Dulles? Yep.

N65410 - C172S - 1.5 hours

Throughout my training as a student pilot, my instructors always made Dulles (IAD) out to be a looming and ominous land of inevitable doom, should you ever wander in its direction.  To their credit, airspace busts are a big concern around here.  First, Leesburg (JYO) is right under the class Bravo shelves, and second, when I started training we had something called the Washington Area Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), which you didn't want to mess with.  The simple explanation of that is that if you violated that airspace, you had at the minimum a Blackhawk helicopter as a personal buddy to escort you to an airport for questioning.  The ADIZ is now the Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA), which is smaller and somewhat easier to work with (at least out of JYO, since it has a slight exemption), but the issue remains that a lot of the airspace around here is very much less than friendly.

If it looks confusing, it's because it is

Beyond the airspace issue, the airport is busy and should be treated with a healthy amount of respect when flying the smaller stuff.  Class B airports in general are very busy and if you're not on your game, you can cause issues for yourself or other people.  Because Class B airspace is positive control, you're essentially considered an instrument flight rules (IFR) aircraft, where controllers provide you with altitudes to maintain and headings to fly, so you need to be on top of your radio work and your aircraft.  All that said, I can understand why most instructors make it out to be a big deal.  Even if they didn't, most larger airports have ramp and service fees that would drive you somewhere else.



Because I'm stubborn, I like challenges, and my roommate works at Dulles, I went in anyway.

My excuse for the flight was that the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assocation was having a seminar up in Frederick, Maryland.  I figured I'd fly up there because the trip up Route 15 is particularly painful if you get stuck behind someone slow, and it's just an awkward route from where I live.  From there, it morphed into a Dulles trip because my roommate Mat works the evening shift, and I figured it would be easier for him to escape work if I got the plane first and picked him up straight from work, instead of having him meet me at JYO.

The flight began with a little homework to make sure I had all of my bases covered.  First, I worked at Dulles long enough to know when the busy times were, so I planned to avoid those.  Second, I made sure to talk to contacts at Potomac TRACON (thanks Roscoe) to figure out the best way to get cleared in.  Finally, I made sure to write myself a briefing sheet with airport sketches, frequencies and so on ahead of time to make sure I could keep up with the faster pace because I'd be on my own.

Before departing, I called up Potomac on the RCO frequency (118.5) to get my initial clearance.  Despite a little difficulty with the aircraft's mic jack, I was able to get the controller the proper data.  The initial clearance was to remain outside of the Bravo, contact Potomac on 126.1 (MULRR) after departure and expect an east side transition for Runway 1C.

Once I departed, I called Potomac and was cleared into the Bravo after being identified on radar.  At first, I was given a heading of 090 (due east) and an altitude of 2500'.  Nearing Germantown, MD, the controller had me proceed direct to an airspace fix called TICON, which is down near Dale City, VA.  That put me on a downwind, parallel to Runway 1R, directly underneath the HYPER arrivals.  While on the downwind, I ended up flying over the Wiehle Avenue Metro Station construction, my house, and a few other landmarks around the area.  As I got closer to TICON, the controller had me switch to the final approach controller on 125.8 (IADFE combined with IADFW).  That controller turned me to a heading of 250 (southeast) and advised me that I had an Airbus ahead of me, 500' above, inbound to land on Runway 1C.  When I advised the controller I had the aircraft in sight, he cleared me for the visual approach behind the Airbus, and had me switch over to tower.

Tysons, and another landmark you may recognize at the top right

My old high school

After switching over to tower I was cleared to land, number two behind the Airbus.  I actually ended up flying over my mom's house and my old high school, adding to the list of landmarks.  In order to not be a complete pest, I kept my speed up all the way in.  I crossed the threshold at about 120 knots, and then bled off speed over the 11,501' runway, landing long in order to cut down on taxi time.  Landmark Aviation - IAD is on the north side of the field, so the long landing helped in more ways than one.  The landing wasn't my best, but I managed to exit onto taxiway Y2 as I'd planned, so all was not lost.  I'm sure the passengers on the Airbus that had just exited the runway were entertained by it.  It's not the worst high-speed Cessna landing I've seen, either.  As I exited, tower told me to continue taxiing onto Y and to contact ground for the rest.  Ground had me continue on Y to Landmark, and on the way, I contacted Landmark to let them know I would be there in a few minutes to pick up Mat.

