Land and Hold Short

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed dealing with comment and traceback/pingback spam on my two blogs, sometimes having to delete up to 50 a day (mostly in the moderation queue, fortunately). My first impulse was to ban comments completely, since most people who leave comments already have their own blogs, and can carry on discussions that way.

However, I do think that comments and pingbacks are valuable, so I’ve come up with a compromise: I will allow comments for all postings in the current and previous month, but close older postings to comments. I’ll still have to deal with a bit of spam, and you won’t be able to comment on very old postings, I think that this approach will work for everyone.

How do people on commercial services, like Blogger, deal with comment spam? Do you spend a measurable amount of time every day deleting it?

Congratulations to Hamish, who has just earned his instrument rating down in California. Hamish wisely reflects that he wants to ease into IFR flying — no low approaches, etc., until he has a lot of experience.

I’m going to be contrarian and suggest the opposite — get out there and experience as much as you can. Deliberately shoot approaches that are below minima. Fly in cumulous cloud and even in some (lowish) towering cumulus. To understand why, consider two scenarios.

Scenario 1

A year from now, you’re at the end of a three-hour flight, all in cumulus, with light-to-moderate turbulence the whole way. You’re frazzled and queasy yourself: one of your passengers has already thrown up twice and is begging you to land, and the whole plane stinks. The rental-car place at the airport closes in an hour. With the headwind, you’re not sure you actually have the full IFR reserve you planned on. You start the non-precision approach, expecting a much higher ceiling and an easy landing, but at MDA you’re just getting glimpses of the ground. You’re drifting around on the approach because you’re worrying about getting your pax on the ground. It looks like you’re right at the cloud base — just another 50 feet lower would have you clear, and you could switch to VFR (well, SVFR) almost immediately and finish the landing. Or, alternatively, you hit the MAP, and just as you’re starting to go missed, you can suddenly see the airport — almost right below you — through a break in the clouds.

Scenario 2

You’re at exactly the same airport, with exactly the same weather conditions. However, you’re alone in the plane (or with a flying buddy). You started out at an airport an hour away, where conditions are MVFR or VFR, assuring you of an easy return when you’re done practising here. You shoot the same non-precision approach, but this time, you have no intention of landing. You notice how you can see straight down at MDA, but you have no forward visibility. You drift slightly, but correct immediately because you’re not worried about whether you’ll be able to land. As you hit the MAP and start the missed approach (which was your plan all along), you notice the airport right below, and remind yourself to remember how it would not be possible to land safely at this point even though you saw the airport.

Are they both dangerous?

There’s no question that Scenario 1 reads like the beginning of an NTSB crash report (in fact, it has enough risk factors to make up several NTSB reports). But what’s the real risk here? Is it that the pilot is not skilled enough to handle the plane in IMC? The pilot and passengers in the first scenario are at an enormous risk of dying, not because of the pilot’s ability or inability to manipulate the controls and scan the instruments, but because of the pilot’s ability or inability to make difficult decisions. That’s the biggest problem with IFR training in both Canada and the US — 90% of IFR training focusses on how to handle the plane and follow finicky hold and approach procedures within tolerances, but 90% of real IFR flying is making complicated decisions like the one in scenario 1. You do not learn much useful about IFR flying by going round and round your local training area planning hold or approach entries, either under the hood or in actual IMC. Nobody does anything stupid IFR until they actually have to get somewhere.

I’d suggest that, even though the approach is below minima, Scenario 2 is not unacceptably dangerous (since there’s no temptation to try to land); in fact, scenario 2 is the kind of thing that IFR pilots should get out and do as often as possible. The more a pilot practises shooting low approaches that he or she has no intention of landing, the less likely a pilot is going to be fooled by the temptation to duck and dive under minima because of a glimpse of the ground or the airport — the pilot learns what conditions for a missed approach really look like (i.e. not necessarily white outside the windshield), and will be more confident about the choice to go missed in Scenario 1. I did a whole bunch of non-precision approaches like these one day last fall, and it was a great experience; I’m hoping to do the same thing again in a week or so, now that the freezing level is lifting.

