Christmas Flying

That's the view of my back yard. According to FlightAware.com, nobody has gotten in or out of my home field since late yesterday afternoon. It's a good time to reminisce about Christmas flights from the past. So throw a log on the fire, listen to Ella singing It's Cold Outside, and reminisce.

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1993 My then-girlfriend and now wife Terri flew with me to Rapid City, SD on Christmas Eve in an Archer. We were going to meet her mother and sister. We had met the summer before, just in time for me to take a long-planned trip to Alaska in a 182. I guess she thought that I wasn't impressed and wasn't going to call her back...

My log doesn't say much about the first leg except that the altimeter setting fell from 30.60 to 30.15 between Pocatello and Rock Springs. I got a pop-up IFR clearance over the Black Hills for the second leg. That was my first introduction to Rapid City's ATC, which is consistently confusing.


1994 A year later Terri was learning to fly. We tried to fly Christmas Day, but my log says "Unable VFR." The flight time of 0.3 corresponds to about one traffic pattern.

But one of the renters was hanging around the airport with a friend who was headed home to Japan later that day. Ace had hoped to give Koshi a ride, but he didn't have his instrument rating yet (now he's a captain at American Eagle), so I gave Terri, Ace, and Koshi a ride. In solid IMC, including a low approach. They didn't see much but had fun anyway.


1995 I flew with two students and spent an hour dinking around in my Taylorcraft.


1996 The ADF failed going into McCall, ID for a ski vacation. Since all McCall had was an NDB approach we went back to Boise and rented a car. On the way home the snow was so bad we got a hotel room and spent an extra day.

We came home from Boise VFR. It was starting to snow, so I set up the VOR runway 3 approach just in case. IMC was inevitable, but John in the tower kept insisting that his visibility was 3, so I flew the approach. At minimums I barely saw the approach lights and circled to runway 21. [Presumably the statute of limitations has expired for both of us!]


2001 I flew a Christmas eve charter in a Cessna 414 to Delta, Colorado from Jackson Hole. There was one passenger, an outdoorsy woman a little younger than me. She did not say a word the whole way. She just sat huddled in the back. I got the impression that something was really wrong, but never found out what.


2002 I was in the 414 again, this time flying freight from Boise to Spokane. I always tried to take a younger pilot along when flying freight, so they could get some experience. This was my way of repaying those who did the same for me. But this time the autopilot was out-of-service, so I couldn't take any passengers.

I flew up to Spokane early Christmas eve. I checked into the hotel early; I think I was supposed to leave Spokane at 0400 or so. The hotel was empty, and the desk clerk was very nice; if I hadn't been happily married I would have made a pass at her, which would have been a nice Christmas memory. But I behaved and went to bed early.

I got to the airport at the appointed time and everything was locked up tight. No courier. Hangars locked. FBO silent. I had some contact numbers, but nobody was answering. It was cold and I was very far from home on Christmas morning.

Finally I reached someone. "We don't fly Christmas Day; go home," he said, angry, so I did. The two companies fought for weeks about whether they should pay for the flight.


2003 Again I was in the 414 on Christmas eve, flying a family from Salt Lake City to Sun Valley. Sun Valley was below minimums, so I ended up diverting to Twin Falls.

The father asked me if his son could sit up front, and of course I said yes. I found him a headset and tried to explain what was going on, but he slept through the whole flight. Twin Falls was above minimums but it was cold and rainy and there was a monster crosswind. I remember my arms tiring trying to hold the aileron for the crosswind correction; the 414 had an aileron-rudder interconnect which meant that slips required a lot of strength.

The kid slept until the engines stopped.

When I got home the ramp was a mess with blowing drifting snow. One of the line guys ran out to the taxiway and signalled that I should shut down where I was. All of us were shoveling through big drifts, trying to get the airplanes into the hangar. The tug couldn't get any traction, even with three of us standing on it, so we shoveled some more.

That is, all of us shoveled except for the then Chief Pilot, who drove to McDonald's and drove back to the airport and ate while we all busted our butts. That was not a popular move.

The snow persisted through Christmas. On Boxing Day I did a LifeFlight. My log makes it sound exciting: "Blizzard Conditions on departure. Winds gusting to 40 at Burley. Pt w/broken neck." I can't remember it.


2004 The company was doing a lot of extra sections for a major international freight carrier, mostly in Senecas. I talked them into using the King Air, which I had been flying for a whopping 200 hours. (I'm still a little resentful that nobody ever gave me any credit for booking a charter.)

This time I took one of the mechanics along for the ride; he had just finished his Private Pilot license. We went to Sun Valley and unloaded. I started up and did the usual King Air "Two Finger Salute," that is, checking the status of the current limiters. Uh-oh: one of them had blown. This is a no-go item.