At Landmark, I shut down and ran inside to file a flightplan back out.  When I got back in the plane, I called up Dulles Clearance to get cleared back out of the Bravo and up to Frederick (FDK).  Since I had filed a flight plan, the controller was able to clear me on the spot without a lengthy initial call by me stating who I was, what type of aircraft I was in, and where I needed to go.  The clearance out of the Bravo had me VFR at or below 2500', runway heading after departure, and departure on frequency 125.05 (ASPER).  After I read it back, I managed to blank on ground's frequency (at a Class B airfield, they assume you have your information handy).  Even though I had a spot on my briefing sheet for the frequency, in my excitement on the way in I managed to forget to write it down.  Thanks to technology, I pulled up a diagram on my phone with the information, and was all set.

A 767 to chase me down

Ground had me taxi to Runway 30 initially via Z, short of A, meaning I had to stop before crossing the intersection of Z and A.  After I called short of A, I got cleared a little further to F, where I had to hold to let a Cessna Citation taxi in front of me.  From there, I just followed the Citation to the runway.  There was a United A320 holding in the holding area near Runway 30, waiting on some sort of departure time restriction.  Because I'm me, I popped my window open and waved to the passengers as I taxied by (you can see it in the picture at left, facing away from the camera, in front of the 767).  Shortly thereafter, an Austrian Airlines Boeing 767 joined the line behind me.  As soon as I departed, the tower controller had me turn to a heading of 350 (west of due north) to get me out of the way of the much faster 767 that would be departing behind me.  Thereafter, he had me essentially fly directly above Runway 1L and then contact departure.  I can assure you, there were no comments about the Austrian crew's accent at all during this time.

The departure controller climbed the Austrian flight well west of me, while I stayed below the initial altitude for Dulles, which kept me mainly out of the way.  After I was north of the airport, the controller placed the responsibility of navigation on me to get to FDK, meaning I no longer had to wait for him to provide me headings.  On the way up, I passed over Sugarloaf Mountain.  For as long as the 9nm trip to IAD from JYO took, the trip to FDK was a joke.  The whole trip took me a half hour, covering about 30nm.  Closer in to the field, I called it in sight and the controller dropped me to the airport's advisory frequency.  There were a few people in the pattern, but as I entered the pattern, they had all landed.

After landing, I taxied in to the ramp and attempted to get some direction from Landmark Aviation - FDK on where to park, but they weren't listening to the frequency.  Because of that, I just shut down right in front of the FBO and walked inside to ask inside.  Inside, I was told that the plane should be in the transient spots, which were right next to where I parked, so I dragged the plane over there with a tow bar and help from Mat.

Back inside, the attendant called a cab for us to get over to the conference center.  You'd imagine that, having its headquarters at FDK, the AOPA would just host the event at the airport, but for whatever reason it was at a Holiday Inn in town.  Interestingly enough, I'd been to the same conference center for work training late last year, so I knew exactly where I was headed.  On the way over there, we passed a Fractured Prune donut shop, but it had closed for the day.  I haven't had any since the last time I was at that Holiday Inn, so I'll have to make another trip soon.

We arrived about 20 minutes into the seminar, unfortunately, so Mat and I slipped in and tried to grab the easiest seats available.  The accidents mentioned as part of the seminar seemed to be pretty obvious, and the speaker kept asking for audience input, which got old quickly.  Most of the crowd could have been my grandparents, so a lot of the input got to be long-winded stories of "back in the day."  The guy next to me kept making comments, and his wife apparently didn't know how to whisper, either.  By the first break, I'd had enough of it all, so Mat and I slipped out to grab coffee (luckily, I remembered where they kept it from when I had been there previously) and left.

It got dark, so no pictures.
Here's a picture of my track into IAD instead.

The seminar could have been really good, but the crowd killed it, so I opted to get dinner which I had yet to eat.  Since my boss, Jason, lives in Frederick, I called him to see if he wanted to join us.  It turns out he was at the mall right next to the conference center, so we met up at the Red Robin right there for some food and then headed home.

The way back was uneventful.  Before departing, I followed a Diamond who was going out for some night landings in the pattern.  I flew my signature short field takeoff just to amuse myself and get more altitude quickly to avoid ticking off people living around the field, as it was pretty late when we left.

On the approach into JYO, I was showing Mat how the pilot-controlled lighting worked through clicking the transmit key of the comm radio.  Unfortunately, after I'd set it to high, it wouldn't go back down to low again.  I normally land with the lights on their lowest setting because the lights outline the runway enough, but don't blind you.  With the lights on high, I felt like I was trying to land on a brightly-lit Christmas tree.  Following with the trend of the other two landings, I landed a little too flat.