Despite all the practice I’ve had, I’m not much better at the mechanical parts of IFR flying than I was in summer 2003 when I got my instrument rating (I’ll be repeating the IFR flight test this summer — in Canada, we have to retake it every two years). I hold altitude and heading a bit better that I did then, but it’s nothing like the improvement in airmanship that you get from two years of VFR flying. The big difference between then and now is what I’ve learned about (a) weather and (b) the ATC system. I did well on my written IFR test, but I cannot believe how little practical knowledge I had of weather then, not to mention of how ATC really worked. It takes only a few bad encounters with weather phenomena to teach you to pay a lot more attention to meteorology, and to realize that reading the TAFs, FDs, and (G)FAs is only a tiny first step to planning a flight: if you cannot explain why a TAF or (G)FA is forecasting the weather it is, you’re not ready to take off yet. And it takes only one long vector on a dark, rainy night to teach you how to learn about traffic flow near big airports and how to plan around it.

Kris Johnson, a student pilot, has a post about the lack of glamour in being a pilot. Instead of the soft leather jacket, silk scarf, and rougish smile, it’s a big, clumsy headset, googly sunglasses, and trying to find a dignified way to lower yourself bum-first into a Piper Warrior down off the wingwalk.

I’m not sure where Kris lives, but in colder latitudes, we also have the problem of dressing for survival in case of a forced landing during winter months — that means long underwear, thick socks, toque, big mittens, scarf, etc. Basically, you end up looking like one of the kids from South Park before you even get to the headset.

Mike Busch has written a column about annual inspections in the U.S., especially about understandings and misunderstandings among U.S. IA’s (inspection authoritiesI think) — many US IAs think that they are a kind of police force responsible for keeping unsafe planes on the ground, and many US owners think that IAs can hold their planes hostage by squawking them.

In the U.S., after an annual inspection, the IA signs off that the plane is airworthy (or gives a discrepancy list to the owner). In Canada, as far as I understand the regs (and as my AME has explained them to me), the AME does not even have to write that the plane passed or didn’t pass an annual inspection, at least not for small, private, piston-powered aircraft. Here’s the exact language from CARS Standard 625, Appendix B — Maintenance Schedule:

(6) Pursuant to CAR 605.86(2), the schedule is considered to be approved for use by owners of small non-commercial operation aircraft and all balloons. Owners need only to make an entry in the aircraft technical records that the aircraft is maintained pursuant to the maintenance schedule.

In other words, I could grab the maintenance schedule, research the ADs, make a list of tasks (inspections and repairs), and take the plane to three different shops, each of which does a third of the work. I would not have to tell any of those shops that the work was part of an annual inspection — each one would simply write what it did into the logbook. Once I was satisfied that everything required for the annual inspection was finished, I would simply return the aircraft to service, and my annual inspection is finished.

In practice, of course, I wouldn’t do things that way. I value my the experience and knowledge of my AME, and I want him to take an active role in keeping the plane safe. And, of course, with or without an IA’s signature, the final responsibility for airworthiness will always lie with the pilot in command.

[Updated: Bloglines OK] At the request of a couple of users, I’m going to experiment with switching this weblog to a fulltext RSS feed. I had been reluctant to do that because some of the posts are fairly lengthy, but it won’t hurt to try. Please leave a comment to let me know about any problems you may have.

I just noticed that WordPress is putting the full content for the RSS 2.0 feed into an RSS 1.0 encoded element, while the RSS 2.0 description element still contains only a summary. That is not what I expected — Bloglines, for example, seems to still be showing summaries, though I haven’t tried updating an old, longer posting to see what happens. Liferea on my desktop is showing the full text now.

I guess I’ll have to mess around with some WordPress PHP templates to put the full text into description, where (I think) it belongs.

Update: Bloglines is showing full text for new postings, but not for older ones. That’s probably OK.

When weather permits, VFR is often a good choice: it gives you more control over your route and altitude than you would have IFR, generally speeds up the trip (since you don’t have to be spaced and sequenced as much during departure and arrival, especially at busy airports), makes it easier to avoid icing in winter time, and just all-round feels nice. When there are clouds somewhere along the route, however, you have to make an important decision: VFR underneath, or VFR over the top?

The decision is hardest when the clouds are right around the best cruise altitudes for your plane, say, 3,000 to 8,000 feet for a normally-aspirated piston aircraft like my Warrior. If you fly underneath, you could end up dealing with precipitation, marginal visibility, hills and towers, and (of course) lots of turbulence; if you fly over the top, you could end up dealing with strong headwinds, and, most importantly, you could get stuck up above an overcast. For my return to Ottawa from Teterboro, mindful of the Catskill and Adirondack mountains along my route, I chose to go on top at 9,500 feet for the smooth air and lack of mountains to fly into; and yes, I got stuck.

