A better pilot watched all my landings

Roald Dahl knew how to write. And he had a little cabin on his property that was his writing space. He disappeared to it almost every day, which is one of the secrets to doing something well: do it all the time. Frequency is important to honing a skill. That’s why I try to get into the plane, and into the sky, every week. That frequency keeps the skills a lot sharper than if I fly just when the family is all going on a trip. In fact, the FAA is pretty sure that frequency is key to keeping you alive. So they have regulations about how often you need to fly in order to legally carry passengers.

The Feds require that you have a Biannual Flight Review, a BFR. That’s every two years, with a CFI, Certified Flight Instructor. There is some required ground time and some required time in flight but I am, already, unclear on whether there are particular tasks and skills that are tested. I was extremely aware of those things when I took my check ride to get my certificate. And, I believe, when I did my first BFR I studied up beforehand on the things that would be tested. There might have even been a take-home test. Now I am simply aware: I will be tested as a pilot.

My CFII, Liz, said she would meet me at the field at 8:30am. I have been a little dissatisfied with my landings lately (I come into the runway too fast and, usually, a little too high.) So while I waited for her, I did some “pattern work.” Around every airport there is a rectangular pattern an airplane flies to take off or to land. When learning how to fly, a lot of time is spent in the pattern. At Santa Monica it is “left closed traffic,” which means taking off toward the beach, turning left when you are past Lincoln Blvd, left again when you are about a mile south of the runway, left as you pass over the I-405, and then left to line up with runway two-one to land. After a pre-flight inspection, I started the plane, talked to the ground controller to taxi to the runway, did my run-up to test the engine and controls, and taxied up to the edge of the runway. I said, “Santa Monica Tower, November nine, seven, one Romeo Delta is holding short two one for left closed traffic.” After a Cessna landed I was cleared to take off.

To fly the pattern around KSMO we are meant to be at 1,400 feet above sea level. The airport itself is at 200 feet, and most pattern altitudes are a thousand feet above the airport, but KSMO raised theirs another couple hundred feet as a noise-abatement concession. 1RD climbs about 700 feet per minute with just me on board, so two minutes after the wheels leave the ground I am pulling the throttle back, turning left, and trimming the aircraft for “cruise flight.” I am in contact with the tower the entire time and it’s a little busy this morning. President Obama is visiting Los Angeles today and at 3:30pm none of the small airplanes will be allowed into the sky.

As I pass abeam the tower I put in a notch of flaps and reduce the throttle. We start down. I have been “cleared for the option,” which means I can either land and stop or I can land and immediately take off again. This is a “touch and go,” a maneuver I did only a couple times during my training. My primary instructor said that he didn’t believe in teaching with touch-and-goes since if you studied the NTSB accident reports for incidents during training a lot of them happened during touch-and-goes and he didn’t know what was gained by using them. For a long time I did no touch-and-goes. Then another instructor said, “I consider a touch-and-go an aborted landing, which is a really important maneuver to teach.” There is a considerable time savings: in half an hour you can do three landings with touch-and-gos and only one (and a bit) if you are doing full-stop landings.

I turn left a little past the 405, because I have been following a Cessna which is slower. Or, at least, it is being flown more slowly. The Diamondstar is a very slippery airplane and it happily zips around the pattern at 120 knots, when I should really be down around 85 knots.I turn left again and line up on the centerline of the runway. I close the throttle almost all the way and add the second notch of flaps. There is a lot more drag on the plane now and I slow to 90 knots. It used to be such a struggle to keep the plane pointed toward the runway. There would be a little gust or a bump and the plane would wander off course and it seemed to take forever to wrestle it back, only to have it hit another little jog. Now it seems one bump points it away from the centerline and the next one points it back again. I am not sure how that works, but the plane has just gotten better at flying and knowing where it needs to go.

