[as the] Radar Sweeps

I flew some ILS approaches at CNO today to test my Garmin 430W’s glideslope receiver. Here are the 1st two approaches to CNO ILS26R. I’m going to reference video times the way you will see them in the playback frame, in terms of time-to-end.

There is a “false capture” initially, before I’m established on the approach, followed by a retraction of the GS indicator. Then [-2:10] starts a series of kinda twitchy capture attempts. It finally captures solid about 40 seconds later [-1:30]. At this point I’m still outside of DEWYE, where GS intercept is at 2100′ - I don’t get there for another minute [-:30]. Normal?

Side note: the #2 nav is “flagged” almost the whole time outside of DEWYE and then truly decided it had a signal.

The 2nd approach is pretty much the same - false capture and a couple of twitches, but 2nd time around the video is a little better:

The last clip is of an approach to SNA ILS 19R. I should be able to receive the GS at SNAKE at D10.8, but currently I’m having trouble outside about D6.5:

BTW these were taken with a Flip Video Ultra - about the size of my mobile phone, $150 on Amazon. I attached it to a table-top tripod positioned on my chest. The whole contraption hung around my neck on a bungee cord. I would not be surprised to find that I was the only guy shooting myself shooting instrument approaches like that today…

About three weeks ago I had a trip to the Bay Area for a meeting in San Jose. Back when I worked Borland Software I flew many trips in 11D up to the Bay for meetings in Cupertino and Scotts Valley. I got into the habit of flying into Marina [KOAR], a nearly deserted former Army Air Field, North of Monterey and South of Watsonville. No traffic, lots of ramp space for this 50′ wingspan, and about 10 minutes from the Enterprise rental office. Then a beautiful drive up Pacific Coast Highway.

Following a couple of morning conference calls, an hour drive out to Riverside [KRAL] to get the plane, preflight, and a short hop to Long Beach [KLGB] for some reasonably-priced fuel [in context, that is], I didn’t launch for my filed destination of OAR until just past 3:00PM. It would take me about 1+35 from get from LGB to OAR.

Nice day - sunny, crisp. It took the marine layer until about 11AM to burn off in the Southland; likely at least until then for most of the California coast on this day. The forecast for my destination area at the expected arrival time was for marginal VFR conditions - plenty good enough for an IFR arrival. Shortly after takeoff from LGB I got switched to SoCal departure. As I climbed through 800′ AGL the first controller gave me “direct LAX, cross LAX at 6000″. From there it was pretty much “as filed” - out to Ventura VOR [VTU] and then Northwest-ward, along V485 toward Fellows VORTAC [FLW]. When I got abeam Santa Barbara, level at my cruising altitude of 11,000′, the coastline was covered as far as the eye could see with a thick - almost juicy - marine layer. I decided it wouldn’t be a bad time to check and see if this same marine layer was making an earlier than forecast entrance further North as well, along that beautiful stretch of coastline between Monterey and Santa Cruz, where OAR is located.

Used to be I would have to check with Flightwatch to check the weather ahead. It goes like this:

me: “Los Angeles Center, Aero Commander 1-1-Delta request depart the frequency for 2 minutes.”

ZLA: “Commander 1-1-Delta, approved, report back.”

me [switching to FlightWatch on 122.0]: “Los Angeles FlightWatch, Aero Commander 1-1-Delta, 1-1,000, 2-0 East San Marcus, PI-REP.”

I provide a PI-lot REP-ort of current flight conditions and then - quid-pro-quo - he gives me what I want - the weather at my intended destination. And I write down the weather. And if its a crappy day I try to visualize, perhaps, the geographic extent of the heavy precipitation he can actually see on his display from the words he is speaking, and how it affects my intended route. Much better than nothing and not a bad deal, all-in, but definitely non-optimal, and frankly a distracting inconvenience if the weather you’re in at the moment sucks. It would be great to actually have the current weather, right there in the cockpit. So you don’t have to write it down. So you can check it for updates later. So you can actually see that area of heavy precip that he was talking about. Now that would be cool…

And now one can. And I do. And I love it.

On this day I wanted to know what it was like at OAR. But OAR doesn’t report weather, so I have to get weather at Monterey [KRMY], 7 mi South, and Salinas [KSNS], 8 mi East, and then interpolate and be skeptical [I’m always skeptical]. Instead of doing the FlightWatch dance to get the weather for KMRY on this day I simply tapped K-M-R-Y on a touchpad immediately to the right of my right thigh; then the same for KSNS. On this day both KMRY and KSNS were reporting 3oo’ overcast and visibility of 1/2 mile. OAR doesn’t have a precision approach and the lowest one can get is about 500′ above the ground without seeing the runway environment. And the minimum visibility is 1 mile.

So…I’m still an hour away, my destination is very likely already below minimums - for both ceiling and visibility, and the “Marina Layer” is probably still coming in and getting lower and thicker. Wow - easy call!

me: “Los Angeles center, Aero Commander 1-1-Delta would like to revise destination to Oakland, for weather. Requesting re-route via Panoche, Panoche-2 arrival.”

