flyable.  Burke was forecast to have winds 20 gusting 35 from 70 degrees off the runway.  In case that was not enough, a very long and wicked line of thunderstorms and other convective nastiness was strung from Kentucky to Canada.  I flew the Sonata instead.

You mentioned Commercial?

Yes, yes I did. 

Always more to learn...

If you've used Gleim, you know that you'll be doing a lot of reading.  I finished the ground school months ago, and passed the written exam with a 95%.  Acceptable, but the perfectionist in me is not satisfied.  Chris over at Photographic Logbook totally understands, I'm sure.  

On to the flying.  This is coming along, and though surprisingly weather has not been a factor in my training, life and travel have.  Between work, travel in the summer with the family, and my instructor off to OSH, this has gone more slowly than I would have liked.  I have done all of the maneuvers, and it's now just about tightening to PTS.  Oh, and there are a few cross countries that have to be wrapped up.  And, I think one more solo night landing at a controlled airfield.  That last part just floors me... what difference does it make, anyway?  I think it's harder at uncontrolled fields to be honest.  

I did have a mock check ride, and the oral was actually relatively strong.  A few areas for me to work on include better understanding of the controllable pitch propeller, better presentation of information overall, and high altitude operations (beyond the Ox regulations).  Flying?  Well, it was ok.  Actually, it was about what I expected.  The navigation portion was actually pretty good, but some maneuvers - maneuvers that I had not performed for awhile - were not really there.

The owner of the school where I'm training really questioned me about why I'd transition to and fly the 182-RG that they have on the line when I have access to a perfectly good Piper Arrow (in which I have just shy of 100 hours in type).  Apparently the retractable Skylane is a PITA to land, and even the very experienced chief pilot informed me that it took him a solid 50 hours before he felt comfortable landing it.  Hmmm... and I need to be down in 100-200 feet of the agreed touchdown spot?  So, I took our club's Arrow to a nearby uncontrolled field and performed all the performance take offs and landings and 180 degree power off, and I'd say that it all seemed to be within PTS or darn close.  I guess when I said that I could get in the Arrow that day and be pretty close I was not really blowing smoke.  I think a few more hours of practice with these maneuvers will be sufficient. 

Have I mentioned that Skip at Skill Aviation is a very honest guy, and if you're in the Chicago area and considering training then you should talk with him.  He has been quite generous to me with his time and knowledge.  It says something when a person makes a recommendation clearly not in line with his financial interests.  

So, what's left?

- Tighten up all maneuvers

- Day VFR XC with instructor on board (at least 100 miles between two landing points)

- Night VFR XC with instructor on board (at least 100 miles between two landing points)

- Long solo XC as detailed above.  Sigh.  Would have been nice to knock that out last weekend.  

- 1 more solo night landing at a controlled field.  

- Study for the oral.  

I hope to have this wrapped up by the end of the year, but we will see.  It's not like I'm up against it for a BFR or anything or that a job depends on it.  

Instrument Rated

Yesterday morning around 7 am, I departed from DuPage (KDPA) for a short flight up to Janesville, Wisconsin (KJVL) to take my instrument check ride.  Boy, what a day. 

I slept terribly.  I went to bed after 11, and was awake by 4.  I had planned to wake at 5:30 to be gone by 6, but 4 it was.  After 45 minutes of trying to go back to sleep, I concluded that it was moot.  So, I left early and figured that I'd be less anxious sitting at the JVL Jet Center waiting for my test than if I zoomed in after red lining it all the way up there. 

The flight up was very quiet and relaxing, and I nailed altitude to plus or minus 50 feet the whole way there.  Not bad, right?  Despite some interesting wind conditions, I had a very nice landing on 18.  "Today's gonna be a good day" (in my best Ice Cube voice). 

After hanging out at the Jet Center for about an hour and catching up with the kind gentleman working the fueling work on the latest airport gossip (why did they close Kealy's, anyway?!?!), the examiner and I got started on this test.  We went through all that obligatory paperwork at first, and then got to it. 

Oral:  I can say that I felt I did pretty well on this.  There were a few holes in my practical knowledge that became evident, but the examiner seemed to think that this was more a problem with how certain unnamed ground school offerings address the problems.  For example, I could nearly quote the regulation about what to do with lost communications in IFR conditions.  I clearly understood what the FAA expects me to do... or did I?  Suppose you get to your clearance limit of the airport, and then it's time to land.  How do you actually start the approach?  But overall, I felt this was the stronger part of the test.

Practical test:  Oi vey.  First, my takeoff was fun.  The winds had picked up and were gusting in anticipation of the cold front moving through.  Joys.  Despite proper corrections my plane wanted to weather vane into the wind, which was not exactly making for a smooth take off.  (where did you go, Ice Cube?!?!).  The examiner had given me a clearance, and it was not long before he basically dumped me on a hold.  But, it was right on the airway I was flying and a direct entry and hold right on the airway.  Perfect.  I got this.  Well, it was REALLY bumpy at 3000 feet, and staying on altitude was not going well.  I certainly busted the PTS multiple times, but I knew this and said I was correcting and did so.  Trim?  I was using it - honest!  Another funny thing.. I double tapped the OBS button on the Garmin 430, so it did not start using my intersection like a VOR.  I didn't realize it right away but it explained why I flew past my waypoint each time.  I could not just hit it again because the system already sequenced to my next way point. 

Approach 1: "Asiana 214 crashed" at my destination, and I needed to "divert."  Since I was near Rockford (KRFD), I listened in and chose the RNAV 25 approach.  I didn't do so bad on this one and had a good landing.  I REALLY needed to take a deep breath because I kept waiting for that dreaded "let's go back to the airport and talk this over" statement.

