Nothing Goes Horribly Wrong...

Somewhere 3,500' over the Diablo Valley, setting up for the RNAV 28L approach back into Hayward (KWHD) as I'm under the Cone of Stupidity in 7PV, Foreflight on my little old iPad mini just ... disappears. The screen goes blank; I'm locked out of the system. The proper response under these conditions should be a shrugged Simpsonian "meh", and a mental note to debug / fix the issue in a minute or two when I've got the time, not when I'm setting things up on the G1000 or trying to keep up with ATC on the radio (never mind actually just, you know, flying the plane). After all, I'm in a G1000-equipped DA-40 in VMC, John is sitting there in the right seat as instructor, and at this point in the (pre-) approach, the iPad's just not essential. But, of course, the engineer in me takes over and I try to fix and debug it all there and then, with the predictable result that I miss a call from ATC and (to mangle metaphors) generally lose the thread of what I'm doing in the big picture.

Oh well — another good lesson, one I thought I'd learned years ago, but that obviously needs to be hammered back into that poor little brain of mine again. But Foreflight and the iPad come back, and things go on as before — a weirdly-enjoyable couple of hours of little failures and well-received lessons (from John and / or what passes for Real Life under the hood).

* * *

The aim of today's flight is to continue my (possibly-Quixotic) attempts to get instrument current again. And overall, nothing goes horribly wrong — the basics, such as staying the right way up and within IPC tolerances for altitude and heading, etc., are generally OK, and it's really enjoyable decoupling the autopilot and just flying the plane by hand on the approach back into Hayward or on the departure out of Napa, but I spend much of the flight not feeling entirely on top of things. Again, not the serious things — I don’t think I have any real issues with either of the approaches we do (the KAPC VOR 6 with circle to land on 18R (probably my last ever VOR approach — we do it because we still can), and KHWD’s RNAV 28L) or the LIZRD 3 departure out of Napa; even the home-made 7 DME arc to the final approach course at Napa feels straightforward (I used to find these difficult to visualise in the old steam gauge era, but nowadays they’re just “obvious”). But my handling of the integrated GFC 700 autopilot was agricultural, to put it mildly, and my radio work was often really bad (missed calls, indecision, saying way too much on air, etc.). Plus my engine management skills always seem to go to pot under the hood. But the flight director was magic — I’ll be using that as much as possible in the future, regardless of whether or not the AP is properly coupled.

Overall, a good series of lessons, and I don't feel that it's too unlikely I could get current in the next few weeks; I'm off to Bogotá in July for several weeks of work, so I want to try to have it all sewn up by then. If not, it's not going to be the end of the world.

* * *

(And the cause of the iPad's blanking? I'd blame heat if it had been a warmer day and the sun had been intense, but it was a standard Bay Area coastal summer's day (sort of like a London summer's day but gloomier), and I don't think it was that. I know it's happened to other pilots here and there, but it's new to me. Again, though, it's hardly a catastrophe, and when I set up an approach correctly, it's not the sort of failure that should cause me much more than a jolt of irritation...).

A Theme

Long-term YAFB readers might just sense a theme in some of the photos here, but I'm not saying :-). In any case, this one celebrates a really enjoyable VFR Bay Tour done a day or two ago with a friend of mine — Atanu, one of the few people I've known in Sydney, London, and here — and G., his teenage niece who currently lives in Cairo, mostly to show G. the local sights (the Golden Gate, San Francisco, the Bay, Alcatraz, Napa, the Bay Bridge, Berkeley, the Hills, Mt Diablo, etc.) from the air. A perfect day for it, marred only by being stuck in traffic for an hour on a mile-long stretch of Interstate 880 on the way to the airport due to a combination of construction activity and a bad accident on the other side of the freeway. But we got there, and the ensuing flight was deeply enjoyable for all three of us, with G. getting her first taste of flying in a small plane — including probably 30 minutes of actually controlling the thing (under my hawk-like supervision).

A classic California Flying day, in every way….

May Showers

I live in a part of the world — Northern California — where you can confidently make plans for late May and know it won't rain. There might be a bit of coastal stratus or fog, and it might be a lot cooler (or hotter) than you'd hoped for, but it won't rain. It just doesn't rain around here — at all — from late April to early November in a typical year (and when it does, it's literally front page news, with breathless live reports on the evening TV news shows). So a few weeks ago when I booked a flight for this evening, I didn't give it much thought: a nice VFR run down to Monterey (KMRY) or up to Santa Rosa (KSTS), with a passenger or two who'd enjoy the view.

But when I check the forecast a day or two ahead, it's for rain. I've lived here long enough to not really take that forecast seriously — the weather guys get it wrong, a lot, when they forecast rain at this time of the year. But we've had a record year for rain (and snow up in the Sierras), and earlier today it's obvious: this isn't going to be a VFR sight-seeing flight, if it happens at all. I tell my passengers that the flight's off, but I keep the reservation, thinking I might get some nice IFR in (actual) IMC experience if things turn out OK — it's relatively warm, the airmass is fairly stable and predictable (at least on the large scale), and if I don't stray too far from home, I might safely spend a significant proportion of the flight peering out into that bright white or grey enveloping the windshield. Not the sort of thing a typical passenger would probably enjoy, but definitely my kind of fun.

