Category Archives: aviation

My trip to DC to compete in the Nation’s Triathlon was my first “real” IFR flight. I say “real” because it combined flight in actual instrument conditions with busy airspace and a long cross-country—conditions I expect to encounter often as I fly around.

Earlier in the summer, I had signed up for the tri.The timing was such that I would come home from GATTS, have a couple of days to pack, and then fly up to DC, hopefully with my instrument rating. That turns out to be what happened.

Flight planning was straightforward. The DC metro area has a number of general aviation airports scattered around, but it also has significant restrictions on its airspace. Without going into all of the gory details, it’s enough to point out that the airports that are closest to central DC are heavily restricted. In order to fly to the so-called “Maryland 3”, you have to go to either Dulles or BWI, get fingerprinted, have security interviews with the FAA and TSA, and then get a PIN that you use when filing flight plans. I didn’t have time to do that, so I settled on Manassas, which is further out but would provide a reverse commute into and out of the city—it also helped that the route from Manassas to the hotel passed right by the bike shop where I’d made arrangements to rent a road bike.

I planned an early departure Saturday morning. Because I’d been out of the office for most of the week, I couldn’t leave earlier than about 5pm, and I didn’t want to fly night IFR in unfamiliar, complex airspace after a full, and tiring, day at work—that’s how accidents happen. My original plan was to fly from Decatur to KGEV, fuel up with avgas and diet Coke, and then continue on to Manassas. The weather at Decatur at departure time was OK, with an overcast layer about 2000’, and Huntsville Approach quickly cleared me to my target altitude. The first hour or so of the flight was smooth on top, then things got a bit bouncy because there were clouds at my filed altitude—with some light rain and a fair bit of chop. Once past that, though, things were looking good until I looked at the weather at my destination airport and alternate . Both were below minimums, so instead I flew a bit further east and landed at Winston-Salem, which was nicely VFR. It turns out that the airport there has self-service or full-service fuel, with a whopping $1.69/gal price difference—but getting to the self-service pump from the FBO is an adventure that involves runway crossings and, in my case, aggravating the pilot of a Malibu who had to hold short while I taxied. Such is life.

The flight into Manassas was perfectly uneventful, just the way I like. I had filed direct from Winston-Salem to Manassas, but I didn’t expect to get that routing, and sure enough, I didn’t; Potomac Approach sent me direct to the Casanova VOR, then direct Manassas. It was fun watching the Foreflight traffic display en route, since I could see a ton of traffic into Reagan.

Watch out for the big iron!

Going to CSN first wasn’t much of a diversion, so it was no big deal. Manassas was VFR, but storms were expected later, so after I landed, the fine folks at Dulles Aviation hangared the plane. (I also want to point out that they provided stellar service: the rental car was ready when I got there, saving me a commute to the nearest Avis office some 12 miles away, and they treated me like I had just flown in on a Gulfstream.)

The return trip looked simple enough too. I filed direct Manassas to Greenbriar, WV. The race was on Sunday, and I needed to be at work Monday morning, so I had to leave late in the afternoon, meaning that several of the airports I would normally have considered as fuel stops were either closed, or would be. Greenbriar was reporting 900’ overcast, which was fine with me, so I filed, preflighted, and started up, then called Manassas Ground to get my clearance.

Here’s what I was naively expecting: “N32706, Manassas Ground, cleared as filed to LWB, climb and maintain 9000’, departure frequency…”

Here’s what I got instead: “N32706, Manassas Ground, cleared to LWB via the ARSENAL FOUR departure, thence the Montebello transition, then direct NATTS, then direct LWB; departure frequency…” Thus we see how ATC deals with the expectations of a novice IFR pilot. This set off a frantic burst of knob-twiddling as I tried to set up the KLN94 for that departure (which it didn’t have, since its onboard database was too old). I eventually got it set up, was cleared for takeoff, and then got a series of ridiculous vectors from Potomac Approach that sent me well north of where I wanted to be. However, the flight to Greenbriar was nice and smooth between layers, and, as advertised, the weather on arrival necessitated shooting the ILS, which I did smoothly. After taking on fuel, it was off to Decatur; the rest of the flight was unremarkably smooth except for a great sunset and some tasty snacks (yay vanilla wafers!) I considered it a very successful trip!

A great sunset to cap off a great trip. Not shown: vanilla wafers.

I’m writing this recap a few days behind, and by now honestly lots of the flying is a blur– so I may have missed a few details here and there. Feel free to request a refund of your purchase price.

Day 4 started in the airplane, and whew. We flew arcs on the VOR-A at Emporia, then went to El Dorado, Kansas (which I never even knew existed) for fuel and an ILS approach. The airport there is named for Jack Thomas, a Marine fighter ace in World War II, and there is a nifty commemorative plaque. I hope he wasn’t watching, because I flew clumsily and nearly blew the approach. It didn’t help that on final approach I was distracted by a loud beeping; our backup radio was picking up a nearby emergency locator transmitter (ELT) that someone had accidentally triggered. Peter suggested that perhaps Captain Thomas’ ghost had affected my approach. Maybe he’s right….

