Some of you may recall that I outed myself as a nerd a while back, by noting the fact that I grew up using Flight Simulator, and continue to do so as part of my code job. Over the years, I've met quite a number of people through the aviation community, but also as part of the sim community. One of my CFI friends is in the section of that Venn Diagram where the circles overlap, and he had some sim hardware to sell. One of our mutual friends - also in the overlapping segment - was interested in buying it, but all of it was still up in New Jersey. My CFI friend and I flew up to coordinate all of that. Unfortunately, given the weight requirements, and the size of the hardware, our friend had to drive up.
It was an incredibly cold and rather windy morning, which made getting the aircraft ready a chore, to say the least. Luckily, my brother had given me some cycling leg and arm warmers for Christmas, which I wore under a few additional layers of clothing. I was thinking that I would need to be able to strategically pull the warmers off without even messing with the other layers once the heater warmed us up at cruise. I was wrong. I just left them on the whole time.
Since the trip up to Morristown (MMU) would require flying around a whole bunch of busy airspace, we filed and flew IFR. The controllers brought us west of most of the airspace around Dulles (IAD), and then turned us back east toward Philadelphia (PHL), where we followed our route up toward MMU. I know I make that sound simple, and the flying part of it was, but the mental part was not. The cold temperature up at that altitude was tough to handle, even with the heater going full tilt. The heaters in small planes are selectively effective. My upper body was quite warm, but my left foot was pretty close to entirely numb toward the end of the flight. The wind was still pretty strong when we got up to MMU, but it wasn't unmanageable. After we parked, we set off to take care of handing hardware over, and warming ourselves back up.
After getting back, we filed our flight plan to get back home and set back off that way. It wasn't too much warmer, but it was just warm enough that the flight back home wasn't as rough. Closer to HEF, the controllers vectored us right over IAD, which was a pretty cool vantage point. A few large aircraft flew under us on approach there. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures. A few minutes later, we were back on the ground at HEF putting the plane away.
With these 4.4 hours in the books, the complex requirement for the commercial rating is complete. Only 3.4 hours left of the instrument requirement.
Hours: Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 128.8 (of 50) Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 3.0 - 35.6 (of 40) Dual Complex: 4.4 - 12.1 (of 10) Total Time in Aircraft: 4.4 - 203.1 (of 250)
As the weekend approached, a flight instructor friend of mine asked if I'd want to split time in an Arrow to enjoy the nice weather. Not one to pass up an opportunity to fly, but also be able to log time toward the instrument rating requirements, I took him up on it. I had been wanting to get out to Hot Springs (HSP) for quite some time. It's a unique airport, being on top of a mountain, and is actually the highest airport east of the Mississippi River. This spot also causes it to be subject to various wind hazards to challenge you on approach. Today, being a windy day, meant that those challenges would be present for my first visit.
Since my friend is based out of Manassas (HEF), I got a break from Leesburg (JYO), and a refresher on the procedures down there. Apart from having to talk to controllers in the tower, and filing a flight plan, it really isn't too different. After departing, we flew directly out to HSP, and I was able to throw the blinders on to log instrument time. Closer to the field, I flew the ILS approach for practice, beginning with a hold for good measure.
Just before landing, the wind started to play games with my approach path and I ended up pretty low. It wasn't the prettiest final approach, but it got the job done. As soon as we exited, we brought the plane back to the runway to head back home. I have been into some pretty unique airports in my years of flying around, but I was not prepared for what I saw as I rolled up to the hold short line. The taxiway comes right up to a sharp drop off, giving you a pretty spectacular view as you prepare yourself to depart.
Once back in the air, I put the blinders back on to log some more time on the way back home. It was a pretty simple flight, but quite a visually memorable one. Of course, it didn't hurt that I was able to log time toward the simulated instrument, and complex requirements.
Hours: Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 2.7 - 127.1 (of 50) Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 1.9 - 30.7 (of 40) Dual Complex: 2.7 - 7.7 (of 10) Total Time in Aircraft: 2.7 - 195.8 (of 250)
There are some times during the weekend where you simply find yourself with nothing left to do. Granted, this doesn't happen often for me between my day job forcing a lot of my activities to the weekend, my PMDG job contributing to that, PMDG Flight Ops activities (flying around in a DC-3, obviously, usually takes priority over just about anything else), and various other activities like visiting family and keeping the fridge stocked. To be clear, I have nothing against any of those things (besides maybe my day job), but it does mean that I'm rarely simply sitting there trying to come up with something to do.
