Fourth Flight Day

Finally got my butt back out on the flight line Saturday after a month of heavy work at the office.

Bob was already over at the airport in the hangars with one of his students and some friends from the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association). That's basically crazy people building their own planes (usually from kits). There were 5-10 folks hanging out BBQ'ing and talking planes. Here's some pictures I snapped:


This one is a real beauty, even without it's final paint job. Not sure what kind of plane it is, but it's fast! It's got a turbine engine that runs on jet fuel, and with that streamlining, it's quick - .6 Mach at altitude.



This one is in the next hangar, a Vans RV-6, I believe. This one is acrobatic certified side-by-side.


One of my fellow students is a partner on building this one, a Vans RV-8 tandem (one person behind the other). It's got an eastern European engine in it, with about 5 years of construction time in on it so far... The second picture is the wings, which have the paint job on them now.



After a burger and a coke, Bob and I hit the sky in my humble looking C-152 :)

We flew up toward Columbia County airport near Hudson. Bob's seat broke loose on the way, so we had to land and do a little ad-hoc seat maintenance with a borrowed wrench from the FBO there.

The radio was really busy up there - there's no control tower so you have to self-announce your plans over a CB radio style common frequency - it was hard to get a word in edgewise. There was traffice from Kingston Airport and Columbia County on the same channel.

Here's a nice picture of a lighthouse in the river up near Hudson.


Good picture of Hudson, NY from the air.


Here's the Kingston, NY airport from right over the Kinston-Rhinecliff bridge.


And my favorite picture from the trip, a picture of Kingston up the Rondout Creek.



Overall, I did pretty well on this flight considering I hadn't been up for 30 days. I'm a little rough on making small turns, believe it or not. I nailed the steep and moderate rate turns on holding speed and altitude.

There was some rain back at Dutchess when we came back - but a nice landing anyway. The rain really rolls off the window well at 60Kts + prop wash!

After the flight, we went back and had some more burgers & hot dogs. Bob sicc'd me on Eric my fellow student who hasn't started his book study for the written test yet. I showed him around my stuff and we agreed that we're going to try and work together on studying for the test. He's ahead of me on flight work - he made his first solo last week, but I'm ahead on the book, so it will work out nicely.

Bob had a night working flight scheduled in our company plane - I need to get some pictures of it after the remodeling job. After a quick schedule check, I was on to fly second seat up to Utica and back. It's a really quick plane - Navajo Chieftan with two props and 8 seats.

After a quick run home to feed the dog and watch a little TV, it was back to the airport. We took off for Utica and almost immediately flew into IFR cloud conditions. It's a bit eerie flying through the clouds - we turned most of the lights down so that you don't get vertigo. My job was to watch the engine performance gagues and the outside temperature, as well as monitor Bob's comms and feed him radio frequencies and other data from the navigation charts. I think it's a good idea to have two people for IFR flight, especially at night - there's lots to do. We flew out at 6000 ft with a strong tailwind; temperature held just 1 degree above freezing the whole flight so we didn't need any de-icing procedures. You can check the wings easily with a flashlight on this plane. Total flight time there with the tailwind was about 40 minutes.

Bob is a great pilot - let me just keep repeating that... smooth landing and flight both ways. We landed IFR at Utica, waited for a cab with our passenger, and checked the weather.

After that, we took off through some fireworks for the flight home. We had a strong headwind - 30kts, and more clouds, but a smooth flight. We just popped out of the clouds on the way down from 7000 ft in time for a VFR landing at Dutchess. It was a bit longer on the way back - 55 minutes - a 15 minute difference due to the headwind. Poor Daryl has to come out to the airport - it takes three people to push back a plane that big.

Overall, a much better second and third cycle than my first cycle in this plane :) (Remember the whole near death experience from my first post?)

I think I made great progress toward overcoming my misgivings about night time VFR flying. There really is a lot more to see up there when the weather is clear than I think my gut was telling me. I was immediately able to recognize I-84 and Poughkeepsie after we descended out of the clouds, and I think I spotted the airport beacon before Bob did (I do have younger eyes though). I know that I trust my instruments over my senses, so that part of night flying won't be a problem for me. Overall, a good learning experience.