Really, it makes the hard part my airspeed control. And that’s only because I am so much more comfortable when there is more wind over the control surfaces. It shouldn’t matter, because I know the plane can be controlled when it is meandering along at 65 knots, but it feels so much better at 90 knots. But 90 knots is too fast to land. In fact, the plane won’t stop flying until it is going 47 knots, and that means that until I have bled off 40 knots of speed the plane will glide over the runway, happily flying six inches above the tarmac. Running out of runway becomes more of a possibility every time you add 5 knots to your airspeed, so I need to get better at crossing the fence at 75 knots and getting right down to the last three feet at 60 knots. It takes discipline. And practice. My friend Susan is great at it.

I am over the fence at 75 knots. I get it down close to the tarmac at 60knots and just as I pass over the thousand foot markers I set the wheels down at 47 knots. No time to even smile though, I have to pull back up the Landing Flaps to T/O Flaps, full forward on the propeller speed and throttle, keep the centerline right under my butt, keep from skittering sideways in the little breeze and let the plane ease back up into the sky.

So I did two touch-and-goes and then spotted my instructor’s car parked next to mine and made the next one a full stop. After almost a thousand and a half landings, this one was passable. I expect if I did another few thousand I would be happy with almost every one of them.

Liz has her own Facebook and blog pages, so you can follow her there. She taught me how to fly my plane without looking outside and, thankfully, replaced the voice of my primary instructor in my head a lot of the time. (She’s much calmer and doesn’t yell the way Bob Dellio did.)

We talk a little about the flying I have done since my last BFR with her, We discuss a plan for the flight today. Then I fire the engine back up and we taxi over to take off. I ask for a right turn at the shoreline (approved) and after the noise-abatement wiggle over the VOR and golf course at the end of the runway we fly north (well, west) along the coast toward Malibu. We fly north of Point Dume, just before the restricted airspace around Point Mogu’s naval base, one of the designated VFR practice areas in the LA basin.

She has me practice a few steep turns, which are important to be comfortable with because you usually do them close to the ground when flying around an airport. So I fly 45 degree banked turns, 360 degrees without losing any altitude. And I demonstrate some slow flight at Minimum Controllable Airspeed (MCA, for you Beastie Boys fans). That’s also something that happens as you are landing and it’s critical to be able to change your direction without losing lift on either of the wings. (Losing the lift generated by a wing is called a stall. If you lose lift on only one wing the plane will tilt abruptly toward that wing and enter a spin. Spins entered close to the ground are almost always fatal; even professional pilots are unable to break a spin when they are in the landing pattern around an airport. So we practice being able to fly the plane slowly, near the edge of a stall, without inducing a spin.)

For similar reasons, Liz has me practice stalls, both power-on and power-off stalls where I am flying the plane straight ahead and pull the nose up so much that the thrust from the propeller is unable to keep the plane moving fast enough to develop lift on the wings. So the plane wobbles (keep it straight ahead, avoid a spin), and then the nose dips as the plane begins to fall. I push the throttle full forward, allow the nose to dip for just a moment and then recapture a positive rate of climb. The goal is to lose as little altitude as possible since, again, the worst-case scenario for this is to have it happen when you are close to the ground, either landing or taking off.

Even though it isn’t standard or required, I have Liz remind me how to do a chandelle. This is a maneuver which commercial pilots are required to master and someday I would like to get my commercial rating. The scenario is that you are taking off from a runway where there are obstacles straight ahead, and perhaps all around. So you need to turn 180 degrees and climb as fast as possible. So flying straight ahead, I pull back on the stick and begin a fairly sharply-banked turn. I am meant to climb fast enough that I am at my maximum climb airspeed (72kts), all the while turning as quickly as possible to the heading directly behind me.

My first one is a mess. After some discussion I try it again and it is much better. I feel like if I practiced it with my friend Art I could get the hang of it after about half a dozen of them. There are six or so maneuvers in the commercial pilots’ check ride which I would need to get a handle on.

Turning inland, we fly over the Santa Monica mountains toward Van Nuys. I call Point Mogu approach control and I ask for an instrument clearance into the Camarillo airport. As I scramble to get the approach plate loaded on my iPad (in Foreflight), Liz points out many of the gotchas that I could be falling into. I keep my head ducked under the glare shield, simulating the instrument conditions which would require an approach clearance. I get the airspeed under control, get the airplane trimmed for more easy handling, and get the approach plate “briefed,” which means reading it aloud. The approach controller hands me off to the Camarillo tower controller and in a few minutes I am rolling out on the landing. We taxi back to the start of the runway, pickup a clearance back to Santa Monica, and are inside the sky again in less than ten minutes. A good instruction flight is one that has minimum time on the ground.

