tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4315154000459757522024-03-13T06:09:13.457-07:00surroundedbyairAdventures of a guy in love with all kinds of flying. Gliders, turboprops, instructing in a 172, it's all fun for me.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.comBlogger285125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-5032965675727461272016-05-25T21:14:00.000-07:002016-05-25T21:14:03.360-07:00Bass ackwardsThe planes are tied down facing south, into the prevailing wind. To help the TSA, they are within sight of the FBO front desk. It's been that way for years.<br />
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But when the large jet arrived the winds were from the north, at least briefly. The peak wind for the week was only 36 knots, which is a lot for a Cessna 152 or a DA-20 but not so bad for a jet (I've landed a King Air at 55 knots so this is not just blowing smoke). So the jet was parked facing north.<br />
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After a few days the jet was ready to leave. Other jets had asked to be towed to face away, but this jet started the engines and applied breakaway thrust while tail-to-tail with a Cessna 172.<br />
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Crunch one Cessna 172. <br />
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The tail slammed down onto the pavement, bending the rudder and the elevators. This is the shop's busiest season, so the airplane is grounded until...whenever.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oJ1K_2b9U9M/V0Z08ZSOC_I/AAAAAAAABDo/JZ-EPZkfLdMqT6u8-Yg88Rqe_pxwxowZwCK4B/s1600/ElevatorCrunchN64427.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oJ1K_2b9U9M/V0Z08ZSOC_I/AAAAAAAABDo/JZ-EPZkfLdMqT6u8-Yg88Rqe_pxwxowZwCK4B/s320/ElevatorCrunchN64427.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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The owner's company makes a product I use. Would it be fair to ask for a few free cases as compensation for lost revenue?<br />
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That's not fair. The crew probably doesn't know that they did this; they could not see or hear it from the cockpit. <i>Besides, it happened behind them.</i> They have "plausible deniability" because there were no witnesses. But there was only one jet parked tail-to-tail with this 172 all week, and nobody had flown or even started the 172 in the meantime.<br />
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They might say "We didn't do it on purpose" but follow Dave English's reasoning to see that <a href="http://innerairmanship.com/blog/2016/05/23/its-no-accident-its-a-crash/">there is no such thing as an accident.</a><br />
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You have to "On purpose not do it." Or as the Navy puts it, "Beware of jet blast."<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dgfcTd0mbbs/V0Z2qWecsdI/AAAAAAAABD0/WZBlvpECGw42FjjwJr8oK7v_BRIm9MTyACK4B/s1600/Beware-of-jet-blast-boats-1920x1080-wallpaper466433.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dgfcTd0mbbs/V0Z2qWecsdI/AAAAAAAABD0/WZBlvpECGw42FjjwJr8oK7v_BRIm9MTyACK4B/s320/Beware-of-jet-blast-boats-1920x1080-wallpaper466433.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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I have been in similar situations in the King Air. The solution is easy, if you think of it: you can start a PT-6 engine in feather, so there is no jet blast. That's "on purpose not doing it."<br />
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Or you can have the plane towed so its jet blast won't hurt anything.<br />
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But that means looking behind you to see what your jet blast will hit. I do this in everything except gliders.<br />
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We instructors often say "Never put an airplane anyplace you haven't put your brain first." Now we have another saying to pass on:<br />
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Never put an airplane anyplace you haven't put your butt first.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-68933145780485263652016-05-15T21:38:00.002-07:002016-05-15T21:38:58.706-07:002016 Air-to-air<div style="color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Thursday afternoon I was ferrying an aircraft home, VFR at 7500ft. By habit, I was listening to Air Traffic Control even though there is no requirement to do so. Salt Lake Center is one of the few that does not separate high and low altitudes on separate frequencies, so it was no surprise to hear "Speedbird 282" check in. Speedbird, by the way, is the radio call sign for British Airways, he<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">adquartered at Speedbird House, London.</span></div>
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Curious, I looked them up on a flight tracker (maybe the same one you use?) and saw that Speedbird 282 was an Airbus 380 going from Los Angeles to London. I looked around a little bit and spotted them, well above me.</div>
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Oh, how nice. </div>
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Air France 50 (LAX - CDG) was also on the frequency but I could not see them. I spent some time thinking about when their paths would cross, since AF50 was north of BAW282. I thought that would be the end of it.</div>
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The next morning my twitter feed featured a photo from a British Airways pilot of sunset over Greenland, "on my way home from LA." After a couple of tweets we pretty well established that he was crew on Speedbird 282 and that we had been flying many hours before within sight of each other.</div>
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I posted this story to facebook and got a comment from our local tower chief. He had been sitting on his front porch (with a beer? Who knows, but that makes for a good story) and saw "something large" going over so checked on flightaware: Speedbird 282!</div>
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You don't have to be very old to remember how difficult it used be to come into contact with people at such far remove. This is one of the things I like about this era.</div>
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Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-87295606615346066562016-04-01T22:27:00.000-07:002016-04-01T22:27:40.409-07:00Foolin' AroundApril 1 is a special day in aviation history, at least at my house, because it is the anniversary of Flight Lesson 1. My first instructor -- I remember his name but won't mention it -- quit sometime before Flight Lesson 2 (I heard he went to United Air Lines), so I did the rest of my training with a man named Tom Carroll at Palomar Airport. Tom claimed that a pilot would hear his first flight instructor's voice for the rest of his or her career, and he was right (Tom died a few years, but in the hospital, not an airplane).<br />
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Maybe he got to teach me at a vulnerable or receptive age (late 20s), but his lessons really stuck, and I often quote him word-for-word with my students. Sometimes it even works!<br />
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But not always.<br />
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I was reminded about this the other day when I gave a BFR to a pilot who started flying just a few years before I did. Why did he appear so old? But no matter: it was clear that he was the master of this airplane and based on our talk he had mastered many others. He'd even survived a double engine failure (induction icing with a faulty alternate air design).<br />
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As we started maneuvering I almost instinctively gave him my "flaps down trim down" speech (this was in a 182; other airplanes are "flaps up trim down") but if I have learned something as an instructor it is that, at a safe altitude, you can wait and see. Sure enough, as the flaps went down the trim went down, even as he continued to slightly bawdy story about a pilot we both knew.<br />
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I trained in Archers and Warriors. Tom taught me to jam my elbow into my pelvis when lowering flaps; this enabled me to keep the nose from rising until I had a free hand to retrim. The seats in a 172 don't quite allow most people to get into a good position to do this, so I have to chant, over and over, "flaps down trim down."<br />
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I take students out and do the demonstration stalls. Near the top of the white arc, I lower full flaps all at once, and the nose rises to about as high an angle as a student ever sees, or wants to see. "If you don't do something you'll stall, and since you usually go to full flaps at low altitude, you won't recover." Or a hundred other things.<br />
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Maybe I should try to attract Tom back from the dead and have him run a flap clinic?<br />
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Or what about this: one of my friends told me that his primary instructor did not teach the use of flaps until after solo: "That's for the short- and soft-field stuff," he'd say. Then there's no worry of watching a solo student's nose rise just before turning final. Maybe he could teach us a thing or two.<br />
