Practice, practice

Last night the forecast for the Puget Sound area was not looking good for a flight this morning...ceilings were supposed to be around 2000', way below what I can fly in.

However, I was awakened this morning at about 6:30 by the sound of aviation in progress...one aircraft approaching KOLM from the northeast, right over the house...as well as a garden full of birds of various types. There was also the distinct hue of sunlight hitting the treetops out the window. As I stumbled to the coffee pot, I regretted canceling my reservation on 898 last night...but happily a quick call to the club reservation system told me that the ship was still available. I did a quick online weather briefing, convinced myself the clouds would stay away until afternoon, and by 7:30 I was out the door for the airport.

The tower opened as I was finishing up pre-flight (at 8 a.m.), and by about 8:15 I was in the air. The goal for today was to practice steep turns and ground reference maneuvers. I made a couple of circuits around the patch at KOLM...my standard practice on non-cross country flights. I did one takeoff as a soft field, and one as a short field. The landing in between was a short field as well. I did all of them just fine--on the soft field, 898 sure doesn't stay in ground effect very long before getting to Vx (60 kts)...maybe two seconds.

After the two circuits, I headed south and up to 3000' for steep turns. I did them fine both right and left, and all four times felt the tell-tale "bump" of crossing my own wake just prior to roll-out. Then down to 900' above ground level (AGL) to practice turns around a point and S-turns across a road. I think these still could get better, but I believe they were within checkride standards. Maybe one more practice session and I'll declare myself ready.

The marine push that's headed into our area, with stratus clouds chasing away the nice high pressure we've had for two days, was starting to inch closer from the southwest. Between that, and not wanting to disturb further the folks whose farm field I'd been circling, I decided to head north and practice a little more. I did some more turns around a point near Oyster Bay, between Olympia and Shelton, and then headed back in.

1.2 hours in the logbook, a good amount of fun, and some boosted confidence that I'm getting really close to the checkride.

Flight track in Google Earth is here. I'm still finding GPS Visualizer to be a very cool tool. Unfortunately, the GPS had a little hiccup in the pattern on one circuit--no, I really didn't make an abrupt turn like that!

I also played around with adding Lloyd Bailey's airspace layers for Google Earth, so I could see today's flight track in relation to the Olympia Class D. The cylinder around Olympia (approximately 5 nm radius and up to 2500' above the airport surface area) requires pilots to establish and maintain two-way radio communication with the tower prior to entry.



Here's the approximate area of the flight from the Seattle terminal area chart...the Class D is the blue dashed line around KOLM...

Non-starter

It's been a week since I flew last, and this post is late partially because of a busy work and family schedule, and partly because it's taken almost a week for the story of the flight to unfold...

Now that I hopefully have your interest piqued...

I met Joel last Saturday morning in Olympia, on his way to work, to get his signoff on a solo cross country flight to Jefferson County International (0S9) in Port Townsend, Washington. It was a terrific day weather-wise, a nice break from the recent prevailing conditions.

I decided to use this flight to practice dead reckoning navigation, where the idea is to choose checkpoints along the way and use estimates of airspeed and winds aloft to determine the arrival at each point. In flight, the pilot tracks progress and time, and corrects the ETA at each point. It's a nice skill to have, and I think it makes flying more fun than just hitting "direct to" on the GPS and motoring along. Maybe at some point in my flying I'll prefer that, but for now, I really like the extra bit of planning, analysis, and in-flight computation.

I called Flight Service an hour before my planned 1730 PDT launch and got a full weather briefing. It was pretty boring...severe clear and calm winds all the way, with no NOTAMs or TFRs either. I filed a VFR flight plan, and headed to the airport.

The flight was terrific. The winds were a little stronger and more westerly than forecast, but only enough to add a couple of minutes to the 35 minute flight. I asked for, and received, VFR flight following from Seattle approach all the way, and once again enjoyed practicing radio skills (not to mention having assistance from radar in watching for traffic!) The landing in Port Townsend was a little left of the centerline, which I didn't like...but the touchdown was my smoothest ever, which I liked very much. I've posted the video of the trip on YouTube.

I've also started posting GPS tracks of my flights to Google Maps; this link should open the track in Google Earth, if you have it installed.

