Quite a Journey

Adam calls me last week (Wednesday) to ask if it would be possible to take him and a friend up flying that weekend for a little 1 hour tour. Because of the BAD weather we have had I said it would depend... but Saturday morningish looked good... but a storm was due that night.

I go on about my business and Saturday morning I call him about the trip... "Well," he says "we were talking about it and wondered if we could go to Vegas?" I don't want to say no to this ('cause it could be some good hours)... but I know the weather is about to get bad again, so I call up Ron to see if he wanted to go... that way it gets bad... I could get some instrument training...

He says OK and I begin to plan the trip... then word leaks out that we are going to Vegas and 2 more want to go... I can only fly a 4 seater... but this could be a good opportunity to get checked out in the 6 seater (Cherokee 6) 260HP MONSTER... grrrrrr. The other bonus is that the plane has a "Constant speed Prop"... without getting into too much boring detail... a constant speed prop adds another control in the cockpit that allows a pilot to adjust the angle of the prop for the most efficient use of fuel compared to altitude... Doing this not only increases the fuel consumption, but can make us fly faster since the prop will be adjusted properly for the altitude... (Hope that makes sense)... Both the constant speed prop, and being over 200HP requires several hours in the plane, and a checkout by an instructor... Ron calls and gets permission... we are set for an 8 o'clock departure from Burbank in the 260HP, constant speed prop, Cherokee 6!!!!

As the day progresses... the weather gets worse... and it's no longer a matter of IF we hit IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) its HOW LONG we will be "In the soup". By eight... it's raining, and I am about to fly an unfamiliar, very powerful plane into IFR conditions... even with Ron this will be weird.

Instrument flying is like no other type of flying. Nothing is to confirm that we were "Just a Cherokee" because we were exceeding 190knots(210MPH)!!!! The Vegas controllers were jerks, however, and vectored us around a bunch... killing the time we had just made. Vegas was pretty clear so we didn't do an instrument approach... since they were delaying us so much, we canceled our instrument flight plan and finished the flight visually.

Landing that plane was next on the bill. Ron was fooling with the prop and I brought us down. Touchdown was another place I could feel the weight of the plane. We sank down on the gear like a commercial airline.

The Vegas story is WAY too long to share... suffice it to say: Adam made $700, his friend made $150, everyone else broke even... Ron and I didn't gamble since we knew the way back was going to be worse, we ate dinner with them, and returned to the airport for some sleep (in the cushy pilots lounge) and kept an eye on the rapidly deteriorating weather. Once the sun came up... Ron and I decided to SCUD run it back to LA.

SCUD run - Stay low, avoid clouds, avoid mountains....

NOW WEZ FLYN'

First the reason for this action... The freezing level was 8000'... rime ice had been reported at that level... If we went IFR on the way back, we would have to fly through 8000'... Ice collecting on a plane turns a plane into a rock... rocks don't fly... SO!

Once the sun was up we could see the cloud level gave us enough room to go VFR (not IFR) back to Palmdale, at which point we would pick up an IFR clearance into Burbank. It was a beautiful flight. 2000 above the ground you get a real sense of your speed, and shaving the bottoms of the clouds accents the feeling. Since we were lower then many of the mountains we kept a close eye on our headings... It was some of the coolest flying I have done... but as predicted the closer we got to LA the worse the weather got. At Palmdale we got our IFR clearance into BUR and we climbed up to 6000'... back in the soup.

This approach would be more difficult then Vegas since we have to line up with a runway we can't see. SOCAL vectors us closer to the ILS (Instrument Landing System) approach... The ILS allows one of our instrument to tell us how high we should be and what heading we need to be... you want to line up 2 needles... and make a "+" out of them. Still blind, we are "On the localizer" which means we are lined up with the runway... a few seconds later we are "On Glideslope" and we begin descending as we follow it down... I begin calling out our altitude and speed to Ron since he doesn't have instruments right in front of him... Just a precaution (plus it sounds cool to the passengers)

"120/3000' " - From that altitude I know I'm over Van Nuys - beginning to drift left... correcting.

"120/2500' " - Too high - dropping a bit

"110/2000' " - Still no runway! fighting some turbulence.

"100/1500' " 700 above ground level!!!! very low... no runway yet!!

"1300' - RUNWAY IN SIGHT" - Dead ahead, on glideslope... Couldn't have been better - 20 seconds later we touchdown.

MUCH better then any simulator... but this is exactly what I used to do with the sim.

So that was that... total flight time 5.1 hours round trip (normally only 4 hours. I have learned that IFR conditions don't equal quickest routes!)

Peter