A Swimmer in the Sky

N52488 — Bartow to Westfield

Friday 24 July 2009

I'm delivering a new Cessna 172R (the 160 hp model) to the Egyptian Aviation Academy ("Since 1932") in Cairo, along with David Henderson and James Creamer in identical Skyhawks, and we've hopped over from Lakeland to Bartow to fill our ferry tanks with relatively inexpensive gasoline.  It's 11:00 o'clock when we lift off into the muggy Florida summer, and I'm abruptly reminded what a difference 20 horsepower can make.  The 172's I've flown recently have all been the SP model, with 180 hp.  This takeoff brings back my early days of ferrying, when I flew a number of old, somewhat beat-up 172's, and taking off in no way resembled the leap into the sky to which airline passengers have become accustomed in modern jets.  It was more like mitosis.

I remember a time at Guernsey, maybe on a Saturday, when I was taking a 172 to Israel with 124 gallons (469 liters) of ferry fuel on board, in line for takeoff behind three or four other 172's out for a lark on a sunny day.  They turned down the runway one by one, their engines buzzed, and they wafted into the air almost like dragonflies.  Not me.  With only 4800 feet (1455 meters) of runway available, I went the other way, taxied back to the very lip of the asphalt, and turned around so my tail was sticking out over the threshold.  I held the brakes, pushed the throttle full open, and waited until the engine had stabilized at maximum power.  Then I released the brakes.  After a moment, the airplane began, tentatively, to roll; then gradually it started to gather a dogged purpose, head down, determined.  Halfway down the runway you could tell momentum was now on its side, and at maybe two-thirds the length you might have seen a sliver of light under the tires.  As it passed the far end, comfortably above the shrubbery now, and groaned on out over the Channel, the tower controller had only this to say:  "Heavy!"

N52399 — Gander to Wick

Tuesday 23 June 2009

It's midnight at Gander, Newfoundland, and I've just lifted off Runway 13 in a new Cessna 172S and climbed into utter darkness.  For a few minutes I could see three or four lights on the ground, but now I've passed through a stratus deck, and, with another layer overhead, I'm suspended in the night.  Progress—even motion itself—is an abstraction, represented only by numbers on the instrument panel.  It's almost as if I were isolated in a separate world, displaced along a dimension beyond space and time from the familiar and homely world of trees and roads and houses and other people.  But it's a familiar feeling:  I've been here before, and with no weather to speak of until halfway across the ocean, I'm content to wait for daylight to come in its own time.

It won't be long.  The sun will rise well before I reach my second waypoint at 52°N 45°W, and I'll land in Scotland before sunset, so I'll have full daylight to deal with a weak frontal system south of Iceland, covering the second half of my route. 

Meanwhile, it's time to let out my HF antenna.  I check the wingtip strobes to see if they're reflecting precipitation.  I use a traiing-wire antenna, 200 feet (60 meters) of high-quality (and expensive!) 14-gauge insulated wire stored on a wooden kite reel, and until I get it out and hooked up to my equipment, it's grounded through my body.  It's no fun at all to be on the receiving end of the voltages induced in that wire by dragging it at a hundred knots through clouds or rain or (ouch! ouch!) snow.  But my strobes tell me I'm flying in clear air, so I ease open the side window and let my "fish"—the funnel attached to the end of the wire to keep it from whipping—out into the breeze.  At first there's not much pull on the wire, while the fish is in the boundary layer next to the fuselage, and I feed the wire out a yard at a time.  But once the fish has passed safely under the tail and is feeling the full effects of the relative wind, I let the reel spin up, holding it in my right hand well clear of anything it might hit, and controlling the speed of the wire with my left.  When the antenna has fully deployed I take a firm grip on it, unhook it from the reel, position it so only a few inches are inside the airplane, and close the window on it.  Then I connect it to my solid-state antenna tuner which I hang on the hook of the window latch, and I'm in business.  I've been assigned 2899 kilohertz, with a back-up frequency of 8891.  I call Gander Radio for a communications check, and learn he's receiving me "three by three", that is, strength 3, readability 3, on a scale of 1 to 5.  That's okay.  I'm still in the groundwave, too close to his transmitter to receive the skywave signal bent back from the ionosphere.  He'll hear me better later on.  I settle back and continue climbing into the night.