Where's the video, you ask?  I left the camera plugged in at work.  Genius, I know.  At least I thought to grab a camera.  I'll have to do it again and get it on video.  That would have been my first flight since I got the camera's mount, too.  Oh well.  Next time.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0 - 50.4 (of 50)
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0 - 4.9 (of 40)

From the Ground

One thing I've always loved to do is sit and watch aircraft fly over.  It sounds incredibly boring, and it very well could be provided you're not in the right spot, but if you get the right spot you're set.  My favorite spot, as well as a favorite for many others in the area, is Gravelly Point Park, which is right under the final for Runway 19 into Washington National (DCA).

When I was a kid, my parents used to take me up there to sit and watch the DC9s, F100s, 727s and MD80s land for hours at a time.  The size of the aircraft has gotten a little smaller on average, but going there is still a lot of fun.

My friend Melissa suggested it during the week last week, and it was supposed to be nice out, so I definitely didn't object.  We aimed to get up there at 2:00 because that's when FlightAware's graphs showed the highest arrival rate for the day.  The weather showed that they'd also be in South Ops, meaning aircraft would be landing on Runway 19.

In an attempt to grab better pictures, I preset my white balance, which made for some great pictures when shooting away from the runway, but towards the runway you'll see color washing in some of the pictures that follow.  I tried to correct it in Photoshop (CS2 if you're curious - yes, I know it's old), but it is what it is.

The first aircraft I got a shot of was an AirTran Boeing 717.  Unfortunately, both the airline and the aircraft are nearing extinction.  The airline is being absorbed into Southwest, and the Boeing 717 will likely die with it in the United States (mainland anyway, as Hawaiian will continue to use them), as Southwest has said they will not be keeping them in its fleet.  It's not the prettiest plane, but I'll miss it.  It reminds me of all of the old tail-engined aircraft that used to fly in here all the time.  The Boeing 727 (although a tri-jet, still tail-engined), the McDonnell-Douglas 80s (which still fly here, but not as much as in the past), the Douglas 9s and the Fokker 100s all had tail-mounted engines.  The design of the 717 actually has its roots in the MD90-30 (and was actually named the MD95 until Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas), which had its roots in the MD80, which all began with the DC9.  Now you know everything you didn't need to know about the 717.

The next shot (that I decided to keep anyway), is a Canadair Regional Jet with Piedmont (flying as US Airways Express) ready to depart Runway 19.  I used to work with these when I worked the ramp at Dulles (IAD) with Independence Air and Air Wisconsin.  Some people will argue they ruined the industry (one guy who said this is mentioned below).  I'd argue they weren't the best choice for Independence.  Others probably have other claims, but you can't argue with the fact that they're just about everywhere, flying regional routes across the globe.  The houses in the background, by the way, are the base houses for Bolling AFB across the river.

Here's one of the old timers for the field.  It's an American McDonnell-Douglas 80.  American and Delta flew them heavily in the past, and there are still some of them around with both airlines.  Delta actually liked them so much that they bought as many of the upgraded MD90-30 version as they could before McDonnell-Douglas went out of business, and then bought a few more recently from airlines in the Pacific region.  I can't say much else about it other than the fact that it's nice to still see a few aircraft around that I grew up seeing.  It's a good looking plane done up in the American polished metal, too.

A few seconds later, I snapped this as it touched down on the runway.  The sky got washed, but I like everything else about it so I kept it around.  The smoke is of course from the wheels going from zero to about 140 miles per hour in less than a second.  Visible to the left of the plane is the Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR), which feeds Potomac TRACON with aircraft positions around the field, and the communications antennas for air to ground radio communications.  To the right, you can see the Runway 19-1 sign (red), with a stop sign next to it (which is for airport vehicles, not the planes).

This US Airways Airbus 319 is similar to the A320 that ended up in the Hudson River a while ago (it's just shorter).  I also worked with a few of these at Independence Air, but not very often.  These are getting more and more popular with the airlines, and have taken over the market for this size of jet.  Where you used to see 737s everywhere, you now see the Airbus 320-series (319, 320, 321).

Speaking of the 737, they're still around.  This one is a Boeing 737-700 flying for United.  To be honest, I like the plane, but the new United livery looks weird to me.  Since United and Continental merged, they kept the United name and used it on the Continental livery so there was a little of both that carried through.  The 737-700 is a newer model as part of the Next Generation (NG) series.  One of the optional upgrades is the blended winglets on the end of the wings that reduce drag and fuel consumption.  The original version of the 737 flew back in 1967.  That itself shows how strong Boeing's hold on that part of the market has been.

Here's another flying with American taxiing to depart, while the United in the last shot is about to lift off.