Luckily, today was one of those days, and I saw an email go out from the school I got checked out with back in April. They needed a pilot to help chase an aircraft from Manassas (HEF) to Stafford (RMN), in order to bring him back from his ferry flight. I immediately called the school to offer to help out and was told to head down to the field and coordinate with the other pilot.
Once there, we waited out some isolated, typical summer storms and set off to RMN. The weather on the way over was still pretty hazy, and there were still isolated rain showers in spots, which was an interesting experience, and offered some pretty cool sights.
On the way back, the other pilot offered to let me log hood time, both to help me get the time, and to help him log time and not just sit there. We were nearly all the way back to HEF when we decided to see if the controller could give us a practice approach to the field, which actually took us all the way back over RMN. It was extra time, though, and time that I needed, so neither of us complained.
After bringing the plane back in and getting it tied down, we added our entries to the logbooks and then headed home. I, of course, stopped by to say good night to the 3 on the way out.
Hours: Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 101.4 (of 50) Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.7 - 17.8 (of 40)
For Christmas, two of my friends got me a gift card for flying time at a flight school one of them uses. While it is a competitor to the flight school I've used for nearly 12 years now, said other school has a location at Manassas (HEF), while my long time flight school does not. The convenience here is that the DC-3 got moved to HEF, and there have been days when we've returned from a trip and I stop and think "you know, I really want to go flying on my own now." Until recently, that would have meant driving all the way up to Leesburg (JYO), but these thoughts usually came at a time too late to request that the keys to one of the aircraft get left in the lock box. With a checkout at HEF, it would mean walking across the ramp and right into a plane.
With that in mind, I scheduled a checkout with one of the instructors at the school to get checked out in their C172M. The checkout itself was the standard flight school checkout of taking the plane out, doing some slow flight, stalls, landings, and then bringing it back in. The addition of the flap 40 setting in the older M model was now, along with the flap toggle instead of the flap lever. Other than that, the main challenge was the wind of 21015G22 at Culpeper (CJR). Bringing it back in to HEF was a little more challenging as the wind of 19014G22 meant a 30 degree crosswind. I forgot to hold the crosswind correction in on the rollout, so the wind came up a bit, but the reminder from nature was enough to get me to do it from then on.
Nice and simple, and now I'm set and ready to use their aircraft to build time and enjoy some flying of my own after the DC-3 trips.
Hours: Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 0.0 - 98.5 (of 50) Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.0 - 16.6 (of 40)
I'd have to say that autumn is my favorite season of all of them. It's not too hot, it's not too cold, and although it's a little rainy around where I live, the leaves changing colors is pretty cool. When I woke up this morning, I didn't think I'd go flying, but I did note how awesome one of the trees in my neighborhood looked. When someone I met at work mentioned going flying, I knew exactly where we would be going.
No, not Charlottesville.
One of the better places to go around here, if you're looking to check out the fall colors, is Skyline Drive. To the west of the ridge line that Skyline Drive follows is the Luray Valley, which is part of the Shenandoah Valley. If you've ever been on Skyline Drive and thought it looked cool, you should see it by air.
Because Marcy and I wanted to actually see the colors, we were presented with a little time issue. Meeting up at Leesburg (JYO) would've meant losing daylight after work, so I agreed to fly down to Manassas (HEF) to pick her up, and then continue to Luray (LUA). This, of course, presented me with a little airspace issue.
The direct path would really get me in hot water with Dulles Tower, as you can see in the picture on the left. Another option was to head out of the SFRA (the blue hatched arc with a white background in the picture) to the west and remain outside almost all the way until HEF. That option would take more time, but it gave me more room to work with. The final option is somewhat less obvious, unless you're really looking, and you're really comfortable with ATC and airspace. The four blue lines near the center of the picture are the runways at Dulles (IAD). The thick blue circle surrounding it is the airspace that starts at the ground and continues up to 10,000'. The next ring out is airspace that starts at 1,500', which you can see over JYO. As long as I stay under that 1,500' shelf of airspace, west of the floor airspace, and talk to Potomac Approach for clearance into the SFRA, I'm golden.
