Yeah, most people wouldn’t have called today’s weather ideal, but I was sitting at my desk wishing I was flying. It was raining and/or overcast all day. At about 3:00PM this afternoon, the weather at KVTA was 19°C (so no worries about icing), winds from 010@09 (a fair crosswind), clouds broken at 600, broken at 1000, overcast at 2600 (it was actually pretty variable below that overcast). Now that I’m IFR current again, today would have been a great day to get some time in actual IMC. It has been a long time since I flew in actual instrument conditions down to minimums, but it was well above the ILS minimums at KCMH and if I missed once going into KVTA, I probably could have gotten in the next time around, so not being able to get down wasn’t really a concern. Sigh… I do need to get some time in actual again.
Category: flying
Flight Log 2009-10-17
Well, I will reach 200 hours total time before the year is out, after today I am at 199.5 (143.4 PIC time) and I need to fly again in Dec to remain current to rent at KVTA. I went for another $100 hamburger today. Flew over to Urbana Grimes (I74) for scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and black raspberry pie. The banana cream pie actually looked better, but I didn’t see it until after I had the black raspberry. Then, on the way back I did a touch-and-go at Madison County (KUYF) to add 2 new airports. I was supposed to have landed at I74 on my first night cross-country with Bruce back in 2002, but the lights weren’t working, so we circled the black hole and then flew back. I was originally supposed to fly to Charleston, WV today to visit a fried I haven’t seen in 24 years, but the weather looked pretty bad that direction, so we changed those plans a couple days ago. At takeoff there were reports of ice between 6000 and 8000 feet, so I wouldn’t have wanted to fly much (any) actual today. Ceilings were about 4000 feet at KVTA, but scattered at 4000 feet at I74. The overcast pretty much ended at KOSU. Winds were out of the north (360°) at 6 knots, gusting 15, altimeter 30.17, temp 7°C.
Current again
Well, I am finally IFR current again. I went up Wednesday with Harold and got an IPC (Instrument Proficiency Check) done. I was a little rusty (as I knew I would be), but I was pretty pleased at my performance. Yes, there is still more rust to be knocked off, but I am confident that I would be fine in IMC up (down) to my personal minimums. We first flew over to KZZV, flew the full ILS 22 (including the hold), then on the miss came around and did the full VOR 22 (including procedure turn), then the GPS 27 back into KVTA (circle to land on runway 9). Now one of these cloudy October days with ceilings 100-200 feet above MDA, I’ll have to go out and get some more time in actual IMC. I am also now 2.5 hours from hitting 200 hours total time, at this rate that may still happen this calendar year.
Charitable Flying
One of the things I’ve wanted to ever since I got my license (probably actually before) was to do something meaningful with it. Ever since I first heard about Angel Flight it has been something I’ve wanted to do. I don’t own my own plane, but I really like the idea of flying folks who need to go a distance for medical reasons or to help fly supplies after a natural disaster. (Okay, if I’m the winner of tomorrow evening’s $207M MegaMillions drawing, one of things I’m going to do after paying off the credit cards, the house, and the kids school loans, is buy myself a plane, probably a Diamond DA40XLS, but I digress). The interesting thing about the various charitable flying organizations is that they all have different requirements of the pilots. To fly for Angel Flight Central (that covers most of the upper midwest), you have to have 500 hours including 250 hours of pilot-in-command (PIC) time or a commercial license, instrument rating desired, but not required. For Angel Flight East (AFE), which includes OH, you need 300 hours total time and an instrument rating (although you can fly as co-pilot without an instrument rating). For Volunteer Pilots (VPA), you need 200 hours PIC time for VFR ops or 250 hours PIC time and an instrument rating to fly IFR for them. All of them have some requirement for time in type of aircraft to be used for the operation. As you can see from the little block to the right, I don’t currently qualify to fly for any of them. I have 196.1 hours total, 139.3 hours PIC. So, I’m a minimum of 60.7 hours from being able to do this, but it is something that I feel is important and I want to take advantage of the opportunity I have been given by giving something back. Unfortunately, 60 hours is an awful long time given the rate that I’ve been racking them up the last few years. I got lots of hours in right after I got my license, but for the last few years, I’ve had to cut back mostly because of $$$$$. With 2 kids in college, it is kind of difficult to justify spending the money to fly, but I will get there. As soon as I get to that magic 200 hours PIC, the application is going in to Volunteer Pilots. I may also look into volunteering in some capacity other than actually flying with either (or both) of AFE or VPA. This is something I feel like I’m supposed to be doing, I just have to figure out how to do it. By the way, any pilots out there know this, but any non-pilots reading this may not, did you know that you can fly people for money with fewer hours than you can fly people for a charitable contribution? You can get a commercial license with 250 hours, but you must have (since the new regulations went into effect last year) 500 hours to make a flight in which the passenger donates money to a charity in return for the flight. Strange, but true.
