The Long Way Round

This morning there was quite a bit of fairly ominous-looking weather over much of New Jersey so I decided to try a northbound route over eastern Pennsylvania. This lead to a swing to the north via the Huguenot VOR (HUO) and the Kingston VOR (IGN) before approaching KBDR from the north.

That last patch north of Bridgeport showed up as mostly yellow with a few flecks of light orange on the Garmin/XM display. It offered moderate rain and a tiny bit of light turbulence.

This was the METAR as I was flying the ILS 6 instrument approach:

KBDR 211452Z 04008KT 9SM -RA OVC014 18/17 A3015 RMK AO2 SLP211 P0005

Good visibility in light rain with a 1,400 foot overcast. I actually broke out of the overcast at 1,100 feet.

I LOVE Air Traffic Controllers!

Have I mentioned how much I love Air Traffic Controllers? When things get, er, interesting - as they did last evening - there is nothing more reassuring than the calm, professional voice of a skilled controller working the situation along with you.

The summer afternoon standard-issue convective weather was kicking up its heels over eastern Pennsylvania as I launched from KBDR; wheels off the runway at 2120Z. My IFR clearance was for the usual routing: SAX V249 SBJ V30 ETX V39 LRP V93 BAL Direct, at 8000 feet. I was watching the NEXRAD weather radar picture from XM Weather on the Garmin GPSmap 396 and planning a strategy for working between and around the nastier looking bits.

Shortly after turning south at Sparta VOR (SAX) the New York controller gave me a small shortcut to LANNA intersection on V30. It was 2159Z and the picture looked like this:

Before the shortcut to LANNA I'd been headed to SBJ, well clear of the storm cell west of my track heading northeast. Before accepting "Direct LANNA" I'd looked carefully at that and concluded that the resulting track was still going to keep me out of trouble with that one.

At that point I shifted my focus to the cell that shows up south of the airway west of LANNA - that's V30. In the picture above it's partly hidden by the track readout "237" but it was headed in a threatening direction.

Just about then, the New York controller said, "31 Sierra, contact Allentown Approach on 124.45." Before checking in with Allentown I looked at the weather situation. The prudent thing to do would be to continue toward LANNA until clear of the cell to the west, then turn behind it to the west so as to miss the one up ahead. I transmitted, "Allentown Approach, Skylane 631 Sierra, level 8000 with a request." That got me an immediate, "631S, Allentown altimeter 29.75 and what is your request?"
I said, "In about 15 miles 31 Sierra will need direct FJC, then direct ETX to rejoin V39, for weather avoidance." The lady said, "31S that will be approved...you may not need it when you get there."

I settled down to watch the weather evolve and listened as the controller did a masterful job of using her radar weather depiction (Approach Control Radar reportedly has pretty good weather capability) and her complete grasp of what each airplane in her airspace needed to keep the potentially chaotic situation under perfect control. Controllers would say of her, admiringly, that "she had the flick."

The cell I was watching continued to move into my path and just as I was about to key the mike and ask for a diversion the controller transmitted, "Skylane 31 Sierra, cleared direct to the Allentown VOR." I immediately entered Direct FJC into the GPS that was driving N631S and turned away from the storm cell. It was about 2222Z and the situation looked like this:

About halfway to FJC I was wondering when to ask for "direct ETX" when my favorite controller said, "Skylane 31 Sierra, from your present position it looks like a straight shot to East Texas will miss all the heavy precipitation. What do you think?" I figured I'd probably catch just the edges of the moderate precip, but was well past the core of the cell, so I responded, "31 Sierra thinks direct East Texas now will be fine." She said, "31 Sierra, cleared direct East Texas."

I did fly through some moderate rain, and minimal turbulence - no big deal. As I flew toward ETX I continued to be impressed by the lady's work, sending airplanes where their pilots needed to go, advising that some requests for re-routes were a Bad Idea and generally doing a fantastic job at a busy time. And I never heard even the tiniest hint of stress in her voice.

Soon, she said, "Skylane 31 Sierra, contact Harrisburg Approach on (some freq) and have a good evening." I thanked her for her help and said, "Great job!" Minutes later I was out of the precipitation and dealing with clearing skies over Lancaster.