N60902 — Saipan to Yao

I had planned to depart at 0100 local, to arrive at Kansai Airport at the beginning of the workday, and I was ready well before that time; but when I called Saipan Ground Control they couldn't find my flight plan in the system.  I called the Honolulu Flight Service Station on my cellphone, and they assured me the plan had been filed.  Back to Saipan Ground on the radio:  nothing yet; they told me they had Guam Center searching for it.  I left the #1 Comm radio powered by the Ground Clearance switch so it was the only drain on the battery, turned on the overhead speaker, and squeezed back out of the plane past the front ferry tank to stretch my legs.  The night was pleasant and the rain merely an intermittent light sprinkle.

N858ND — Bangor to Goose Bay

first, previous

Monday 12 March 2007

I've had a number of experiences in which a sealed electrical component—a relay or a contactor—has failed when I flew into cold weather, and I've concluded that it's often caused by moisture sealed into the unit, turning to frost on the contacts.  After landing at Bangor with the airplane thoroughly cold-soaked I tested the left-hand battery again, and this time when I turned on the master switch I couldn't even hear the contactor clicking.  I imagined so much frost on the contacts it muffled the sound.  I wanted to have the guys at Telford Aviation test that possibility while the airplane was still cold, before bringing it into the hangar, but when I called them first thing Monday morning I learned half the guys were out with the flu and they couldn't hope to look at it till Tuesday.  Meanwhile, after the sun came up in Oregon, I called the factory to make sure they'd approve warranty work at Telford. They were convinced it was the battery, because they'd been having some annoying battery problems.  Experience usually trumps logic, but we'd have to wait to find out which was right.

Tuesday, even more guys were out sick, and the wind was howling so fiercely the reduced crew didn't dare even try to open the hangar door.  Wednesday we finally pulled the airplane in and found the battery flat, as Columbia expected.  After being charged, it seemed to be working fine, but to be sure we had to put it on a trickle charger overnight and re-test it in the morning.  In any case, Columbia wanted to send me a new battery to carry along.  Given that shipping times to some of the places I'd be going could usefully be measured in geological eras, I thought that a wise precaution, and well worth the wait.

By Friday afternoon the upshot of all those phone calls and emails flitting across the globe was that all concerned parties knew 1) the battery had passed its tests, 2) the spare battery would arrive on Saturday, and 3) icing in the forecast would prevent my departure before Monday.

So now I'm sitting at FL210, scooting along at 190 knots with a breath of a tailwind, watching my fuel consumption.  There's a problem with the avgas at Goose.  I believe the stuff in their storage tanks has passed its sell-by date, and they haven't figured out what to do with it so they can fill the tanks with fresh fuel; anyhow, you can only buy avgas there by the 205-liter drum (about 55 gallons).  Naturally, I want to fill my tanks at Goose without leaving much gas behind, so I'm trying to burn as close to 55 gallons as I can. 

Since I can't get any farther than Goose today I hadn't been focussed on my departure time.  I wandered out to the airport, made sure the paperwork was square between Telford and Columbia, ran a few errands, bought some groceries for the trip, and somehow failed to actually take off until after 1700 local.  Now I'm regretting my carelessness.  I'm still in fine shape to meet my revised schedule to Germany, but I'm going to be late for supper.  In Goose I like to eat at a bar and grill called Trapper's:  they provide the trimmings; you grill the steak; no-one ever complains to the chef—but they shut off the grill at 9:00 Atlantic Standard, and I'm not going to make it. 

Now it's time to start down for my submarine sandwich.  I ease the power back, set up a 700 fpm descent on the autopilot, and, as is my habit, turn on the defroster so the cold windshield won't fog up when I hit the warm, moist air down below.  Everything's proceeding nicely—smooth, clear air, the lights of Goose Bay/Happy Valley beginning to twinkle just below the horizon—but my feet are getting cold.  Then it hits me (duh!):  Goose is reporting -13°C with a dewpoint at -25.  That windshield ain't gonna fog up.  I de-select the defroster, but it's too late. 

Later, heading out the hotel door for the sub shop, I bump into a couple of guys in snowmobile suits with bibs indicating they're officials at some sort of event.  I ask them about it, and they tell me it's a multi-day cross-country snowmobile race from Churchill up to some lake I've never heard of, down to Goose, and back to Churchill.  This is the second day of the event—last night the racers slept in the woods—and it's been a tough one.  There are guys who still haven't made it to Goose, and they'll have less than twelve hours till start time in the morning and won't be able to dry out their gear. 