For the whole BFR I have avoided using the autopilot. That is not true when I am really flying, but if I lose the autopilot to some malfunction, it is better that my hand-flying skills are very sharp. When I do my weekly flights (usually to lunch or to drop a friend somewhere), I always hand fly at least one direction end-to-end. Keep it sharp.

On the way into Santa Monica I am behind the airplane a little. I am worn out from the flying and I drop below the published altitude on one segment of the approach. It is only fifty feet, but Liz has me look out the window to see Century City sliding by on the right. “There’s a good reminder of why you want to stay above the approach minimums all the time. They are there to protect you from obstacles.” I am high enough on the last leg of the approach that we go around on the landing. We discuss the various places where I fell behind, and what I would have been doing if I were actually “in the soup,” or inside the clouds on the approach. This is my home airport and I have to remember not to be in a hurry to get on the ground.

My logbook is buried somewhere in the back of the plane and I have to get back to work, so my CFII will have to sign off on another day. Since she manages three planes over at Justice Aviation, she is on the field often enough. All in all, it was a great lesson, which what a Biannual Flight Review should really be.

That’s why I try to fly twice a week, both because getting rusty is a life-threatening trap and because as long as I pay attention (rather than just enjoying the ride), I get a little bit better. I learn to land a little more smoothly in a crosswind, I get just a little more concise and professional speaking to the tower controllers, and I get the checklists ingrained a little more deeply in my behavior in the cockpit.

Once or twice a year I go up with an instructor and have someone else keep me focused. The CFII who taught me how to fly in the clouds, Liz deSteffany, is a great instructor. She has mostly stopped teaching “primary” students and I am lucky enough that she’ll still slum occasionally to do my BFR. (That’s Bi-annual Flight Review. The FAA mandates that I get one every other year. I think that would be lax, so I have one once a year instead.) She has me do a bunch of maneuvers like steep turns and stalls and tries to distract me to see if I’ll forget to lean the mixture at altitude, things like that. And we always practice an engine-out where we pull the throttle back to idle and spiral down over an airport, gliding in to land without any engine power at all.

That last one could be a life saver. When reading the NTSB reports on accidents, which I do ever month to remind myself that this aviation stuff is very serious no matter how much fun it is, you often see the first link in the accident chain: engine failure is in there. Since airplanes are all designed to glide without engine power, engine failure alone it not enough to cause an accident. You have to be at the wrong place at the time of the failure or, more often, you have to make some bad decisions. The pilot needs to try to turn around to make it back to the airport, instead of landing straight ahead on the golf course. Or they need to try to stretch the glide to that airport they already were headed toward, instead of just setting the plane down on Highway 101. That’s why so many accidents have as a contributing or primary factor: pilot error. Yes, the engine failed, but the pilot made the error to try to land on the beach instead of in the water. Or the pilot made the error of keeping the engine coughing along, rather than shutting it down to decrease the risk of a fire.

So I practice. Practice, practice, practice and hope that when a failure actually happens, all of the training and practice will pay off.

My friend Susan Dost needed to collect her plane from West Coast Maintenance down at KLGB. We were meant to meet at the Santa Monica airport and I’d fly her down. I was feeling a little behind the plane in the pattern, so I arrived at the airport a little early and planned to do a couple landings while waiting for Susan. I did my pre-flight inspection, fired up, taxied to the run-up area, did my run-up and waited for the oil temperature to reach 100F. As I was waiting I glanced back at my parking area and saw Susan’s car. She’s never early. Shocked, I told the tower I was going to taxi back to parking to collect my passenger.

After taxing over, I shut down the engine and popped the canopy. Susan clambered onto the wing and hopped into the right seat. While I went back through engine start she told me about the work finished on her plane, and we talked about the procedure for flying the mini-route down and back to Long Beach.

