[as the] Radar Sweeps

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.

Front Door to Baggage Door

First, walking out of your “home” right to your plane is amazing. We have a lot on a airpark that we have not yet had a chance to build on. But on this day, from our rented Little House on the Airport in Bloomington, I walked a few yards to my plane, rather than having to drive to it. I can’t tell you how different - and good - it felt. I’m really looking forward to Sandia.

Satellite Weather

I preflighted, we loaded up, fired up, and turned on the Nexrad. Pretty much every bit of weather we saw Wednesday afternoon between us and our destination was still there Thursday morning. We filed for a route that took us to the South of most of it, via Cincinnati, and Parkersburg and then turned to the Northeast direct to our destination, Ledgedale Airpark in Brockport, NY, just West of Rochester. As on the previous leg, the connection between XM receiver and computer was now solid. In the same way that my Garmin 430 has worked it’s way into my heart to the point that it is hard to imagine going back to flying without it, I think satellite weather will do the same - in less time.

Having this information onboard is huge. First, the correspondence between the weather display and what you see out the window is sometimes startling: on the display, a single dark green Nexrad cell at 10 o’clock, 5 miles; nothing else for miles. Out the window, a lone rising cloud climbing maybe 700′ out of an otherwise very uniform, almost flat, broken layer. 10 o’clock, 5 miles. I saw this time and again. It’s kind of like using a cheatsheet to understand what is going on in the sky around you.

In addition to the obvious benefits of knowing where the really bad stuff is there are more prosaic benefits: being able to call up current weather for any airport at any time is very convenient. Before satellite weather I would request to go off-freq for 2 minutes, try to raise FlightWatch [about 70% success in my experience], and then get a verbal picture of the weather that must be translated to a mental model. And, of course, I’m writing this stuff down and flying the plane, and unavailable to ATC if they have traffic for me. With GlassView+XM, to call up the weather, for example, for Burke-Lakefront airport in Cleveland, a nearby airport which was not on our navlog, the sequence is:

• tap the Airport Info tab,
• tap “K B K L Enter”
• tap the weather tab, and you see this:

But that is the hard way; tapping the airport if it is already displayed gets you this with two taps. You have the latest METAR and TAF, if applicable. When the next observation comes in it refreshes. Very handy. Now I still go off-freq to FlightWatch, but it is almost exclusively to provide PIREPs. I can’t think of much that the FSS guy has that I don’t. And whatever we both have, I can get it myself much faster he can get it for me. Graphical TFRs are also broadcast and this comes in very handy flying out west during fire season [this is the 4th season in California - it follows Earthquake, Flood and Drought].

We flew our plan, kept an eye on the moving weather, and had confidence the whole time that the weather would get continuously better as we approached our destination. And that really reduces my stress level.

One Cancelled Leg

The plan at this point was an afternoon in Rochester, then a short hop to New Haven, CT the next morning, Friday. We had a hard deadline for return to Rochester - we needed to be back in Rochester Saturday at 1PM without fail. Checking the forecast Friday AM for the expected Saturday return it was clear that with thunderstorms forecast over a wide area of New York and Connecticut I could not guarantee I could fly Ellen back on Saturday AM to attend her mother’s 91st birthday party. That had to happen. I elected to drive to New Haven, 6 hours each way.

Parking for $0 at an Air Carrier Airport

While I toured Oshkosh and Ellen did a nostalgia tour of Muskegon, MI with sister Trish, 11D had been relaxing at Dane County Regional Airport, the air carrier airport in Madison. I originally wanted to fly into
Morey Field in Middleton, named after Field Morey [I’ll bet that circumstance doesn’t exist too many places!]. It is just west of Madison - our hotel was there and it is a great little GA field. But we would be arriving after 12 noon, the Enterprise office in Middleton closes at noon on Saturday, and Avis wanted about $20 more per day than Enterprise. Out of frustration trying to get a car at a reasonable price I checked with Wisconsin Aviation at KMSN. I expected them to have Signature- or Atlantic-style pricing for a tie-down. Much to my surprise they charge $0 for ramp space - I think it was $11/night for a tiedown. I elected to pay $0, knowing I would be coming back to Madison each night and if the weather kicked up I would move it to a tiedown. Fuel was about the same as at Morey- $4.74/gal- and they were very accommodating. Two thumbs up for Wisconsin Aviation!

Satellite Weather At Last!

While on the ground in Wisconsin I experimented with my “airplane computer” extensively, trying to diagnose why I was having so much trouble establishing [or keeping] a reliable bluetooth connection between the XM receiver and the laptop. The Seattle Avionics folks say that problems with the Toshiba bluetooth stack I am using are legion and that they remove it and install the Microsoft bluetooth stack. Long story short, on my system it appears that if I “pair” the XM receiver first, and then the GPS, I’m golden. Not a clue as to why, but it does seem to work. I’ll probably continue to use it this way until I switch over to a bluetooth card I found that requires no stack at all. More on that later.

KMSN to …

The mission for the day is to get from Madison WI, to Rochester, NY. Most of Ohio was one big low; thunderstorms in bands in a lot of places. Without the weather we would go SW of Chicago and then due East to Cleveland for a fuel stop. That was a non-starter this day. We ended up having to go as far South as Bloomington to get around this stuff. We had gotten a late start and decided to spend the night there, landing at Monroe County. We figured: never been there, university town, let’s try it. And we are very glad we did. This is how it looked when we landed at KBMG:

Little House on the Airport

We rolled into the BMG Aviation and loaded up on the cheapest 100LL of the trip: $3.60/gal! I asked Bob Burke, the owner, about a room and a car. Bob told us that he had a room available right at the FBO and if we were interested he would throw in a crew car. Skeptical, we said “Let’s take a look…” What Bob showed us was a double-wide mobile home - 2BR, 2.5 BA, office with computer/printer, full laundry, stocked kitchen - right next to the tower.

Beautiful! And as a former Air Traffic controller I just couldn’t pass it up:

My and my tower.

Almost takes me back to my PATCO days. And the crew car was a, um, Cadillac. ;>)

Ellen as Hood Ornament

Bloomington has an area near the Indiana University campus - 4th street - where almost every house on the street has been converted to a restaurant - Indian, Turkish, Italian, Chinese. We had a great meal at Siam House that compared favorably with some of the best Thai food we have ever had.

Off to Rochester tomorrow…