"How'd they get wet?" I ask, thinking of the solidly frozen lakes and rivers. 

"Sweat," they answer. 

Sweat?  In this weather?  I remark that I know the hardest thing about cross-country skiing is figuring out what to do with all the clothes you have to take off, but that I hadn't thought of riding snowmobiles as strenuous.  Oh no, they say, these guys are working hard.  And then I realize I've been envisioning people gliding serenely through the woods on a groomed trail—but these are racers going hell-for-leather cross-country.  I've heard of them, on a frozen lake, outrunning a Cessna 206.  Tearing through the woods, it must take tremendous effort just to hang on to the machine, to say nothing about what it takes to wrench it out of a snowbank when they get stuck.

Trapper's, I learn, is keeping the grill hot for the stragglers.  The guys say they'll call over and let them know I'm coming, and sure enough, when I arrive (after peering cautiously around head-high snow banks to check for traffic before crossing the street), I'm greeted with a T-bone and a smile.  While that's getting started, the waitress points out a huge vat of caribou stew and invites me to help myself.  I do so with enthusiasm:  northern caribou, to my taste, is almost as good as wildebeeste, and this stew is sho' 'nuff delicious.

Much later, as I'm nearing the end of a satisfying meal, some of the racers come in—slowly:  arms hanging, stiff-gaited, stunned.  They make directly for the vat of stew, which seems the right choice to me.

The glossary

I've been doing quite a bit of work on the glossary lately.  It's by no means up-to-date, but it's much improved, and I'll continue to work on it as I have time.  Meanwhile, if there's something you're desperate to find out about, please leave a comment and I'll jump right on it. 

N858ND — Muncie to Bangor

first, previous

Saturday 03 March 2007

I haven't been paying much attention to the news, but it's gradually filtering into my consciousness that a cold front associated with this same vicious storm that's been thwarting my progress across the U.S. has kicked off lethal tornadoes in Alabama.  I'm content to keep my distance.  This morning, what had been two lows have merged into one over Lake Huron, far enough north of my track that I'll be clear of most of the weather—except that it's dumping a ton of snow on Bangor, Maine, my destination. 

I think FL210 is going to work out well as a compromise between high-altitude efficiency and oxygen conservation.  Swinging south of the low at that level will give me tailwinds up to 75 knots.  It's great to go fast, but I don't want to catch up with the weather, so I drag my feet a bit leaving Muncie.

The storm has dropped about an inch of afterthought during the night, and I expect to have to brush it off the airplane; but I find the wind, sweeping across the open airport, has kept her clean.  A check of the oil shows essentially the same level as at McCook, so now I can find out how the airplane does at long-range power settings.  I don't have ferry tanks and the winds-aloft forecasts over the next few days from Wetter Zentrale show adverse winds on my route across the Atlantic, so I really need to find out how much headwind I can accept on those legs. 

The Columbia has two independent electrical systems, each with its own battery and alternator.  (The left and right buses can be connected by a cross-tie switch in the event an alternator fails.)  When I turn on the left-hand battery switch, I can hear the contactor click, but there's no power on the bus.  The right-hand side works fine.  Now I've got a decision to make.  I can try to get the problem solved here, or I can take it to Bangor and let the guys at Telford Aviation look at it.  I know Telford's mechanics are good, and Bangor's my home base.  The weather's good enroute, so if I lose an alternator I can land at any nearby airport on the remaining system and abandon the flight.  But I need both electrical systems to begin the flight. 

The right-hand battery alone won't start the engine today at -1°C, so I arrange for a ground-power start.  After the GPU's unplugged I turn on the right battery and alternator switches.  Normal indications.  I try the left battery.  Nothing.  I close the cross-tie switch and try the left alternator.  It comes on line; and when I open the cross-tie switch, it stays on line.  Bingo. 

