VFR on top in the Comanche

I had no plan to fly today, but work took care of that for me when our General Manager walked in my office at about 9:30am to ask if I could run to Casey, IL to meet with one of our clients. Yup! I can do that!

The plan was to take the older Diamond DA20-C1 (2000) down there around 11am. The trip is about an hour in that airplane. I asked my dad if he wanted to go for a ride, and I got the response I expected, and hoped for…YES! At about 10:50am, we went out to the airplane to pre-flight…the wind was FREEZING!! My dad sat in the airplane while I walked around, and soon I was belted in, ready to taxi.

This airplane has a bit of a reputation for being “rattly” on the ground, but I guess our guys in the shop took care of it. The winds favored runway 2, so that meant we had to taxi for almost two miles. I always lean the mixture back on long taxis so I don’t load up the plugs…I expected a normal runup, but didn’t get one. The mag check was awful. The left mag check was fine with about a 25rpm drop. The right mag…I’m surprised the thing ran! It shook so bad that I couldn’t read the instruments! The drop was between 220 and 250 rpm, and is well beyond the 150rpm limit, and even farther beyond a 50rpm difference between left and right. I tried “burning it off” by running up the rpms and leaning the mixture. No dice. We taxied all the way back to the ramp, and got further instructions to take the Comanche. I suggested this in the first place, but was told to take the Diamond. You can bet I was pleased with this! I LOVE flying that Comanche!

At about 11:45am, we lined up on runway 11 for a crosswind takeoff to save some time by not making the two mile trip to 2. It was nice and cool today, and the Comanche LOVES that cool air! Soon were climbing out of Bloomington and heading for a large hole in the broken clouds at 1900′.

VFR on top. One of my favorite things to do! We cruised on up to 5500′ heading southeast. In the Comanche, this trip is about 40 minutes with no wind. We had a decent push going down there with a 175kt groundspeed, and made it in 30. Of course, that meant the trip home would be slower…

About 18 miles out of Casey, I began noticing the broken layer was becoming more and more overcast-like, which I had expected. We found a good sized hole, and made our way back down below in to the haze at 2500′. Boy it got bumpy. Not terrible, but it was so smooth on top, that it felt worse than it was. We landed at Casey on a nicely resurfaced runway 4 with not even a chirp to the tires. This airplane is really a joy to fly and land.

My dad took this cool shot of the Comanche on the ramp from the FBO…

We took care of business, and about 45 minutes later, we were headed back out to the airplane. The one bad thing about the Comanche 260B, is that it has been tough to hot start lately. I wasn’t looking forward to spending the afternoon in Casey if we had to wait, but as luck would have it (just like the fact that I got to take the Comanche over the DA20), it started on the first hot start attempt! We back-taxied runway 4, and we were off again! This time, we drudged through the bumps to start since it was still overcast, and I didn’t feel like filing an IFR flight plan. So, we bumped though it at 2500′ until the clouds began to break again. When we got to the “legal” sized holes in the clouds, we climbed up on top to the smooth air again. 6500′ this time, heading northwest back to Bloomington with 145kts over the ground.   Here we are coming back down thru the broken/scattered clouds at Bloomington-

I doctored this photo a bit to get the deep blue’s in the sky, and dark greens on the ground…on final to BMI-

When we taxied up to the ramp, I was somewhat pleased to see that they were still working on the DA20 outside with the cowl off. We had been gone for a little over two hours, so it wasn’t just “operator error”. After we shut down, I walked over to talk to Doug about the mag problem. He said it was a weak mag, and it had fouled the plugs on two cylinders, and the roughness was because it was only firing the other two. The mag will be changed next week, and I feel good that I made the decision to say “No go” to that airplane today. It would’ve been very easy to say “Ah, it’ll burn off in flight, and we’ll be fine”, and I’ll admit that it crossed my mind because I wanted to fly! Glad my noggin prevailed, and I was rewarded with a great flight in the Comanche with my dad.

1.4 logged.

1st Instrument Currency of ‘08

With the general lack of flying lately, I’ve come to my personal 4 month IFR currency limit. I haven’t flown an approach in five months actually, so it was time to get in the sim. To tell you the truth, I’ve only flown 2 approaches in the last 8 months, and the last sim time I had was back in July ‘07.

Since the King Air is gone, my 135 checkride was not required, and I can’t let my IFR currency slip in to an Instrument Proficiency Check stage. It’s amazing how fast time goes by, and IFR currency slips right by if you’re not careful to think about it!

So today, I had one of our instructors (same one that did my instrument and commercial several years ago) give me six approaches, a hold, and course interception in our Piper Malibu simulator. I’ve written about this sim before, but it’s a 170 degree wrap around sim with a full Malibu cockpit. It really makes you feel like you are flying, even with no motion.

We started with a takeoff in to 300ft ceilings with 1 mile of visibility off of runway 29. From there it was immediately in to a course reversal for a non-precision GPS 11 approach. Off of that, I flew to the published miss fix, then loaded the ILS 29 in to the Garmin 530. I flew that down to 100′ above minimums when I broke out, and flew the miss to the “missed” intersection. Then it was a non-precision backcourse approach to 11. Following that break out at the runway, I was instructed to fly the published hold at “Cooks” intersection. Once around that, and I had vectors to the ILS 20 approach course. My missed approach instructions after that approach were a climbing turn to a heading of 150, up to 3,500 feet. Once established on that heading, and altitude, I turned the autopilot on to get some approach practice while monitoring the autopilot. I loaded the GPS 29 approach in, and flew that on AP down to about 500′ AGL, then clicked it off to continue the decent to the breakout at 350′ AGL. The last approach was another on AP, but an ILS 29 to a full stop landing.