I landed at Port Townsend, taxied to the transient parking, and shut down. I called Flight Service to close my flight plan, called Deb to check in, and walked around a little to stretch my legs. After about 10 minutes, I hopped back in, ran the checklist, and turned the ignition to "start". Nothing. Primed it, tried again. Nothing. Sat for 10 minutes or so, tried again. Nothing. Both a mechanic on the field and another pilot offered assistance, but nothing we tried would get 898 started.

To cut to the chase...I wound up calling Deb back to drive 2 hours to pick me up, then drove 2 hours back home. It turns out the left magneto had died (good thing there are two!), and it is the one used to start the engine. It clearly died during flight, since the magneto check I performed during runup at Olympia was 100% normal.

I left the aircraft there all week, allowing the mechanic to overhaul the magnetos. He finished up yesterday, and Center O folks went up to pick it up today.

Magnetos tend to last about 500 hours, and these were getting close. It's ordinary wear-and-tear, and really illustrated for me how important dual mags are.

All the folks I encountered at Port Townsend were extraordinarily friendly and helpful, from the pilot and mechanic who tried to help me get it started, to the family who offered me a ride to a nearby restaurant to wait for Deb to pick me up. I need to go back up there when I get my ticket and buy them all a slice of pie at the Spruce Goose (the cafe on the field).

Lots of work travel these days, but I hope to fly again later this week or next weekend.

Quick flight today

I took half the day off today to go flying. I met with Joel to go over plans for a cross country flight to Jefferson County Airport (0S9), which would allow me to scout the first part of my intended long cross-country route to Friday Harbor. Skies dawned mostly clear this morning in Olympia, with only some high cirrus and usual low-level morning scud that would burn off by 9.

Michael had a music concert at school at 11, so my plan was to head to the airport right after that. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans...the 11 am forecasts did not look good for places further north. After the concert I made the call to cancel the cross country and just practice maneuvers around KOLM, where the weather was still quite good.

However, those plans didn't work out either. Since the last time I flew 898, she had an oil change, and in the course of that maintenance task some of the cowling fasteners didn't quite make it back on securely. This is a fairly normal thing on Cessna 172s, but I was concerned about the extent of the gap between cowling and mount on one side. Despite a hunch that it was perfectly ok to fly, I decided to cancel the afternoon flight until I could consult with Joel.

I finally talked to Joel after 5, and we agreed the aircraft was safe to fly. In the meantime, the club's maintenance officer for 898 called me and also assured me it was safe, and also mentioned that he managed to reattach two of the missing fasteners. I was able to get a third opinion when I showed up at the hangar around 6:30 to find the club president working with another club aircraft in the hangar next door. So by the time I launched, I had no fewer than three expert opinions, all reinforcing what my gut told me this afternoon, but all the same giving me a higher comfort level that I could fly safely.

So I launched under mid-level stratus (6000') and the calmest winds I've ever experienced. There was not a bump to be had at any point tonight...lovely! I did my customary trip around the patch and headed south to practice maneuvers. I did a decent job at "turns around a point" and as I rolled out of the last one, I saw rain bands falling about 3 miles south, headed my way. Back to Olympia, where I encountered some light showers, two more pattern circuits, and back in the hangar.

I played around with GPS Visualizer by simply turning our Garmin handheld GPS on and leaving it in my flight bag. A couple of quick up/down loads at home, and I was able to produce this in Google Earth:



This will be yet another fun toy to play with, and is actually really helpful for grading myself on maneuvers. Here is a close-up of my "turns around a point"...



One of the turns with a "bulge" to the east was a "clearing turn", which we do to ensure no other traffic are nearby, and also to signal to any such traffic that we are maneuvering. And the other one was, simply put, a poorly performed turn. But I was pleased with the two tight ones! I was emphasizing keeping altitude and airspeed pegged throughout, and I accomplished both (1000' above ground, and 90 knots).

Video of tonight's flight forthcoming this weekend...I tried turning off autofocus, and also used a $3 mono/stereo adapter from Radio Shack to try to get the intercom patch in stereo. Hopefully that will improve the video quality.

Next aircraft time scheduled for Saturday evening...I may try again to go up to Jeff Co, or I had so much fun with maneuvers, I might just do more of that.