A Walk in the Clouds

Today was a great day - Not only did I get to fly almost 3 hours for free, I went to a concert with my dad and ran into a ton of friends there too!

I'll save the gory details of the flight for the end here, but basically we went to Muncie, IN to retrieve a charter plane that had been left there after an engine failure. I watched my flight instructor fly on the way down, then I flew on the way back. It went really well, and I feel really good about it. :-)

Afterwards, I went downtown and met my dad at Morphy Hall for a concert by Sotto Voce, a world-class tuba/euphonium quartet that was started at UW-Madison several years ago. I saw them with my dad earlier this year (January?) and thoroughly enjoyed both concerts. One of the pieces they played today struck me as the perfect title for this entry - Wilkenschatten, which supposedly translates to "A Walk in the Clouds." (I was flying in clouds earlier.)

The best part was that I ran into a bunch of friends. Tina, who I went to high school with. Toby, who I marched with '91-'93. Adam, who I marched with in '96. The best, though, was some of my cohorts from the UWM Tuba/Euph ensemble... Chewy (who also marched Madison), Russ, and Jon (another Madison alum). I was really happy to see them all!

Okay, now on to the gory details of my flight:

(I believe the word I've used in the subject means "A walk in the clouds"... It's a piece of music that was played at a concert I saw tonight after flying all day, and I thought it appropriate.)

Today I learned a LOT. The mission: Retrieve Chieftain 3591U from MIE. The taxi down was none other than Dakota 8183X, which I've been working on my hi-performance endorsement in the last couple of days.

My day consisted of two flights: One in the back seat watching two experienced pilots (my CFII, Joe, and the charter pilot, Gary) fly IFR (actual IMC for part of it) and a flight back to Madison in the left seat IFR with a good solid hour of actual.

Some impressions of the flight down: Joe can cruise through checklists a lot faster than I can, and he flies with precision. It certainly gave me a standard to aspire to. However, I still have the best eyes: I was the first of the three of us to spot traffic on three different traffic calls.

Joe tried valiantly for the short way around Chicago (V177) but this was our conversation with Clearance for the way down:

"Madison Clearance, Dakota 8183X IFR to MIE" "Dakota 8183X, cleared as file... Uhhh, I don't think that route's gonna work. Taxi to 21 via Juliet and Bravo, we'll have your new routing in a few minutes."

As I expected, our new routing included KELSI, the magic intersection for staying out of the way of Chicago approach.

Anyway... Enough about that. I want to talk about the part where *I* flew! (duh ;-)

After lunch at Vince's Joe and I waited for Gary to get the Chieftain running and then fired up the Dakota. I got out my new Viban view-limiting device. I'm kind of disappointed in it, but with some paper taped to the left-hand side and a sectional in the window, it worked pretty well. It definitely beats the heck out of Foggles, but I think I'm gonna send it back for a Francis hood.

Our filed route for the return trip was Muncie direct Boiler V399 Peotone direct KELSI direct Rockford direct Madison, and we were cleared as filed. I took off and stayed perfectly on the centerline (gotta add all them horses SLOWLY). After takeoff it was on with the hood and over to Indy Center (Todd, were you working today?)

Things went pretty well in the beginning. I'm to the point now where Joe mostly is giving me hints to make things easier rather than "you did this wrong" type of stuff. It feels good!

With the longer cross country there was more time available to fly, to think, to get ahead of the plane. I was doing all the right things. However, all of the flight planning was soon out the window, before we even reached Boiler: "Dakota 8183X, turn left heading 305, vectors to clear Chicago airspace..." And we were on vectors almost until RFD!

Well, we can't just let things be easy right? So my attitude indicator suddenly disappeared behind a cover. OK, no problem, I've done this before. Heck, I feel perfectly comfortable with no AI.

A little TOO comfortable, perhaps. 30 seconds later, the DG failed too. That's all right - Still standard partial panel. Keep the wings level, check 305 on the compass every once in a while, you know the drill.

Then, the compass failed too. No direct heading reference... OK, this is getting tougher now! Extra concentration on holding wings level, and when I notice a departure from that, try to do the opposite for the same length of time. After doing that for a while and working it out OK, the compass came back to life. But you know what that means...

Bam bam bam, things start failing left and right and center too! For the next hour plus, there were never fewer than three instruments covered up, and as many as five!

Altimeter failed, watch the VSI, do the same "averaging" technique as when the compass and DG were both failed. And look, your pitot iced up, there goes the ASI. Pitot heat on, ASI back, Whoops, now your VSI failed too, airspeed is the last pitch reference. And just in case you weren't having enough fun, there goes the turn coordinator!