But I had Alex along! He fixed it, or else we would have been stuck there for Christmas Eve.

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And that's about it. I don't see a pattern (other than lots of IFR). Some fun, some work.

Actually, even the work was fun.

91.13

14CFR § 91.13 Careless or reckless operation (a)Aircraft operations for the purpose of air navigation. No person may operate an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another.

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91.13 is the FAA's catchall regulation. If you hurt someone or something, then that is prima facie evidence that you violated the regulation. I came close today, close enough to send in an NASA Aviation Safety and Reporting System form. I also sent a letter to the chief pilot of the company that operates the airplane.

It was a miserable day, with heavy rain and strong gusty winds. A good day for ground school, which we did. As a reward, Dan wanted to look inside one of the King Airs in the tightly-packed hangar. I had flown both of them a lot, but it has been a whie. I picked the EFIS one so he could see a glass cockpit.

I put him in the left seat, did a quick cockpit scan to make sure the switches were in the right position, and turned on the battery. I showed him how the stall warning test moved the little vane on the wing, and then had him turn on an invertor and the avionics master.

Immediately I knew that something was wrong. "Do you hear something?" I asked, but that wasn't fair because Dan had never been in the airplane before. There was a strange whirring noise from the nose of the airplane. I thought it might be the air conditioning, but that was off. The aft blower was off, but I turned it on anyway, and was reassured to hear more noise. The new noise was rhythmic, with a 4 or 5 second period.

Still puzzled, I turned on the EFIS. It takes a few seconds to warm up and do its internal tests. As soon as the multifunction display came alive I saw the problem.

The weather radar was on! We were radiating inside the hangar!

I said something unprintable and turned the radar off. Looking ahead, we had been irradiating the auxilliary tank of the King Air in front of us.

We had been irradiating a fuel tank!

By blind dumb luck, the fuel was far enough away and well enough shielded, the radar we weak enough, and the exposure time was short enough. We did not blow southern Idaho to smithereens.

I was disgusted with the situation, shut everything down, and went back upstairs to talk about weight-and-balance. I did take some time to remind Dan how it was important to use all of our senses when approaching an airplane. I heard something wrong. I smelled exhaust fumes. I saw the collapsed nose strut. I felt the kink in the control cable. I tasted the ozone from the failed alternator.

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I suppose that there are worse things than radiating in a hangar. Nobody walked by, and nobody got hurt. But, what had happened when the airplane landed? Had one of the line crew marshalled the airplane, and how close did he get to the beam? Was someone hurt? I get weak in the knees thinking about it.

And weaker when I think of how close I had come to hurting someone.

Aircraft Owner Again (Please Cross Fingers)

I sold my Taylorcraft BC-12D about two years ago, and it is finally time to buy another aircraft.  While there are still a few details to check out, I am buying a Standard Jantar SZD-48 with two partners...that's right, a glider.  A single seat glider, at that.

The current owner has not flown it in several years, but it is in annual and we got Tim, who has some experience in type, to fly it for us on Sunday.  Here is his takeoff.  He had a great two hour flight, which is pretty short for him.  The owner has agreed to our price.

My previous aircraft were a Mooney (with a partner) and the T-craft, which I owned by myself.  I wasn't flying the T-craft much, and it needed some expensive engine work, so I sold it to a guy who put in a new engine and is having a great time flying it.  I still keep in touch with the guy who bought the Mooney, too;  he still has it, although he bought it in 1987.

The irony is that a year ago I was flying turboprops, complaining that I was so busy flying that I had no time for flying.  I was disappointed when the company decided that they did not need a part-time pilot anymore, but I am enjoying the combination of fun personal flying, glider flying, and basic instruction so much that soaring feels more like a step up than a step down.  

Yesterday, a bizjet crew was hanging around while I flew with a student.  They were sprawled on the couch, looking logy, jumping every time the cell phone rang.  (One of them used the same generic ring tone that I use, so I jumped, too.)  They had come from someplace pretty far away back East, and the track of their flight home, which would have been 4 hours or so in the turboprop, was a straight line.  I am sure that they had fun, but I am also sure that a 4 hour glider flight (which I have yet to do) would be more fun.  Those 4-hours-in-the-flight-levels-on-autopilot flights were my least favorite.

Once, I longed to be in their shoes, longed to the extent that I spent a small fortune keeping a first class medical certificate (required for a charter jet captain).  Now I long to fly, period.  The only fuel I need is brain fuel; I need a lot of that.  The phone is off; the radio is on 123.3, comparing my view of the sky with what the other glider pilots see.  Nobody questions my lunch expenses, or my rental car expenses, or my fuel order, or my manifest.  The only question is "Did you have fun?"  I like that one.