Wind!

Today was going to be a $100.00 omelet flight up to Lake Havasu City (KHII) and back. A couple of things happened to change my plans. First, my right seat cancelled on me late yesterday; citing some lame excuse of parental responsibility. He had to drive his son to school… That was OK, and since the “flying for fun” objective was altered somewhat, I gave my CFI, Scott, a call to see if he wanted to fly. Fortunately he did. Don’t get me wrong – I like Scott. It’s still fun flying with Scott – hell, it’s fun flying with anyone. The problem with flying with Scott (or practically any other good CFI) is that the flights take on purpose in addition to fun. I was sort of on the fence as to whether I wanted to fly for a purpose; however, at $50.00 per hour, it’s prudent.

This brings me to the second reason for the change in plans. Weather. More specifically, wind. I called flight services and the briefing was grim. Winds were 20kts gusting to 30kts in KHII. Not a good idea to try and land in those winds… Also, the winds were not favoring any of my other regular destinations with good restaurants. So the decision was made to make this an IFR training flight.

I began pre-flight while Scott ran into the office to get some approach plates. We took off from RWY 4R and turned southeast. While heading towards Casa Grande (KCGZ), we loaded the VOR approach for RWY 5 at KCGZ. I learned some pretty cool tricks on the Garmin GNS430 today and I’m grateful that Scott is one of those instructors who is really patient while I try to figure things out. Furthermore, that GNS430 coupled with a really good HSI is the next best thing to flying a glass cockpit. Now, we live in a desert. Deserts have a lot of sand. When sand becomes airborne, it affects visibility. I would classify the visibility at some points during our flight today as very marginal VFR. As we were on a three mile final into KCGZ, our crab angle essentially had us flying sideways. It was really cool! We declared a missed approach and flew to the Stanfield VOR (TFD). We entered a hold at TFD and set up for the GPS approach to RWY 23. We went missed and headed east to Coolidge (P08) and did an ILS approach for RWY 5 and finally a VOR approach for RWY 23.

There are a lot of things going on in an approach and I can see why there is a currency requirement for IFR pilots. We talked about and performed the 5Ts:

T turn to proper heading

T time hold or approach

T twist OBS knob to inbound course

T throttle adjustments, as required

T talk - procedure turn inbound, entering the hold, etc.

Plus you have to know what altitude and heading you need to fly as you cross each fix. Not to mention that you can conceivably be doing all of this in IMC. Fun stuff!

After we determined that it was clearly too windy to land anywhere, I donned my JeppShades and we practiced flying vectors and altitudes with climbing and descending turns. We did some unusual attitude recoveries and triangulated our position using VORs. After about an hour of simulated instrument flying, we headed back home to Falcon Field (KFFZ). Winds at KFFZ were 040 09kts gusting to 15 kts – right down the runway. We did three touch-and-gos and then called it a day.

All in all, it was a great day of flying. I learned a lot and I like flying in choppy air. My next IFR lesson is scheduled for next Friday.

Flight time: 2.4 hours

Total time: 99.6

Texas – Ya’lls State Sure Is Flat…

OK, so I’m not that excited about Texas. Can’t stand the Cowboys. I will say this, the people here are friendly and though they’re a little hard to understand sometimes, they seem to make up for it in hospitality. I’m here on business. Again. When I was here last month, I was constantly reminded that my hotel room was a half of a mile from the end of runway 15 at Addison (KADS). A lot of people would get sick and tired listening to planes climb-out all day (and most of the night). Not me. It only makes me want to fly…

Last month when I was here for a week, I did a little reconnaissance work. Scouted out the FBOs, flight schools, and aircraft rental companies. I actually reserved a plane on my last trip but the check-airman (I’ll get to that in a minute) cancelled on me at the last minute. Apparently he forgot that he was supposed to have dinner with his dad. This time around, I called a different company and my experience was totally different.