Today, I'm working on tracking down an e-mail address for the manager at Allentown Approach. I want to let them know that the lady on 124.45 at 2200Z last night is one terrific controller.

Flight Review

Non-cognoscenti find it amazing that the only requirement for recurrent qualification imposed on the holder of a Private Pilot License is the accomplishment every 24 months of a Flight Review to be administered by a CFI. The regulations define the Flight Review, in 14CFR61.56(a), thus:

"...a flight review consists of a minimum of 1 hour of flight training and 1 hour of ground training. The review must include...a review of the current general operating and flight rules of part 91 of this chapter; and...a review of those maneuvers and procedures that, at the discretion of the person giving the review, are necessary for the pilot to demonstrate the safe exercise of the privileges of the pilot certificate."

For a long time, I took advantage of a waiver to this requirement that was incorporated in the WINGs Program. The enabling document said, in a nutshell, that if you spent three hours flying with a CFI and attended one FAA-recognized aviation safety event within two years your Flight Review requirement would be considered fulfilled and you'd get a nifty little pin for your hat.

A little more than three years ago the FAA destroyed the WINGs program by making participation much more complicated and adding onerous verification requirements. It just became easier to go get a Flight Review.

Last summer I did just that, with my friend and long-time instructor Bob Parks. I'm not required to do it again until next summer...but I like the idea of applying some Quality Control to my aviating a bit more often so I decided to get another Flight Review this summer. But that presented a problem - with whom? My pal Bob became ill (and recently "went West") so I needed a new instructor.

Starting a relationship with a new CFI is just about as challenging as getting acclimated to a new barber. Styles and approaches differ, and as much as the FAA would like to claim that instruction and evaluation are standardized, personal characteristics matter. I've gotten to know a young (compared to me) instructor at Three Wing Flying Services named Jared. He's easy to talk to and seems pretty pragmatic in his approach to things so I asked him if he'd do a Flight Review with me and he agreed.

Jared and I started with the hour of ground instruction and we finished up the Flight Review on Tuesday evening with an hour aloft in N631S. It was fun to scrape the rust off of some neglected "stick-and-rudder" skills with steep turns, stall series, simulated emergencies and pattern work. (I do wish I could take back one landing. I'm again grateful for Cessna's hell-for-stout landing gear.) Jared proved to be as calm and good-natured in the aircraft as he is in the hangar. I will happily fly with him any time.

I surely do miss Bob Parks. But life goes on. I suspect Jared and I will be doing another Flight Review in a year.

Maintenance Odds-'n'-Ends

My good friends at Three Wing Flying Services (at KBDR, and I recommend them highly and without reservation) finally managed to print maintenance log stickers for the last couple of times they laid wrenches on N631S. (It seems that they were afflicted by a computer system virus that, among other effects, trashed the driver for their thermal printer.)

The first item was an oil change, accomplished at the same time that they installed the Cessna seat-stop modification. It being summer, we put in Aeroshell 100W oil, as opposed to the Aeroshell 80W that the engine runs on in cooler weather. I've now been following this routine for about 500 hours and the engine seems to be loving it.

I always have a spectrographic analysis done on a sample of the used oil and it has come back from the lab as normally unremarkable.

The second item was triggered by one of those "hmmm" moments during my run-up a couple of weeks ago before a flight from VKX up to KBDR. After taking the engine RPM up to 1,700 and getting a good magneto check and good propeller pitch cycling, I pulled out the knob for the carburetor heat and...nothing happened. Not too good.

The wonderful Continental O-470U engine that pulls N631S along does have one important idiosyncracy. It is an ice maker that would make the Frigidaire folks proud. The carburetor is mounted on the bottom of the engine and the throttle body stands well off under the crankcase, in a comparatively cool environment. As a result, the carb is prone to the accretion of ice in the venturi section. When that happens it can choke off the flow of combustible stuff into the cylinders and the engine stops running. This can be inconvenient at any altitude greater than about 2 feet AGL. The cure for carburetor icing is to provide a valve that diverts the incoming air flow past the nice hot exhaust plumbing, thus preheating it and making ice accretion unlikely. If the carb heat is not working as designed you are left without a weapon to combat carb icing.