The tower read me my clearance for the VFR mini-route over LAX and I was cleared to take off. A right climbing 270, turning at the beach and turning back toward the Santa Monica VOR, I entered LAX’s Class B airspace at 2,500 feet, following the 128 radial off of SMO. Exiting the Class Bravo to the south, Los Angeles tower switched me to Hawthorne tower, who cleared me to continue on to Long Beach.

It’s a short fifteen minute flight. Even with the minimal climb to 2,500 feet to slide over LAX, after Hawthorne’s airspace I am in a descent to get down to pattern altitude for Long Beach. It’s a good exercise in radio work and staying ahead of the plane because at every moment you have to be looking for the next thing to do: grabbing the ATIS for Long Beach, twisting the radio controls to switch to Hawthorne’s tower, or setting the altitude bug for a descent. It’s busy.

And Susan and I are discussing some of it along the way. “Is that the same frequency on the way back up?” “Do you usually lean a little bit even though you’re only at 2,500?” “How do you know where Alondro Park is?”

Long Beach tower had us enter the left downwind for two-five-left, and we crossed over the top of Signal Hill. We were following a Cessna (clearly a training flight, they were doing a touch-and-go on the same runway). I put in half of the flaps, slowed down and made my base turn. I added the second set of flaps, noted that the Cessna was on its climb out already and the tower cleared us to land. (I believe they had already cleared us to land, as “number two behind the Cessna 150…” but especially at a field with a lot of training the tower will often repeat the landing clearance once the runway has no contention.) I keyed the mike to acknowledge that I had received the clearance and, bzzt, bzzt, there was a fuzz noise instead of my transmission.

In the scant seconds before what happened next I flipped through the possibilities: bad connection from the headset to the audio panel, bad cord, bad batteries in the headset, bad radio in the avionics stack… The last one was the easiest one to eliminate, and I reached toward the panel to put the frequency for the tower into the other radio (the plane has two radios for communication: redundancy is key in flying safely). That’s when the plane had a complete electrical failure and the gorgeous ten inch color LCD screens representing the brains of our very fancy airplane blinked to mute, dumb black.

I wish I had a video camera recording of those few minutes. Susan and I tried to reconstruct some of the details of the flight afterwards and couldn’t be definite enough about some of the details. And the next minute or two happened quickly and then it was all over.

The number one priority in any sort of emergency in the airplane is dreadfully simple: fly the plane. Number two: fly the plane. Fly the plane, fly the plane, fly the plane. Most of the time, it will not fly itself, and if the pilot stops flying it there are only so many moments before something goes badly wrong. Especially close to the ground. Especially slowed down enough to land. So almost all of my attention was focused on flying the plane.

And one of the great things about the fancy, electronics-laden, carbon-fiber-constructed plane is that deep down it is just a glider. Even more so than some of its compatriots, the Diamondstar was built by a company that started by building gliders.

I didn’t even need to glide. Another solid advantage of the way the fancy plane was designed is that the advanced electronics sit as a layer on top of a very simple, single-engine airplane. So although my plane’s brain (and ears, and mouth) had winked out, the four massive cylinders continued to fire, the fuel continued to flow to the engine, and the propeller continued spinning.

I glanced at the control tower. There are special signals the controllers can use if they believe that you have lost communications. They have a gun-shaped flashlight (a light gun) which they will aim at you and flash red or green signals to tell you it is safe to land, or to go around to try to land again, or that there is danger ahead… all through patterns of blinking or steady red and green. I have a page on my kneeboard which reminds me which signals were which, but I saw no light. I was pretty sure that my last transmission made it out a little bit, and that they were just expecting me to land. In any case, I had been cleared to land, whether or not I had managed to transmit back I could land without a problem.

So I continued the approach to land, keeping the engine at the same throttle level until I was actually over the beginning of the runway. (The majority of engine failures occur immediately after a change in power. This informs my decision to refrain from touching the engine controls of take off, until I am in a position where I can glide back to the runway or to a safe landing.) Once my landing was assured I reached across Susan and just ran my hands over the circuit breakers. Then I continued the right-to-left motion, looking at the flaps lever, correct, the magneto/ignition key, correct, and then shifting my attention back to the landing. Susan was sitting very still.

