Scud Running

Landing on the right number of people for a small plane is worse than trying to get a settlers game going.  I'd prefer to take at least one person, because I feel like accomplishing something, but two people can easily make the plane overweight.  Three passengers is a challenge.  So with people backing out, and then me asking other people at the last minute, it just becomes what I consider a scheduling nightmare.  Other people probably just call it making plans, but in my opinion anything that takes more than three to six text message to arrange is too complicated.

That being said, it turns out that my decision to learn the 172SP Cessna in addition to the 172P Cessna is paying off big time:  yesterday and today I had no trouble scheduling the club's 172SP, even though a ton of people were all flying the 172Ps.  I pay for it; the SP is more expensive.  However, when you like to make plans a few days before, it is worth it because you can still get a plane.  I am considering moving up to the 172 RG, because the RG stands for Retractable Gear and even fewer people can fly it.  I love how all of my motivation for flight training stems from scheduling issues.

One disadvantage of the 172 SP is that it has bigger fuel tanks.  This is great if you want to go far, and not so great if you want to carry four people (because fuels weighs a lot), even small people.  So it looks like the max number of passengers I can offer to take, and be sure about taking them without going home and calculating weight and balances stuff, is two.

Hoqiuam

Yesterday, we went to Hoqiam.  I initially thought I was going to take starbucks girl #1, but she backed out again.  Then, Saturday morning, I thought we weren't going to go at all.  I was looking at all the information sources sounded bleak:  instrument conditions everywhere, cloud heights in the hundreds of feet (instead of thousands), overcast layers directly over the airports I wanted to land out.  I was logged into the online scheduler in the middle of deleting my reservation when I decided to check the weather forecast products one last time, and something I saw made me decide that, worst case, scenario, I might be able to pop over to Bremerton, pick up Bridget, and maybe fly around for a few minutes.

Then I get to the airport, and the whole damn sky is bright blue.  No clouds in sight.  The same thing happened today, so it seems like this whole area is typically super cloudy in the morning, and then at 2100Z, which I can never remember is 2pm Seattle time, all the clouds just to poof and disappear.

My landings are crap.  I mean, they are both safe and don't damange the aircraft, but talk about sloppy.  When I was landing at Bremerton to pick up Bridget, I started bouncing in and out of ground effect and had to take off again to re-fly the whole approach.  I don't think I'd make a very good glider pilot.  Anyway.

I had made an actual "cross country" flight plan for this trip--my first real flight plan since getting my license.  It Was Awesome.  First, I made the flight plan start and end at Bremerton, because I already know how to fly between Boeing Field and Bremerton.  Then, I didn't put "checkpoints" (read: do-a-lot-of-extra-work points) every fifteen miles.  Instead, I put my checkpoints wherever I wanted, and there weren't many.  I planned to use only a single naviation device (Hoqiuams VOR) instead of like three different ones to get extra practice.  Then, I didn't bother writing down the winds or calculating correction angles for the heading.  I'm the kind of pilot where flying heading 252 versus 248 isn't going to make a much of a difference because I'm going to get off course either way.

So the flight plan, both making and following it, was a breeze.  Then we got near the coast, the one place we wanted to go, and the one place with some clouds.  It was a tiny, thin, but nearly solid layer of clouds at two thousand two hundred feet.  My "personal weather minimums," a collection of random visibility and cloud heights that I established because people say you should have personal weather minimums, dictated that I never fly where the cloud ceiling is less than three thousand feet.  So, I changed my personal weather minimum to two thousand, two hundred feet and ducked under the overcast layer.  It was an extremely clear day, and the clouds had lots of holes that I could see through, and it was basically completely unlike "scud running" for real, but it was exciting because I was pushing my ridiculously safe personal limits, and I could give up at any time because I had a completely clear sky behind me.

We did end up turning back--the clouds and the ground seemed like they were getting lower, and I am very much not a fan of flying close to the ground.  And it was getting darker under there, and we still couldn't see the coast.  I turned back, pushed the throttle all the way open and climbed up through a hole in the clouds.  I wanted to try to fly over the super thin cloud layer and at least be above Hoqiuam.  I figure, that counts as getting there even though it would be illegal for me to descent through the clouds to land (unless I found a big hole--unlikely).  As we continued on, it looked like the clouds went way out over the ocean, forming their own horizon.  There was really no point.  So we went back to Bremerton.

When we got back to Bremerton and joined the traffic pattern, some jackass flew way, way to far past the runway before turning and making his final descent.  Because we were behind him, we, too, then had to fly too far away before turning and making our descent.  I came in too high, as usual, but the landing wasn't bad.

Despite the ease of my super awesome flight plan, I was nevertheless exhausted.  Long (by my standards) cross country flights are always exhausting for me, and I think it is because there is a constant workload that is demanding on the brain.  It is very draining, and I must have been doing it on adrenaline during my flight training.  I want to do a lot more flights like this, so that this stuff becomes automatic and I don't have to concentrate so hard.  After flying back to Boeing Field, the plane's clock said the engine had been running for a total of two hours for the time I had it.


Issaquah and West Point

Today, same thing.  I almost canceled our flight because of weather and when we got to the airport it was blue skies.

I took Luke and my steampunk friend on a tour over their houses.  I also convinced the air traffic controller at Boeing Field that I am an idiot.  Luke lives east of Seattle, so we flew over lake Washington, and then over Bellevue, and then over Issaquah.  My steampunk friend lives in what I call West Point, because thats what is says on my pilot map.  People on the ground call it something else.

It was a quick tour, but way less stressful than going somewhere far away.  There were a lot of seaplanes taking off from Lake Union, which we had to fly over, and they were hard to spot.  That was annoying.

Then, we headed back into Boeing Field and I accidently went into SeaTac's airspace because I misjudged at which point I had to descend.  And the controller at Boeing Field noticed.  That was not good.  You can lose your license for something like that.  I'm told, though, that when you get in trouble with ATC/FAA they usually give you a number to call when you land, and they didn't do that for me.  So, hopefully only the girl at Boeing noticed and not anyone at SeaTac.

My landing was crap because I was proccupied with out I just busted SeaTac's airspace.  I came in to high, had to slip it in (i.e. turn the airplane sideways), then I bounced in and out of what I thought was ground effect, and then we had a hard landing because I misjudged how high we were (the larger runway made me think we were lower than we were) and then I skidded a bit when we touched down because I didn't have the plane lined up right.  I don't think I damaged the plan at all--aside from leaving some rubber on the runway.  I need to practice my landings in the SP model.

The whole point of this trip for me, besides taking my friends flying, was to familiarize myself with the airspace in that part of Seattle.  I suppose I did accomplish that--the hard way.