Third Flight - 4 landings

Big fire right off the end of the runway while I was doing pre-flight; tower said it was an overturned explosives truck!

Met Dave, the owner of the plane I'm renting time on - nice guy. We ended up popping the engine cowling after I found that the taxi & landing lights were out. It was just a slipped wiring harness - we put it back together and tied a string on it to hold it together.

Practiced slow flight @ 60kts, holding altitude & heading in level flight and in 15/30/45 deg turns - I actually did pretty well.

Flew back down the west bank of the Hudson river and practicing my new turn skills at 1000' - what a beautiful night to fly - right at sunset.


Then we returned to the airport and practiced flying the pattern and landing - made four landings myself - a little low on the approach for one...
Bob also showed me 2 simulated engine failure landings.

Toured the control tower and met Bill, one of the controllers, who is retiring on Friday.

2nd Flight Day - airport pictures

First Flight!

Frustrating wait for my first flight!

Here's the plane I have time on - it's tiny inside.

Ok, this week has been a bit frustrating from the first flight perspective... the plan was to fly every night this week after work because I was going to be out of town for BSA summer camp part of the following week.

Here's what actually happened so far:

• Monday: Bob forgot about the lesson - I got some good study time in sitting there waiting for him though
• Tuesday: Waited 2 hours for Bob again - turns out that he got stuck in court (no cell phones allowed). Talked with a friendly guy that had just landed his self-built stunt biplane for a while and had a good time - he was practicing for an acrobatic flight competition in Montreal that weekend. What a bare bones plane he had... wish I had taken some pictures
  
• Wednesday: Got there, met Bob, and did learned to do pre-flight inspection on the plane. Discovered that the alternator belt was loose on the engine and it wasn't safe to fly. Spent some time learning about all of the instruments in the plane instead.
• Thursday: big line of thunderstorms rolled through at 5:30 and saw another big line on the horizon, so decided it wasn't a good day to go up

Flight lessons!

After some discussions with my wife about things, I decided to take Bob up on his offer to teach me to fly!

I started out reading as much as I could on the FAA website - what the requirements for a private pilot license are, etc. I also found PDF copies of the Pilot's Handook of Aeronautical Knowledge, which looked like a pretty comprehensive guide to stuff you need to know to fly. I spent the whole weekend reading (much to my wife's dismay - sorry honey!). Only counter-intuitive thing I learned is that humid air is less dense than dry air. Reading didn't provide much of the stick-and-rudder knowledge - I will make it a point to concentrate on that during flight training. I think the only guide I read in there is to "step on the ball" (the turn coordinator) to help fix uncoordinated (slipping or skidding) turns.

After studying, I think I'm going to be pretty good at the technical parts of flying - I'm very scientific/technical from my computer & engineering background. Plus, there are lots of acronyms - and I'm just good at acronyms... :) Overall, most of what I was learning is pretty straightforward or I already knew in principle: theory of flight, how airspace is laid out, ATC, how the instruments operate and what they tell you, etc.

Over the next few weeks, I worked out some details with Bob:

• Purhcased 10 hours of flight time in a Cessna 152 - a pretty good deal at $80/hour "wet" (which means including fuel & oil)


• Made a trip with Bob to Richmoor Avaition, one of the FBOs at the airport, and got all of my books and training materials:
  
  • a FAR/AIM manual
  
  
  • a sectional map
  
  
  • my first log book
  
  
  • a plotting tool
  
  
  • guidebooks for study for the written and verbal exams.
  
  

Bob hooked me up with Dave, one of his former students that he gave IFR instruction to, who owns a Cessna 152. Unlike many Cessna 152s which are set up as trainers, this one has had a substantial equipment upgrade and is set up for IFR operations and has a certified GPS unit built into it. After a quick chat with Dave I sent him the cash to cover my first block of time in the plane.

It took a couple of weeks to work out training time that fit into Bob and my busy schedules - but things are set for next week!

First flight in the copilot seat

My second flight in a small plane was to Wilmington, DE on business. We took our company pilot's 2 engine Aztec down and back (the company plane was still in the shop from our first trip). I got to ride in the co-pilot's seat and observe the IFR flight down and back. I was hooked!

