Category: Revelation

Last night, I looked at the weather and thought “tomorrow is the day”. It wouldn’t be a perfect day, but it was a good enough day, and it looked like I couldn’t count on a perfect day any time soon. Every day since last Friday, when I made the decision to fly to Barnes Muni (KBAF), the weather map at AOPA showed lousy weather tomorrow, marginal weather the day after, and good weather the day after that. And every day I’d wake up expecting progress, only to find that the next day would be marginal and the good weather would be the day after that. And so on and on.

Last night, the area forecast said that the ceilings would be 4,000 feet or so. The Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts for the stations along the route had some good news and some bad news, ceilings mostly high enough to deal with, but with ocassional low ones. The highest ceilings were at Barnes itself, which is good because there is a line of low hills between it and the Hudson Valley to get over. The worst forecasts were for Rochester itself and Utica. Utica was predicting ceilings around 3,000, and Rochester was predicting two layers, one at 2,500 and one at 3,500. I had every reason to expect that today would have the usual AIRMET ZULU for icing in clouds and precipitation. There was a mention of scattered showers and even snow in the hills.

The IFR Minimum Enroute Altitude (MEA) for the first part of the route, from BAF (Barnes) to CTR (Chester) to ALB (Albany) was 6,000 feet, which would probably put me in the clouds, and I didn’t want to risk that. My plan was to fly VFR over to the Hudson Valley, up to Albany, and up the Mohawk Valley. That would get me to the flat lands between Syracuse and Rochester, where if I could avoid the rain shafts I could possibly scud run in below that layer at 2,500 feet. But there were risks in that plan, and I knew that I might find myself having to turn and run if the ceilings start coming down or I started picking up ice in a rain shaft. I tossed and turned all night about this plan – I normally fly high and IFR, and here I’d be between possibly dangerous clouds and rising cumulo-granite. But I felt like I had enough “outs”, and I could do this without hurting myself, even if it meant staying overnight along the way.

I brought my laptop and threw a change of underwear and socks in the laptop bag in case I had to remain overnight somewhere. And so early this morning I set out in the rented van that we’d driven home on Sunday. Along the way I stopped for gas – $65 to fill the tank! And I thought flying was expensive! I spent the whole trip looking up at the clouds and trying to guess how high those solid clouds were. They looked low. I was also looking to make sure the valley didn’t get too narrow when it got high, so that if I had to turn around under low ceilings I wouldn’t be trapped, and that appeared to be the case. The good news was there was almost no rain. I kept checking the METARs (current observations) on my “Local Aviation Weather” web page (the page is deliberately simple so that I can read it on a cell phone). Barnes was still reporting ceilings over 5,000 feet, and Utica was still reporting ceilings of 3,000 feet, which was definitely still in the do-able range.

The first thing I did when I got to Barnes (after filling the van again – sheesh, another $20!) was to borrow a local phone to call the weather briefers. And after all my raving earlier about how much better Burlington weather briefers are than Buffalo, the Burlington FSS briefer I got was just a reader, he didn’t offer any advice at all. One interesting thing was that Rochester and Syracuse were reporting better ceilings that predicted. Other than that, it looked like I was going to go ahead with plan A.

So I fired up and took off. I climbed up to 4,800 feet, that left me just below the clouds (a nice and legal 500 feet below the clouds, actually), and 2,000 feet above the hills. The visibility was actually good, but the outside temperature was -6C. There were areas of mist, but even when in them I had 10 miles or more of visibility, and I checked the outside air temperature probe and wings and didn’t seem to be picking up even a trace of ice. Hey, this was going to work! I text-messaged Vicki at every significant waypoint I passed just so she’d know where I was and wouldn’t worry. I kept climbing and descending to keep that 500 feet below the clouds – I still wanted to be as high as I could be because of the higher terrain on each side. I got into the Hudson Valley about 15 miles south of Albany, and I tagged up with them because I was at 4,300 feet and their airspace went up about that high.

The Albany controller seemed very friendly and was very helpful. There was a surprising amount of traffic around, including a number of general aviation planes. Some of them were being cleared up to 10,000 feet on IFR clearances – I hope they had ice protection.

Along the way up the Mohawk Valley. As expected, the ground was rising up, the clouds were coming down, and the valley was getting narrower. Luckily it never got dangerously low, and even at its worst I was a good 1,500 feet over the valley floor, and that was very close to the Utica and Griffis airports and I could see them both perfectly, so I could have aborted to either of them with no trouble. And very soon after Utica, the ceiling started to lift up. And about 20 miles after Syracuse, I started to see blue sky. I tuned into Rochester’s ATIS, and they were reporting an overcast layer at 5,000 feet. So much for the low clouds I was worried about! By the time I got there, it was more like a few clouds at 5,000 feet, and clear above. It was a beautiful VFR day, and I’m sure all the Rochester pilots were wondering what I was so tense about!

Vicki and I flew the club’s Lance to Barnes Muni (KBAF) yesterday so we could be at Stevie’s last Parents Weekend. Vicki’s sister Sherri is here, but she came on a more conventional flight. It was a great flight, in wonderfully clear and smooth air. There was mist below and to the south of us, but in front and to the north side it was “clear and a million”. We did see a strange phenomena at one point where it looked like a dark streak that that went across the ground and then crossed in front of us and up into the sky, all as one very straight line. I wasn’t sure if we were seeing the shadow of the solid sharp-edged layer of clouds behind us (the sun was close to it) or if somebody with a very smokey jet engine had taken off from the north of us and climbed across our flight path.