I set the plane down on the thousand foot markers, slowed easily and came off the runway to the left, pointing toward our taxiway. I glanced down and continued my pass across the instruments and controls. The master switch in the Diamondstar is two halves, one for running the system on battery and one for running it by the alternator when the engine is spinning. The procedure is to switch on the battery half before starting the engine, and then once the engine is going flip the other half so that the engine is powering the electrical system. In my checklist, which has become a right-to-left “flow” in the cockpit, the way Air Force pilots learn to do their checklists, once the engine is running I check the circuit breakers (sometimes starting the engine can trip one), and flow across right to left checking various lights and switch positions. When I get to the big red Master switch I push up the half for “Alternator,” then continue to the switch for “Avionics” and turn that on. Then I proceed up to various other switches that come on after engine start (position, taxi light).

As I sat there trying to figure out why I had no electrical system, I saw that the Master switch only had half of it switched on, the battery half. Running the full plane worth of avionics on just the battery will drain it in about twenty minutes. I switched the alternator half on and the plane popped out of its coma. I told Long Beach ground that I had lost the radio on short final and I needed to taxi to maintenance. She said the tower controller had not noticed me being unable to communicate and “everything looked good from up here.” In other words, I had exited the runway where they had told me to, even though I didn’t hear them tell me. (Not a surprise, I fly often to Long Beach and I know the drill.)

I taxied over to West Coast and shut down.

Susan and I sat and tried to figure out what might have happened. We came up with a few scenarios, but we weren’t definite about which had happened. It is possible that because I restarted the plane once she climbed in I didn’t follow my usually strict procedure for startup and turned on the avionics without turning on the other half of the Master switch. (This seems really unlikely, since the avionics switch is directly next to the Master switch, but it is possible.) It’s also possible that the battery was drained by the two starts (one of which was after quite some time without running the plane, so it was probably hard on the battery), and there are some odd configurations of depleted-battery and full-power on the engine which will pop the circuit breaker for the alternator. And it was possible that in my hurry of checking things on short final, when the failure first occurred, that I flicked that half of the switch off in an attempt to isolate the electrical system to just the battery, so that if the problem was the alternator I had taken out of the loop.

We could come up with an answer. But I certainly wasn’t flying the plane back home without it getting a thorough checkout by my mechanic, Mike Herbert. He called a couple days later and said they had recharged the battery and couldn’t find anything else wrong. They went through all of the circuit breakers and the starter and alternator and so on… nothing.

As we were putting her plane away in Santa Monica, after flying it back up together, Susan said, “That was amazing. You were just as cool as a cucumber. I was stunned when everything went black and I looked over and you were just flying the plane.”

It’s good to know the training works. A total electrical failure on short final to an airport you are familiar with is probably not as exciting as a catastrophic engine failure (which a friend of mine had at 18,000 feet over Atlantic City and landed beautifully). It is a failure, though, and I was glad I didn’t panic, or feel like it was Game Over. (A lot of accident chains include that: the pilot gives up.)

It was very interesting to get to meet my first real failure (in this case of the electrical system). Here’s to another 1,200 hours in the Diamondstar before the next failure.

KIPT: Williamsport, Pennsylvania – Degol Jet Center
Even though it was a Saturday evening, our lineman was cheerful and helpful. While he fueled another plane that had arrived he had no problem with our young boys stretching their legs in the air conditioned lounge. Prompt, knowledgable service and a friendly wave as we fired back up.

KCRW: Charleston, West Virginia – Executive Air Terminal
One of the very few places we have stopped crossing the country where we felt we were not wanted. The lineman was prompt on landing, but invisible the next morning. The woman at the desk in the morning was cheerful enough, although not very communicative, but the one in the evening really made it seem as if we were interrupting her personal time. We arrived in the evening ahead of a huge thunderstorm with two little boys. There was really the least effort made to help us get a hotel room, direct us to where to wait for the hotel shuttle, offer us a ride down to town… nothing. We will press on the next time we are in the area.