I've asked for GPS-direct to Bangor, and when I call for my clearance I receive "as filed."  I'll try that more often in the future.  It takes me 19 minutes to climb to FL210 at full power and 135 knots indicated, with 12.9 gallons showing in the "fuel used" window of the MFD.  I set 65% power, and find that at -35°C (ISA-8°C), at 50°F lean of peak TIT per the P.O.H., I'm doing 191 ktas at 14.7 gallons per hour.  At 60% power, I get 191 knots again, at 14.2 gph.  Something's wrong here, but I'll take the 60% figure as correct for now and verify it later—I think 65% is a bit too high for my needs on this trip, anyhow.  I pull back to 55%, and get 184 ktas at 13.1 gph.  Even if I take 12.9 gallons as the "cost to climb" to FL210 and subtract that from full fuel, I find I can cruise at FL210 from Goose Bay to Narsarsuaq at 60% power with a 34-knot headwind and still land with two hours' reserve.  At 55%, I can accept a 43-knot headwind.  This is much better than I expected, and plenty to get me across in the winds the forecasters are predicting. 

Just before I start my descent I check the performance again:  at 65%, 194 ktas; at 60%, 196; and at 55%, 189.  Either the 65% speed is low or the other two are high—I'd expect to pick up a couple of knots after burning off fuel for three hours, though I'm not sure I believe five—but these numbers are reasonable, and increase my confidence in the speeds I recorded at the top-of-climb.  After landing, I check the "fuel used":  57.1 gallons.  Liftoff to touchdown, the flight took 3 hours and 23 minutes.  I spent most of it at 60% power, and assuming 14.2 gph as my average consumption, I should have burned 48.3 gallons if I'd spent the whole flight at FL210.  So the energy required to lift the plane to FL210, counting engine start, taxi, and takeoff, less what I gained back in the descent, is represented by about 57.1 - 48.3 = 8.8 gallons.  If I'd spent the whole leg at a constant power setting I'd have a more accurate number, but this is close enough for government work.  Using nine gallons as the "cost to climb" to FL210, and the performance figures I got at top-of-climb, and reserving two hours of fuel, I figure I can fly from Goose to Narsarsuaq at 60% power with a 37-knot headwind, and at 55% against 48 knots.  Wow. 

I strap the airplane down and pat her on the nose, and head out to the parking lot to be reminded why I keep a snow shovel in my car.

next

N858ND — McCook to Muncie

first, previous

Friday 03 March 2007

Well, the forecast was right, after all:  the sky is clear, and it didn't snow at all last night.  I take credit for that.  If I'd left the airplane outside I'm sure the town would've been plastered.  The line guys and I pull the airplane out, and while they're pumping fuel I discover I've used a quart of oil in the 2 1/2-hour leg from Odgen.  I'm not surprised, since if the oil consumption had stabilized already it would mean I'd seated the rings on the first leg.  That would be earlier than I had any right to expect, even considering the several hours of test flights and training that preceded my departure.

I've filed to Muncie, Indiana, at FL190 to save oxygen—since the winds aren't that much better up high—and via airways again.  There's an unfortunate dogleg in the route, and I'm hoping that before I get there Center will give me a clearance direct to somewhere on the far side of it, to save the twenty miles or so it adds to the great-circle distance to Muncie; but I'm surprised when, before I even reach my cruising altitude, I'm cleared direct to my destination.  I'm used to flying up the East Coast of the U.S. and in Europe, and I always file via airways. Up the East Coast, I usually get a shortcut once I'm north of Long Island Sound, but never earlier.  In Europe I often have to fight with Brussels to get a flight plan accepted, and it's not unusual for them to reject the shortest route (which can be none too short in Europe anyhow.  I keep being reminded of the old-time Mainer's response to a tourist's request for directions:  "You caan't git theyah from heeyah").  They'll often add 30% or more to the distance before they're satisfied; though, once airborne, it's common to be cleared direct across any individual controller's airspace.  But on this trip I've been cleared direct across most of my route on every leg, and now I'm thinking I should have been filing GPS-direct all the way.  I believe I'll try that on my next leg.

Last night a trucker who had driven up to McCook from the southeast was telling me traffic had been slowed to a crawl in the blizzard—where the roads were open at all.  Sure enough, while McCook was bare, I haven't gone very far before I see the prairie thoroughly whitened.  It looks like my choice of an overnight stop was a good one.  The fury of the storm has moved on now, and the only clouds I encounter are a couple of layers of strato-cumulus between 8,000 and 5,000 feet on the descent into Muncie, though on the satellite weather page of the MFD I can see snow falling as nearby as Fort Wayne.