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So the point is that on this anniversary of a flying lesson, I think I need a flying lesson. It never ends.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-89369578682241897062015-05-19T22:28:00.001-07:002015-05-19T22:28:24.499-07:00TransferabilityIt is difficult to predict what kind of knowledge is <i>transferable</i>, whether in aviation or in any other realm. Sometimes it's obvious one way or the other: a Course Deviation Indicator reads the same in a helicopter as it does in an airplane, and you can't bring an airplane to a hover except in the most unusual circumstances.<br />
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But I have also <a href="http://surroundedbyair.blogspot.com/2011/08/stick-and-rudder.html">written</a> about using the no-rudder-pedal Ercoupe to teach some stick-and-rudder skills.<br />
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Yesterday was to be my first helicopter training flight in a month, and when we last left our hero he was wondering how to smooth out his approaches and noticing that his airplane approaches had become sloppy, too.<br />
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Was holding a constant glide path a transferable skill? If so, shouldn't I practice in a $75/hr airplane rather than a $300/hour helicopter? And isn't practice part of the reportoire of a craftsman?<br />
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So before my helicopter flight I took an airplane and spent nearly an hour flying extremely precise approaches. Let me rephrase that: I took an airplane and spent nearly an hour <i>trying</i> to fly extremely precise approaches. I was most concerned with the portion from 500AGL to 30AGL, because you can't hover an airplane.<br />
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I told my instructor what I had done, saying it was really smart or really stupid and we would have to see which.<br />
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After an hour in the helicopter he concluded that it had worked and my approaches were much better despite a month's worth of rust. A few more autorotations and it will soon be time to solo.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-8636007513202302262015-05-10T21:03:00.000-07:002015-05-10T21:03:49.413-07:00The Last LegThe IFR system is not kind to the unprepared. And I suspected that I was one of the unprepared: I can count on one hand the number of times I've filed IFR in the last few years. I have been scrupulous about staying instrument <i>current</i>, and have regularly spent time reviewing charts and procedures and regulations. But not in the system is not in the system.<br />
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Until this week. Regular readers may recall me writing about a <a href="http://surroundedbyair.blogspot.com/2014/10/414.html">Cessna 414</a> that we would be operating for the owner (ie, under Part 91, rather than Part 135, for those savvy about US regulations). I had been training other pilots to fly it, but with the university in session I had not taken an actual trip. It had been so long that I needed 3 landings to be legal to carry passengers.<br />
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But now school was out and I was scheduled for my first 414 trip in 9 years. <br />
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Pick a day 3 weeks in advance and you know the weather's gonna suck, right? The morning of the trip arrived with marginal VFR conditions and a pretty significant chance of icing based on the icing tools at <a href="http://aviationweather.gov/icing">aviationweather.gov</a>. I hadn't blown a boot since 2009, but icing was an important part of the training package I had prepared. But the system is not kind to the unprepared.<br />
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I flew a short leg to pick up the owner and his colleagues, mostly IMC, and was waiting for them in the FBO lobby when they drove up (this is very important in the charter/corporate world). He had some concerns about the weather but I reassured him that the airplane could handle it. Could I?<br />
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The departure was a little bumpy and I was in IMC for almost an hour. The system is not kind to the unprepared.<br />
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Luckily I had played with the radar during training and it showed safe air ahead. Still, the system is not kind to the unprepared.<br />
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I was at 16,000 and did not think FL180 was available because of the low altimeter setting, and Center confirmed that. But maybe I could get on top? I had to try to get to FL200, which the airplane could do, but I spent a lot of time staring at the pressurization controller, because the system is not kind to the unprepared.<br />
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After 15 minutes at FL200 we were in the clear. Actually, we would have been in the clear at the same time at 16,000, but who's counting? We were going to the KPDX area and the whole Presidential range was in view.</div>
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But the system is not kind to the unprepared. "I have an amendment to your clearance, advise when ready to copy." I had not heard those words from any mouth other than mine, in training, for years. It seems I had picked the wrong IAF for the approach in use, and the new clearance involved an intersection that I couldn't find. <i>With a crossing restriction.</i> You see, the system is not kind to the unprepared.</div>
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This 414 has a good pressurization controller, but I didn't have any way of knowing that until I had to descend from FL200 to Sea Level. (Other 414s I've flown had touchy controllers.) I spotted the airport about 12 miles out and made a competent landing. (For that I was prepared.)</div>
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Oh, one more thing: this was my first actual trip flying a Garmin 530. The system is not kind to the unprepared.</div>
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OK, flight levels, radar, reroutes. Garmin 530, crossing restrictions. Nice trip.</div>
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The next day dawned with a weather inversion: Idaho weather in Oregon, Oregon weather in Idaho. Time to see if I remembered how to dodge thunderstorms in IMC.</div>
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But the system is not kind to the unprepared. I fired up and called for a clearance and of course it was nothing like what I had filed, so I quick had to program a DP into the Garmin and into the VORs just as a backup. And Foreflight as a backup to the backup.</div>
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The takeoff and climbout went well. I have family in the Portland area and I think I flew right over their house on the departure but my hands were full with altitudes and reroutes and traffic. ATC knows when you are single pilot and wait until you start the level off before clearing you higher, as usual.</div>
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The air smoothed out climbing through 7,500' and I spent a fair amount of time just watching the time tick down on the Garmin FPL page. There was a cloud deck ahead and it looked like we would be higher (we were) but a big thunderstorm was also in sight and on the radar. Everybody was deviating and I told Center about my plans, but the thunderstorm was actually moving away from the destination. I did some step-down descents trying to stay out of the clouds but eventually had to go through with both radar and stormscope showing that I had picked a good route.</div>
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Approach control at the destination told me to expect a visual to 26, but the tower put me on left base to 8. The system is not kind to the unprepared.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8sWESK56YqY/VVAnc_LCgOI/AAAAAAAAA_A/Xno90R8_vfw/s1600/TStormRadar.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8sWESK56YqY/VVAnc_LCgOI/AAAAAAAAA_A/Xno90R8_vfw/s320/TStormRadar.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
Just one more leg home, and the last leg is special. No passengers. No schedule. Airline pilots don't know this pleasure, and most people flying for themselves miss out, too. It happens when the passengers go to an airport other than the home base, or you are returning empty. Sure, we'll fly a King Air home VFR from Salt Lake City, indicating 199 knots under the Class B, or across the desert at 1,000AGL.<br />
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I decided to finish the trip VFR, dodging thunderstorms, and hand flying. There is a difference between eluding (what you do with passengers) and dodging. It was time to <i>dodge</i>.<br />
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There were two big ones straddling the course. With passengers I would pick a single heading, but in an empty airplane it's much more fun to turn the airplane at the storm and see what it looks like on radar. And take a picture. And then turn away.<br />
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And, of course, the best landing of the trip is in an empty airplane at a deserted airport. Sometimes, the system is kind to the unprepared.</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ulUEkWUlzUo/VVAosk3srSI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/bQcJuHcRaHM/s1600/SunsetWith414.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ulUEkWUlzUo/VVAosk3srSI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/bQcJuHcRaHM/s320/SunsetWith414.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-86636363937480901672015-04-27T15:39:00.000-07:002015-04-27T15:39:11.107-07:00It creeps up on youI am the world's worst helicopter student: my full-time job and my other flying obligations have me flying helicopters once a week or so. This was just like my glider transition, only with the gliders I had a 3 hour drive each way so flew even less than once a month until I decided to knuckle down and go to a big commercial operation and finish the darned thing.<br />