My view out the front window on the return flight.












My boss Rick and my co-worker Denise were in the back (Denise looks a little queasy :) )












Mountains in southern NY on the way back. A little bit of chop from the afternoon updrafts.












The control panel on the Aztec. The left side are the navigation instruments like the altimeter, airspeed indicator, turn coordinator, and heading indicator. The center section is the radios and VOR radios. The right side in front of me has the engine performance indicators.








Coming up on Stewart AFB (just below the horizon in the distance)












Stewart AFB (Newburgh, NY) on the right as we approach Poughkeepsie. They were friendly and let us take a shortcut and fly through the landing pattern.











The Newburg-Beacon Bridge (I-84 crosses the Hudson River)












Another shot of the bridge. The city of Beacon and Mt. Beacon are on the far side of the Hudson River.











That's our home field - Dutchess County Airport - Poughkeepise NY (KPOU) . The water in the foreground is Wappingers Creek where Rt. 9 crosses it.










Tried to take a picture off toward my house...













Close up of Wappingers Creek as we flew past it. You can just make out our office in the bottom left corner of the picture.











Another try to take a picture of my house... that's the houses in the field leading up the hill on All Angels Hill Rd.











View across the cockpit towards Poughkeepsie.













Shot out the front window on final approach. A bit of a crosswind but smooth landing. Bob is an excellent pilot as I'm sure my story about my first flight with him bears out.








After we landed, I helped Bob push the plane back in the hangar and talked with him about the flight details some more. He told me that he was a licensed instructor and offered to teach me to fly! More details in my next post...

First flight in a small plane

Wow! If I had known what was happening, I might have been scared...

We were scheduled to fly from our local airport in Poughkeepsie to Bridgeport on business with two of the owners of my company in their plane along with my co-worker Denise and our company pilot Bob.

We got to the airport and boarded their 8 seater about 9AM. Bob informed us that President Bush was scheduled to be in the Bridgeport area later that day and that if we didn't get there in time they may close the airspace. It was a nice day out - scattered clouds although a bit chilly.

Bob fired up the plane and we took off - one of the owners up front in the co-pilot's seat with Bob and the rest of us in the back. We climbed out heading east and then turned toward the southeast. A few minutes into the flight, I noticed that we banked and turned back to the west - I figured that we missed our window for Bridgeport because of the President. The other two passengers didn't notice that we turned back until I pointed out the Hudson River and some local landmarks to them. The owner in the back with me checked with his brother and then turned around for the landing.

After we landed, the pilot opened the curtain and told us that we returned because the engines were overheating and that we were going to taxi over to the maintenance hangar to have things checked out. Once we got there, we shut down and the owners went off to look at another plane on the tarmac.

As we sat there inside the cabin door, Denise and I watched as Bob and the mechanic looked for stuck vents and checked the fuel pumps and other engine hardware - but didn't find any problems. Denise and I noticed the smell of fuel wafting in through the door, but it didn't bother us much as we work for a fuel company and smell it all the time. However, when we pointed that out to the pilot - he noticed it too and thought it was unusual.

We went to check the fuel tanks and discovered that we had been mis-fueled! The plane is a has turbocharged piston engines that take basically high grade gasoline fuel. When we opened the tank, the smell was wrong and the fuel felt oily, as opposed to gasoline, which evaporates off your hand readily and smells distinctively. The ground crew had fueled our plane with JET FUEL instead! Jet fuel is basically kerosene and has radically different properties than gasoline. This was the cause of the engine overheating and lack of performance.

Bob explained to us that we were quite fortunate to make it back to the airport - that the engines had been destroyed by the mis-fueling and that we had made the landing with little or no power from the engines; ATC had offered to him to declare an emergency and we would have had fire trucks and rescue people waiting for us when we landed!

Overall, not quite an auspicious first flight, eh? I guess I must really like flying in small planes because I want to go again! I think had I known what was going on while we were still in the air I would have been much more freaked out... not that we could have done anything about it other than pray.

From later conversations, I gather that Bob is a heck of a pilot for recognizing the problem and making an underpowered return and landing - a few people I've mentioned it to around the airport said "OH! You were on that flight!". Wow.