Controllers here have a reputation for pushing the limits of how many aircraft and take off and land at DCA.  It takes a lot of skill for the controllers both in the TRACON and in the tower at the airport to do that and keep it safe.  Despite that story that came out a while ago where a controller had fallen asleep, on the whole these people are using a skill set most could only dream of having, handling hundreds of lives at a time. These last two shots somewhat capture that, as the A319 (US Airways) is on short final, with one aircraft about to lift off, and one holding short of the runway waiting for it to land.  My friend Melissa is in the foreground.

Here's another CRJ flying with Air Wisconsin (for US Airways Express).  If you look carefully, you can see another CRJ being vectored for the approach, which is called the River Visual Runway 19 Approach and it's somewhat of a legendary approach in the United States.

 

Smaller aircraft going into the airport can land on the other two runways: Runway 15-33 and Runway 4-22.  The aircraft is an Embraer 170 (Shuttle America as Delta Connection) crossing between me and the buildings of Crystal City to land on Runway 15.  To me, the plane looks like the short bus of planes, but I might be influenced to say that because they're a bear to service.  I had to deal with them when I worked at Air Wisconsin.  They need a jet bridge or portable stairs, whereas the other regionals I worked with had stairs built in to the door.  The bag bins were also pretty difficult to work in.  Whining aside, they're pretty successful in sales, so I can't argue with that.

This is another aircraft you don't see much anymore.  Earlier, I mentioned the 737 is a design that's been around for a while.  Since it first came out it went through a few design changes, and the pictured aircraft is part of the series that sported the first major changes.  This aircraft in particular is a Boeing 737-400 flying for US Airways.  The first in the series were the 737-100 and -200.  The pictured generation is the 737-300, -400 and -500 (oddly enough the 737-500 is shorter than the -300 and -400).  The current generation is the 737-600, -700, -800 and -900.

The longer version of the earlier EMB170 is the EMB190, which JetBlue uses in addition to its A320s.  I still think they're weird looking, but this one has a nice tail, and I managed to catch a bird in the shot.

US Airways, in an attempt to break the monotony of the same design across all of its aircraft, has painted some of its aircraft in unique liveries.  Some of them are sports teams like this one, while others are what they call heritage liveries.  The heritage liveries are basically the paint jobs of past airlines (that were at some point integrated into US Airways), on the current planes.  This one (an A319) is painted up in the colors of the Philadelphia Eagles.  Each of US Airways's hub cities has an aircraft painted for its football team.


Earlier I mentioned Delta's love of the MD80s and 90s.  This is definitely an example of that.  Like I said earlier, they're going as far as Asia to pick more of them up because they're no longer in production.

As the Delta plane left, I ran into a local spotter who was equipped with a camera with a giant telephoto lens, a scanner, no less than three binders of information (which I later found out was the flight schedules printed in several sorts), and a bunch of other information to hand out to people interested in the hobby.  For those of you who don't know, spotters are people who take pictures of aircraft or those who log aircraft types and tail numbers as a hobby.  I guess I'm a casual spotter in the picture-taking sense, but some of these guys get serious.  He spots with the WashBalt Spotters group (linked below), so if you're interested in photography and aircraft, it might be something for you.

If you're at all interested in spotting in the area, there are a few web pages that might be of interest to you:
http://washbaltspotters.net/
http://www.spotterswiki.com/index.php?title=Category:Virginia

I used a Nikon D60 with a 200mm lens, and it's decent at DCA, but you're better off with a 300mm if you have one or can afford it, especially at Dulles.

IR PIC XC Complete

N172DR - C172R - 1.7 hours

For those of you scratching your head, wondering what the heck the title is supposed to mean, it means "Instrument Rating Pilot in Command Cross Country Complete."  Basically, in order to get the rating, the FAA wants you to have 50 hours of flight time to destinations more than 50nm (57.5 "regular" miles) away.

After the last flight, I was looking at the numbers and noticing that I was only 1.4 short of the 50 hour requirement, so I figured I might as well put that one out of the way.  At first, I'd assumed that I'd leave a few hours in there for the long cross country, but I just wanted to get it all over with.  That requirement is now out of the way, so all I have to do now is knock out a ton of sim time, along with a ton more time in the aircraft with horse blinders on, and then go take a checkride.  Easy, right?

We'll see how it goes.