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But the helicopter school is on the field, and the helicopter itself is in our hangar, so I have spent a lot of time sitting in the thing working on my scan and procedures.<br />
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And like all bad students, I fly better when the conditions are more difficult, like a beach landing with a maximum performance takeoff. Try that in an airplane!<br />
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But when I come back to the airport my patterns suck. Worse, <i>I</i> don't think they suck, which means that I am not perceiving something. You've seen your students do this...now so can you!</div>
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Then one day last week I was returning from a photo flight in an airplane and decided for once to pay attention to my approach, since I was flying rather than a student. You know what? <i>It sucked!</i></div>
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And now I realize that after a few years of flying focused on Something Else (and maybe a few friendly BFRs from CFI buddies who know that I can fly) I have gotten sloppy. Sloppiness creeps up on you, through some mixture of complacency and ego. I fly great! Why should I pay attention to my approach angle! </div>
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Yeah, right.</div>
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The sloppiness wasn't visible until I pushed myself into the helicopter, where someone paid attention and critiqued me.</div>
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So here's the plan: I'm going to take my helicopter CFI flying <i>in an airplane</i> while I work on flying a constant approach angle. The airplane costs 1/4 of what the helicopter does and we're working on an eye problem, not a hand problem, so this seems like a practical approach.</div>
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I'll fill you in on the results.</div>
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Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-69645247231311897052015-02-05T09:15:00.001-08:002015-02-05T09:15:27.549-08:00Harder Than They Make It SoundLots of people have lots of things to say about aviation safety, myself included, and it might surprise you to hear me say that I am sick of it. No, I'm not sick of the message, but I am sick of saying and hearing the same things but not seeing any effect in the safety record.<br />
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(Today the internet is awash in horrifying pictures of a large turboprop with only one engine turning hitting a bridge in what appears to be a Vmc rollover. Are we spending enough money on training? How often has this question been asked? And how often answered: the lack of effectiveness of training programs is addressed in 14CFR135.225, which specifies that low-time (ie, just out of training) captains of turbine-powered airplanes must use higher approach minima.)<br />
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My recent forays into helicopter flying have reinforced how difficult training is. Despite nearly 6,000 hours of flight time in fixed-wing aircraft I am an 8 hour helicopter <i>student</i>: the R-22 pre-landing check (carb air temp, engine gauges, rotor RPM, and warning lights) sometimes costs me 10 knots of airspeed.<br />
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One of the big ideas in safety is "Situational Awareness," a phrase old enough to be nearly a cliché. Those rather dry manuals urge students to practice "SA", but actions are more than words. A recent SA situation illustrates how difficult SA really is.
(BTW, despite my struggles with the aircraft I perceive that my helicopter SA is about where my airplane or glider SA is. But I could be wrong...)<br />
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Here's the set-up: I was getting ready to fly with a student who needed some pattern work, but the field was IFR at 900 overcast. I told him that I was willing to wait, since the TAF suggested clearing, and had him get the airplane ready so we could have our fingers on the start button when the field went VFR.<br />
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I thought about asking for a Special VFR, but hesitated for two reasons: first, Special VFR is usually a tool for getting <i>into</i> the airport, and should only be used to get <i>out</i> of the airport with extreme stupidity, or at least caution. I hesitated (Law of Primacy) to have my student's first exposure to SVFR be backwards. Second, there were inbounds fairly close (I checked this on <a href="http://flightaware.com/">flightaware</a>), so we wouldn't get the SVFR clearance even if we asked.<br />
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Soon enough, the clouds began to part, and we walked out to the airplane. The beacon was winking at us from the tower, but it was clearing rapidly so I called the tower on the phone to suggest a tower observation of 900 scattered. "We were just looking at that," the controller said, and I said "From here, and I'll swear on a stack of meteorology texts, it's only 45% coverage. I swear!"<br />
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He wasn't buying it right away, but pretty soon the beacon stopped and we heard "Attention all aircraft, Pocatello is now VFR, ATIS Bravo is current." Oddly enough the ATIS said runway 3 was in use, even though 21 is the calm-wind runway, so we taxied to the hold short line of runway 3.<br />
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For some reason I got curious about the location of the inbound and monitored Salt Lake Center while we did the runup. Sure enough, a SkyWest CRJ checked in, with ATIS bravo, and asking for the runway 21 ILS instead of using runway 3.<br />
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Pause.<br />
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"SkyWest 7429, Salt Lake, the tower says there's a Cessna in the pattern for runway 3, expect the VOR-3 approach."<br />
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That didn't sound right, so I called ground and offered to depart runway 3 and maneuver to use runway 21 for landing.<br />
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Pause.<br />
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"SkyWest 7429, Salt Lake, the Cessna is willing to work with you if you still want runway 21."<br />
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"7429 thanks, but it looks like it's clearing quickly and we'll be able to do a visual."<br />
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Ground relayed the same message to us a few seconds later.<br />
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Look back over this event: the situational awareness involved the internet, face-to-face communication, telephones, and the radio. Throw in some lights, because I turned all of ours on to help the inbound see us. And the transponder, which is now permanently on ALT since the recent change in the Aeronautical Information Manual. And the eyeballs. (I will omit sixth sense, ESP, and synchronicity as contributing factors. Or should I?)<br />
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This is all in addition to flying the airplane!<br />
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<i>This is all in addition to flying the airplane!</i><br />
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The moral is simple: SA is hard, it takes a lot of knowledge, and it takes a lot of practice and experience.</div>
Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-80819490838814552742015-01-02T10:34:00.003-08:002015-01-02T10:34:50.615-08:00NOTAMI got this NOTAM today:<br />
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<pre style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px;">!IDA 12/049 IDA SVC GROUND COM OUTLET COMMISSIONED KEY FREQ 121.7 2
TIMES FUEL DELIVERY /4 TIMES SLC ARTCC /6 TIMES BOI AFSS /8 TIMES 911 </pre>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12px;">DISPATCH SVC WHEN TWR CLSD 1412101345-PERM</span><br />
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This looks like a good thing: the ability to make various calls (including 911) on the ground control frequency when the tower is closed. Since KIDA tower closes very early it is especially useful (the fueler stays open after the tower is closed). And 911 (emergency services) dispatch might come in handy, considering that there was a New Year's Eve murder in Idaho Falls.<br />
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Using the ground frequency is much better than using the CTAF, because that would interfere with Pilot Controlled Lighting. <br />
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How many airports have or will have this feature?<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-90085967385278251992014-11-14T10:23:00.000-08:002014-11-14T10:23:06.538-08:00New New OldI was checking a pilot out in our "new" Cessna 414. He has a lot of time in multiengine turbojets but none in cabin class piston twins, so none in the 414. We had done a lot of ground instruction on systems and their operation, and now it was time to start the engines in anger (we had done a practice start already: the starting procedure for a Continental TSIO540 is nothing like that of a JT8D...). We went over my 414 transition mantra: pumps pressure props & pedals. (I say this a lot flying 414s to make sure the right things happen during a transition, say from cruise to enroute climb: boos Pumps on, check the Pressurization for the climb, Prop synchrophaser as required, and yaw damper (Pedals) as required.)<br />
