Land and Hold Short

The first year I owned my Warrior (December 2002-December 2003), I used it to get my night and instrument ratings, and to fly an abortive family trip to Sault Ste Marie. The second year I owned my Warrior, I decided to do something much more romantic, and used it to whisk my love off to New York City for her birthday in late May.

In a movie, the trip would have been a total surprise, with me taking off her blindfold at the airport, not telling her where we were flying, etc. In real life, that would have been a horrible idea, since she was still very nervous about flying. Instead, I introduced the idea a few of weeks before, and made sure she was comfortable and had time to prepare. My brother and sister-in-law very kindly took in the kids, who were too young to stay home on their own back then.

I’d flown into the NYC area only once before, landing in Caldwell, which is a long way from Manhattan; this time, I decided to try Republic, which is just as far the other direction, but would let us take the LIRR almost door-to-door from the airport to our Midtown hotel (hint to everyone: use Teterboro). We were MVFR to Massena to clear customs, then IFR for the rest of the trip: she experienced her first ILS approach in actual IMC without panicking, breaking out around 600 ft, and we had a wonderful romantic weekend in Manhattan. The trip back was all IFR but in the clear on top, with strong headwinds but smooth air, and she sat in the back reading and relaxed the whole long trip. We flew directly over a break in the clouds a few thousand feet over Manhattan, and could clearly see Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, etc.

After this, while it wasn’t always easy, the whole family was game to fly, and we had several years of amazing family trips to Toronto, Waterloo, Vermont, North Bay/Sault Ste. Marie, Cape Breton/Halifax, Gaspé, and (every March Break) NYC. We don’t all fly together much now, because my kids are getting older and have their own lives, but I’m hoping to squeeze in one or two more some day. In the meantime, I’m so grateful that we had those shared years with all four of us (and sometimes the dog) bouncing around in a little Cherokee, and it all started with a romantic trip to New York City.

The last time I flew was mid September, just before I was due to renew my medical. Things didn’t go as expected, and I had to get through an obstacle course of health, work, and then mechanical issues (this after going through another set of obstacles last spring to renew my IFR rating).

Today I went to the airport with a huge fear of failing again. The last three times, something was wrong, and the plane wouldn’t/couldn’t fly. I arrived hoping that the mechanic had put in the new, fully-charged battery I’d asked for, that the engine heater was working, and that the plane would actually start. I saw the old battery sitting in the baggage area, so I knew Red had put in a new one, and I put the old one in my trunk. The engine was warm to the touch from the heater, so I knew it was good. I uncovered, preflighted, pushed the starter, and — just like last time — the prop turned only a few degrees and stopped.

The battery was flat again, or else the starter was shot. If a second battery was flat, that would mean that something (a short?) was draining it even when the master was off, so yet another round of troubleshooting and maintenance. I plugged in my battery charger (in case it might help), drove back across the field to the shop, walked into Red’s office, and asked him if the battery was fully charged when he put it in the plane. He said yes. Then he added something:

“It was late in the day, so I didn’t install the new battery. I put it in the back of your plane, and meant to leave a note.”

So the old battery was still in the plane, while the new battery was in my trunk. That meant there was still hope I might actually fly. I borrowed a pair of pliers, drove back to the plane, swapped batteries, took the cowl cover back off (I’d put it back on to keep in the heat), and fired the starter.

The prop spun.

The engine fired and kept running.

I did a long, detailed runup and a high-speed taxi first, to make sure that all the controls were functioning properly after maintenance (a “high-speed taxi” involves almost talking off — going fast enough down the runway to take most of the weight off the wheels or climb a few inches, but not high enough that there would be a problem if a control cable snapped, etc.). No problem. I taxied back around and took off, flying four left-handed circuits.

Back in September, my landings were sucking a lot, but after everything I’d been through fortune was smiling on me. I flew four nearly-perfect circuits, with four textbook-smooth landings. I parked the plane, then realized I should top the tanks, so I started it again — the new battery spun it up fast — and taxied over for fuel. Then I started up the engine a third time to taxi back to my parking spot. It probably sounds silly to go on about starting a plane, but I’ve had so many problems since the new year that I was probably more excited about the starts than the actual flying.

So I’m back in the air. I’d like to get up every week or so, even in the winter, to get my chops back — I have no illusions that four successful day VFR circuits in smooth, calm air are enough to prove that my skills haven’t rusted since September.

The Bendix is unstuck, I can placard the ELT U/S for 30 days (and stick close to home) while trying to find a new antenna to replace the one knocked off by ice and/or wind, and I have new, better wing covers, so I’m almost ready to fly.

When I arrived at the airport last Saturday, the shop hadn’t plugged the heater back in, so I plugged it in for 90 minutes to warm up the engine and watched a bit of Hot Shots! (!) that was playing in the club lounge. Once the cylinders were warm to the touch, I fired the starter, but it wouldn’t turn the prop — the battery was flat. I plugged in the battery charger, then walked over to find my mechanic (who was working on building a new hangar) and asked him if he’d had to recharge the battery before starting my plane a few days earlier.

“Yep.”

OK, dead battery. To be fair, it was an old loaner from the shop a couple of years ago supposed to tide me over for a few weeks, and it never should have lasted this long. After 45 minutes still not enough charge to spin the prop, and the VRTUcar was due back soon, so I had to give up.

I’m getting a new battery this week, then hopefully everything will line up and I’ll be back in the air for the first time since mid September.