ZLA [5 seconds later]: “Commander 1-1-Delta, LA center, cleared to Oakland as requested.”

Having satellite weather onboard is a very substantial advantage, even here in California, where we don’t have “real” weather.

The last day - heading home now; Santa Fe to Santa Ana.

As is my practice, I filed with FSS, pre-flighted the plane, and the last thing I did before letting Ellen know we were ready to go was load the expected flight plan into the Garmin 430W. That plan, of course, is already on the “airplane computer”[gotta get a better name for that], on which I did the flight planning in the hotel. Loading the flight plan into the Garmin was uneventful, as it should be.

Through a Glass Darkly
Then I fired up the engines, turned on the avionics master and waited for the Garmin to complete its self-test, before activating the flight plan. “Hmm, kinda hard to read…I wonder if the light sensor just went South on me…no, covering that doesn’t make any difference…I can hardly read the top, the bottom is a little better…crap!…my new Garmin is biting the dust!

I got the ATIS, my IFR clearance, a taxi clearance, and went out to the end of Rwy 20 into the run-up area. The controller said, “11D advise when within 1 minute of ready to expedite release.” “Wilco, we’ll be here a few minutes.”

I went to the config menu for the display. It was on auto. I set it to manual and pushed the brightness all the way up. Marginally better. Earlier in the trip my COM2, a KX-170, had been acting up and I determined that replacing it was now near the top of the upgrade list, but not pressing, because Garmin 430W, and the 430 that preceded it, have been very reliable. Until now.

“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”
Then I got a MSG annunciation: “Backlight Failure”. I don’t know how the display is lit, but I’m now guessing it is by two lights and I lost the top one. When I determined months ago that I would put together an “airplane computer” [laptop, external touchscreen] to display satellite weather, rather than adding a GDL 69, one of the central reasons was redundancy. If the 430 went South on me, the logic went, I would still have GPS and weather on the airplane computer. Now I quite unexpectedly found myself more concerned with COM than Wx or NAV. I know it sounds stupid now, but I never once considered a display failure on the Garmin. When the display goes, you also effectively lose COM - you can’t see what freq you are on! I changed freqs a few times to make sure I could read what the active and standby were set to. I could, but you had to look pretty carefully and shade the display. After a bit I determined we could fly.

The leg to Lake Havasu City was smooth in the early morning air - a stark contrast to the outbound leg we flew closer to mid-day. When we landed at KHII there were dueling “follow me” carts. One from Sun Western and one from the other FBO. Thanks to Voyager’s fuel price info I followed the Sun Western cart, saving $.75/gal!

All Ahead, Bright!

Yet another surprise: on startup at KHII now the Garmin was completely backlit, on full bright. Very readable by comparison to the previous leg, but also clearly troubled. The LA center controller was overworked, frazzled and not particularly helpful. It took 20 minutes of our 1.1 hour flight just to get the clearance.

In contrast, once handed to SoCal approach they were just as busy, but cool, calm and helpful. I always get great handling from these guys. I asked for the GPS Rwy 19, even though it was “severe clear” to test as much of the Garmin as I could before sending it in for warranty repair. All was good.

Home again, home again.

Departing Jones-Riverside in Tulsa was good illustration of the value of [at least] instrument training, if not the rating. They were calling the vis “3 miles, haze”. When they call it that in Southern California it usually means that the vis is a little less but ATC doesn’t want to slow things down anymore than they already are. I would say it was not much different in Tulsa this day.

When is VFR Not VMC?

While it was technically VFR at the airport, once airborne and out of 500′AGL we had much closer to 1 mile vis and by the time we were at 2000′ AGL almost no ground reference or horizon. So while one could have taken off VFR from RVS that day, until he was cleared to and reached 7000′ MSL - about :15 into the flight for us - it would have been strictly an instrument affair. I continue to think that “3 miles and haze”, even without a low ceiling is very treacherous for non-instrument-rated [or at least instrument-trained] pilots.

Weather, Good!

This flight, too, was also very reinforcing of the value of onboard weather. We were in and out of clouds for, perhaps, a third of the 3.1 hour flight. There was weather in Northern Texas moving slowly toward our intended course.  We had weather displayed the entire time and were able to proceed with the confidence that we were not near any serious convective weather. Our XM-based system performed very well, showing, for example, a band of thunderstorms that was about 20 miles South of our intended course as we crossed the Northernmost part of Texas, just below the Oklahoma Panhandle, NE of Amarillo. With ATC’s approval we deviated to the North to put a little more space between us and the heavy rain and lightning [see flight path]. Occasionally we would break out and we could see tops rising to perhaps 18-20,000′ well to the South of our course that mapped perfectly to the heaviest rain and lightning on our navAero display. I love this stuff!

Unchanging Weather, Bad!

We also noticed, by judiciously monitoring the aging data, that GlassView sometimes stops updating the display with weather it has received from the XM receiver:

Weather Aging Info Example [NOT taken during flight]

GlassView tells you how old each displayed weather item is. In the illustration above the Radar is pretty current; the Clouds are not [I just now grabbed the above screen cap as I am writing this for purposes of illustration - it was not taken during a flight].