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Since this would be his first flight at our airport, we would need to do some area familiarization, too. Knowledge of the local roads and creeks is worth at least another Garmin 530.<br />
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But the weather was marginal.<br />
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We taxied out (I taxied while he studied the airport diagram) and did a careful, detailed runup; we did some items twice, to cement the ideas into place. We programmed the Garmin 530s for an approach that we hoped to practice after doing some steep turns and stalls.<br />
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A Caravan (C208) taxied out, and we told the tower to let him go first since we weren't quite ready and didn't want to rush. Besides, he was on a schedule. But I also asked the tower to solicit a base report from the departing 208.<br />
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New pilot, new airplane, new airport, right?<br />
<br />
As we were taxiing to the hold short line the Caravan called back to say that the bases were 4000AGL. Sweet!<br />
<br />
But not for long. After a nice takeoff it seemed to me that the ceiling was a tad bit lower than the Caravan had reported, like 1200AGL. Not the right situation for airwork in a high-wing-loading cabin class twin. We decided to stay in the pattern. You know, the pattern he had never flown before?<br />
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This is where I got stupid. I thought it would be nice to put the final approach course for the approach we had programmed into the pilot's HSI, since, after all, he wasn't familiar with the airport. It would have been nicer to keep my head outside to help him stay oriented in the rapidly-decreasing visibility, but with my head inside (and not just inside the airplane: my head was someplace where the Moon seldom shines) I was not as aware of the decreasing visibility as I should have been.<br />
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He got us onto final without my help and noted that we were a "little fast" at Vref+50. This was our chance to try the spoilers, but this pattern was so screwed up that no amount of spoilers would help. We went around.<br />
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This time I was flying the airplane, or helping him do so, rather than flying the 530, and we turned 1 mile final on speed and altitude and with the proper configuration. Then came another surprise.<br />
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"I think you should do the first landing so I can get the sight picture."<br />
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Not one to refuse a landing, I complied. One of the things I notice when I am flying and teaching simultaneously, though, is that I exaggerate things a little to bring the point home. I held the airplane in the flare position with a little power, so we landed long. Better to taxi back then do a touch-and-go: you know, new pilot, new airplane, new airport?<br />
<br />
As we did a 180 on the runway and the tower called and told us that the field had gone IFR. We looked at each other and easily decided to call it a day.<br />
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If I hadn't landed long we would have been a new pilot in a new airplane at a new airport and scrambling to get a clearance.<br />
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I was reminded of a flight many years ago at the former Oneida County Airport in Utica, NY, which has since closed. I was in the pattern in a 152 on a winter day. POOF: a snow shower hit the field and it was suddenly IFR. The tower played the "say intentions" game but I couldn't just air file IFR because he had General Electric's DC-4 radar testbed airplane inbound, so his airspace was full. I continued "VFR" on the downwind as the snow increased and was shocked by the sight of the DC-4 with all of its lights ablaze emerging from the snow just short of the threshold. With no thought of wake turbulence I turned base as close as I dared behind it and landed.<br />
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The moral? Snow showers happen quickly and with little warning. The fact that the bases were 4000AGL only 5 minutes ago is not helpful. Be ready to change your plans and abort, especially in training flights or in aircraft that can't handle ice.<br />
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And keep your head where it belongs.<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-17564103991758590222014-10-27T19:49:00.000-07:002014-10-27T19:49:19.601-07:00Fishing for StudentsI've always felt -- well, OK, maybe even <i>preached</i> -- that everything a pilot does is a preparation for flight. Like many investments, though, you never know what, exactly, it is that you're preparing or what, exactly, you're preparing for. You just have to trust that you're preparing <i>something</i>.<br />
<br />
Take what happened in <a href="http://surroundedbyair.blogspot.com/2008/05/young-eagles-day.html">this story</a>: at one point I decided it would be fun to learn the American Sign Language alphabet; many years later it came in handy when giving a Young Eagles ride to a trio of deaf girls.<br />
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So, you never know.<br />
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Something similar happened today. I was scheduled to do a "Discovery Flight," you, know, the half hour introductory lesson at a reduced price. These are invariably fun, even if the pay works out to be approximately minimum wage.<br />
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Sometimes people want a half-hour of sightseeing while they try out the controls, and I am always happy to let them try to fly to see their house or some other favorite landmark, as long as we stay within 25NM. <br />
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Today's couple wanted to look at some of the streams south of town; they had a special interest in beavers.<br />
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Beavers?, I said. Let me show you the beaver pictures I took this summer.<br />
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They got all excited. I think they liked the pictures better than the flight, which was pretty nice. I emailed them pictures of the beaver pond, dam, and the beaver himself.<br />
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So, what's the story here? Last summer my wife and daughter wanted to take an Australian friend hiking, and I decided that fishing would be more fun. The access was a little difficult and I was fishing small pocket water with just a little success. I went from opening in the willows to opening in the willows, fishing each stretch for a couple of minutes before moving on. This fishing requires a little stealth and a delicate presentation.</div>
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One opening took me to the beaver pond, and I could see the beavers working. So I took some pictures, posted them to facebook, got a few likes, and forgot about the whole thing.</div>
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Until today.</div>
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Mike enjoyed the story and pictures, and he really seemed to enjoy his time at the controls, too. He asked lots of questions about the syllabus, the controls, and the like. This might turn into a new student!</div>
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CFIs, including me, sometimes complain that it's hard to find new students. It seems unlikely that we will find them hanging out at the too-quiet airport. The way to find students is by being out-and-about, letting your <i>joie-de-voler</i> about flying spill into your<i> joie-de-vivre</i> about life.</div>
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In other words, if you want to attract new students, go fishing.</div>
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-2723900853080546222014-10-10T15:23:00.002-07:002014-10-10T15:23:39.041-07:00414Irony isn't what it used to be, but still, only a few weeks after resurrecting memories of flying a Cessna 414, one has arrived on the property, and I have been designated to train everyone in it. It's pretty; it has the RAM VII conversion; and it has winglets. It has dual Garmin 530s and weather radar. I like it!<div>
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I don't know much about winglets, so I asked a friend who flies for an all-737 airline and he shared some information (this always impresses the guys who don't know you: "My friend at XXX says that winglets...")</div>
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The interesting part is that none of the pilots I am training have much time in piston twins, and there is a lot to learn here. They have been flying King Airs (with autofeather and rudder boost) and Citations (almost centerl-line thrust, and nothing to feather), so the piston-engine drill is new to them. This puts me in a dilemma: proper training is hard on the engines, but a little must be done in any event. When I first flew it to regain my multi-engine currency I waited until the final pattern to fail an engine on myself and flew a singl;e-engine pattern to a full stop landing with a slow taxi to parking to make sure the turbochargers cooled adequately.</div>
