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Last weekend I took my first “real” cross-country flight. Executive summary: this is the one of the major reason I got a pilot’s license: fast travel, on my schedule, to do things that otherwise would be prohibitive. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine, but one with a practical side.

I recently earned my high-performance endorsement and got checked out in the Redstone Arsenal Flying Activity (RAFA) Cessna 182. This plane is bigger and faster than the Cessna 172 I’ve been flying. RAFA’s C182 is an older model, and the interior shows it, but it is mechanically in great condition, and it’s nicely equipped with a moving-map GPS and a decent autopilot. It can travel at up to about 145 knots, and its endurance is about 5 hours when fully fueled… longer than mine!

All of my XC time so far has been within California (with the exception of two short legs in the Mobile/Pensacola area early on in my training). The longest leg I’ve flown so far was Palo Alto-Bakersfield and back, a distance of about 220 miles. However, all of my flying so far has been casual. This was my first “real” XC: I had a defined mission, a longer distance, a time window to hit, and all my sons aboard. I’d aborted a previously planned trip on a similar route because the weather was just awful, so I was eager to make this trip if possible.

We’d planned to depart sometime Saturday morning. The forecast was for IFR until around 11am, gradually clearing. Sure enough, the morning started with IFR here in Huntsville, with low IFR (meaning even worse weather) further to the west along our planned route: direct from Redstone Arsenal Army Air Field (KHUA) to Jackson, Mississippi (KJAN) and then on to Alexandria (KAEX). By about 1pm it had cleared enough for us to head to the airport, but actually getting there took 3 tries as various kids remembered that they forgot important things such as contact lenses.

By the time we got to KHUA, visibility had improved to around 5mi but ceilings were still 3500′, which is low but manageable. I’d planned the flight to take place at 6500′, but that wasn’t gonna happen; however, the forecast called for higher ceilings further west, and I had a brand-new Stratus aboard for inflight weather, so we fueled and launched. After takeoff, we turned west on course and climbed to 2500′, where there were a few light bumps but nothing too serious. I noticed right off that the Stratus was connected but not displaying GPS or ADS-B data. Turning the iPad’s WiFi off and back on fixed it; it did this periodically throughout the trip, so I’ll have to figure out what’s going on. About halfway to KJAN were were able to climb up to 4500′, and things smoothed out considerably. There was a line of storms about 45nm to the south of our course, but they were moving NNE fast enough so that they were never a factor. Being able to see radar and METARs for en route airports on this leg was absolutely invaluable. At every point I had a good picture of what my options looked like if I needed them. Here’s what the Stratus data looks like when displayed in ForeFlight; The airplane icon displays our position from the Stratus onboard GPS; the green and blue dots represent airport weather results (tapping on the dot displays the detailed information), and the weather radar data is just like you’d see from a NEXRAD display.

We landed at Jackson, taxiied to Atlantic Aviation, parked, and went inside. Nice FBO, friendly people… but key learning #1: check fuel prices beforehand! I am used to flying out-and-back legs from a single FBO, where I rent wet, and it didn’t occur to me that there might be dramatic price differences. After filling up at $6.90/gallon (with a club rental reimbursement rate of $5.11/gal), I now know better.

After a quick snack and a pee break, we loaded back up and took off for Alexandria. We were able to stay at 3000′ until about Vicksburg, when we asked for higher. Our arrival and descent into KAEX was smooth, but I had a sterile cockpit problem: the kids were bantering and I got distracted enough to begin an approach to runway 36 when I was cleared to runway 32. I caught the mistake in time, went around, and was lucky to have an understanding controller, but key learning #2: shut your passengers up as part of your descent checklist.

We parked at Million Air. They treated us like we’d rolled up in a Gulfstream. I am now a huge fan.  Unlimited soft drinks, popcorn, and soft serve ice cream? Why, yes, thank you. We needed it because, like a doofus, I’d neglected to pack any water for the flight. Key learning #3: if you pack snacks, pack drinks too, duh.

Our visit with the family was superb; we had a feast of BBQ chicken, got some great visiting time in with my mom, grandmother, uncle, and cousins, then got a good night’s sleep. Sunday we just relaxed and visited, at least until the 32 pounds of boiled crawfish arrived. After a delightful meal underneath a big tree in the backyard, it was time to head back to Million Air.