I knew that things weren’t going my way when the broken cloud layer closed up to an overcast near Saranac Lake, NY instead of breaking up to scattered. I checked the Massena, NY ASOS (I had planned to descend there, over the flat land) and it was also calling overcast; the Ottawa ATIS, which was coming in from 100 miles away at that altitude, was calling broken clouds. Halfway between Saranac Lake and Massena, I was handed off to Montreal Centre for flight following, and I talked to them about the situation, warning that I might need an IFR clearance to get down. The controller insisted that the latest weather for Massena was showing scattered (as I’m sure it was, as far as the data available to the controller went), so I said that I could wait until closer to Ottawa.

In the end, I got my clearance for an IFR descent inside Ottawa Terminal airspace. I knew that the cloud layer was too thin to hold any large, supercooled water droplets, so icing wouldn’t be a major issue; still, I activated all of the meagre ice-prevention gear at the Warrior’s disposal before starting down: pitot-static heat on, carb heat full, heat on defrost. The clouds were less than 1,000 feet of stratocumulus, and I was through them and back VFR in a couple of minutes, as expected.

Now, let’s try some what ifs. What if I hadn’t been flying an IFR-capable aircraft, or weren’t IFR current? There was no hole that a VFR pilot could have used — the biggest one I saw near Ottawa was about 50 meters long, and mostly there were no holes at all. Canadian VFR pilots require a special rating and 15 hours instrument time to fly VFR over the top, but US pilots have no such requirement. If I had been a new American PPL, with (say) 70 hours experience, arriving at Ottawa stuck on top of the overcast with only my required 30 minutes VFR fuel reserve, how would ATC have dealt with me? Obviously, Montreal didn’t have up-to-date information about Massena — might they have sent me somewhere similar, where I might have found nothing but more overcast? The centre controller could tell that I wasn’t in trouble by my calm tone of voice and the specificity of my request (”I might need an IFR clearance to get down” rather than “I need to find some way to get down” or even “oh my god! oh my god!”), so I was handled much more casually than my hypothetical VFR-only pilot. I’d like to know how they would have handled that pilot, who might have been getting more and more panicky as the fuel got lower and the cloud layer stayed solid underneath.

My flight met all the requirements for VFR over top — the sky was clear at my point of departure, Massena was forecast scattered, giving me a way down, etc. — but I still got stuck. Does VFR over the top make sense for non-instrument rated pilots? Certainly, it’s safer than scud running around mountains, but I would not have wanted to be up there without the IFR option. At least a much bigger required fuel reserve would be a good idea.

I just got back from a short trip to New York with my family and my first visit to Teterboro airport. A big advantage of Teterboro is that it has customs at the airport, so I was able to fly non-stop from Ottawa rather than landing just over the border to clear US customs.

Once again, I was surprised at how (relatively) quiet New York Approach was. I always hear pilots either complaining or boasting about the rapid-fire radio traffic, etc., but the radio was much noisier (and faster) departing Ottawa than arriving in New York — on arrival, my sector wasn’t any busier than, say, Albany Approach, much less Ottawa or Toronto Terminal. Maybe it’s just that we Canadians talk even faster than NY air traffic controllers pumped up on caffeine and adrenaline …

I was VFR arriving at noon on Monday and was able to fly straight to the airport and directly into a tight right downwind for runway 01. Leaving VFR around 3:00pm EST Wednesday afternoon was a bit busier, but my delay was still only about 10 minutes waiting behind a line of bizjets (tower let me cut into the middle of the line and take off from an intersection). This was my third time flying into New York airspace — I previously landed at Caldwell, NJ (Essex County Airport) VFR and Farmingdale, NY (Republic Airport) IFR in low IMC. Some pilots, and even flight instructors, are too nervous to fly into NY — I think the reputation for scary airspace and ATC is completely undeserved. If you can handle flying in Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal, you can handle New York, at least arriving from the north. Get out there and try something new.