On the morning in question, the sky was clear and (more importantly) the humidity was low (i.e., there was a good spread between temperature and dew point). So I assessed the risk of carb icing as minimal and made the flight to KBDR. On arrival I asked the nice folks at Three Wing to take a look at N631S's carb heat valve.

The valve in question is a squarish plate that rotates open or closed on a shaft turned by a bell crank attached to a cable that is pulled by the control knob in the cockpit. In this case, the fasteners that attach the valve plate to the shaft had sheared. I guess after 32 years and 3,750 hours this kind of thing can happen. Tony at Three Wing opened up the carburetor air-box assembly and re-secured the valve to its shaft.

The last item involved the electric pitch trim control. For a while I had been not liking the feel of the yoke-mounted thumb-switch that actuates the pitch trim. It had developed a "sticky" spot. So I asked Dave at Three Wing to look at it. He agreed that it wasn't right and ought to be replaced.

The reason this matters is that the switch might fail in one of its "ON" positions and cause a runaway trim actuation. If this happens at an awkward time (say, just after takeoff) things can quickly get a bit too interesting.

The bad news is that the manufacturer wants $495 for a new switch! (No, it isn't made out of gold - just priced that way.) So for the time being, I have elected to render the electric trim option INOP and make do with manual trim adjustment. I am on the lookout for a used switch and meanwhile Three Wing pulled the electric trim circuit breaker and made a nice little placard saying "Electric Trim Inop".

Robert J. Parks, CFII (1922-2009)

My instructor, my mentor, my friend went West last night after a long, eventful life and a mercifully brief decline. He was 87 years of age, and 67 years a flight instructor.

Bob soloed in an Aeronca C3 on floats in 1939. He served his country during WWII in the CPT program and in the USAAF, attaining the rank of Captain. He went on to a rewarding career in business, but always stayed involved in instructing. Last year he received the FAA's Wright Brothers Award for those with over a half-century of contribution to aviation.

My mind does not usually work in verse, but for some reason as I tried to put my feelings about Bob's passing into words this is what came out:

Requiem for an Aviator

For Robert J. Parks, CFII (1922-2009)

Somewhere far, far to the West – almost beyond where the sun goes to rest
After flecking the clouds with pink and gold hues,
An airfield lies nestled in a valley, under clear blue skies.

The grass strip is home to machines of wood and fabric, wire and dope,
With round engines and spruce props turned by AvGas and the hope
That it won’t quit now – but out there it seems they never do.

Every now and again a new one drones in from the East – there’s always a tiedown
For at least one more, and the guys hangar-flying near the line shack door
Pause and look up as a biplane comes into view above the hill.

The pilot overflies the field, to see what the wind will do, and banks onto the downwind.
He turns base and final, squaring the turns and slipping down to the flare,
Scrubbing off altitude he’d kept in the bank in case the old Continental picked then to tank.

Reacting to the gentle crosswind flow he holds the upwind wings a bit low,
And pulls the stick back, landing in a full-stall. Rolls out, taxis back,
With his sinuous track letting him see past the cowl. “A Waco UPF-7”, somebody says.

The old Waco’s paint is faded and stained but it’s a neat bird, it looks well maintained.
They watch as the flyer taxis around to a tiedown, pulls the mixture, shuts down.
And he climbs out, lithe, agile, with youth rediscovered, and hops to the ground.

As he sheds his leather jacket he hears his name called. “Hey, Parks, where’ve you been?
We’ve been waitin’ for you.” He grins and calls back, “You old reprobate, Lou.
The Teterboro crowd is here? The Ramapo gang, too?”

“You bet. Have some coffee. We’ll get caught up soon enough. And you can tell us,
What the hell is this GPS stuff?” Bob chocks the old Waco and says, “Sorry, Lou,
But I’ve got to find Madeleine, and my grandson, too.”