And so it goes: by the time I'm at Oakland (KOAK) in the early evening, it's raining, and the field's IFR — the ceiling's low (but not too low to get back in safely if something goes wrong on departure), and the visibility's down to maybe 1.5 miles (officially; unofficially I'd have said it wasn't more than a mile in some directions). I've filed a couple of suitable IFR flight plans, and I've checked and checked (and rechecked) DUATS and Foreflight, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to fly. The weather at my chosen destination (Napa, KAPC) is better than at Oakland (but still pretty mixed), and the en route freezing levels are fairly high (a few thousand feet higher than the highest altitude I'm likely to get assigned going there or getting back). Nexrad shows nothing serious, and there are no reported thunderstorms or anything especially worrisome in the area. And it's a short flight, combining a fair IFR procedural and communications workout with several outs in case of problems. So what am I waiting for?!

Not much, really, and after a careful pre-flight, I'm sitting at the run up area off 27R with rain streaming down around me, programming my clearance to Napa (basically vectors for SABLO intersection, Scaggs Island VOR (SGD), direct, a route I've been given many times, IMC or not). From experience I predict it'll actually be flown with a couple of initial vectors, then REBAS intersection direct, then straight onto the localiser for runway 36L. Which is basically exactly what happens — after being cleared for departure I enter the clouds at maybe 1,000', and spend the next fifteen or so minutes in and out of (mostly in) IMC as a rather benign set of stratus and cumulus passes around me at 4,000'. I monitor the outside air temperature (OAT) every few minutes; it doesn't go below about 4C the entire time; each time I break out I look around for thunderheads or anything malicious, but really, it's all looking rather nice; it's not even turbulent except for some very minor stuff here and there. There's not much traffic on-frequency, and I don't (quite) get the usual Napa slam on to the localiser — this time I'm basically left to my own devices from fairly early on and can get down early rather than attempting a 1500 fpm descent in actual.

On the localiser into Napa I break out very early, then realise that, while Napa airport itself is actually VFR, I'm about to follow the localiser back into some extensive cloud — the localiser seems to be boring its way through the only large cloud formation in the area. If I were VFR at the moment, I'd just go a mile or two left or right (it wouldn't matter much which), and I'd be safely and legally VFR all the way to the runway. But I head on regardless, straight down the localiser, straight back into the clouds, and break out again well inside LYLLY (the IAF) at maybe 1,000' — and a mile or two to either side the ceiling's at least 5,000'. Yes, the clouds seem to have deliberately formed a long tunnel around the localiser, which makes me smile as I break out. Following Napa tower's instructions, I circle south for runway 24, and land on a wet runway in what seems to be a very dead time for KAPC; the place sounds and feels deserted (all those Northern Californians afraid of the unseasonal rain, I suspect). I taxi back to runway 24's runup area and wait for my next clearance, which comes after a minute or two's delay. The clearance is exactly what I expect, and after another minute or two of programming and double-checking, I'm cleared for departure.

A minute or so later, I'm back in IMC, heading for Scaggs Island VOR (SGD), then REBAS intersection. Just past SGD I'm given "Oakland direct, expect the ILS 27R", and that's what happens, with the inevitable stream of vectors for the ILS and traffic closer in to Oakland. The cloud bottoms and tops are all over the place now, and I'm in IMC pretty much continuously until I break out on the ILS back into Oakland. Every now and then I break out between clouds or layers; at one point I see the Southwest 737 I've been hearing on the radio paralleling me 1,000' higher and off to my 2 o'clock as we both break into one of those cloud canyons; then it's gone again (I can see it on the G1000's traffic display, as well; remarkably, it doesn't seem to be going much quicker than me, which can't be true). A few minutes later ATC calls traffic at my one o'clock, heading north, type and altitude unknown; I respond that I'm in IMC but I'll keep a look out if I get clear of the clouds. A few seconds later I break out into another cloud canyon, and there a few thousand feet below me, very (very) close to the ground flying up a valley in the hills, scud running below a broken layer, is a yellow Husky or Cub (or similar — it's a bit difficult to tell from this distance). He disappears below the layer as I tell the controller what I'm seeing and tell him if that's the traffic, I have it in sight — or not, as by then I'm already back in IMC.

I get vectored onto the ILS back into Oakland, and break out at about 900'. Landing's pretty routine, and I taxi to Kaiser for fuel. It starts raining again just as I start refueling (of course!); but it's definitely clearing on the larger scale, if a little raggedly. Just as I finish refueling, I slip badly and manage to scratch the paint on the leading edge of the wing — a small scratch, maybe 3cm long, and not really visible unless you're looking for it, at least in the semi-light during refueling and hangaring — but things like this always end up costing an arm and a leg, and later I squawk the scratch with a small mea culpa. We shall see what this ends up costing me….

Back in the hangar, the evening sun breaks out weakly as I'm closing up, and the Port-A-Ports where I am become a lovely mess of puddles, sunshine, structure, and the odd sodden business jet. Hence the photos above and below, taken from the hangar. Not quite what this Anglo-Australian Californian expected to see at this time of year, but never mind.

A good flight — quite a lot of benign actual IMC, and, as always with a short IFR flight to Napa, quite a navigational and procedural workout. It's a shame about the paint scratch (and the pulled shoulder from the same slip), but it's all flying — in some way or another….