I’d planned a single leg back, without the Jackson stop, but on preflight noticed that the oil was lower than I’d like, and none of the Alexandria-area FBOs had 15W50. That necessitated another stop, and since I was familiar with Jackson I planned to stop there. (Key learning #4: carry spare oil. ) This worked out OK because the kids all needed a bathroom stop. I had filled up with fuel at Million Air ($4.81/gal), so I didn’t buy any fuel at Atlantic… so they charged me $20 for stopping by. I don’t think I’ll be back.

Coming back we were able to fly at 3500′ to just east of Alexandria, then 7500′ from there on out. Great, smooth ride with a beautiful view of the Mississippi River crossing, the flooded bottomlands near it, and all sorts of farm and agriculture happening beneath us. I started teaching David how to work the radios, and he did a creditable job (although I think there are some guys at Memphis Center wondering what kind of aircraft a “Skyliner” is).

I used the return legs to get some practice in driving the 530W and the autopilot; I am used to flying a G1000/GFC700 172 so the knobology is quite different. This particular 182 doesn’t have electric trim so I had to do a bit of trim wheel judo to keep the autopilot happy in altitude hold mode but it was good practice. While I love hand-flying, learning to use an autopilot effectively, in the right modes at the right times, is critical to safe single-pilot IFR operations, so I want to start getting better at it ASAP.

The eastern approach to KHUA crosses several restricted areas (some for drone flights, some over propellant storage areas), so we had to turn north, fly past the Decatur airport, then remain north of I-565 until we passed Huntsville International. We landed, refueled, hit Taco Bell, and poof! A trip for the books. 

The 182 burned about 13gph and gave me an average groundspeed of 133kts over 7.5hrs on the meter. While this isn’t exactly exciting compared to faster aircraft, it beats the hell out of driving, and it let the four of us deliver a great Mothers’ Day surprise. The kids enjoyed the visit and tolerated the cramped quarters pretty well, so we’ll be doing this run again soon.

Last week, Doug Mahugh posted this great blog entry on taking pictures from commercial airplanes. He’s done some excellent work. I don’t usually take my real camera on commercial flights, but I think I’m going to have to start. In the meantime, here are two of my favorite airborne pics. I have some other great ones but my iPhoto library is so disorganized that finding them would take more time than I can spare at the moment.

the business end of a B-17

en route to Petaluma; that’s Alcatraz in the foreground

Bonus double Flying Friday post today. Why? Because this article is too good not to share.

…these NASA pilots were always at 350 when needed. It wasn’t 349 or 351. They always flew on-speed. For me, sitting in the backseat for my first couple of missions in ACTIVE, a whole new skill level was revealed. They flew this way all the time. They were always on parameters. They were always on-altitude. No 34,900 ft or 35,100 ft for them. It was 35,000 ft and not a foot higher or lower.

The author goes on to talk about how this precision inspired him to fly more precisely– “Why not,” he asks, “endeavor to fly as perfectly as possible? In fact, why not endeavor to fly as well as you possibly can all the time, versus ‘just good enough’?”

Exactly. That’s what I want, and what I try to do.

Andy, my primary flight instructor, has always described a pilot’s license as “a license to learn”. This may sound trite, but it’s true… if you’re doing things the right way.

This week’s FLYING LESSONS newsletter contained an interesting factoid: the Australian Transport Safety Bureau says that partial loss of power is three times more likely than complete engine failure. After reading the report, I am forced to agree with Thomas Turner that partial-power operation is under-taught; I know that in my relatively limited experience none of the instructors I’ve flown with mentioned how to deal with it or even how to recognize it.

Recognition, of course, sounds like it should be pretty easy: is the engine making as much power as it should? In a car, you can tell by your forward speed and/or acceleration: does the car accelerate normally when you push on the accelerator? There are also audible cues that may tell you whether the engine is working normally. In an airplane, the same audible cues may exist, but airspeed and climb performance are just as useful as the sounds you hear. If you have fancy engine instrumentation, then it may give you information such as cylinder head temperatures that tell you what’s going on.