“Go ahead, Bob,” Lou says, “We’re here every day. Come by in the morning.
The tanks will be full. The oil will be topped up and she’ll start, the first pull.
Bring your grandkid around. You can teach him to fly.”

With a glance at the sky, he walks through the gate – then runs to join the one who waits.
There’ll be no more cross-countrys, no reason to roam.
The pilot’s gone West; he’s found his way home.

The Giant's Alphabet

LOCATION: Central NJ along V16 between CYN and DIXIE (south of Lakehurst, over the Pine Barrens at 5,000 MSL.

TIME & DATE: About 9:30 AM local time on Monday, July 6th.

The unusual geometry of the ground features caught my eye. It looks like clearings have been created in the form of huge upper case letters. Like the giant's child spilled his toy box.

Anyone have any idea what this is all about?

"Somewhere, Over the Rainbow..."

At VKX on July 2nd, about 2:30 PM local. We'd landed a few minutes ahead of a rain shower that left behind this reward after passing through:

Just pretty...which, I think, suffices.

Composite vs. Base NEXRAD Images

A while ago in a post discussing Frontal Weather, I spliced in a number of NEXRAD images including one that showed the situation within a minute of the time I touched down at KVKX.

I commented that, "...these NEXRAD images show composite reflectivity and ... the surface weather was not as evil as the depiction just above would have you think." Let's take a closer look at that.

Below are two archival NEXRAD images showing returns seen by the Sterling, VA site at 2338Z on Friday, the 26th of June. I had landed at KVKX one minute earlier. The image on the left shows Composite Reflectivity; the one on the right shows Base Reflectivity.

If you enlarge the Composite (left) image by clicking on it, you'll see pretty intense returns very close to the location of the airport. You'd be thinking that I had cut things awfully close getting in from the east at that point.

Go ahead - click on it...then use your "Back" button to come back here.

Now, if you click on the Base (right) image, you get a different impression. The intense returns are still a fair distance away from the airport and there is even a clear band immediately adjacent to the field. In fact, there was no precipitation when I touched down. I had a pretty good margin. Have a look.

The NEXRAD weather radar system obtains a layered array of reflections in increments of 1/2 degree of elevation. The Base Reflectivity image is just the totality of reflections in the lowest 1/2 degree (i.e. pretty much horizontal). If you want to know what is going on near the ground you look at the Base Reflectivity image.

The Composite Reflectivity image is a synthesis that displays the most intense return obtained at any elevation above a given point on the map. So, if moderate precipitation exists 3,000 feet overhead, the system will paint the pixel corresponding to where you are standing yellow even if none of the precip is reaching the ground.

The NEXRAD image displayed on my Garmin GPSMap 396 (via XM Weather) shows Composite Reflectivity. (Note that the XM image is processed and synthesized a little differently than the National Weather Service (NWS) images shown above, but the principle is the same.) For cruise flight, you want a Composite Reflectivity image because that will give you "worst case" information and allow conservative decisions. If you were to rely on a Base Reflectivity image in planning your progress you could find a very unpleasant surprise waiting for you at 8,000 MSL.

Lots more interesting information on weather radar is available from NWS at this site. It's fascinating stuff and real-world useful. Highly recommended.

"Frontal Weather" Blog Images

Being fairly new at this "blogging" enterprise, I was perplexed when the images in my recent post describing Frontal Weather did not proffer an enlarged view when clicked -- since the images in older posts had behaved thus.

It turns out that cutting and pasting images within the Blogger editor risks severing the link from the image that appears in the post, and the "parent" image that resides somewhere in the Cloud on a Google server.

In any event, all of the images in that post are now enlargeable with a click. All fixed.

Frontal Weather

Last Friday's trip from Connecticut to Maryland turned out to be an adventure in dealing with frontal weather. It was obvious on Thursday evening that the cold front approaching from the west would require adaptive planning but the details were well in the future so I filed an IFR flight plan for the route from KBDR to KVKX that the Air Traffic Control computer always gives me:

SAX V249 SBJ V30 ETX V39 LNS V93 BAL Direct

By mid-afternoon on Friday it was clear that that was not going to work! Severe weather associated with the front was generating Convective SIGMETs in eastern Pennsylvania and the associated lines of thunderstorms were heading east at about 25 knots...so most of the filed route would not be flyable.