The storm may have moved on, but the wind is still ripping across the airport when I land, and I screw in the tie-down rings (the Columbia doesn't leave them sticking out into the airflow when they're not being used) and tie the airplane down securely before leaving her for the night.

next

N858ND — Bend to McCook

first

Thursday 01 March 2007

Yesterday I had a glance at the forecasts and saw a grand sweep of winds roaring down over the Central Plains and back up into the Northeast, and I figured if I left early I might ride them all the way to Indiana today.  But now, at 0430 Pacific Standard Time, I'm looking at a radar summary splotched with hail and mesocyclones just where I want to go.  There's no way I'm going to take this pretty little airplane into that mess, so a re-think is in order.  I look back and forth between the radar summary and the significant weather forecasts and finally decide south-central Nebraska is as far as I want to push it today.  Next, I jump on the AirNav website, checking fuel prices and customer reviews, and I settle on refueling with OK3 Air Center in Ogden, Utah, and an overnight at McCook, Nebraska, with Red Willow Aviation.

I'm no longer in a hurry, since I don't have so far to go, but I still need to get to the airport in time to make sure I'm not blocking people behind me in the hangar who wanted to leave at 7:00 for Southern California.  I find that situation well in hand, and spend some time chatting with people at the factory and finishing up some paperwork, and somehow it's after 9:00 before I'm actually airborne.

I've filed the first leg at 17,000 feet, as an intermediate step toward the altitudes I expect to be using during most of the trip.  After takeoff my route takes me over the Deschutes VOR, 15 miles north of Bend and 90 degrees from the direction I want to go.  I'm hoping I'll get a turn from Center towards Twin Falls, Idaho, before going very far out of my way, but in fact this airplane eats 15 miles in a snap.  Level at 17,000 I set the power at 80%, and pretty soon I'm looking at a true airspeed of 230 knots, for a groundspeed—with a 50-knot tailwind—of 280.  Whee!  I'll be varying the power between 80% and 75% in various combinations of manifold pressure and RPM, so as to seat the piston rings early on.  It's great fun to go fast, but what I'm really interested in is going long, and I need to find out exactly how long this airplane will really go.  For that, I'll have to pull the power way back—but first I have to seat the rings.

The Columbia 400—especially with a brisk tailwind—just gobbles distance.  Before long I'm in the descent to Odgen.  There are snow showers there, and Salt Lake City Approach vectors me around for the ILS to Runway 3, circle to land on 16.  I'm still above pattern altitude when I break out and see the airport laid out before me.

Inside the FBO there are a couple of young women behind the counter, a customer who's just leaving for Montana in a sweet little Cessna 120, and a young man—obviously a flight instructor whose lessons have been cancelled because of the weather—flying a 6-inch-long radio-controlled helicopter around the office, buzzing the women's hairdos, to their subdued amusement.

I order fuel and head for the weather computer, to find the forecast still holding:  clear sailing to McCook.  I file via airways across northern Colorado at FL230, and then call Red Wing Aviation.  I talk to Shirley there, asking her to book me into a hotel.  She asks if I'll want to re-fuel tonight, and I tell her, "No.  I haven't had anything to eat all day, and by the time I get to McCook the only things on my mind will be a steak and a beer."

I walk out to the airplane to find it covered with a half inch of snow.  As I'm brushing it off I wonder how the guy in the 120 is getting along in this weather.  I'll never know, unless I read about him in an accident report.  One thing about a 120 that's good in this situation is that you've got a bit more time than in most airplanes to see and avoid obstacles—even ones that loom suddenly out of the snow.

Not in the Columbia.  In this airplane I want the number on my altimeter to be bigger than any of the nearby numbers on the map, and after takeoff I scramble for altitude, crossing the High Uintahs with a mile to spare.  Soon I'm streaking across Colorado with only a glimpse of the ground from time to time, still using 75% to 80% of power—and a lot of fuel.

I'm using a lot of oxygen, too.  Columbia builds a Precise Flight oxygen system into the 400, featuring oxygen-saving cannulas for use up to 18,000 feet and masks for higher altitudes, with adjustable flow meters so you can set an oxygen flow appropriate to your altitude.  When I was packing the airplane's accessories I recognized the Precise Flight flow meters:  I have one at home, with a variety of detachable connectors so I can plug it into the built-in oxygen systems of the various airplanes I fly.  Mine was made by Ted Nelson Aviation so many years ago I've been needing to replace it, but I haven't been able to find the company on the internet.  The name change explains my difficulty.  I was about to write down the phone number I saw on the package when I was told, "Oh, they're right here on the field."