Capt. Jack Thomas, USMC. Semper Fidelis.

When we left, our next stop was Hutchinson, where we flew the localizer backcourse (LOC BC) approach to runway 31. In a previous entry, I mentioned that an ILS provides precision lateral and vertical guidance; the lateral component is based on a radio transmitter known as the localizer. It transmits a narrow beam aligned with the runway centerline.. but it can broadcast in both directions. Hutchinson is a great example: the localizer on runway 13 is used for the ILS 13 and for the LOC BC 31. The difference: when you fly the backcourse, is that the course deviation indicator (CDI) is backwards! It’s still showing your lateral deviation from the runway centerline, but its direction is reversed than it would be on the front course. So instead of turning right when the needle is to the right of center, you turn left. This is wicked confusing until you get used to it. Having the GPS in map mode helps a lot because you get a good picture of the correct track to the localizer line.

After a pretty good landing at Hutchinson, we ate at the Airport Steakhouse. Sadly, there was no steak, but the buffet was decent. Right next to the main building, there’s a large repair shop, Midwest Malibu, that specializes in Piper Malibu, Meridian, and Mirage aircraft– very pretty, multi-million dollar birds. We walked over and had a quick tour, which was neat; I always like seeing the guts of interesting machinery. The highlight of the stop in Hutchinson for me was seeing Lady Liberty, the A-26 bomber flown by the Commemorative Air Force. She had an engine failure on final approach, so the picture below was carefully framed not to show the side with the missing engine.

When we left Hutchinson, our next stop was Marshall Army Air Field, part of Fort Riley. We didn’t stop there, of course; instead, we flew what’s known as a precision approach radar (PAR) approach. In a PAR approach, the controller gives you continuous verbal guidance on which way to fly and how your lateral and vertical alignment is holding up. You don’t acknowledge the controller, you just apply course corrections based on what he tells you. It’s both harder and easier than it sounds, but it was neat to do it. Civilian air traffic controllers can conduct similar approaches, but PAR approaches are unique to the military. Then it was back to Manhattan and the GPS for runway 21.

In the afternoon classroom session, we switched gears and moved to a different simulator, this one based on the Garmin G1000. I was familiar with the G1000 for VFR flying, but I hadn’t used it for IFR approaches before. The combination of the G1000 and the GFC700 autopilot is capable of flying a complete approach all the way to landing. Not that we did that, of course, but I did fly a couple of practice approaches into Alexandria, something that will come in handy when I go visit. Today’s classroom topics included more on currency, the start of a few days’ worth of discussions on weather, and coverage of the conditions under which you must designate an alternate airport as part of your flight plan (basically, if the weather at your destination airport is below a certain set of minimums, you have to pick an alternate and make sure you have enough fuel to get there).

Nifty portable G1000 simulator

After such a long day, I was pretty tired, so I went back to the apartment, read for a bit, and then headed out to find the Kansas State University rec center, where I’d read that there was a lap pool. Long story short: nope, it’s in another building (the Natatorium), but I eventually found it, got in the water about 845pm, and swam 800m, a new distance record. Then it was home for a turkey sandwich and a good night’s sleep. Luckily I wasn’t further troubled by ghosts.

My first real day of GATTS started bright and early Tuesday morning. I met Peter at the GATTS classroom facility, which is in a nice office park adjacent to a sports bar and some medical offices. When you walk in, here’s what you see:

Sadly, that wasn’t the simulator that Peter and I were scheduled to use, but more on that later. We adjourned to a small classroom and proceeded to dive into that day’s classroom curriculum. Because GATTS requires its students to pass the written exam before they show up, this was more a review of practical issues surrounding the topics we covered than a tabula rasa introduction. The GATTS class is structured in a fairly standard triad: first you discuss a topic with the instructor, then you do it in the simulator, then you do it in the airplane. These three things may take place on the same day, or they may not. I picked up a few tricks for holds, including what they teach as the “GATTS entry”. Instead of worrying about parallel vs teardrop vs direct, they preach a simpler rule: if you’re coming from the “long” side of the hold, go direct, and if you’re not, fly to the fix, fly 1nm past it, then turn 45 degrees opposite the turn direction for 2nm, then start your procedure turn. For example, let’s say you’re going to fly the published hold at DCU:

The DCU VOR 274 degree hold is that little racetrack-looking thing

If you’re west of the Decatur VOR, just fly until you intercept it; that’s easy. If you’re east, fly to it, fly past it, then turn from 274 degrees to 219 degrees, fly for 2nm, and then do your standard-rate procedure turn– you’ll magically end up about 3nm from the VOR on a heading of 94 degrees. (Try it if you don’t believe me). I was always taught to fly timed legs in a hold, so doing it with DME distance was quite a revelation, and it’s much easier. I flew that hold a few times in the simulator, along with a couple of other ones, then we reviewed and flew a few simulated approaches. About the simulator: Flight Simulator 2000 on an ancient Dell running Windows 95. Yep, old school. It shares the common PCATD simulator trait of being super sensitive in the roll axis, so you fly it like you do an A320: put in the amount of roll you want, then take it back out again. Neutralizing the controls in a turn does, basically, nothing; you have to apply an equal amount of opposite aileron to get where you want.