After exchanging a few e-mails with Ron, at Lone Star Flyers, he put me in touch with a great guy named Derek. I was talking to Derek because 95% of my piloting time is in a Piper. Nobody in Addison rents Pipers (singles anyhow). Therefore, I had to get checked out in a C172. I explained to Derek that I wanted to spend some time flying and get checked out in the 172. He asked me a lot of questions about my flying experience and e-mailed a lot of information to me regarding airport operations at KADS and the V-speeds associated with the Cessna 172. After about 5 e-mail exchanges, we scheduled an airplane for November 4th.

Today I spent the entire day in a conference room talking about ERP systems (JD Edwards). Now, I’m not an IT guy and I certainly don’t relish 8 hours in a room where I am struggling to understand what is being said (even though they are all speaking English). By 5:00, I was really itching to be “wheels up” somewhere over Texas.

When I arrived at the airport, I was immediately greeted by a friendly guy. I told him that I was looking for someone named Derek. He simply grinned and said, “You found him.” We spent about 10 minutes talking and planning the flight. We were standing over a sectional talking about where we were about to go and he says, “On the outbound leg, we’ll fly over the top of Love Field and DFW, then head southwest to Granbury…” Wait a minute, not only is that flying into Class B airspace, but it is going to take us right on top of DFW! I reminded him that this would be VFR. He simply said, “So?” I explained that you have to have clearance and that they don’t hand that out like Halloween candy. He just looked at me and said, “Why not?”

Let me tell you, where I’m from, as a general rule of thumb, they just don’t clear any VFR traffic into the Class B airspace. Most VFR pilots I know, don’t even ask! This concept was beyond him… I was amazed. Anyhow, we went out to the plane and began our pre-flight. Big differences between the Piper and the Cessna: 1) 13 fuel sumps (Piper has 3); 2) Climbing the wing strut to visual the fuel quantity; 3) Field of view through the windscreen is exceptional. After our walk around, we started the engine and radioed ground for taxi clearance and indicated our destination and requested VFR flight following. We were given clearance to taxi to runway 15. Winds 150 at 17kts., gusts 22kts. – yeah that was windy but it was coming right down the runway.

As we were taxiing, we were given departure instructions and a transponder code. We did a run-up and were cleared for takeoff. Shortly after we were airborne, about 1000 ft AGL, we were handed off to DFW Approach. Then in a cheerful voice, the controller cleared us into Class B airspace! He told us to cross Love Field at 2,500 and fly an assigned heading… I was simply amazed. Every time we were handed off, we were met with friendly and enthusiastic controllers! Coming out of Phoenix, this was shocking. For the most part, Phoenix Approach is friendly, but they really don’t have the time to deal with VFR aircraft. This was awesome. It felt great to be in the air and flying a new aircraft wasn’t nearly as much of a challenge as I had anticipated.

The Cessna flies very well – maybe that’s why there are tens of thousands of these planes buzzing around. We flew to Granbury. Landed – full-stop. Taxied back and took off VFR to Mesquite. Mesquite is a non-towered airport about 20 miles south of KADS. We did some slow flight, stalls, steep turns, and finally 3 landings so that I could get my night currency back. After Mesquite, we flew back to KADS and packed it in for the night.

So, in the title of this post, I mentioned that Texas is flat. That is the understatement of the century – especially when all of my flying has been in or around mountainous terrain. The Dallas sectional has only one color for the topographical depiction – green. The highest terrain depicted on the sectional chart is 1400 feet! This is great – except at night. Due to the flat terrain, there are more communication towers and antennae per square mile than anywhere else in the world. These towers don’t typically interfere with flight (except perhaps Cedar Hill); but, at night, when you are trying to spot traffic, you literally see thousands of flashing white and red lights on all of these towers and antennae. It is hard to spot traffic among all of the flashing lights. Like anything else, I suppose you would get used to it in due time.

All in all, my experience was fantastic. Great people, great plane, excellent controllers, smooth air and 30 miles of visibility. Oh yeah, you’re probably wondering how were your landings? New plane be damned, I greased ‘em. Pert’ near perfect ya’ll.

Flight time: 2.1

Total time: 97.2