At 18,000 feet a full charge of oxygen will last many hours with this system, but as you climb your need for oxygen increases seemingly exponentially.  At FL230 I'm watching the oxygen-supply pressure fall at a rate I know can't last till Bangor, where I'm planning a refill.  The airplane is performing beautifully up here, but unless I have extraordinary tailwinds on subsequent legs, I'll fly a bit lower to stretch my supply.

The clouds end abruptly at the last ridges of the Front Range, and as I sail out over the high plains I'm treated to a panoramic view of the fields and frozen ponds around Loveland.  That clear air lasts across the Colorado plains and much of Nebraska, but on my long descent into McCook I'm flying through clouds with a lot of snow. 

The forecast calls for McCook to be clear all night, but I break out of the snow only 20 miles west of the airport.  The temperature on the ground is above freezing, and I can envision the airplane getting coated with slush which freezes hard during the night, requiring hours of time and gallons of expensive de-icing fluid (if it's even available) to get it off.  So after I shut down I ask the line guys how much it might cost to put the airplane in a hangar overnight.

"Fifteen dollars."

Oh, I'll take it!  I've paid $600 (Canadian) just to have a hangar door opened for me—though, to be sure, that was in Kuujjuaq; and up there, in Winter, six hundred bucks is about what it takes to replace the heat that rushes eagerly out the opening door like a pack of huskies too long confined.

Shirley has gone home by the time I land, but when I look at the map of McCook the guys hand me along with the keys to the courtesy car, I see she's circled not only the hotel she's booked for me, but also the best restaurant for steaks and beer.  What a gal!

next

N858ND — Bend

Wednesday 28 February 2007

I've long had my eye on the Columbia 350 and 400, especially since flying a Lancair Turboprop to Italy in 2005.  I liked that airplane very much, but I had trouble with the autopilot, and hand-flying it at FL250 kept me so busy I ended up not writing much about the trip.  I now have an opportunity to fly a Columbia 400 from the factory in Bend, Oregon, to Germany, and I hope to do better with the trip report.

Columbia requires an extensive ground school and a thorough check-out for pilots flying their airplanes.  I'm sitting in the ground-school classroom waiting to meet my flight instructor for my first flight when a slender young woman comes up and says, "Are you Gerald? I'm Emily.  I'll be taking care of you today."

I surreptitiously grab my chair so as not to fall off and wreck my outward semblance of aplomb, and say, "Okay."

Emily, I learn, used to work in the Flight Department, but has moved over to Sales.  The other instructors are tied up, though, so she's volunteered (or been drafted) to check me out.

She offers a tour of the factory, something I haven't yet had a chance to enjoy, and I begin my acquaintance with the physical airplane as a sewing project:  people cutting cloth with scissors.  The cloth is pre-impregnated fiber glass, and the pieces are laid carefully into molds where they're fused by heat and pressure into the skin of the wings, top and bottom halves.  The innards are inserted and bonded into place, then the halves are joined by more heat and pressure, and mated to the fuselage, which has arrived in left and right halves from another location.

From this point construction proceeds much as in an ordinary airplane.  I notice with interest that the field-swappable components of the Garmin 1000 are located behind the flat-panel PFD and MFD displays (that is, Primary Flight Display and Multi-Function Display; see Glossary entry "EFIS" for details).  The Continental TSIO-550 is rated at a conservative 310 h.p., which, with its two turbochargers, it can maintain up to 18,000 feet.  Each turbo is driven by one bank of cylinders, with the compressed intake air routed through an intercooler on each side on its way to the single throttle valve.  Exhaust gas which is to bypass the turbocharger is routed through tubes with a smaller diameter than the exhaust pipes feeding the turbos, to a single waste gate on the left side.  Thus the tube from the right-hand cylinders is longer; the temperatures on the right side, unsurprisingly, run a bit hotter than on the left.

The tour completed, we drag N858ND outside and start our preflight inspection.  I see that a bit of turbulence is introduced into the boundary layer by low-profile vortex generators which are molded into a plastic tape along the leading edge of the wing.  All sections of this tape must be firmly affixed for flight.  The lifting airflow under the tailplane is similarly modified by a zig-zag tape.