After discussing the situation with Flight Service I amended my flight plan for a more easterly routing:

DPK V16 ENO V379 OTT Direct

This would take me across the sound to Long Island, over Kennedy Airport, down the New Jersey coast to Dover, DE then into Maryland and home. The idea was to get down into the DC area before the frontal weather crossed New Jersey to close off the route.

By the time I got to Sikorsky Memorial Airport, there was nothing much happening. The latest observation was:

KBDR 262052Z 34003KT 10SM FEW110 26/19 A2967 RMK AO2 SLP049 60001 T02610189

Just a slight breeze from the north, with ample ceiling and visibility. However, severe weather was approaching. The situation on the NEXRAD display looked like this:

(You can click on any of the images in this post to view a larger version.)

I needed to be on my way in something of a hurry...and that clearly needed to involve departing to the south. So after pre-flighting N631S with all deliberate speed I called KBDR Clearance Delivery and was unsurprisingly given "Radar vectors to SAX, V249, SBJ,...etc."

My response was, "I cannot accept that clearance due to the active Convective SIGMET over V30 and V39. Request Direct Deer Park, V16 to ENO, direct OTT direct." That produced a "631S, stand by," from the tower and I proceeded to "stand by" for about ten minutes. As the weather approaching from the northwest got to look ever more menacing.

About five minutes before the point when I would have to give up on the trip, the tower called to offer a revised clearance:

Radar vectors to DPK V16 DIXIE V1 ATR BILIT DCA Direct.

Now I knew they did not want me to going to DCA (the VOR on the field at National Airport in DC). But this was not the time to argue a fine point so I read back the clearance, got cleared for takeoff and departed. Wheels off the runway about 5:17 PM. By that point the situation looked like this:

That small white dot just off the Connecticut coast is labeled N631S. (The position is taken from the FlightAware track log.) At that point I was on an 090 vector (i.e., eastbound) assigned by New York Approach for sequencing onto V16. In short order they turned me to the south across the sound, then to the west toward DPK, the Deer Park VOR.

At about this time the weather at KBDR was deteriorating rapidly:

KBDR 262138Z 34013G17KT 10SM FEW026 BKN033 BKN090 24/19 A2968 RMK AO2=

Winds at 13 knots, gusting 17 from the northwest with layered clouds. Just a few minutes later the storm arrived:

KBDR 262147Z 33014G21KT 10SM -TSRA SCT029 BKN048 OVC090 23/16 A2970

Inside N631S approaching JFK on V16, the Garmin GPSMap 396 NEXRAD image showed this situation:

This display is "track up" so north is on the right. All of that colorful stuff is the frontal weather arriving at the Connecticut coastline. By this point it was clear that I'd easily make the southbound turn at JFK before the weather became excessively entertaining. This occurred at about 2155Z:

Headed away from JFK to the south at 6,000 feet the air was smooth and visibility good.

I listened as the weather closed in on the New York airports and JFK, LGA, TEB and EWR became unavailable for arrivals. Lots of holding instructions were being issued to commercial traffic and a number of crews were expressing concern about fuel state.

I was pleased to be clear of the New York area and looking forward to a period of "clear sailing". But I still had to be concerned about the weather at my destination. My plan was to watch the weather in the DC area. If it closed off early I'd divert to an airport along my route (Atlantic City or Millville or perhaps even Baltimore). If it appeared that KVKX weather was holding up I'd proceed inbound and if necessary divert to the south (possibly to Richmond).

When I was handed off to Dover Approach I took advantage of the opportunity to clear up that nonsense about having DCA in my clearance. In fact, they were surprised because their strip showed me routed after ATR to OTT thence direct to KVKX. OTT is the Nottingham VOR and that made a great deal of sense. Problem solved.

I was keeping a weather eye (pun intended) on a storm cell just to the north of DC and moving ver-r-r-r-y slowly toward where I wanted to go. That was going to be the challenge!