Approach 2: We departed toward the JVL VOR as the IAF for a VOR-A approach into Beloit (44C).  This was to be the dreaded partial panel, and the examiner kept dealing with trying to cover the Aspen panel.  This was REALLY distracting and I blew past the VOR and had to get back to it in order to do the procedure turn.  Upon reflection, I should have offered to turn it off as this is what my instructor does all the time.  I got south of course, then north, then south and then north and then eventually on the course.  I did NOT bust MDA.  If I was going to go down, this was not going to be the reason.

Interesting thing about Beloit.  If one is going to circle to 25, one must deal with some very poorly lit silos right on the approach end and some hills to the south.  The examiner was teaching me an important lesson about circles especially at night by taking me here.  He suggested using Google Earth or Maps to check an area out.  Take a look at Beloit, WI airport and you'll see what he was showing me.  

Going around, he took the airplane.  I had not done anything wrong at this point, but my honest reaction was "now we're going back to the airport."  Instructed to look down, I was quickly handed back a plane that was in a turning dive to the ground.  "Holy s*^&!!!" was the only thing I could think.  I mean, I recovered just fine, but that was downright frightening.  "And that's how it's going to happen, too," the examiner assured me.  I assured him that this scared the bejeezus out of me.  One more unusual attitude, then we were preparing for the last approach.

Approach 3: ILS 32 back into Janesville.  I flew this one pretty well, but it was a dumper.  It was the second time that a full and careful brief of the approach was not possible, so I had to prioritize.  I was doing just fine and landed without incident. 

That was a long taxi.  Not literally of course, but I was asking myself I I passed.  I mean, as you can see from my description above, it's not like I just nailed it.  On the other hand, he never said we should go back to the airport and I flew the ILS just fine. 

After shutting down, we opened the door and talked for a solid 10 minutes about some things that will certainly help me fly better.  They were not correcting me, but only helping me anticipate some things better.  It was the biggest sigh of relief when he congratulated me on the successful completion of my check ride. 

After we completed the paperwork, we talked for a bit more about flying and things that I wanted to make sure I understood from his feedback.  I learned that I rely in pictures a lot, yet when I had one available during the partial panel but with GPS working, I didn't use it.  I should have as it would have helped a lot.  The examiner did not say that, but it just hit me as I sit here processing this experience. 

After taking a bit of time to relax, eat a cookie, and stretch, I filed my first IFR flight plan back to DuPage.  Would you believe that I held altitude within 50 feet again?  Flew through a very small cloud (I don't think 10 seconds is really enough to qualify as "actual" instrument time), but I enjoyed the fact that I could. 

Then... the dreaded ATIS.  How does 250 at 22 gusting 31 sound to you?  Did I mention the runways are 20R, 20L, and 28?  I checked Foreflight for what I already suspected - 20R and 20L despite being the wider runways were past the crosswind component for the Arrow.  Sigh. 

Descent was fun - I had about a 35 knot tailwind component, and hit 175kts groundspeed on 140 IAS.  That was not even to yellow line.

As I approached the airport, the wind check was 240 with the same speeds.  Seeing that things were the same and above my comfort level anyway, I figured I'd take 20R as it's wide and nice and long.  Just as I was flaring, the wind picked up and blew me left enough that I could no longer touch down without bending the airplane.  Go around, which was sliding all over the place as I had to stay in ground effect to speed up.  When I was comfortable again, I called the tower and said "898 is doing a dosie doe and a go around."  The controller gave a new wind check and asked if I wanted 28.  The winds were now favoring that, so I requested it.  Let's just say that I am not at all unhappy with a less-than-gentle touchdown that was on center line.  My instructor for my private told me more than once that sometimes the winds are such that a squeaker is not a very constructive goal. 

"Good job, 898."  What a way to end the day. 

Here is my flight track back to DuPage from Fight Aware... cleared route was interesting.  

2013 Half-Way Point: How Go the Goals?

At the start of 2013, I sent out a few goals.  The half-way point of the years seems like a good time to review how things are going. 

As of this writing, I have72.9 hours of piloting time (1.5 was in a simulator).  Jeez!  No wonder I don't have time to write. 

• Fly at least 15 hours at night

I've actually flown 4.6 hours at night.  Guess I have to be behind somewhere!  

• Fly at least 70 cross-country hours

I've logged 43 hours of cross-country time.  I've even managed to see a few new airports - Champaign, IL (KCMI); Boscobel, WI (KOVS); Dubuque, IA (KDBQ), Wood County, OH (1G0), Findlay, OH (KFDY), DuBois, PA (KDUJ), and Lebanon - Warren County, OH (I68) to name the most memorable.  

• Complete my instrument rating.  

Mrs. Dr. Flying Shrink is so ready for this to be done, and I am too.  As of this writing, I have completed 61 approaches and have a total of 41.8 hours of instrument time (10.5 actual; 1.5 of the remaining time came in a simulator... you know, it turns out the simulator is pretty darn hard to fly after all).  Things are clicking now, and it's just a matter of doing a bit more tightening.  I've been really working on altitude hold since that is one of things that would result in the pink slip.  My last few flights have been pretty tight.  The written exam is also checked off (93%, which is pretty good but still offends my perfectionistic sensibilities). I can see this being done in the next few weeks.     

• Complete Complex Endorsement and required transition training in our club's Arrow.

 Completed.

 A few additional milestones. 

On Saturday 6/22, I crossed 200 hours total piloting time.  As of today, I have 203.9 hours.  Nice.