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Land and Hold Short

Archive for May, 2008

Partial panel

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

attitude indicator

I had my first experience flying partial panel in IMC on Monday, coming home from Boston. It wasn’t the classic partial panel — a vacuum failure — but a failure of the attitude indicator instrument itself, followed by the airspeed indicator while I was on an ILS approach. The AI had been sluggish for a while, but I had told myself that it was still usable as long as I allowed for a few seconds’ lag. In IMC and moderate turbulence (with a bit of light icing to distract me), however, it was totally useless, and I ended up relying on the turn coordinator to keep the wings more-or-less level, with the heading indicator as a backup.

I’ve heard that partial panel in a slick plane with retractable gear can be a nightmare, but the Cherokee is so slow, draggy, and spiral-resistant that it wasn’t more than an irritant. I’m not sure that simulated partial panel under the hood does anything to prepare you for it, though, because the hardest part is recognizing that you have a problem in the first place (I’m also not convinced that flying under a hood does much to prepare you for flying in actual IMC, but that’s another posting.)

Losing the ASI wasn’t a big deal, since I was already on the glideslope and had a 10,000 ft runway ahead of me, so I just kept a generous power setting on the tachometer and burned off the extra speed in a long flare.

The plane is grounded until the pitot system is cleaned out and tested, the AI is fully overhauled, and new wiring is installed for the intermittent landing light.

Posted in system, weather | 3 Comments »

OurAirports at DemoCamp Ottawa

Saturday, May 24th, 2008

DemoCamp Ottawa 9 logo

I’ll be giving a short demo of OurAirports at DemoCamp Ottawa 9 next Monday (26 May 2008). Feel free to drop by if you’re in town. It’s at The Velvet Room in the ByWard Market, starting at 7:00 pm.


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Posted in OurAirports, web | No Comments »

Capital to Capitol

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

Canadian Parliament Buildings

U.S. Capitol

I flew from Ottawa, ON to Washington, DC (400 nm) today, with a few pilot firsts:

  • First time flying south of the Mason-Dixon line.
  • First time flying outside the 40-49 degree north latitude band as PIC.
  • First time flying into the Washington, DC ADIZ.
  • First time dealing with turbulence, icing, IMC, thunderstorms, and extensive routing changes in unfamiliar airspace all at the same time (with no autopilot).

What a difference 45 minutes makes …

Over central Pennsylvania: cruising in smooth air, under clear skies, watching the Susquehanna River wind back and forth across my flight path, eating a bagel and thinking “it doesn’t get better than this.”

Over Maryland: in cloud in the weather that was supposed to stay south over the Carolinas, rain pounding on the windscreen, checking the Stormscope every few seconds, and trying keep the LO chart (and my head) still enough in the turbulence to find VORs I’ve never heard of for my new routing, while staying roughly on course, at altitude, and level. No bagels involved.

Easy ADIZ

The ADIZ is no big deal if you’re IFR — it’s exactly the same as any IFR flight, except that you have to turn around and exit instead of continuing to your destination if you have a transponder or comm failure. It was no different than flying IFR into, say, Philadelphia or Montreal.

Dulles

Washington/Dulles is surprisingly GA-friendly for a big airport — there’s an $8.00 landing fee, a bit over $18.00/night for parking, and that’s it (they waive the $28 handling fee if you buy gas). The FBO is right beside the main terminal, closer than you’ll usually be on an airliner (where you have to take the @#$#@ people movers from a satellite terminal).

I was flying ridiculously slowly (80kt) at full throttle into a brutal headwind, but both Potomoc approach and Dulles tower were very accommodating, vectoring me parallel to the localizer until about six miles back, then giving me an easy intercept. I had no delay to speak of, even though I was sharing the approach with much faster jet airliner traffic. They gave me the runway I requested (close to Signature), and even gave me step-by-step taxi instructions (which I didn’t ask for, but appreciated after a long flight).

Still better than the airlines

I think it’s great that I can fly from the Canadian to the U.S. capital on 38 U.S. gallons of avgas, in about the same amount of time as it would take on the airlines (when you include having to be at the airport early for security, etc.). Last time I took the airlines, the trip was actually longer than it would have been in my Cherokee, since the flight was delayed.

Posted in canada-us, places | 9 Comments »