The engine likes a good five seconds of prime when cold or even moderately warm, then starts readily with the mixture rich and the vernier throttle cracked three-quarters of a turn.  If you've under-primed, you can help the engine along with shots from the primer.

After takeoff, with the flaps retracted at 400 feet, we start a cruise climb at full power and 135 knots to reach clear air, for air work, above the tops of some robust cumulus. It takes 12,500 feet to clear them, but the airplane zips right up there.

Emily asks for steep turns.  Oh, goody!  (Ferry pilots, you understand, are turn-deprived.)  I roll briskly into a 65-degree bank and start wallowing all over the sky, trying to get the back pressure and nose attitude right.  Emily, aghast, suggests 45 degrees instead.  Oh, okay.  (Sigh.)  I do a few relatively sedate turns during which my wallowing is less pronounced.  I'll concede the moderated angle of bank is more effective.  The reason we do steep turns during a check-out—and the slow flight which follows—is that the airplane talks to you loud and clear during these maneuvers:  they're the quickest way to develop a feel for the machine.  After the slow flight, we do a complete stall series, including one with the stick held full back until the nose falls through the horizon.  Perfectly straight-forward.  Then it's a simulated emergency descent in which we plunge toward poor Madras Airport like a hawk after a rabbit, for pattern work.  I fling us repeatedly at the runway there, in a frisky little crosswind, until both Emily and I are satisfied with my performance.  Thanks to the rapport I formed with the airplane during the steep turns and slow flight, a few of my landings are halfway respectable.  (And Emily, as a flight instructor, truth be told, is as effective as she is enjoyable.)

I haven't had that much fun in an airplane in a long time.

In the next phase of the checkout we concentrate on the interface between the pilot and the Garmin 1000.  I have a fair amount of experience with the rig, but this is a new software version with some features I'm not used to, including a systems page for engine and electrical parameters, an updated "lean-assist" program, a data-input keypad on the armrest between the pilots' seats, and Garmin's integrated autopilot, with controls on the left edge of the MFD.  I'll tell you, I have more than 10,000 hours in turboprops of various types, including the Saab 340 and the ATR-42 with "glass cockpits", and I've never flown an airplane with such sophisticated avionics as this little single-engine four-seater.  Emily wants to watch me turn the theory into practice.

First we do an ILS at Redmond.  I know Emily wants me to use the autopilot: she's been watching me fumble for the the autopilot buttons on the audio panel (situated vertically between the PFD and the MFD).  I, on the other hand, like the way this airplane feels too much to want to hand her over to "George" so soon in our relationship.  I compromise by using the flight director, which requires the same button-pushes the autopilot would.

The ILS goes smoothly, and to my great satisfaction I squeak onto the runway at the touchdown-zone markers just as the stall horn gives a preliminary chirp.  We head out for some more exercises, concentrating on the functions I haven't used very often, until Emily's finally convinced I won't actually get lost, and that I know how to simplify things if I get tangled up.

As she's signing off my check-out (admirably concealing whatever trepidation she feels), she remarks that I should feel privileged to have flown with her today, since this is the very last day her flight instructor's certificate is valid until (perhaps "if") she gets it renewed.  I agree about the privilege, but not about the reason.

next

N282SS — Saint John's to Aarhus

Saturday 18 November 2006

I'm flying a new Cessna 182 to High Wycombe, England, but in order to take advantage of Denmark's less onerous importation taxes, I must land at Aarhus before any other place in the European Union. That rules out the British Isles, France, and Spain -- all those coastlines that first come into view after an eastbound Atlantic crossing. Iceland is okay (though the weather isn't, this week), and, according to the importation experts at Opmas, the Channel Islands have managed to retain their independence from EU tax laws, as well. That pleases me, because Guernsey is my favorite stop in all the world. But Guernsey is 1960 nautical miles from Saint John's. The new Cessna 182's will do better than 140 knots true airspeed, or 135 knots carrying a full load of fuel (87 gallons in the wings and another 85 in the ferry tanks), but I'll burn about 12 gallons per hour on the average, so in order to reach Guernsey with a reasonable reserve I'll need a bit of a push.

I wake up early Friday morning to check the weather and find the forecast winds barely adequate and the freezing level too low for comfort. There's a mess of weather out there, and I'm sure to pick up ice at some point. I'll need a good layer of above-freezing air beneath me, and it looks as if I'll have to go way out of my way to the Azores to get it.

