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.