Flight Log 2009-08-17
I went flying today. I wasn’t able to visit the friend I was hoping to see this month, so I just stayed in the practice area. I talked to my favorite CFII and I’ll probably try to get an IPC in next week. So, for today, I went over Buckeye Lake and practiced some slow flight and power on stalls. The first take off was a simulated soft field, I realized I hadn’t done one of those in quite a while (a year, maybe 2, I need to start working it back into my list of things to accomplish when I fly). Then, as I said, slow flight and power on stalls. It was very, very hazy for being “clear”, visibility was 8 miles. Well, it was a decent 0.7 hrs and there should be another 1.5 or so next week.
Home for a while
Well, my car has travelled 5,118 miles in the last 30 days. It has been a busy month and I have one more little visit (though I intend to fly that one rather than drive) to make sometime this month, but otherwise I think I’ll be a homebody for a while. The week after the holiday, I visited my youngest sister for a couple of days and got to see my nephew play some baseball, then went on to NJ to get in some face-time with the boss and team. While there, I also got to visit with some good friends from back when I lived out that way. Then it was back to my sister’s for another day and on home. After a week at home, it was down to NC to spend time with Mom and Dad and celebrate Dad’s 75th birthday. While there, I set up wireless networking so I can use the laptop down there. I also was able to have lunch with a very dear friend from college that I hadn’t seen in over 25 years. Then I came home, but my car went on another road trip with Matt. He went to Memphis to visit a friend from basic training (I think) then to visit with George (his old boss, the one who took him to Japan a few years back). After he brought my car back, I traveled back over to my sister’s for my nephew’s belated graduation party. Lots of miles on the car, but lots of good visits with friends and family. There has also been some bad news in the extended family, but I don’t really want to talk about that right now. It looks like the weather probably won’t allow the flying I was hoping to do. I really need to find some time to get instrument current again.
The $100 hamburger
I desperately needed to fly, but my original plans to visit a friend (that I haven’t seen in 24 years) fell through, so I decided to take my first “$100 hamburger” flight (which with inflation is probably more like $200, but who’s counting?). The weather was pretty nice this morning, high only expected to be about 80°F. I flew from KVTA to KPMH and had lunch at the restaurant there on the airport. The grilled ham and cheese was pretty good, the pie, not quite so much, but the people and the atmosphere were perfect for the venue. Got some nice crosswind practice on landing too which I can’t complain about. The flight back was windier than I expected and on landing at KVTA, it was 28°C, alt 29.59, wind 270@16G22. Fortunately, right down the runway, because that’s a little more crosswind than I’ve done in a while (not that I was really worried about crosswind, but…). A pleasant little 1.8 in the logbook (and another airport) and I’ll still try to catch up with the old friend next month. Life is good.
What is going on?
Things have been pretty busy for me lately. I took a brief vacation last weekend and visited my baby sister and got to see my nephew, the baseball star, play. His team won both games, he scored the first run in one and drove in the game winner in the other (and according to my internet research, he appears to have won this past Thursday’s game with a solo homerun in the top of the 7th inning). It was a good time, I always enjoy spending time with Munchkin and her family. Yesterday and today seemed like they would have been great days to fly, but, alas, I didn’t get to. I hope to get in some flying again in the next week or two, but that will depend in part on the work situation. The company and the union are still negotiating although the contract expired last night at midnight. If the union goes out, I’ll have to work in a new place and, I’m told, it will be 6 12-hour days per week for the first few weeks (if the strike lasts that long). Ah, well, it isn’t flying weather now, we have thunderstorms and a tornado watch and they are predicting snow tomorrow and Tuesday. Gotta love spring, huh?! Oh, well, tomorrow is opening day of the baseball season and the NCAA championship game (in basketball), so I’ll try to OD on that and enjoy the snow. It also just occurred to me that yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis. As I think I wrote before, I really came to appreciate him much more in the mid-70s, but I do remember the rioting that broke out after that awful day. I’ll try to write something of substance in the next week.