So at this point I'm trying to maintain 6000 feet and 305 degrees (and keep the airplane right side up) with nothing but the airspeed indicator and the magnetic compass. Yow! Joe did keep peeking at the altimeter just to double-check, but I didn't get the luxury.

Well, all these "failures" had the desired effect. After about 10 minutes of being almost instrument-less, I'd managed to hold my altitude within 60 feet just guesstimating corrections, and hold my heading within 10 degrees. And most importantly, keep the greasy side down and maintain situational awareness (station keeping with VOR's and an NDB despite being on vectors). Then, all at once, Joe pulled all of the instrument covers off and said "OK, you've got all your instruments back. It should feel like a CAVU VFR day now!" And it did, almost.

What changed VERY noticeably was my scan. The cross- checking was almost effortless. I was seeing things I've never seen before. For the first time ever, I noticed a subtle pitch change while I was looking at the airspeed indicator. In 40 minutes or so, my IFR flying went from marginally passable to rock solid.

With the "hacked" Viban setup we also passed into actual conditions at some point without me being able to see it. There was still occasional ground contact I guess, because Joe wouldn't let me take the contraption off.

Finally, somewhere west of Joliet we were given direct Rockford. What with all the vectors and partial (REALLY partial) panel operation, I was a little bit weak on including the navs in the scan, but still better than I've been until the last couple of flights, so overall, OK.

After crossing RFD and getting cleared direct back to Madison, I started the approach checklist:

Position: Just north of RFD
ATIS: Information Golf, 600 broken, 2400 overcast, 2 miles in mist. Sweet!
Instruments: DG and Altimeter set.
Nav radios: Nav2 left on the Madison VOR to continue enroute navigation, Nav1 tuned to localizer, ID'ed (kinda weak), twisted to inbound course, markers set. DME tuned to Madison VOR and ID'ed. ADF tuned to Monah for the miss.
Com radios: Now on Madison approach, number 2 to tower.
Approach briefing: 2700 to WINSR, 182 degrees inbound, 1300-1/2 for localizer, punch 3:36 into the timer, 1060 -1/2 for full ILS, missed climb straight ahead direct MONAH and hold.
Landing checklist: Gas on fullest tank, pump on, Undercarriage down and bolted, Mixture and Prop deferred, Switches on as needed, Seat belts secured.
Listen... And we're once again on vectors.

This is the most prepared I've felt for an approach in a long time. I wasn't spacing on anything, got everything done plenty early and double-checked things too, and even anticipated what ATC was gonna do with me.

We were vectored a fair ways north of the field. Joe finally let me yank the Viban off and use the murk outside as my view limiting device. They vectored us through the localizer and then back on it to let a couple jets pass us, then we were cleared for the approach.

The approach wasn't the prettiest thing in the world - I was practically back on the localizer before my turn inbound, went through, didn't pick a high enough intercept angle, etc... But, in some ways it was an improvement. I called out "Glideslope alive" rather than "Oh crap I'm already above it". I noticed trends in the needles rather than just positions. My only real problem was that I was overcorrecting. However, once I'd gotten firmly established I kept both needles within a dot and a half at the worst.

I first spotted the rabbit at 1300 MSL (440 AGL) and stayed on the glideslope needle as we busted one last cloud and I saw the runway lights at about 300 AGL. This was my third approach in fairly low actual (ie within 20 seconds or so of being a miss). There is nothing quite as satisfying as getting your tail kicked trying to keep that bird flying right through the clouds and then after all your hard work on the approach seeing the runway slowly, magically appear out of the murk right where it's supposed to be. It's a really cool sight.

As we were taxiing back in, Joe said "That's some of the best IFR flying I've seen from you." I concur - Today *was* the best IFR flying I've done. I'm finally starting to feel competent! Yee haw! :-D

Oh, and today's flight put me over the XC PIC requirements for the IR, I got my Wings Phase I signoff, and I only have an hour of performance landings to go to earn my high performance endorsement. Woohoo!

High-performance disappointment.

Today's mission: Earn my high performance endorsement and the right to rent the Piper Dakota. I had the Dakota and CFI reserved yesterday as well, but would not have passed I'M SAFE so I rescheduled for all day today, and hoped to get my 5 hours in.

The plan: One flight VFR, bang out some airwork, a bunch of landings, then go on a cross country using NDB nav and shooting NDB approaches at both ends to burn up the rest of the required 5 hours.

The reality: CFI injured himself somehow and showed up way late. (No problem, he's cheerfully waited for me too - Plus that gave me time to sit in the Dakota and find everything.) Didn't depart first flight until about 12:30, came back down at 1:45 to get food before the Jet Room closed, back up at 5:15 (!) for some more landings, second (OK, would have been third) flight scrubbed. :-(

Believe it or not, the flights actually went pretty well despite my subject line. By the time Joe arrived I'd preflighted and we went up almost right away. I'd flown an SR22 before so I knew I'd need a legful of rudder on the takeoff roll - No surprises there.