But on the long-range 700-millibar prognoses from the German site Wetter Zentrale, which show the height of the constant-pressure surface near 10,000 feet MSL, I notice the winds are expected to increase dramatically by Saturday night. That's too far in the future for there to be an actual winds-aloft forecast published, but by comparing the spacing of the contour lines on the Friday night 700-mb chart with a winds-aloft forecast for the same time, I see that the tailwinds along the route to Guernsey Saturday night are expected to be in the neighborhood of 70 knots. And since they look like the development of the warm winds I rode up from Florida, there's a good chance the freezing levels will be higher, too. And these winds will allow Dave Henderson, who'll be making the crossing with me in a Piper Arrow, to stop at home in Yorkshire on his way to Kassel, Germany.

Well, that's enough to convince us to wait on the weather. Head-scratching completed and an afternoon at our disposal, we set out on a long ramble down to Quidi Vidi Village, up over Signal Hill, and back down to the Harbor, ending up (where else?) at an Irish Pub on George Street.

Saturday morning I sleep in as long as I can stand it, a task made easier by the good music at Bridie Molloy's which had kept us up late. Out at the airport I run into Jeff Hall, who's flying a Cessna 172 to Denmark, and going nonstop from Saint John's. I really hadn't considered doing that because of the relatively short legs on the 182 -- it's 15 knots faster than the 172, but it burns fuel at half again the rate. Still, I'm looking at precipitation forecasts that indicate the weather I'm going to fly through tonight will roar into Guernsey by Monday morning while my client's nice new airplane sits unprotected on the ramp, and I'm inspired to see if I can't stretch this leg all the way to Aarhus.

I download and print out winds-aloft forecasts for midnight, 0600, 1200, and 1800 Zulu, at FL050, FL100, and FL140, noting with satisfaction that the freezing level will be near FL100 all the way out to 25 degrees west longitude, and not much lower until 15 West, where we should be past the weather. I sketch a curve that follows the winds as they're expected to develop tonight and tomorrow, and calculate my groundspeed for every 5 degrees of longitude along that route across the Atlantic and Ireland and England and the North Sea and Denmark, and apply those speeds to the leg distances, with the result that I reckon I'll land at Aarhus with an hour and a half's fuel remaining. Considering the good weather that's forecast for the British Isles and Denmark, and that I can drop into Guernsey after all if I'm running late, that's ample reserve.

Since Dave's Arrow is a few knots slower than the 182, he takes off ahead of me and climbs to FL090. I follow after ten minutes or so into a clear night sky, and climb to FL110 while we're still in radar contact with Gander Center -- once we're beyond radar coverage we'll need that vertical separation in order to be cleared on the same route. Already in the climb the winds are hurrying me along, and I confess in this situation I enjoy being pushed.

By the time we reach 45 West I'm only four minutes behind Dave, and I can see his strobes twinkling in the distance: 13 nautical miles ahead, in fact, since by now we're grounding around 200 knots. These winds are 15 knots better than forecast, and the forecast won't catch up with them until halfway across the ocean. This turns out to be a good thing, because around 25 West we run into the weather, and I ice up and have to descend to melt it off. I find the freezing level at FL090 (I'm 50 miles ahead of Dave by now), and stay there until I see stars. I start to climb back up, and suddenly I'm brushing against cumulus tops. I hurry the climb to stay above them, but it's no use: I run smack into solid clag, ice up again, and have to descend again. Normally, passing through a front, I'd only have to go through this exercise once, but this weather is a big swirling mess, and I have to melt off ice four times before I'm done, each time descending a bit lower to reach the freezing level. All that yo-yoing costs time and fuel, and I'm glad to have had the extra push for the first half of the crossing. Finally I'm able to climb back to my altitude through heavy snow without encountering any clouds, and I break into the clear just at daybreak.

Dave has taken a more northerly route approaching Ireland, and he has to descend lower, in the end, and stay down longer, so he makes it a low-level scenic flight across Ireland and England to land at Humberside. It's a beautiful day for it. For my part I amble along at a mere 170 knots for another five hours, enjoying the scenery from a less intimate viewpoint, to find the weather in Denmark as advertised -- though, with the airport hiding in a light haze and behind a few puffy clouds, I'm glad to have the ILS to lead me in gracefully.