We flew because I don’t get to fly as much as I’d like, and also because Vicki wanted to go to the Accapella Jam, which Stevie was performing in. If we’d driven, there is no way in hell we’d get there in time. Vicki was later getting to the airport than we planned for so we ended up arriving a few minutes after sunset. According to this extremely cool web site (which will only show our flight for a few more days), we arrived at 6:22pm. And were met by a FBO person who did NOT know how to fill in the rental car agreement. But we got out of there and up to campus just a hair after 7pm, which was plenty of time.

They’ve dropped me off in the school library because they’re doing stuff that’s a lot of walking, more specifically that start-stop wandering like shopping, and that’s hell on my knees. And it will give me a chance to do some work and make up for leaving work hellaciously early.

I’m a little concerned with the weather for the flight home. Today is showing very low ceilings and rain, which I can handle (although I haven’t done an ILS to minimums in actual since last year’s trip here), but there’s also an AIRMET for some occassional icing from freezing level to way high. Freezing level today was just about 6,000 feet, which is the sort of altitude I usually fly, and it’s going to be a little bit colder tomorrow. I think I can manage it if I file for a lower altitude and keep an eye on the temperature probe, or if I can get tops reports that indicate the clouds end below the freezing level, which is frequently the case in this weather. But we may have to stop en-route or stay here another couple of days. Oh well, such is flying. Better to play it safe and be down here wishing I was up there than up there wishing I was down here.

It was a very blustery day today. As I was sitting in the airplane getting it ready for departure, the wind gusts where shaking it around quite a bit. The tower was reporting winds at 15 to 24 knots, and the forecast for Rochester was even higher winds, 25 to 35 knot gusts. Good thing I was in the Lance which, being heavier and faster than the other planes, can handle those gusts better.

Last time I was in Oshawa, I was giving Liane a sight seeing ride when I heard somebody request an IFR clearance to Rochester and given “YYZ V31 ROC”, so that time that’s what I filed and what I was cleared for. Of course, no flight plan survives contact with Toronto ATC, so that isn’t what I ended up flying.

This time, I filed the same “YYZ V31 ROC”, but instead I was given “A21 V224(?) AIRCO V31 ROC”. Aha, I thought, a reroute that keeps me more out of Toronto’s airspace, maybe they’ll actually let me fly the cleared route this time. So after reprogramming my GPS, I was ready to go.

It was really bumpy on the climb out to 2,500 feet. The clouds stated at about 2,600 feet and it wasn’t so bumpy in the clouds, but I was still getting updrafts and downdrafts. What didn’t help is that I had to spend all this time in the clouds arguing^Wnegotiating with Toronto ATC over my route. They asked me to go direct to Rochester, and I said I didn’t want to be that far off shore. So they said they’d have to keep me at 3,000 feet 10 miles off shore. I said that was totally unacceptable, and they said then I’d have to go north of Pearson and then down the other side. Faced with the prospect of doubling the distance home, I said “how about I go direct to Buffalo at 8,000 feet”. I hadn’t realized that I’d gone far enoug that I was now a little to the north west of Buffalo, so they offered me 7,000 feet which fits in the “hemispheric rule” and I accepted. Not a great routing, but I realized I probably wasn’t going to get a better one. They cleared me direct to Buffalo and told me to let them know when I could accept direct to Rochester.

I was squared away on about a 170 heading towards Buffalo and reprogramming the GPS when I broke out over a solid cloud layer at about 4,000 feet. It was a few degrees over freezing still, and I hadn’t picked up any ice. As I continued up, I went into a few small clouds, still not picking up ice. I was making pretty good time over the ground – I think I had about a 50 knot tail wind on that segment.

Once the GPS was showing me getting close to the shore again, I accepted a direct clearance to Rochester, and lost a bit of tail wind. And then they started me down. First down to 5,000 feet, which put me in solid clouds. Ok, I thought, as long as there’s no ice, this will be good practice. But they quickly had me down to 4,000, which was getting a bit bumpy, and then down to 2,500. As I was passing 3,000, they asked me if I had the airport in sight, because otherwise they’d have to send me through the localizer and out a bit to re-intercept it. They just turned me to 060, which is away from the airport, and as I was turning I broke out of the clouds at 2,600. I told them, and they offered me the visual to 25, which I took.

Trying to do a base leg for 25, it was turning into quite a roller coaster. I think the winds were 330@30, and of course runway 28 was closed. I turned on final, and had to hold about 40 degrees of crab. Up and down drafts where making it impossible to stay on the good side of the VASI, and my airspeed control was in the toilet. Over the numbers I tried to kick out the crab, but didn’t have enough rudder authority to get rid of all of it. Not a pretty landing, but not hard either.

The huge tail wind got me there a good ten minutes before the customs guy, which suited me. Lots of time to get my paperwork in order. Aas well as a completed CF-178 form, I had my passport, green card, and aircraft registration all ready. So of course the customs guy was the one who recognizes me, and he just asked for the CF-178 and said “see you next time” and left.

In conclusion, all I can say is what a difference a bit of practice makes. I still had a few altitude and heading excursions in IMC when I tried to multi-task, but much less so than on Friday. And I remembered to turn on the auto-pilot before I needed to look away from the panel for a second rather than after I was 30 degrees off course.