If you look closely, I even have a good landmark to keep me out of the floor airspace (aviation term for airspace that starts at the ground): Route 15. What you can't really see are the Bull Run Mountains, which I've talked about before in past posts because they're tall enough that you can't fly over them with legal clearance, yet remain below the Class B airspace. So, if I stay at 1,300', west of Route 15, and east of the Bull Run Mountains, I'm set. It really isn't the most ideal route - I don't really like being kept that low to the ground, and being close to airspace always makes me a little nervous - but it shaves enough time to make it worth it. I definitely wouldn't try it at night.
I took my time with the preflight, since I was slightly ahead of schedule, but still managed to get out ahead of a couple inbound aircraft. Once airborne, I coordinated my departure path with one of those inbound aircraft as flying the standard pattern would have meant cutting him off. I've noticed I've gotten a lot better at spotting traffic, for reasons I'm sure you already know if you've been following the blog for any amount of time. After I was clear of the traffic, I called Potomac up and got cleared into the SFRA. From there, I turned southbound to follow Route 15 down to Haymarket.
IFR really means "I Follow Roads" right?
(Route 15 runs right up the middle of the image)
Closer to HEF, Potomac passed me over to tower, who set me up on a left downwind for Runway 34R. If the pilot or ATC-side of you thought that last sentence was odd, mine did too. In the world of ATC, however, never forget two words: operational advantage. While putting me on the left downwind for runway 34R made me cross the final of 34L, it kept me away from two helicopters using 34R.
After landing over a construction team still working on extending the runway, I taxied off to the main terminal. Unfortunately, the main terminal doesn't have any parking spots painted on the ramp, so I asked the ground controller if she knew anything about the parking situation. She said she didn't, but offered a frequency for one of the FBOs next to me. The person who answered the call at APP Jetcenter was the GM, as I found out later. He gave me instructions on where to park, and even came out to marshal me into a spot as all of the other rampers were busy with other aircraft. I was pretty impressed, especially having been a ramp agent and supervisor myself.
I decided to try something new with the videos. I've always wanted to be able to add the voice communication to the recordings I take, but everything gets drowned out by the sound of the engine. I actually bought a cable to work with my voice recorder a while ago, but just got it (story and review of that will come at some point). With it, I'm now able to record the audio and then overlay it using the same program I use to create the time-lapse videos. This is the result:
It gives it an interesting new feel, and now I don't have to try to explain the things I find funny on frequency.
The rest of the flight was pretty simple. After taking off, tower kept me on runway heading for departure traffic on Runway 34L. Once that traffic turned southbound, I got my turn on course and frequency change to Potomac. Despite listening in to the frequency for a few seconds and calling when it was clear, the controller snapped back with "all VFR traffic standby!" As I've mentioned before, controllers often work combined frequencies, so you can't always hear the other traffic on the frequency. While the tone did seem a little unnecessary, I shrugged it off. In any case, I continued on my way to LUA, climbing under the Class B airspace. After crossing the mountain ridge, I descended into the valley to get a closer look at the colors and continued inbound to the airport.
After landing on Runway 4, I parked the plane on the North Ramp and got a ride into town from Kenny for dinner at Uncle Buck's. If you haven't flown in during the week, you probably haven't run into Kenny, but he's a great guy, just like John. They have a good crew down there.
The flight home was pretty quiet, and the landing at JYO was uninterrupted as there aren't many people who fly later in the day on weekdays. After landing on Runway 17 and parking the plane back in its spot, it took a while to get all of my technology out. It hadn't occurred to me until just now how much I have in there: the Contour, the iPad, the Garmin GLO, and a voice recorder. That's all on top of the other normal items.
No idea where the next trip will take me, but I'm not going unless I can get some simulated instrument time. Yes, that's an invitation to my other pilot friends.
Hours: Pilot in Command Cross Country (PIC XC): 1.9 - 72.4 (of 50) Actual/Simulated Instrument (Act/Sim): 0.0 - 8.3 (of 40)
Since the trip up to Morristown (MMU) would require flying around a whole bunch of busy airspace, we filed and flew IFR. The controllers brought us west of most of the airspace around Dulles (IAD), and then turned us back east toward Philadelphia (PHL), where we followed our route up toward MMU. I know I make that sound simple, and the flying part of it was, but the mental part was not. The cold temperature up at that altitude was tough to handle, even with the heater going full tilt. The heaters in small planes are selectively effective. My upper body was quite warm, but my left foot was pretty close to entirely numb toward the end of the flight. The wind was still pretty strong when we got up to MMU, but it wasn't unmanageable. After we parked, we set off to take care of handing hardware over, and warming ourselves back up.