This is the 2nd leg during which the display has for some reason stopped automatically updating. I have not yet had a chance to discuss this with Seattle Avionics, but I did determine that I can force a refresh by “disconnecting” from the XM receiver and re-connecting. In both cases I had fresh weather on the display in minutes. And to be clear, this is not a bluetooth issue - the bluetooth connection between the XM receiver and the laptop was solid and not reset. I will be looking into this with them, but suffice it to say, if the clouds and radar don’t look like they have “moved” in a while, check the aging info.

GlassView displays a positive indication of GPS Lock in the upper left corner of the window.  I think a similar XM status message is on their task list. It probably needs to represent not just last wx received, but displayed.

Santa Fe

Just prior to reaching Santa Fe we got another 20 minutes of solid IMC, dodging a couple of areas of “dark green”. Probably not necessary to dodge, but we did. We landed on Rwy 20 and in minutes were on our way to Sandia Airpark. Until we grade a spot on our lot there really isn’t a convenient place to park an Aero Commander!

It is Wednesday morning in Ohio. We want to be back in California Friday or, at the latest, Saturday, and we want to spend a little time in New Mexico on the way back. I’m now serious about planning a route home…

In general I try to find new places to stop; that is one of the great pleasures of traveling this way. Going commercial it is almost as though the country consists of a small handful of locations: LAX and JFK, with ORD and DFW in between. Flying your own plane provides an opportunity to stop nearly wherever you want to in what many think of as those”fly-over states”. And there is so much to see.

On to Missouri and Oklahoma

But we do need to make some time now and I start looking for a route that approximates a straight line, has reasonable weather, and [relatively] inexpensive AvGas. I settle on Waynesville, MO as a fuel stop [Voyager helpfully tells me that they are selling it for $4.05], with a possible destination for the day of Tulsa, OK or Amarillo, TX. If we get to AMA that would leave us with about 1.5 hours on Thursday AM into Santa Fe; Tulsa would leave us with 3.0 hours to go.

On departure from Dayton-Wright Brothers we are vectored around, rather than through, the Cincinnati Class Bravo. I’m on an IFR flight plan, cruising about 175 Kts and I’m still being vectored around the Class B [see flightpath]? A gentle query of the departure controller elicits an apology and an explanation: I have hit this airspace right in the middle of the morning departure push. Okay, got it.

We make Waynesville Regional at Forney Field [KTBN] right on time. It is on Fort Leonard Wood and is almost entirely military - just a very small GA ramp on the South end of the field, but lots of construction going on to build a large GA facility with new hangars. After a quick turn we are ready to go again. As we saddle up, Ellen and I decide that Jones-Riverside in Tulsa is the day’s destination. We’ve never been to Tulsa…

I had done a little looking on the web and found that there is something of a tiff going on between the two FBOs on the field: Christiansen and Roadhouse Aviation. Apparently Christiansen has been there a long time; Roadhouse is the newcomer. Both FBOs get good marks from AirNav users. I ended up choosing Roadhouse and had a great experience. Good price on the AvGas, a recommendation to, [and a discount at] a good hotel on the Riverwalk, and a crew car [an old GMC Jimmy]. The next day I tried to buy one of their cool Roadhouse Aviation T-shirts and they wouldn’t take my money. I’ll certainly go back to Roadhouse when I return to Tulsa.

Riverwalks

Apparently Riverwalks are in. I remember being at the Riverwalk in New Orleans a looooong time ago. This trip we found one in Milwaukee that was, we are told by the boardwalk, 245′ wide:

Tulsa has one on the Arkansas River and our hotel was just steps from it. Nice little upscale place with restaurants, a coffeehouse; we had lunch there. Later we decided to checkout the Oklahoma Aquarium, right next to the hotel. We got there too late to go in but you can see here how an inland Aquarium simulates a sea-breeze - those “pennants” are aluminum, permanently blowing in one direction. Kinda reminds me of the fake palm trees we have in California to that are really cell phone repeaters.

What’s This About a Blue Dome?

When dinnertime came we took the Jimmy into downtown Tulsa and looked around. Every urban core seems to have a once-thriving, then decaying, now rebounding warehouse district. Tulsa is no exception: they have the Blue Dome District. We are driving around seeing signs like “Heart of the Blue Dome District”, “Best Food in the Blue Dome District”. I’m thinking: “How did it get to be called the ‘Blue Dome District’? Then I turn the corner and see this:

I guess that explains the mystery. This is what this Art Deco gas station along Route 66 looked like in 1924:

We got out and walked a bit and there were an awful lot of folks going into El Guapo, a cantina. It turns out that they have only been open 6 days - hour and a half wait for a table. We decided to eat at one of the 3 bars in this very unusual 3-story restaurant. Excellent. All in all, a great intro to Tulsa. We’ll be back.

Next stop, New Mexico.