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The RAM conversion adds 25 horsepower a side, but that's only 100 feet per minute of extra climb on one engine (see this <a href="http://surroundedbyair.blogspot.com/2010/10/weighty-matter.html">post</a>). Which might be enough in a crisis.</div>
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OK, time to go to the airport.</div>
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Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-60349708162758376052014-09-06T20:26:00.000-07:002014-09-06T20:26:05.853-07:00RNAV NavigationJohn Ewing knows a lot about navigation and writes well. Read <a href="http://aviationmentor.blogspot.com/2014/08/rnav-obscurities.html">this</a>.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-88931329415542371462014-08-19T11:46:00.002-07:002014-08-19T11:46:52.927-07:00RadioRadio spreads essence through the æther, causing action at a distance. The intent may be directed toward one spot on the ground, or toward one craft aloft. But the effect is universal, the call "left base to final'' eventually reaching another planet where a pilot cranes its necks searching for the unseen and invisible.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-73985302226189109542014-08-11T20:34:00.002-07:002014-08-11T20:34:39.433-07:00CFITThe article in this <a href="http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/B732,_vicinity_Resolute_Bay_Canada,_2011_(CFIT_HF_FIRE)?utm_source=SKYbrary&utm_campaign=f45a21f1d5-290_Importance_Cross-checking_11_8_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e405169b04-f45a21f1d5-276440341">link</a> from skybrary.aero, describes a Canadian Transportation Safety Board report on a Boeing 737 CFIT (controlloed flight into terrain) accident about 3 years ago. The airplane was on an ILS approach in instrument conditions. They started the approach high and fast, passing through 10,000' MSL at 310 KIAS; Canada, like the USA, has a 250 KIAS speed limit below 10,000'. This is already a sign of trouble.<br />
<br />
For various reasons you can read about the 737 flew through the localizer. The First Officer noticed, but the Captain insisted that the current heading would allow them to reintercept the localizer. They were discussing the discrepancy between the GPS track and the localizer as they descended through 1,000' AGL.<br />
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They were lost. They knew they were lost. And they continued to descend.<br />
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Folks, if you are below 1,000' in the clouds and not sure whether you are on course, then you are <i>not</i> on course. This crew had full localizer deflection but continued to follow the glide slope, with fatal results.<br />
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Swallow your pride and go around.<br />
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<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-67263644786881393172014-08-06T16:12:00.001-07:002014-08-06T16:12:27.868-07:00SixtyAviation for me has always come with an intrinsic conflict, namely that I seem to enjoy numbers and formulas more than most other pilots. Mathematics has always come with an intrinsic conflict, too, since I seem to enjoy flying and airplanes more than most other mathematicians.<br />
<br />
I think pilots would fly better if they calculated more, and I think mathematicians would calculate better if they would fly. (That's not quite right, since the purpose of mathematics is to get the right answer without calculating. But you get the idea.)<br />
<br />
So I have been writing an essay about the number 60. I think it's the most important number in aviation, with the possible exception of the price of self-service Avgas at my local airport. I won't reproduce the essay here, but will share some thoughts.<br />
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The mathematician likes 60 because it has so many factors: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. This makes it easy to divide by 60. (Someday I will get to teach a semester-length course in long division, which is an important technique in coding and cryptography, but that's the subject of a different essay.)<br />
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I am unsure of how this came to be, and don't want to replay the "Babylonian mathematics" game, but we divide a lot of things into 60 pieces: hours are divided into 60 minutes, each minute is 60 seconds; each degree of arc is 60 minutes, and each of these minutes is 60 seconds; and, what is the same thing, each degree of latitude is divided into 60 nautical miles (in theory). The circle is divided into 360 degrees, that is, 6 times 60, too.<br />
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All of these divisions are part of aviation. Remember the "Rule of 60" that appeared on every FAA knowledge test that you ever took? That one degree of error is one mile of error after 60 miles? <br />
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To focus on error is a mistake; focus on desired performance instead. Lots of turbine pilots use the 3-to-1 rule for descent planning: 3 miles for every 1000'. A little fooling around with 60 shows that's remarkably close to 3 degrees. <br />
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That's fine if your pressurized jet can sustain 2,000 fpm without busting eardrums, but what if the airplane isn't pressurized? Then you're looking at a descent rate of 500 to 1,000 fpm. To lose, say, 4,000 feet, takes 8 minutes at 500 fpm. A groundspeed of around 120 knots is about 2 miles per minute (see the role of 60?), so the descent takes 16 miles. The same idea works at 110, or 130. A groundspeed of 180 knots is 3 miles per minute (we divided by 60 again), so the same descent takes 24 miles. This is still close enough at 150 knots, or at 210. Oh, add a couple of miles to slow down to traffic pattern airspeed. That's experience, not math.<br />
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Using a base of 60 means that you can work with whole numbers, which are a whole lot easier than fractions.<br />
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Now if only coming up with money to pay for Avgas were as simple...<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-36219368288317342222014-07-23T10:17:00.000-07:002014-07-23T10:17:13.836-07:00Time To Slow DownI'm in an unusual situation this summer: there's a Cessna 182 I can borrow just about any time I want it! Of course I have to pay for fuel. <br />
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And that's changed some of my thinking about speed, and slowing down. Let me explain.<br />
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As an <b>aircraft owner</b>, well, my last two aircraft were a glider (no fuel concerns there) and a 1946 Taylorcraft (fuel costs were negligible).<br />
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As a <b>professional pilot</b> I was encouraged to go direct and go fast, and people made fun of me (behind my back, mostly) for doing things like trying to compute a minimum fuel route by taking advantage of unusual winds aloft. Once on a long King Air trip I "diverted" 100 miles from the direct course to stay in the favorable circulation around a low pressure area. This only took me a couple of minutes to figure out by playing with routes on DUATS, and maybe saved 10 minutes of flight time. If everybody did that the company would be way better off, but instead I heard "How come you flew that funny route?" <br />
I wrote an altitude optimization app for our Cessna 414 that nobody else used: analyzing the performance data led me to fly much higher than the other pilots, which was fine until it depressurized at FL260. But that's another story...<br />
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As a <b>renter</b>, I use the maximum allowable power. I also worry about taxi time, which costs as much as flight time. I have actually picked fueling stops based on taxi time (Battle Mountain, NV is much better than Winnemucca). Saving 0.1 hours of taxi time saves a lot of money in the long run.<br />
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But as a <b>borrower</b> I have learned to think in new ways. <br />
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First, the cost of taxi time is negligible.<br />
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Second, there is no need to firewall the engine and go fast. I can fly that 182 at close to 140 knots, but if I slow down I use much less fuel and not much more time. <br />
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So I've learned to slow down.Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-15792776054491153322014-06-26T16:14:00.000-07:002014-06-26T16:14:15.450-07:00Message Number One. Message Number Two. Message Number ThreeThe messages of flight instructors contain too little information for those who know. Message number one is "right rudder,'' the reminder that at high power and low speed the left-turning-tendency is strong. Message number two is "centerline,'' a reminder to keep the craft's path proper. Then comes "lower the nose,'' reminding the student (or experienced pilot) to prevent a finesse-destroying stall.<br />
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Message number one, message number two, message number three. The pilot has heard it all before, and stops listening<br />
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Storage requires essence, action, and inaction-induced forgotten messages destroy essence. How else to explain the glider pilot, trying to thermal at low altitude, and in the end spinning in to a perfectly landable field? <br />
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Message number three.<br />