Melissa rode along with me again on this milestone trip, and since we were going to be flying later in the day, on a Sunday, we eventually settled on Charlottesville for the trip.  It's shorter, it's easy, I know it, and it's safe.  Originally, I'd planned on departing in time to see the sun set, but by the time we both got ready, got to the airport, and got the plane ready, the sun had dipped below the horizon.  Even though it had disappeared, the sky was still a nice orange, so all was not lost.  Melissa also set up the Contour on the glareshield as I was preflighting, too, so I got the full taxi out, run up, and departure.  It's still in the testing phase, though, so it's still not perfect.  For one, I took 3M Command Adhesive to stick it to the glareshield, so it's still not properly mounted (the mount should be here in a few days), and I haven't tuned the camera settings to my liking.  In any case, there's a good bit of video captured prior to it getting too dark.

On the way down, I talked to the MANNE and CHOEA sectors of the Potomac TRACON, along with Charlottesville Tower of course.  As soon as I checked in with CHOEA, I was given the ATIS info and the arrival runway, which was Runway 3.  Once I was on tower's frequency, I was instructed to make right traffic, and flew over Route 29 to enter on the downwind.  As I entered the pattern, the tower controller, who was working a combined tower and ground, was giving instructions to a Colgan SAAB 340.  As usual, I don't like to be the little plane that gets in the way, I made a closer turn in to the runway, came in a little fast, and bled off the speed over the runway so that I could land, slow and exit the runway quickly.  That all worked out pretty well as I exited right before they called ready for departure.  Given the amount of wind, I'd say it was a pretty good landing.


The camera recorded nearly the whole flight, before it died on right base into Charlottesville.  Oddly enough, it actually split it into two videos.  I'm not sure if that was a file size limitation, or if it somehow got bumped in the turbulence, but it split the file.  Oh well.  Weird things always happen when adapting to new technology.

I took my normal taxi route to the Landmark ramp, which apparently somehow confused the tower controller, as he revised his earlier taxi instructions for Landmark.  It was the same tower controller I always talk to and I was in my normal plane, but I guess he had never paid attention to what I'd done before.  In any case, I made it in, parked and shut down.  The ramp guy parked me right in front of the door to the building (I felt a little first class right about then, no lie), and as I opened the door I was greeted with "the crew car should be here - no fuel?"  Even though our flight school worked out a deal to avoid the ramp fee at Landmark - CHO because the aircraft is based at a Landmark at JYO, I felt like I should give them something for letting me borrow their car all the time, so I had them put some fuel in it.  When I walked inside, Keya met me with similar, in that I knew the drill for taking the car, and we were off.

I haven't yet decided if I like the fact that I've come here so often that I'm recognized and understood or not.  On the one hand, I like being a regular because it's nice to actually develop relationships with people, even if only simple ones, and it's nice to have a go-to.  On the other hand, being a regular means you're also somewhat predictable (evidence in the comments when I got out of the aircraft and walked inside), and I'm not sure I like being predictable like that.  It's not a big deal, really, but it's something I've obviously thought about.

At the grill, Melissa noticed the kid's menus had horses on them, and asked if I wanted to take one to color.  Of course, being an occasional large child, I did.  The hostess made note of the move and gave me a hard time about it as well.  At the table, I colored the horses while Melissa chastized me for my lack of proper shading - with Crayons, mind you - while the server, Chris, got the drinks and took the food order.  Melissa tried to steal my burger twice in the time we were there: once when we were ordering, and once when it came out.  In the end, I managed to end up with my Clint Eastwood burger, despite her efforts.  As we got ready to leave, I decided to finally get the names of the servers I liked and write them down so I can request them next time, which Chris helped with.  As a thanks, we left the drawing.  He said they'd hang it up if we left it, so we'll see what happens with it next time I'm there.

After taking care of the fuel and getting the plane set, we were off again.  Tower got us set up with flight following from Potomac while we were still on the ground, waiting for a US Airways regional jet to land.  As the RJ was exiting, we got the standard on course takeoff clearance, and we were off.  As usual with my departures out of CHO, I made a short field takeoff.  I find them fun and they keep my skill up for if I ever need to do one in the future.  I kinda want to see what it looks like from the ground, though.

The flight back was calmer, though still bumpy in parts.  As we got closer to JYO, I asked Potomac (ASPER), if I could get cleared into the Bravo.  The controller let me know she'd advise me as I got closer, and eventually cleared me in, VFR at or below 5500'.  Keeping it up at 5500' was nice, as we had a 20 knot tailwind, which put us up at about 140 across the ground.  Once we were about 20 miles out I called the field in sight, but she held on to us until we were about 5 out.  From there, I made a non-standard left base entry (nobody was around) and landed on Runway 35.

You know the rest of the story.

Yeah.  That's the runway, and that's the end of the video.

50 hours of PIC XC done.  Now it's just the instrument time, and the long cross country with multiple approaches.

Hours:
Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 1.7 - 50.4 (of 50) 
Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0 - 4.9 (of 40)