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)