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Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-22616742375481020432014-06-05T15:12:00.000-07:002014-06-05T15:22:54.576-07:00Climb unrestricted to FL600.<br />
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We had an unusual motorglider visit yesterday: its best glide ratio is 28:1, approximately that of a Blanik L-13 glider. I mean the U-2. The pilot was on his last military flight and did a low pass at his new home airport, where he will be flying a Shrike Commander on wildfire duty.<br />
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The U-2 requires a lot of infrastructure to land, so he did not touch down, but he was definitely in ground effect.<br />
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The departure clearance was "Break right, climb unrestricted to FL600." <i>FL600!</i> I've never heard that clearance before. I lost sight of him just a couple of minutes later as he reported through FL324.<br />
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Someone remarked "I wonder how he'll like flying the Commander after that?"<br />
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I think he'll be right at home: both aircraft are from the same era.<br />
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[Note added later: Barry Schiff got to fly the U-2, and wrote up his experiences <a href="http://www.barryschiff.com/high_flight.htm">here</a>. It's good reading.]<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-32648384611697828262014-05-25T20:23:00.000-07:002014-05-25T20:23:33.594-07:00It just might be working...Those two or three of you who are regular readers know that I have been working on the "Essence and Finesse" project for a long time. Put briefly, I have been exploring how the aerodynamic concepts of "essence," which is like energy only more so, and "finesse," which is the wing's glide ratio only more so, can explain various flying phenomena. You can read more starting <a href="http://surroundedbyair.blogspot.com/2011/08/essence.html">here</a>.<br />
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But one thing that has always bothered me about this project was that, so far, I had not used it much in the air. The reason for this is simple: a primary student has to pass the FAA knowledge test, and presenting an alternative approach to the basics of aerodynamics is more likely to confuse people than help them.<br />
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But if I can't teach it, then what's the point?<br />
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Our new glider club is appropriately strict about who instructs, and I needed to fly with the Chief Instructor before taking on students. We flew yesterday, and it was fun! He asked me to do some things I haven't done in a while, which I enjoyed.<br />
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But I saw an opening. We were in slow flight with almost continuous buffet (remember, few gliders have stall warning devices, so being sensitive to the buffet is important). He asked me to do a 360 degree turn, so I put the ship into a 10 degree bank and started around.<br />
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The buffet increased so I relaxed just a little back pressure, not so much that we picked up speed. The buffet was still there.<br />
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"That buffet is energy your glide doesn't have any more," I said softly. ("Said softly" can be hard in a glider at high speed with the air vents open, even though there's no engine noise. But in slow flight there' s much less wind noise so you can speak softly.)<br />
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Now, I didn't go into a long dissertation about essence and fuel and the psyche, just a simple statement about energy management.<br />
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There was an appreciative murmur from the front.<br />
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This stuff might be useful!<br />
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<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-15447235658419373962014-05-11T21:55:00.003-07:002014-05-11T21:55:34.911-07:00But I had a job to do...The experienced pilot was a successful businessman who had accumulated enough money to fill a hangar with beautiful classic airplanes, and he held a local aviation group in thrall discussing how he found and restored and flew them. <br />
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He'd been flying for a long time, and of course the conversation turned to how good we have it now. These are funny conversations in aviation: nobody, and I mean <i>nobody</i>, talks about the good old days. It's always "Man, we have it so much better now..."<br />
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"Let me tell you about GPS. A few years ago I had one of the first GPS units in my Queenstar (the type has been changed to protect the guilty, but it's a pressurized cabin-class twin). It was about <i>this</i> big (arms outstretched) and the screen was about <i>this</i> big (fingers pinching a quarter). Well I was headed into White Pigeon (a well-known mountainous airport) one day for a job and it was beautiful VFR except for about 5 miles of fog covering the airport. <br />
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"But I had a job to do and I had to get in there."<br />
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The textbooks call this get-home-itis. I started to squirm in my seat.<br />
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"So I set the GPS to navigate to the airport and followed it down into the clouds."<br />
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I squirmed a lot more. No mention of setting a known waypoint on the final approach course, or following a published approach (there were none then), or extending the centerline, nothing. Just "the airport" and I suppose he approached willy-nilly without any plan for a missed approach. He had no idea where the GPS thought "the airport" was. In all likelihood the airport reference point wasn't even on a runway so he was lining up with a 50' hangar with a remote altimeter setting so maybe he'd miss it by an inch or so if he was lucky that day.<br />
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"So got down to about 100' (one hundred feet! At an approach speed of about 110?!?) and sure enough about a quarter mile (a quarter mile! At an approach speed of about 110?!?) I saw the airport and landed. Boy that GPS was great."<br />
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I was very uncomfortable. I didn't want to rain on this guy's funeral procession, but that kind of crap (there is no nicer word) has gotten more pilots killed than almost any other kind of crap I know. But (pardon my crudeness) if I spoke up I'd be the kind of asshole CFI who gives CFIs a "bad name." So I held my tongue.<br />
<br />
But one of my students was seated next to me. I leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder.<br />
<br />
"Don't do that," I whispered.<br />
<br />
<hr />
By the way, that approach speed was 110 knots <i>indicated</i>. At 5,000' MSL, the <i>true</i> airspeed is 10% greater, so call it 120. That's a mile every 30 seconds, one-half mile every 15 seconds, and one-quarter mile every 7.5 seconds. He had 7.5 seconds of forward visibility. Now a glance at the GPS plus the time to refocus at a distance is probably about half of that. If he had hit something he would never have known what happened.<br />
<br />
Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-4659022443455269102014-05-08T16:18:00.002-07:002014-05-09T13:36:42.344-07:00Doing Something About The WeatherI have long taught that the best and simplest pilot weather briefing is the "Standard Briefing." I admit that I haven't had a phone briefing in a loooong time, but the Standard Briefing option is available from all of the online providers in the USA.<br />
<br />
(In my cynical Part 135 days, I called this "spreading the liability," especially when concerned with Temporary Flight Restrictions or weather below 14CFR135 minimums.)<br />
<br />
But I admit that this is not, in fact, my practice. Don't get me wrong: I always get a standard briefing, even for a short local sight-seeing flight with one of my kids. I save it to my Dropbox and cache it before the flight so I can refer to it later.<br />
<br />
But that's not <i>all</i> I do.<br />
<br />
For one thing, I like to take a look at the <a href="http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/synop/products.php">GFS-NAM forecast</a>, which is a little hard to track down but I've provided a link. A meteorologist friend says that he would never use this to make decision, but it's the only aviation forecast I know that provides a temperature outlook. It's a little hard to interpret but not <i>that</i> hard; most of the problem is that the ceiling and visibility values are categorical.<br />
<br />
Another is the radar picture from any of the commercial providers or apps. I'm old enough to remember the grid in the Flight Service Station that you used to decode a Radar Summary like this:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w8yIalKJf8g/U2wMEdZfajI/AAAAAAAAA5I/Da4GZe0cCwg/s1600/MO_WX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-w8yIalKJf8g/U2wMEdZfajI/AAAAAAAAA5I/Da4GZe0cCwg/s1600/MO_WX.jpg" height="320" width="247" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px; white-space: pre;">SGF 2235 AREA 1TRWX 55/84 125/56 48W MT 330 109/36 C2129
AREA 5RW++ 40/117 192/128 160W MT 330 109/36 C2129
AUTO
^HN143 IN344 JN24532 KN25551 LM125541 MM345541 NM125452 OL1223434 PK1 PM22342
QM33442 RK11223.