The ATSB report calls out a fairly straightforward procedure for dealing with partial power loss: lower the nose to maintain best glide speed, find a place to land, and do so as soon as practical. No turns under 200′, and no troubleshooting the engine unless you have sufficient altitude to do so. It also goes into some detail about potential causes of partial power loss, including spark-plug fouling, fuel contamination, and problems with carburetor heat. All of these are things I will be more mindful of as part of my preflight and in-flight operations.

Always something new to learn…

Thomas P. Turner is a flight instructor and businessman who publishes an exceptionally useful weekly aviation newsletter called Flying Lessons. Recently he’s been focusing on trying to help pilots understand what’s truly risky about flying, and to provide some standards to help improve proficiency in those situations. As part of that process, in this week’s newsletter he linked to a matrix of go/no-go rules that I really like: the Categorical Outlook Flying™ matrix. The basic point of this matrix is to provide a simple, clear set of guidelines to help pilots of all experience and skill levels make good decisions.I don’t want to reproduce the entire matrix, but here’s a snippet:

This doesn’t seem that instructive– after all, all but one of the suggestions are “go”. However, the real beauty of this approach is that it breaks down the go/no-go decision into multiple factors, including weather, time of day, terrain, and flight rules. These factors correspond pretty well with some of the major risk factors associated with flight. Night VFR over mountains is more risky than day VFR over mountains– not because of the airplane, which doesn’t know it’s dark, but because of the difficulty of finding a safe place to land if there’s a problem.

The full set of matrices is well worth looking at. I like this approach and plan to incorporate it into my own personal minimums; the matrix above is already pretty much how I plan, but the “marginal VFR” matrix, which I haven’t shown here, is where things start to get a bit more interesting…

Tuesday afternoon I was working and decided to check out LiveATC.net, a web site that plays air traffic control audio for a huge range of airports worldwide. Soon enough I had fired up the Palo Alto tower, which led to looking out the window, which led to me reserving an airplane for a quick flight to Petaluma. Why there? It was just over 50nm away from Palo Alto, meaning that I could log the flight as cross-country time towards my instrument rating.

I got to the airport, preflighted the airplane, and enjoyed a smooth takeoff; departure had me do a right 45° departure and head towards the Oakland airport. I got on the radio with NORCAL Approach, who routed me over the runway 29 numbers at Oakland International and then cleared me further to the north. The sun was lowering in the western sky, which gave me a few pretty nice photo opportunities:

Approaching KOAK rwy 29 from the south; the numbers are just out of frame on the lower right

the city of San Francisco; that’s the Bay Bridge in the foreground

the Golden Gate Bridge, with bonus freighter

Both bridges, plus shafts of light through the city fog (you might need to see the full-size version to see them)

The Petaluma airport was easy to see, and I had a good landing on runway 29. Sadly, the diner there closes at 3pm, and I got there about 7:30pm. So, my key learning for this flight: verify the status of your proposed dinner destination before takeoff. I got out, stretched my legs, and fired the plane back up to return to Palo Alto; the night view was absolutely stunning, but I didn’t take any pictures.. maybe next time. Since it was dark, I went ahead and shot 3 landings to update my night currency; my last landing was a power-off, short-field squeaker that would have pleased even my  picky CFI.

An evening well spent…

I grew up reading Flying magazine. There always seemed to be copies around the house, along with books written by stalwart columnists such as Gordon Baxter (“File IFR even if you’re just going to the men’s room.”) and Dick Collins. I learned a great deal (mostly about what not to do) from reading the “I Learned About Flying From That” series, and I’ve happily enjoyed the magazine as it’s evolved to its present form, with a few minor nits that I’ll talk about another time.

Dick Collins is still writing. A couple of years ago, Sporty’s relaunched “Air Facts,” a magazine once run by Dick’s father, Leighton Collins. It’s now a web site and not a print magazine, but I still read and enjoy it. Earlier this week, Dick wrote a beautiful piece on a lifelong romance. No, not him and his airplane… him, his airplane, and his wife Ann, who sounds like a marvelous woman.

Read it.