The down side is getting into the city from any of the airports I mentioned. A limo from Teterboro to SoHo cost USD 90, including tip; a taxi from SoHo back to Teterboro cost USD 80, including tip. By comparison, parking the plane for two nights at Teterboro cost (I think) USD 25, since the first night was free with a fill up. My total bill at Teterboro, including fuel from Ottawa (23 US gallons, at high Teterboro prices), parking from Monday to Wednesday, and tax was only USD 139, which is a lot less than the ground transportation. Next time, we might try the cheap municipal express bus to the Port Authority if we don’t have too much luggage. As an alternative, it might be worth paying the USD 100 fee at La Guardia in exchange for an easy USD 18 cab ride into midtown — if anyone’s tried that, please leave a comment or pingback/traceback from your own weblog to let me know how it went.

The U.S. Airport/Facility Directory consistently lists 1-800-WX-BRIEF as the phone number for any Flight Service Station (FSS). Unfortunately, the toll-free numbers don’t work for a Canadian cell phone, even when you’re in the U.S. — that makes life hard when you want to close a flight plan after landing at a non-towered airport (for example), or get a weather briefing while you’re in the taxi on the way to the airport.

Fortunately, I’ve just found this PDF list of local numbers for all U.S. FSS. Once I actually had to call Nav Canada’s toll-free FIC number just to have them look up a U.S. FSS number for me — I’m printing this out and putting it in my flight bag so that that doesn’t happen again. They’re also useful for getting a U.S. briefing from a Canadian landline.

The US has some sites for tracking flights on the web (IFR or VFR with flight following), but as far as I know, they all require accounts, membership in an organization, or something like that. While collecting information for our family trip to New York City on Monday, I was visiting the Teterboro Airport web site and discovered a link to a real time feed of flights into, out of, and around Teterboro. You can watch the planes take off, land, and transit the airspace, and you can click on any plane to find out its type and altitude. Similar feeds are available for Newark, La Guardia, and JFK. You can zoom out to get the big picture, or zoom in to get a detailed view of what’s going on close to the airport.

So now you have to decide who you want to pretend to be — John Cusack or Billy Bob Thornton — and then you can scream into your imaginary headset lining up planes tight on the approach to keep the tin moving and prove that you’re the alpha-controller. Of course, the planes won’t listen to you, but that’s life. More seriously, it’s a great way to get a feel for traffic patterns before flying into New York airspace, supposedly the world’s busiest (though I’ve flown my Warrior in and out twice so far and found it quieter than Toronto or Ottawa on a busy day — that might just have been my timing).

Aviatrix has a great posting on the pointless mnemonics we learn during flight training, such as GUMPS (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Props, Switches) for last-second pre-landing checks and CCCC (Cram levers forward, Carb Heat [or Cowl Flaps], Climb, Call ATC) for an overshoot (go-around, for our American cousins).

I have a strong feeling that these so-called mnemonics (which don’t usually help you remember anything, as Aviatrix pointed out) come originally from the military, where people have to memorize lots of procedures for their own sake, whether they were practical or not. When the goal is to remember the exact words of the procedure rather than learn the procedure itself, the mnemonics might work.

Do they actually help us fly, though? During training, I did find occasionally find that phrases were useful, like “time-turn-throttle-talk” at transitions in an instrument approach, or “aviate-navigate-communicate” when I found myself a bit behind the plane, but memorizing these as TTTT or ANC would not have done me any good. I don’t consciously use either of these any more, though, just as I don’t actually have to count two steamboats to make sure that I have a safe following distance on the highway.

I can remember some mnemonics that never helped at all, like AMORT for an approach — I think it was “approach [right one?]-minima-overshoot-radios-timings”, but if I spent too much time trying to figure it out, I’d probably blow through the localizer or fly the plane into the ground, so I’ve pushed that one from my memory. In real life, as opposed to IFR training, you have lots of time to set up your approach anyway — you’re probably starting to fiddle with the radios 50 miles out, trying to see if you can pick up a hint of the localizer yet, just because you’re bored. You read the approach plate over and over again like a cereal box on the breakfast table, because there’s not much else to do but look at the white outside the windows, scan the gauges, and listen to the airline pilots messing up their clearances on the radio (”XXX flight 000, please confirm you want direct Sudbury; your flight plan shows that your destination is North Bay”; “Umm, yeeeeah, thanks Ottawa terminal — request North Bay, please”).