I never really look forward to doing these sim sessions, but I’m always glad I do them afterward.

Here are the screens showing my radar tracks. The one on the left is an overview, sort of like what a controller would see on his screen…but nicer. The screen on the right shows profile and plan views of the approach corridor.

A close up of the radar screen…

And a close up of the approach corridor. Each approach is laid one over the other, so it becomes a bit cluttered. You can see the wide swooping turns made by the autopilot as it sort of hunts around and hones in on the course. It’s not the best autopilot sim out there, but it does a good job of allowing you to get familiar with how to set things up, and monitor its progress…or lack thereof.

The sim is so sensitive in pitch, that it’s extremely hard to keep it straight and level for any amount of time, but being sensitive in the sim, makes it easier in the airplane.

Anyway, it was good sim time, and I’m glad to be good for another 4 months or so!

1.5 hours-simulator

RV stick time!

Because of the time difference in wherever the WordPress server is and Illinois, this says it was posted on the 17th…all of this took place on Sunday the 16th…

The weather cooperated, and as planned, I went flying with Jack in his RV-7 this morning. Clear, but hazy skies greeted me this morning when I woke up to feed the dogs at 6:45am. Jack called at about 6:55 to tell me we’re goin’ flyin’! Sweet! Engine start at 7:45 he said. I finished getting ready, and made my way to the airport in the crisp 22 degree air. When I got to the hangar, Jack had the engine running already…it was cold, and the airplane was cold soaked from a month in an unheated hangar (he usually keeps the RV in his heated home/hangar, but he is re-doing his runways). He noticed I had arrived, and throttled back a bit for me to get in. Cold. We taxied out to the ramp to let the oil temp come up to a minimum 100 degrees. When there, a call to ground, and we were headed out to runway 11. Winds were 040 @7, and RWY 2 was the preferred runway for the tower, but that’s a two mile taxi to get there. With a 7 knot wind, RWY 11 was fine.

Throttle to the wall, and we were off! Beautiful morning! I snapped this picture about 25 seconds after liftoff…

Then I turned and snapped another off to the east in to the early morning sun…

The mission of the morning, other than to circulate the oil, was to run down to Jack’s house to take pictures of his new building and runway. Jack flew down, then handed the airplane to me so he could shoot some pics. I did a couple trips around his property, and then just messed around for a few minutes to get a few tenths of RV-7 time. That’ll be really important to the insurance company one of these days when mine is finished.

After some gentle yankin’ and bankin’, I handed the controls back to Jack, and we headed back to Bloomington for breakfast.

When we called the tower 8 miles to the south, the parade of airplanes for breakfast at the new CJ’s airport restuarant was just beginning to get started. Good timing…we were the first to land, and got a premium spot right up front.

22 airplanes landed behind us!!!

It was a great early morning flight, and breakfast was fantastic! All those airplanes…this is a great thing for my home airport!!

0.3 logged.

Phew! My wings still work!

Today was the end of my flying drought!! It turned out to be a beautiful March afternoon in central Illinois, so I pretty much had to take the opportunity to fly SOMETHING! 58 degrees, sunny, light winds…perfect! I dragged the ‘ol Comanche out of the hanger, pre-flighted, and she fired right up! The Comanche 260B is such a sweet flying airplane. Definitely one of my favorites on the spam can side of airplanes. My buddy Dan, who’s also a pilot, but not current, went along with me. He had never been in a Comanche before, so once we were off the ground, and I had some time on the yoke, I handed it over to him for a bit. “This is a nice flying airplane” he says. Yup.

We went down to Jack’s house to see if he was outside working on his new building next to his newly graded north/south runway (yes, he has an east/west at his house too…). He was. Razzle, his Border Collie, came out to say hi too! We did several passes down his runway before heading out to the wind farm to take a look at how many more they’ve put up. Amazing. 8 miles from a Class D airport, and there is a sea of 300+ windmills. I’ve heard that the power generated from these things isn’t even being used in Illinois! Anyway, that’s another story. Dan was doing the flying over the windmills, so I just relaxed, and took in the flight.

It’s only been a month and a half since I last flew, but it was a long month and a half. Taking the time to “just go fly” was something that I really needed. No reason other than to be in the air (and burn money…not that I’m complaining).

I called Jack once I was back on the ground at Bloomington. He answers the phone asking why I didn’t fly THRU the building!!?? I thought it looked like that’s what he was signaling…funny guy. Since it’s not done yet, it is open on both ends. Sounds like I’m gonna get some time in his RV-7 this weekend before breakfast on Sunday! SWEET!!! Motivation baby!!!

Hoping for good weather…

0.6 logged.

AHHHHH!!! I STILL haven’t flown!!

Jeez!! Weather, life, my own laziness! Still haven’t flown since January 22nd! I HAVE to make an effort to do SOMETHING this week flying-wise. A few landings over lunch, after work, or a dinner flight somewhere with Brit…I’ll do anything!! I’m goin’ nuts!!