</span><br />
(The notation "KN25551" meant that on line KN of the grid the radar intensities were, going left-to-right and box-by-box, 2, 5, 5, 5, and 1. Nowadays I know how to get the report but not how to get the graphic of the grid, and I'm not going to learn because there are a hundred apps that will give me the radar picture in much finer detail. I do have to admit, though, that given that this report corresponds to the picture at left, I'm unlikely to go flying.)<br />
<br />
This was more than enough to keep me legal. <i>But what about safe?</i><br />
<br />
Now the National Transportation Safety Board says that this is. in fact, not enough. Their <a href="http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/recletters/2014/A-14-013-016.pdf">report</a> makes very interesting reading. They claim that the FAA's weather dissemination apparatus makes it <i>impossible</i> to inform pilots of hazardous conditions that are, in fact, known to forecasters, and they provide several examples of accidents that were caused by known hazardous weather that was not mentioned in any aviation product.<br />
<br />
Most of their concern is addressed to mountain wave activity (MWA). It's one thing to contact the upward part of the wave in a glider, but it's another thing to be in the downward part of the wave in a Cessna 172 flying at best-rate-of-climb speed but descending, at night, at 400 feet per minute. As Joni Mitchell might have sung, "I've looked at wave from both sides now..."<br />
<br />
(One might argue that these accidents might have been avoided by an attentive pilot, but since mountain wave conditions can be invisible I am reluctant to judge.)<br />
<br />
So now the NTSB is calling on the FAA to improve the situation, but I'm frankly not interested in waiting for somebody else to intervene for my safety. So what else can I do?<br />
<br />
One thing to do is to be aware of the possibility of adverse MWA. When a strong wind is perpendicular to a ridgeline, wave is a distinct possibility, so expect it. If you know the winds aloft (which you would if you'd had a standard briefing) you can fly with or against the wind to get out of the wave.<br />
<br />
And always be in a position to turn toward lower terrain.<br />
<br />
The thing is that if you fly a lot your life should become one continuous weather briefing. Don't just look at the METARs and TAFs: look out the window, call your friends and compare observations, look at the radar picture someplace nasty. <br />
<br />
It takes 3,000 square miles of activity to generate a SIGMET; for anything smaller, you have to keep your eyes open.<br />
<br />
And one more thing: make PIREPs. This seems to be a lost art with better information available in flight, but let's help each other out.<br />
<br />
And, please, be careful out there.<br />
<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-62617139814736881052014-02-08T22:09:00.001-08:002014-02-08T22:09:22.292-08:00Navigating AwayThe automated observation at the airport where I fly gliders was insisting, repeatedly, that the ceiling was 6,000'AGL, but those of us who fly the ridge there knew it was below 3,000'. <br />
<br />
I was doing a high-performance checkout and today's lesson plan included stall recognition and recovery. The standard minimum altitude to be recovered from a stall is 1,500', which might be OK in a Cessna 150, but 3,000' is on the edge of "high enough" for a plane with higher wing loading.<br />
<br />
It was the pilot's first flight in the airplane, too, which pretty much guaranteed that we would be climbing higher than I specified. The chance of accidentally entering the clouds was low, but higher than normal.<br />
<br />
But another part of the lesson was using the GPS in the airplane. For too many pilots GPS use doesn't get much beyond the DIRECT button, and while this pilot would have the opportunity to revert to that behavior after the checkout, I wanted to be sure that he had seen what the unit could do. (The FAA defines learning as a change in behavior based on experience, so I guess if the experience wasn't going to change his behavior then he wasn't going to learn anything.)<br />
<br />
So after the runup I gave the pilot a GPS exercise: program a route from a waypoint on one of the instrument approaches to the south, through the airport, to one of the waypoints to the north. This gave the pilot a line on the moving map that he had absolutely no intention of following, except if we lost visibility, in which case that line would show us which way to fly to safety. After the flight, we plotted the "route" using <a href="http://skyvector.com/">skyvector.com</a>, and it looked like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XAUO1uCx_QE/UvcZuNzlx2I/AAAAAAAAA4A/-1S1o7K0Hso/s1600/Screenshot+from+2014-02-08+22:58:52.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XAUO1uCx_QE/UvcZuNzlx2I/AAAAAAAAA4A/-1S1o7K0Hso/s1600/Screenshot+from+2014-02-08+22:58:52.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
As you can see, the "route" would have kept us away from the mountains to the East and to the West.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I have written before about ideas like this: see <a href="http://surroundedbyair.blogspot.com/2012/06/rnp-and-saaar-vfr.html">here</a>, for instance. This post's end copies that one:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" style="width: 400px;">
<tbody>
<tr><td>The conclusion is that, going back to Bowditch, a wise navigator uses every available resource. Even without the equipment to fly those approaches, you can use the data to make your flying safer and more efficient.