Arrival at KVKX was going to be at about 2340Z and at 2315Z the situation looked like this:

The white dot over the Maryland eastern shore is N631S and the dot just south of the severe weather is KVKX. At this point Washington National (KDCA) was reporting:

KDCA 262312Z 21008KT 10SM FEW030 BKN065 BKN250 29/21 A2970 RMK AO2

Gentle southwest breeze, good visibility, plenty of ceiling. Press on!

I crossed Chesapeake Bay and cleared OTT. Potomac Approach brought me down to 3,000 feet and I could see the weather in the distance. I did not slow the airplane down. By 2329Z I was close in and could see the airport:

A short time later the controller at Potomac Approach, who was staying with me and doing a great job, said that DCA had just reported a major wind shift. But I was just then turning base for Runway 24 at KVKX. I landed in a flat calm at 2337Z:

It should be noted that these NEXRAD images show composite reflectivity and that the surface weather was not as evil as the depiction just above would have you think. I had time to fuel the airplane and taxi to the hangar before the storm arrived in earnest. I watched it rain from inside the hangar for about fifteen minutes and then winched N631S inside and put it to bed.

To summarize this very long post, here is the track graphic from FlightAware:

KVKX did not get the worst of that storm cell but Andrews AFB, just a few miles away, did record some pretty serious weather. At five minutes after the hour:

SPECI KADW 270005Z 09014G61KT 060V120 M1/4SM R01R/0500V2200FTR01L/1200V4000FT +TSRA VV016 20/17 A2976 RMK AO2A PK WND 04061/0001 WSHFT 2350 PRESRR SLP079=

Yes, that was a 61 knot gust at 0001Z during heavy rain.

Today at KBDR

When I arrived at KBDR about 1030 local time this morning, this was parked in the expansive grassy area that lies between the approach ends of Runways 6 and 11.

Sikorsky Memorial is often used by airship operators as a base. It's fascinating to watch them wrangle the things especially in anything more than a trivial wind.

You can see in the photo that the morning was overcast. The METAR that was current as I landed put it this way:

KBDR 151352Z 09010KT 10SM OVC008 16/14 A3007 RMK AO2 SLP183 T01560139

The ILS approach for Runway 6 was on offer and I did in fact break out right around 800 feet. Having the runway appear like that is really one of life's most satisfying events.

As I was departing around 1700 local time last Friday I heard KBDR tower working an FAA Flight Check aircraft that was tasked with an examination of the health of that ILS approach. This was getting done because early that morning, in dense fog and with a 5 knot tailwind, a Pilatus PC-12 overshot and got acquainted with the blast fence at the far end. Fortunately the seven occupants all walked away (although there is substantial damage to the fuselage and wing, and the engine and prop are toast).

The fence is rather infamous. One night back in 1994 eight occupants of a Piper Navajo that went through the same fence died in the post-crash fire. In 2001 a Hawker HS-125 landing in a snow squall did the same thing, but that time there was no fire and the two occupants were not seriously injured.

There is now a plan in existence to remove the fence and install a safety overrun that would be filled with frangible concrete to arrest the motion of an encroaching aircraft. This would entail moving the street that the fence protects slightly to the northeast.

Unfortunately this sensible move has been mired in local politics for years. It seems that while the airport is located in the Town of Stratford it is owned by the City of Bridgeport. For far longer than I can remember (I started flying in these parts in 1993) the two municipalities have been at loggerheads regarding what one side calls "expansion plans" and the other calls "safety improvements".

Perhaps the most recent incident can serve to get the runway overrun protection project off of top dead center...but I shan't hold my breath.

The Wonder of Flight

I ask people who don't fly, 'How can you not fly when you live in a time in history when you can fly?'

William Langewiesche, 2001

We need, occasionally, to be reminded of the degree to which we are privileged.

On today's 'to-do' list was the fetching of N631S from Manassas (KHEF), to which I diverted last night due to weather (see earlier post), back to home plate, KVKX. I invited my son Rich to tag along in the company of one of his good friends. Rich's friend is a very smart and astute fellow who had not, heretofore, been a passenger in a light General Aviation aircraft. The flight from KHEF to KVKX was an ideal introduction.

