What Goes Around...

Last Saturday's EAA Young Eagles rally in Blackfoot, ID was a bit of a disappointment. Somebody had dropped the ball on publicity, and there were a lot of chapter members milling around and socializing because there were no kids to fly. I walked the line and visited a friend's hangar; that seemed like it was going to be the best of it. Oh, except for the cookies. A chapter member passed away suddenly last summer (not aviation related), and when our president asked people to bring cookies for the memorial service we all pulled together and brought cookies. There were far more cookies than even the large crowd could eat, so the president keeps them in her freezer and brings some to chapter events. We all miss John, especially at Young Eagles events, so the cookies are a bittersweet reminder.

Finally some kids showed up and I got to take a brother and sister on a search for their house, which we found easily. They were so excited! I took a cell phone picture and emailed it their mom after we landed. They really enjoyed the flight experience and I did, too.

But now we were back to the lots of pilots standing around scenario. I got an idea: this was a great opportunity for some IFR proficiency flying. It was easy to find an eager safety pilot and even another pilot who rode in back for the fun of it.

So I did an ILS and a hold and headed back to do the VOR approach into Blackfoot. The VOR approach into Blackfoot is a little silly, starting at Pocatello VOR and following the 016 radial for 24 -- count 'em, twenty-four! -- miles. Being that far from the VOR the obstacle area is pretty large, so the minimum descent altitude is actually above the ordinary VFR pattern altitude. Plus, you're flying away from the nav source, so the needle gets less sensitive as you get close to the airport.

Worse, the approach shuts down both Pocatello (KPIH) and Idaho Falls (KIDA), at least for a while. Pocatello is a long way from Salt Lake Center's radar antenna, so it's not clear to me that radar separation is even possible; in any event, the separation criteria are loose enough that someone on the VOR-C into Blackfoot is also taking up the airspace for the ILS into Pocatello. And the missed approach is Idaho Falls VOR at the airway MEA, so nobody's getting into IDA, either. For a long time the approach was NOTAMed out of service.

(I had a hand in designing the Pocatello ILS, but nobody asked me about Blackfoot. One of the approaches in the original draft for Pocatello had a missed approach point at an airway intersection 500' above the MEA, which was 7000 MSL. This meant that 7,000 and 8.000 were unavailable on two airways, shutting down low-altitude IFR traffic for a 60 mile radius.)

But a logged approach is a logged approach, and I was going to Blackfoot, so I flew it. At the right point I lifted the hood and entered the pattern, making the usual calls on downwind, base, and final. While we were gone, though, some kids had shown up, and there were airplanes in the runup area. No big deal. Until when we were about 100'AGL, a red Skyhawk took the runway and started his takeoff roll.

Ouch.

I went around.

Blackfoot was the site of the near gear-up landing a couple of weeks ago. I think I'll avoid it for a while...

Young Eagles Day

I am a long-time enthusiastic supporter of The Experimental Aircraft Association [EAA]. Their Young Eagles program gives kids an opportunity to fly.  For one reason or another I have never been able to participate until today.

I took the club Archer, accompanied by one of our chapter members, to Gooding, Idaho, the home of the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind.  This is the third year that our chapter has given flights to the kids at the school.  As the name implies, most of the kids have some kind of developmental difficulty, but I still believe that everyone loves to fly. 

The airport was like a mini-Oshkosh, with planes continually taxiing out, launching, and returning.  We used Oshkosh call signs too, to keep the radio chatter under control.  I was the white Archer, Mike was the Red Cherokee, Austin was the Pulsar, and so on.  We kept the pattern pretty full, and it didn't take long to give something like 50 kids airplane rides.  (The rides were substantial; mine averaged 18 minutes.)

[By the way, everyone did a full 360 before taking the runway at this uncontrolled field. There have been way too many midair collisions in the pattern this year, with tragic consequences.]

When I taught computer science, I used to say that "a good computer scientist is interested in everything;" now I am beginning to think that "a good pilot is interested in everything," too.  For example, at some point I learned sign language letters.  My friends and I used this on multiple car road trips before there were cell phones.  "Next exit," we'd sign, and the like.  Today I flew two girls who were completely deaf, so the only way to communicate with them was by signing.  I felt inept: their signing is so graceful and fluid.  But mine worked.  The girl in front was fussing with her shoulder harness during the taxi out, and not wanting to get distracted during a "critical phase of flight," I stumbled through signing "W A I T."  Which she did.

So you may never fly with a passenger who cannot hear.  But think about this: two guys I knew were flying a King Air that lost a door in flight.  They kept it flying, and landed at an airport in one piece.  In their later talk about the incident, they said that one of their big problems was that it was too noisy to hear each other.  

A little bit of sign language would have helped.