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-52183867180430480242014-01-09T10:50:00.000-08:002014-01-09T10:50:00.090-08:00One Million DollarsIn the Austin Powers movies Dr. Evil, hopelessly behind the times, wants to hold the world at ransom for [pause] One Million Dollars. The joke is that that's not much, but for me and probably you that is a very large amount of money. Even for an airline, that is a very large amount of money.<br />
<br />
A recent story in <i>Aviation Week and Space Technology</i> caught my eye and reinforces my tendency toward acquiring lots of data and acting rationally. <br />
<br />
An unnamed airline was operating a flight from the West Coast of the USA to Europe. (I was once a passenger on a Boeing 747SP from London Heathrow to KLAX; this is a <i>long</i> flight! For me, with clear skies and daylight all the way, it was a spectacular flight, allowing me to see Iceland, Greenland, and Hudson's Bay.) This crew got a "Low Tire Pressure" warning somewhere over the USA.<br />
<br />
These days every automobile service center is familiar with these warnings. When the weather gets cold lots of cars get these warnings, by simple physics: a 25 degree Celsius temperature drop from close to standard is, directly, a 10% drop in pressure. So when the temperature drops from summer's 30C to winter's 5C the colder tires really have lower pressure.<br />
<br />
Presumably the engineers who design these sensors for aircraft compensate for the expected pressure change of 30% when an airplane leaves 30C KLAX and climbs to the -50C stratosphere. This tire was genuinely leaking.<br />
<br />
The airline's maintenance department took several pressure readings at 20 minute intervals to determine the leak rate, and calculated (that's the word I like!) that the tire would be flat on arrival in Europe. This didn't worry them operationally, but someone remembered that every time an airplane landed in Europe with a flat tire it cost the airline $1,000,000. <br />
<br />
With this information the dispatchers suggested that the airplane land while still in the USA, while the tire still had air. The crew did so, the tire got fixed, and the passengers were on their way after a small delay. This was probably another complex calculation: find a maintenance base with a tire available that was far enough along so that the airplane was below its maximum landing weight.<br />
<br />
The airline saved $1,000,000.<br />
<br />
Now one of my mottoes (see the sidebar to the right) is that <i>a pilot should never think about money while in the air</i>, but with an outcome like this I conclude that it was a good decision. So I suppose I need to update my motto?<br />
<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-21935857645556029182014-01-03T15:48:00.000-08:002014-01-09T11:16:24.679-08:00HabitReaders know that I am a big believer in habits. When you're on fire your habits will take over; you're unlikely to invent a new technique.<br />
<br />
No, this is not about New Year's Resolutions.<br />
<br />
My first flight of 2014 was a paid maintenance flight. Salt Lake City (KSLC) was <i>really</i> low IFR, pushing Category II minimums. Good thing I wasn't going there. Or was I?<br />
<br />
As I departed home I saw a landing light coming down the airway from KSLC and sure enough pretty soon the Tower was talking to a SkyWest flight that had diverted after a long hold at KSLC. <br />
<br />
Radar coverage is sparse in this area so Flight Following is generally unavailable; still I decided to at least listen to Center (the habit). I heard a lot of non-standard phraseology:<br />
<br />
"Climb and maintain Flight Level 290, I have to keep you below the holding stack."<br />
<br />
"Are they missing [the approach] in Salt Lake?"<br />
<br />
"What's the Salt Lake RVR?" [The answer was "I'll check" then "1,000 feet, but it looks like it's going down."<br />
<br />
"Can we just circle visually?"<br />
<br />
My destination, Twin Falls (KTWF) is one of the few non-radar approach control facilities in the USA. I usually call Approach (that's the habit) and they usually don't care, but today the approach controller was juggling two unexpected jets in his head and it seemed wise to let him know that I was coming. (My groundspeed was 65 knots, I would be coming for a loooong time.) For the moment both jets were above me but I knew that that would inevitably change, so I stayed north of the runway 26 final approach.<br />
<br />
"55J, say distance from Twin Falls please?" He asked three times.<br />
<br />
One jet was on final and the other was on right downwind, metal-to-metal with me. I made sure my transponder was on so I'd show on the RJ's TCAS.<br />
<br />
About 15 miles out I saw the RJ turn base and called "I've got the RJ turning right base in sight."<br />
<br />
"Follow that RJ to the airport, contact Tower now on 118.2."<br />
<br />
Now the use of the word "follow" might have been correct by the ATC handbook but I was indicating 95 knots with a 40 knot headwind, while the jet was indicating 200 knots with the same headwind. The jet would be landed and the passengers deplaned before I landed, but I agreed and headed in.<br />
<br />
The lesson here is that this was all no big deal, <i>because of my habit. </i>It's my habit to contact Approach Control, even though 9 times out of 10 they don't care. It's my habit to set up the radios for an instrument approach, so when the Tower asked for my distance all I had to do was look down at the DME display.<br />
<br />
Habits.<br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-431515400045975752.post-56169787099817220322013-11-24T22:45:00.000-08:002014-02-09T15:34:30.512-08:00A Disaster Waiting to HappenAs the proud owner of a new medical certificate it was time to spend a sunny Saturday at the airport hoping for a new student.<br />
<br />
The first thing I noticed, though, was a pressurized piston twin (let's call it an Queenstar to protect the guilty) sitting on the taxiway surrounded by the Lectro tug and a bunch of guys scratching their heads.<br />
<br />
There's one Queenstar based on the field, so I went inside and asked the receptionist "Is that Bob's Queenstar out there?"<br />
<br />
She kind of grinned. "The left engine stalled as they were taxiing in, and the right was making lots of smoke."<br />
<br />
Before you think "Oh that silly girl doesn't know what a stall is," keep in mind that she is a licensed A & P mechanic. She meant that the engine stalled, just like a Chrysler Slant Six with a bad clutch on a steep hill.<br />
<br />
At least it wasn't Bob's. I looked up the N-number and saw that it had come from two states away.<br />
Someone came in looking for them, and we buzzed him out onto the ramp just as the tug deposited the airplane in front. A bunch of people came in followed by the line guy, picked up a small package, and went back out to put it into the airplane, setting off the alarm as they forced the door open. <br />
<br />
While they were out we quizzed the line guy (not an A & P, but almost done with his Private). What did they say? They refused his offer to call maintenance, and refused fuel as well. This was starting to sound bad.<br />
<br />
I checked on flightaware and was surprised to see that this particular airplane hadn't filed IFR for more than two years. Now a Queenstar is a fast pressurized twin, and the way you get the most out of it is to file for FL200 or FL210 and let 'er rip! But these guys (who lived in a foggy part of the world) just waited for VFR and for all we knew they flew at 3500 MSL unpressurized.<br />
<br />
They got back into the airplane and we all stood at the window and counted the starts. <br />
<br />
Five tries on the left, with no sign of combustion.<br />
<br />
The right engine started on the fifth try.<br />
<br />
They tried the left nine more times. This is not looking good, but there is so little that one can do after they've refused maintenance. It was not funny.<br />
<br />
But the left one got going and they started to taxi out. No call to ground, but they stopped at the edge of the movement area, turned <i>down</i>wind, and started to do a runup. Oops! They throttled back and whipped around a started to do a runup facing into the wind. I couldn't hear that the props were exercised, but there were more than the expected four magneto checks. Then they went to full power, the airplane thrashing and bucking and backfiring. More magneto checks.<br />
<br />
They taxied back in and shut down in the fire lane. <br />
<br />
"We've got a bad mag on the right engine," they said, and maintenance was called. <br />
<br />
And disaster was averted.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">[revised 9 Feb 2014]</span><br />
<br />Dr.ATPhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10577827249492491854noreply@blogger.com2