Mark's Pilot Log

This year we went back to the Outer Banks for our family vacation. We took the Saratoga and now I'm more in love with it than I was with our old Cherokee Six. With one exception: the pilot seat needs more padding! My butt was sore after the first hour.

I was starting to get a little concerned about the decision to fly. Last year we drove to the Outer Banks. It took over 13 hours and $165 speeding ticket. I vowed then and there I would never drive on a long vacation again. My wife vowed to never be stuck in a car with me that long again. So this year we flew again. The plan was to depart Sunday morning bright and early and arrive at Dare County Airport before noon. We couldn't check-in until 4:00, but I wanted to get there before the afternoon summer pop-ups started. Well you know what they say about the best laid plans...

The first "problem" was that the Saratoga was getting a new engine. It was scheduled beginning the Monday before we were to leave. Since Murphy's Law indicates that there's no way the engine would be done before we were scheduled to leave, I was, to say the least, frustrated. The last thing I wanted to do was drive, and no other plane was available for the week. Fortunately, the engine was swapped out by Friday and the plane captain took it out for its initial 3 hour break-in. Here's where Murphy woke up: while he was out flying, the vacuum pump went Tango Uniform.

But luck was on my side: the shop managed to get a new one in the next morning and have it replaced by Saturday afternoon. But that was the end of my luck.

I had been watching the weather the last several days. Tropical Storm Barry was tracking up the east coast. It appeared that I had two choices: try to beat it in or wait it out. Unfortunately, there were the typical afternoon thunderstorms over the Appalachians so we couldn't leave Saturday afternoon and by the time those calmed down, Barry was rolling into the Carolinas. So we spent all day Sunday monitoring the weather hoping maybe we could get out sometime that afternoon. Once again, the afternoon thunderstorms took care of that. Not to mention the entire eastern half of the country was covered by sigmets and airmets for turbulence and convective weather. The worst part, of course, is that the family doesn't understand all of that. All they know is that they aren't at the beach yet. (On a side note, as an instructor, I think that will be the hardest thing to teach a new student: how to make the right go-no go decision while your family is riding you.)

Fortunately, we woke up earlier Monday morning and the weather was perfect from Cincinnati all the way to the east coast. There were a few overcast skies in the forecast, but no thunderstorms or turbulence. So I filed my flight plan and off we went.

The visibility was below VFR for most of the trip, but it was haze, not clouds. We only spent a few minutes in actual clouds. Unfortunately, with the new engine we had to maintain 75% power, so we couldn't get any higher than 7,000 feet, so we did have a few bumps to deal with, but on a whole it was a very easy flight. Especially with the Saratoga's autopilot coupled to the Garmin 430. Normally a flight that long leaves me pretty drained, but with the autopilot, I was a little stiff, but not totally exhausted.

Landing at Dare County was, as usual, bumpy with the gusty winds, but I was expecting that. Departing the following Sunday was a little less bumpy, but we left first thing in the morning so the winds hadn't really picked up yet.

The trip back was about like the trip out. Dare County doesn't have a frequency to use for clearance delivery, so I opened my flight plan in the air with Washington Center. Again, needing to maintain 75% power, I had to fly back at 6,000 feet for most of the trip. When we got to the mountains, I asked for 7,000 on the off chance they would give it to me, but they didn't so I needed to climb to 8,000 for a while. I couldn't maintain 75% power, so I had to do that portion at 65%, but that shouldn't hurt the break-in any.

By the time we got home, the temperature was building so we had a bumpy final 20 minutes, but the visibility was amazingly clear for this time of year. I had the airport in sight and canceled IFR 15 miles out. For this area, this time of year, visibility over 10 miles is almost unheard of.

Even with the one day delay leaving, I'm glad I chose to fly instead of drive. Driving would have meant an extra 20 hours of travel time, which almost makes up for the lost day.

We took the Saratoga to Clevelend this weekend to visit with family. We were supposed to go on a fishing trip on Lake Erie, but some unforeseen circumstances put a kink in that plan. Since we already had the plane reserved and reservation for boarding the dog for the weekend, we decided to make the trip anyway.

The flight up was beautiful. There was hardly a cloud in the sky. It was somewhat amusing. There were a few mild bumps. Nothing major, but my wife doesn't like any bump. I had the autopilot on, and I think the autopilot tends to induce a few osicillatons when recovering from bumps, so they seemed worse than they were. Our six year old was sitting in the right seat and wanted to fly the plane. I let him put his hands on the yoke and pretend to fly, but he isn't strong enough to overpower the autopilot so he wasn't really driving. My wife, however, just saw him with his hands on the wheel and the plane was bumping and rolling. She wasn't amused. I was.

We arrived at Cuyahoga County with a gusty crosswind and I used a lot of runway trying to make a smooth landing. My wife, not knowing anything about aviation complained about the landing. Thanks for the support.

Anyway, we hung out for the weekend and woke up Sunday morning to rain showers. They were light, but constant and the radar showed stronger showers moving in. It looked like we would have about three or four hours before they got into the area with no breaks until at least Monday, so we packed up and headed out early to try to beat the worst of it.

We arrived at the airport as the showers started to intensify, but the radar showed that the strong stuff was still well to the west. So I went out to load and preflight the plane in the rain. I hate preflighting in the rain. After thoroughly soaking myself, I loaded up the family and started up.

Since I was sitting at the edge of the tie down area with nothing behind me, I decided to do my run up in place so I would be ready to depart when calling clearance delivery/ground. I had filed /G direct to KHAO which would take me right through the south eastern approach corridor for Cleveland's Class B. I knew they wouldn't clear me for that, but I figured it would be easier to let them decide where they wanted me to go to stay clear, so I filed it anyway.

To my surprise, I was cleared as filed for immediate departure. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, I copied the clearance and accepted the immediate departure. The rain was pretty good by now and I could barely see out of the windshield until we started our takeoff roll. Visibility was still pretty descent for the conditions (about 3 miles and maybe 1000 foot ceiling), but I decided to hold the plane down until we were well above rotation speed just in case I needed to abort. Once off the runway we made a brisk climb out and were cleared to turn on course at about 700' AGL. It was actually a smoother departure than our CAVU departure from Cincinnati on Friday.

They did modify my clearance slightly to steer us clear of most of the Class B, but it was just a simple "turn to 210 until further notice" and about 15 minutes later "cleared direct". It doesn't get much simpler than that.

The most interesting thing was that the flight was smoother when we were in the clouds than when we were in the clear (or at least the haze). We were hardball IMC for about half an hour and in less than VFR conditions for most of the rest of the flight until they lowered us from 6000 to 4000 about 25 miles out of Hamilton. The smoothest part of the whole flight was the part in the clouds. Go figure.