Some random thoughts for March
Okay, I still don’t have the time (or more accurately the motivation) to write up the book thing, I promise I’ll get it out in the next few days though, but I did want to post some links to some other people’s work.
- I’ve mentioned it before, I really like a lot of the stuff that Don Brown writes over at Get the Flick. Anyway, I finally figured out that we don’t disagree as much as I thought about ADS-B and the FAA’s NextGen project. He wrote a piece this week making fun of Newt Gingrich (well, several, all probably well deserved, but I digress). The key thing I finally figured out is that ADS-B and GPS can be very useful for general aviation (i.e., my flying), but won’t be the panacea the FAA brass tries to claim for commercial aviation (which is all most people really think about when they hear the word aviation). The real problem there is (as Don has pointed out before) “it’s the runways, stupid”. Even for GA, however, the price can be a problem, especially if the ADS-B can’t replace the Mode C transponder.
- He also, posted 2 excellent stories last month that should be required reading by those pushing for an entirely “space-based” air traffic control system. Radar can’t and won’t ever go away completely.
- Although a bit overcast and windy, it is over 70°F today and would have been a nice day to fly. Sigh…
- Also from Don, last week, another story about why the suggestion of privatizing ATC is just plain stupid. We have the busiest airspace in the world by quite a bit. User fees (which I think would be inevitable in a privatized ATC world) would kill general aviation in this country just like it has in Europe, Canada, and Australia.
- Okay, the labels would suggest that I’m not only going to talk about flying stuff. Also, via Don’s blog, (yes, I do read other things, but he had a number of good stories in the last month that I had marked in my RSS reader to share with my friends) Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, a rather conservative economic commentator, also saying the $787B stimulus package was too small. Which reminds me, I may not have cared much for our former President at times, but I don’t recall actually wishing that he would fail, so it really bothers me that there are a bunch of bitter Republicans (including the blowhard Limbaugh) who are actively hoping to see the current President fail. How can you call yourself an American and say you hope the President will fail when he hasn’t even been in office 2 months yet? If he fails (especially now), we all pay the price. It just makes me sick. (Okay, end of rant, I promise)
- And, finally (for today) from Fred Anderson’s blog, a story by Kent Nerburn that touched me.
- Oh, wait, I guess that wasn’t my final thought for today. Thanx to Facebook, I’ve gotten back in touch lately with a number of classmates from high school and college. I’ll admit, I didn’t really talk to (or care for) some of them that much back in the day, but we’ve all (well, at least I have) grown up some since then, so it is kind of cool finding out what they are up to now. One of my good friends from high school will be having knee replacement surgery on St. Patrick’s Day (at the ripe old age of 47), so I’d appreciate it if you’d keep her in your prayers (though I won’t share her name here because I haven’t asked her if it would be okay).
Nice days and I’m stuck inside watching and other thoughts…
Work has been really busy lately for a number of reasons (that I won’t go into now) and this blog has been one of the victims. The other thing that has been driving me nuts is the weather has been so nice I did manage to get out a fly for an hour last Monday, but there have been another 4 or 5 (including today) that have been absolutely gorgeous (and most of them not too windy) that I’d love to have flown more. I did take the opportunity to intercept and track radials and even took two turns around in a hold at the Appleton VOR (APE). I still need to do a post on the book I read last Sunday. It has been a while since I read a book from cover to cover in one day, but I did last weekend, but that is a topic that requires more time than I can devote to it right now. Today is Ash Wednesday, but I didn’t make it to church this evening because I was working on something that my daughter needed. I have a book (or two or three) that I’d like to knock off my list during Lent, but whether or not that happens will be determined in part by how much more work I need to put into the paper I’ve been working on. More on that later, too. Last thought for this evening, today was the first spring training game and the Reds won, 7-0. No, I didn’t watch or listen, just read that online after the fact. I’m hoping for a better year than the last 8, but I’m not holding my breath. Hopefully, my next post won’t be so scattered. Shalom. —Jim