Anyway, I did a decent job in the simulator (flying a total of 4 approaches for 3.3 hours), so we headed out to the airport to go do some bidness. We flew approaches at Abilene (the VOR-DME A), Herington (the GPS 17), and Manhattan (the GPS runway 21, if I remember right) approaches, netting a total of 1.9 PIC hours for the 4 approaches. Sadly I only got 0.1 actual on this outing, but I did learn a great deal about how to coax the ancient KLN94 in the airplane into doing what I want.

The mental effort of learning all this stuff took its toll in the evening; after we put the plane to bed, I went to the grocery store, loaded up on food, then went back to the apartment and did absolutely nothing productive for the rest of the night. It took a while for all that learning to sink in, I guess!

In my last flying post, I explained why I was going to GATTS to get my instrument rating. For the next few posts, I’ll be chronicling my experiences there.

One of the things that appealed to me about GATTS was that you have the option to use your own airplane. Another is that they assign a single instructor to work with each student for the entire course, and (for a modest fee) they’d send the instructor down a day early to ferry the plane back. I wanted to take advantage of that option for two reasons: in case the weather were bad my arrival in Kansas wouldn’t be delayed, and I could use the extra flight time to get a head start on my classwork. I signed up for the ferry option, and, as planned, my instructor, a cheerful fellow named Peter Schmoling, showed up Sunday afternoon. The boys and I took him to dinner to get acquainted, and then Monday morning I picked him up at his hotel and we headed to DCU to start our trip.

We had planned to fly from Decatur to Kennett Memorial in Missouri, thence to Manhattan, Kansas, where GATTS is located. This plan went off without a hitch. I don’t have much to say about the actual flight except that I hand-flew both legs and logged a bunch of simulated instrument time while doing it. It was pretty smooth.

We found that the Kennett airport had a nest of fast food places right near the arrival end of runway 18, so we walked over to McDonald’s and had lunch. After refueling, I got to practice my hot-start techniques. The POH calls for a hot start procedure that’s identical to the cold start, minus priming. After doing some Internet research, I found that the consensus seems to be that the best procedure is to leave the electric fuel pump off, set the throttle to full, mixture to idle, and then start the engine. It took a couple of tries, but this procedure worked and we were off to Manhattan. Our flight was completely uneventful except that we had a controller out of Kansas City Center who sounded just like Cleveland Brown. I took the ILS approach for runway 3, landed, and taxied to the hangar that GATTS provides– it was a tight fit, but with Peter’s help I got the plane in without bending anything.

GATTS includes housing and a car in the course fee. My car was a late-90s Taurus with great air conditioning– the only thing I was really interested in at that point. After handing over a map and the car keys, Peter took off and I drove downtown to my apartment building, which sits over a swanky restaurant named Harry’s. The apartment itself is basic, but nice: a small kitchen (two toasters but no dishwasher), a comfy double bed, a dinette, and a living room with a balcony overlooking the street below. It sort of reminds me of a timeshare beach condo: it has all the necessities but nothing fancy. GATTS maintains 3 apartments in the building for students, and previous occupants had left a small collection of airplane magazines, books, and movies around.

I unpacked, plugged in all my gadgets, and set out to explore.

My nifty apartment building

Right up the street is Manhattan Town Center, a smallish indoor mall. I walked a lap there just to see what was on offer (answer: nothing I wanted except an iPad charging cord, since I’d forgotten mine). I’d spotted several restaurants during my short walk; the closest was Hibachi Hut, which I’d ignored because of the name. When I looked on Yelp, though, I saw that they a) served Cajun food and b) had great ratings, so I went there for dinner and had an excellent shrimp and crab bisque and a dish of andouille and chicken pasta. Friendly, quick service, great cornbread, and a nice selection of local beers made it a very pleasant meal.

Then I decided to explore a bit more; my apartment is right next to the Riley County Courthouse, and further down Poyntz Street is Manhattan City Park. I didn’t make it to the park my first day, but the courthouse has this excellent statue as part of a small courtyard dedicated to American veterans.

Because AMERICA.

By this point I was pretty tired, so I hit the bed. Day totals: 4.8 hours PIC time, 0.5 actual instrument, 4.4 simulated instrument, and 2 approaches. All in all, a great way to start the week!