I had filed IFR for the short (about 20 minute) flight and we were cleared for the Arsenal Two departure to the Casanova (CSN) VOR, thence vectors to KVKX. Our final altitude was 3000, and the bases were for the most part around 2000. We got to see the inside of a couple of clouds.

My first-timer passenger asked good questions, and maintained a "sterile cockpit" environment for the departure and as we got in close to our destination. We had no problem doing the visual approach into KVKX. Potomac Approach ATC did their usual highly professional job. In short, if I wanted to expose a "newbie" to the best of General Aviation, I couldn't have asked for a better flight.

After landing, fueling, and hangaring N631S we stopped off for lunch and my now-veteran GA passenger asked another whole passel of really good questions. And, he allowed as how the flight had been about as much fun as he could remember having with clothes on!

Made my day, ya' know? We get jaded. We interact with ATC and we "monitor systems" as our excellent avionics take us from Point A to Point B. But we occasionally lose our appreciation of the miracle that occurs each and every time we accelerate down the runway and gently apply backpressure at about 55 knots. We need new eyes to remind us to be grateful. I am, this night, very grateful for what I have been given -- the gift of flight.

That's What an Alternate is For!

Yesterday afternoon. Generally rainy but looking flyable for the weekly commute from Bridgeport to Alexandria.

Everything's goin' good up until about 2330Z. KDCA reports a 1300 foot ceiling and I am cleared for the RNAV (GPS) RWY 6 approach into KVKX. Piece of cake. Enter the approach, fly the course reversal, line up on final and start to descend. 1500 feet at the Final Approach Fix...4 miles from the runway, no joy. Descend to the Minimum Descent Altitude of 680 feet. If I look straight down I see the houses just fine. Looking ahead, I see...nada! It becomes obvious that the ceiling has lowered and this is going to be a missed approach.

I climb away from the airport and report the miss to Potomac Approach. She gives me a climb to 3000, a 180 heading, and a frequency change. The next controller tells me that the bases are reported at DCA at 500 feet. Even the big guys are missing, and it will be at least 40 minutes until they can give me another shot at the approach. "Say intentions."

"Stand by..."

If I go somewhere and hold for 40+ minutes and then spend 20-30 minutes shooting the approach again and I miss again (it will be dark by then and there's no real reason to count on a higher ceiling) then I will have to find somewhere else to go...and by that time I'll have less than two hours of fuel remaining.

I key the mike and ask, "What's the current weather at Manassas?" KHEF is reporting scattered at 1100, overcast 1700,  landing Rwy 34R. I dig out the appoach plates for HEF. There is a very nice RNAV (GPS) RWY 34R with a Minimum Descent Altitude of 620 feet. Sold.

I advise the controller of my intention to go to KHEF and he clears me via radar vectors.

 The approach goes routinely and a half hour later I'm on the ground. At the wrong airport, but on the ground. I rent a car and drive home.

Archival NEXRAD Images

In putting together last night's post describing last Friday evening's flight I wanted to include some images of the weather situation in certain areas at certain times of interest. What I needed was archival images from the NEXRAD weather radar system. Turns out that it's easy to obtain them and I thought others might like to see how.

The whole process starts HERE at the NEXRAD National Mosaic Images site. Click on the "Get/View" menu item to go to the Radar Data Access page.

Click the link to NOAA's Weather and Climate Toolkit, which you will need to download and launch on your computer. It's a Java application and it will check to ensure that you have an adequately recent version of the Java run-time environment available.

Now, back at the Data Access page, click the link for the Nexrad Inventory Search tool. You'll be presented with a map showing the locations of all the NEXRAD sites. Click on the one that interests you. On the next page, select the date of interest (available dates range from about 1992 to "the day before yesterday". It takes about 48 hours for the system to crunch all the data and archive it.) Then in the list box, highlight the product of interest (one of the COMPOSITE REFLECTIVITY images is a good place to start). Then click the "Create Graph" button.