… every time you started the program, something different would be wrong with the plane: flat strut, weak battery, missing ELT antenna, broken intercom, stuck Bendix, etc. (I’ve dealt with all of those over the past 12 months). You’d then walk to the virtual maintenance hangar, but find out that it’s Sunday and no one’s there (actually, today, there was someone).

If your plane was OK, you’d get to spend an hour convincing ice-encrusted covers to separate from the wings without ripping, bumping 1/2″ of ice off the fuselage, etc. Your car would get stuck in the snow near your tiedown spot as well, and you’d have to hack a path out with a borrowed ice chipper. In the end, you’d try to knock some of the ice off the covers, put them back on the plane, make a note to book maintenance, and sit for a few minutes watching other people land and take off.

Fortunately (for me, not for them), Microsoft has fired the whole MSFS team, so there’s no risk of anyone reading and implementing this suggestion. Instead of changing MSFS, I want to change real life. I want to arrive at the airport and climb straight into a fueled, shoveled off, uncovered, warmed, preflighted plane idling on the threshold of the active runway. When I finish, I’d like to just taxi clear of the runway, shut down, and toss someone the keys.

I guess I could make this happen, but I’ll have to figure out a way to get rich enough to hire a ground crew first. Suggestions? In the meantime, I’m scheduling time to get a new ELT antenna installed and the Bendix unstuck and lubed, and ordering new wing covers. With luck, I’ll be flying again before the end of the month.

This morning, I took my first stab at supporting the W3C Geolocation API in OurAirports and ourairports.mobi. If you’re using a geolocation-aware browser, such as Firefox 3.5 or recent versions of Safari, and you authorize OurAirports to know your location, your latitude and longitude (or your browser’s best guess about them) should appear automatically in the search box on the home pages.

I’m hoping especially that this will work with the iPhone (version 3 or better), since it’s supposed to support the W3C Geolocation API now. If this is successful, I can add new capabilities, such as an automatically scrolling map, without too much work.

If you own an iPhone, please try out the sites, and let me know what happens. They’re working fine with Firefox 3.5 in Linux, except that Firefox tells OurAirports that I’m in downtown Ottawa, about 4 km away from where I actually am (probably guessing from my IP subnet).

I need to reward (and re-word) myself with a bit of silliness, after roughing in the first navaid pages on OurAirports, so here is a sentence made up entirely of valid navaid identifiers, with one small cheat at the end:

BUT IT IS ART, AS ANY OLD CAT OR DOG CAN SEA.

Does anyone have any better ones?

(This would be more fun with fixes and airport idents as well. Maybe in a future posting …)

OurAirports now includes pilot info pages with comm frequences, live weather, runway information, and live notams — for now, it’s accessible though the “Pilot info” tab at the top of each airport page, but I’ll be redesigning the site over the next few weeks, so the link location will likely change.

Here’s sample pilot information for Bahrain International Airport.

Note that it’s not currently possible to edit frequency or runway information. I’ll be adding that ability soon, as well as data for more airports (right now, only larger airports have runway and comm information).

Update: if an airport doesn’t have its own METAR and/or TAF, OurAirports will display the closest ones available. This works in both the main and mobile versions. Look at pilot info for Rivière-du-Loup Airport for an example (mobile pilot info for Rivière-du-Loup Airport).

On 11 June, for the first time I failed a flight test, an IFR renewal (private pilots have to refly the IFR test every two years in Canada). I resolved immediately to get my rating back, so I went up twice with a great instructor and fellow Cherokee owner Jean René de Cotret from Rockcliffe, after which he was comfortable signing me off for a retest.

The retest

With Jean’s letter in hand, I did my complete IFR retest on 29 June. Without a rating, I had to scud-run my plane in marginal VFR the 7 miles from Rockcliffe to Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier under a low ceiling to meet the examiner. We zipped through the ground portion: sadly, the simulated emergencies were things I’ve actually experienced in IMC, like a failed ASI, and trying to get ATC’s attention when I have ice accumulating on the airframe, so I didn’t have to think long about the answers.

We took off into actual IMC for the flight portion of the test, which lasted an hour including taxiing, clearances, etc. This time I did the radio work, since we were on an IFR flight plan (many thanks to the Ottawa terminal and tower controllers for reserving me a slot at noon on a busy IFR day!). I was a lot more comfortable talking directly with the controllers, rather than doing simulated radio work with the examiner in VMC conditions. I won’t bore you with a play-by-play, because this was my fifth time flying the IFR flight test, but everything went great (including a shuttle descent in the hold), and I have the IFR endorsement back on my license.

Filing IFR again

I’ve accumulated several hours of actual IMC in the week and a half since that exam, including a flight from Ottawa to Waterloo last Saturday (the return on Sunday was VFR), a flight from Ottawa to Rivière-du-Loup through a low-pressure system on Tuesday, and the return flight to Ottawa through the same low-pressure system yesterday.

I canceled a baseball flight to Toronto City Centre on Canada Day because I don’t like embedded thunderstorms that I can’t see coming (that’s the same reason I waited overnight in Rivière-du-Loup), though I could have flown it with my StormScope and ATC advisories, and have done that before — it’s just that it’s not fun. Without my instrument rating, though, all three trips would have been canceled — it really does make a huge difference in the ability to travel, and I’m feeling much more confident hand-flying in the clouds after a couple of hours of review training. I started on my instrument rating right after I finished my PPL, and have never regretted the choice.