Climb rate was around 1500fpm. It sure felt different being at 500+ AGL by the time we reached the opposite end of the runway! Departure cleared us up to 4,000 right away and it was off to the Southeast practice area for some airwork.

First was slow flight. I pulled power, pulled more power, rinse lather repeat, and finally got it down to 55 KIAS, well behind the power curve. Holy rudder force, Batman! I was about to make my leg fall off when I decided that I might as well use the rudder trim. That made things much easier.

The sight picture out the window and down the wing was rather interesting. It seemed like an extreme pitch-up attitude but was in reality less than 15 degrees.

We spent quite a bit of time in slow flight, including turns, climbs, and descents. Next, power off stalls. The Dakota stalls like any other PA28, but I had to learn a bit of a different recovery technique: Rather than letting all of the yoke pressure out right away, I had to slowly relax it to prevent the heavy engine from pitching us down too much.

Now, to power on stalls. I've been eager to do power on stalls in a high(er) performance airplane. I keep reading on here that you can't stall a plane that isn't heavily loaded with full power without exceeding 30 degrees pitch up.

WRONG. Slow to rotation speed, FULL power, 20 degrees pitch up, hold for about 5 seconds, stall. (2612 pounds at takeoff, MGW is 3000). I have yet to find a plane that won't stall at full power and less than +30 degrees when the proper entry technique is used.

We headed back in. I heeded Joe's warnings about not having much to slow the plane down with, and managed an almost-perfect approach: Down from 4500 feet at 130+ knots, level off at TPA long enough to slow to 102 and drop the flaps, and that put me right at the VASI glideslope. I began descending again and only needed a single minor power correction the whole way down.

Any good feelings I had about the approach were erased upon landing, though. I flared just a hair high (maybe two feet higher than I wanted to), then started to let her down too fast, began to recover, bounced lightly once, and then stuck the wheels to the pavement. Not too pretty. But hey, it was my first landing in type - That's a good excuse right?

After eating in the Jet Room and planning a flight (which we never took) to PVB via NDB's only, we went back up a few minutes before sunset for some pattern work. We were tossed back and forth between runways 21 and 14 so much it seemed like a new pattern! Takeoff from 21, left traffic to 14, right traffic to 14, left traffic back to 21, etc. I got in 9 total landings, including 3 at night. (All were stop & go's.) We did some normal, some short, and some soft. All of them were better than my first, but only a couple were real greasers.

My worst problem, however, ended up being the flying part: I'm so used to not reaching pattern altitude until at least the turn to downwind that I blew right through by 100-200 feet more often than not. This plane is to pattern altitude by the time you roll out on crosswind! My patterns weren't the prettiest either, but that's really getting picky. I did one forward slip to land, one engine-out approach and landing, then one greaser with no flaps and we called it a night.

The disappointment part: CFI says he wants to see me do everything we did today again tomorrow before he'll sign me off. *grump* Kinda makes me feel like I didn't accomplish anything today, when I know I did.

No luck.

Well, I didn't get rolling on Thursday. They broke a fuel pump housing trying to get the new pump on and had to order a new one. I called Tim Friday morning and he said "I'm getting you out of there right now." (Good answer, Tim.)

So, I met Bill Swope (and his wife Sharon) and we teamed all the way back to Madison, arriving at about 10 AM on Saturday. Unfortunately, I had to cancel my flight that I'd planned for Saturday afternoon - Flying tired and trying to learn something just doesn't work very well. :-(

Next step? I don't know. I'm gonna ask for a new truck. I mean, a NEW truck. The kind with zeros in the odometer. I don't know if they have any right now though. I may end up teaming back out to MD to pick mine up again. Grrrr. I don't even know if/when it's gonna be done.

The good news: I did get to fly today, and I'm flying again tomorrow.

Stuck in Baltimore

Got to Baltimore Sunday night for a Monday morning delivery...

Emptied out and was sent another load...

That load wasn't going to be ready for 12 hours, got a different load...

Got loaded...

And my truck broke down. Gear-driven fuel pump on the engine failed. They put in a new one, then decided to replace the electric one as well. Took them two more days to get the parts. I'm still here. Ugh.

The upside: I got a suite at the Best Western. Couch, recliner, big TV, wireless internet. Could be worse. But, I'm still bored out of my mind.

Hopefully I'll be rolling later today. I'm supposed to be home tomorrow. Wish me luck.