Now you are presented with a graphic that displays the population of available images for the date being examined. Below the graphic you can enter a time range (say, the time of interest plus/minus an hour) and your e-mail address. Then click on the "Order Data" button.

In a few minutes the system will send you an e-mail with a link to a dynamically-generated web page that will list the images available during the time period you've specified. The links will be in a format like this: KLWX_SDUS51_NCRLWX_200905292200. The first part is the station identifier and the last part is the date-time group. Click on the one(s) you want to keep and save them to your local drive.

Now, remember when we downloaded the viewer application a few paragraphs ago? Fire that up. It will present a graphical interface window. Pull down the Data menu and click Load Data. This will bring up a Data Selector dialog. Click the Local tab and browse to the data file you saved a minute ago from the web link in the e-mail.

The app should load the data and, Presto! There's your archival NEXRAD image. You can save it locally as a *.png file and manipulate it with any of the usual graphics software.

A useful tool set.

There Are Two Kinds of Weather...

In aviation, there are two kinds of weather: Bad Weather and No Weather. With a map that looked like this at 7 AM on Friday morning, it was clearly not going to be a "no weather" day in the Northeast:

I filed the usual "preferred route" (preferred by the ATC computer, not by me) from KBDR west to Sparta then south to Solberg, west to East Texas (near Allentown), south to Lancaster, then Baltimore then home. But around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, the radar picture was looking like this:
That top lobe of precipitation (with the nice red and orange markings) had a SIGMET wrapped around it and I was pretty certain I didn't want to go there. So I filed a new flight plan, starting at KBDR then going to Albany, Wilkes Barre, way out west to Selingrove, PA, then back to Lancaster and thereafter as previously planned. The idea was to first get around that northernmost bit of nastiness and then build in a big loop to allow time for the weather in the Baltimore/DC area to clear to the east.

So I got to the airport, pre-flighted N631S, and called for my clearance. I got: Radar vectors to Sparta, V188 to Wilkes-Barre, thereafter cleared as filed. Not what I wanted to hear, as the last radar picture I'd seen (above) made the Sparta, NJ option a bit unpalatable. I decided to accept the clearance and if it started to take me where I didn't want to go I'd say "Unable!" and negotiate a better deal.

But once airborne and headed west, things started looking better. The picture below shows the echoes at 5:30 PM, just a few minutes after I departed KBDR. You can see that there is an attenuated region developing between the areas of stronger echoes, just about where I needed to be going. So far, so good...
By 6 PM, the path between the heavy weather areas was open and comfortable to transit. Clearly, I was going to be able to get behind the northern parts of this frontal activity.
Sure enough, here is a screen shot of the XM weather display on the Garmin GPSmap 396 at 8 minutes before 6 PM. I am right over Danbury (KDXR) and looking down the road toward Sparta (SAX) the coast is clear.
Of course, that left the little problem of getting into the DC area. At 6 PM, when everything was looking good up north, this is what the Sterling, VA NEXRAD facility was painting:
I got to Wilkes-Barre about 6:15 PM and the controller there asked if I wanted to join V93 there and go straight south to Lancaster, omitting the "delaying loop" out to Selingrove to the west. I had been watching the trailing edge of that patch of nastiness down to the south and it seemed like there was a good chance of it clearing out by the time I made it down there around 8 PM. So, I accepted the excellent controller's offer and headed down toward Lancaster. By 7 PM (probably somewhere around Reading, PA) the radar picture down in DC was improving:
And here, below, is the 8 PM situation. All of the really nasty stuff is over to the east, beating up the DelMarVa peninsula and the path from Pennsylvania over Baltimore and into the east side of DC looked very nice:
Here is another screen from the GPSmap 396 at 5 minutes before 8 PM. That's a pretty intense patch at the upper left, but it's a good 50 miles away. I've just cleared BAL and am headed down to OTT (the Nottingham VOR) where I can make a right turn into KVKX. It's nice when a plan comes together.
To wrap up, here is the FlightAware track for the whole 2.9 hour flight:
And in case you're wondering, the flight back up to KBDR this morning was smooth, fast and totally uneventful. Not good blogging material, but a nice way to travel.