KCPS: St. Louis, Illinois – Jet Aviation
St. Louis happened to be at the edge of our range crossing the country, so we stopped to see the Arch. Jet Aviation’s staff was very helpful, talked us through the provided map, gave us a crew car, warned us that there was a Cardinals game going on, so to avoid the ballpark if we could. On return the plane was fueled and ready to go. The rest room (fifteen minute nap before continuing) was very comfortable and quiet. They are building a new facility, but the current facility was one of the nicer I have been in.

KICT: Wichita, Kansas – Yingling Aviation
There’s nothing more to say. This is consistently voted the number one FBO in the country and there’s a good reason why. We taxied in at 9pm and two lineman came jogging out. They marshaled us (a piston single) to the spot right in front of the door. This was appreciated by the two little boys on board who needed the restrooms. The woman at the desk was very helpful with hotel suggestions, going through the book with my wife while I dealt with the plane. They ran us over in their van. In the morning the plane was fueled and as close to the door as it could get without blocking an arriving plane. Added bonus: a hangar full of Skycatchers being assembled. If we are within range, we will always stop at Yingling.

KLVS: Las Vegas, New Mexico – Las Vegas Municipal Airport
Much more than we expected for a tiny dot in the middle of the desert. A rough little airport that the National Guard (and others) use for approach practice, but the staff (John, I think) could not have been friendlier. Topped the plane off before we had even made it inside to the AC. The place is kept neat and clean and everything was in working order. I’ve been in much worse and paid much more for gas. After some of the comments posted on Airnav, this was a relief.

KABQ: Albuquerque, New Mexico – Atlantic Aviation
The last time we had stopped at ABQ we got home and there was a postcard from Atlantic saying, “Next time, try us!” So we did. Their facility is nice and clean. They didn’t have a crew car available (it sounds like they have only one), but their van driver was very friendly and dropped us at the Nuclear Science Museum fifteen minutes away, and then collected us when we were ready. The ramp is actually in better shape than other places on the field, which was a nice change.

KDVT: Deer Valley, Arizona – Cutter Aviation
Once again Cutter provided an invaluable rest stop on our way across the country. Being the last stop before home, their friendly service and response to the needs of our little family were very appreciated. We wanted half an hour of rest with some pie and ice cream, so they pointed us out the door to the nearby restaurant on the field. Even in 100+ degree heat it was a tolerable walk. The plane was ready to go when we returned. There is a LOT of flight training at the airport, so keep your head on a swivel as you approach.

KVNY: Van Nuys, California – Sky Trails
We were diverted from KSMO to KVNY because of the Presidential TFR. Needless to say, we arrived without warning. I had used Sky Trails before (when I needed to divert for weather), so taxied down. It looked deserted, no planes on the ramp, few lights on. We were so happy when there were people inside. Helpful friendly people! They had a taxi waiting to take us home even before we had all the bags out of the plane. The next morning when I returned to collect the plane their waived the overnight fee with a top off (which I needed). When I asked why it was so empty they admitted that they were part of MacGuire Aviation, so next time I will use that ramp (which is a lot less remote and has a nicer lounge). I am not sure why they keep Sky Trails running, but they were certainly nice to us that evening.

That means that at the end of the day I have spent hours and hours concerned about where to land if we lose the engine, what the cylinder head temperatures are, how we will select the FBO at the next stop, and whether the GPS system will be happy enough to navigate down through the clouds when we get there (RAIM check!). In short, I am exhausted and my passengers are usually rarin’ to go.

We are fortunate and are able to get two hotel rooms. I guess otherwise I would sleep on the balcony some evenings. But I’ll be out like a light while Nell wanders the far reaches of the Wichita airport’s industrial park for some sort of meal for the boys. And the boys will stay up watching television, which they don’t have at home. And Nell will answer a bunch of work-related email, work on her latest pilot script, and wait for the room to stop bouncing around like it is in light turbulence.

Click the photo to see a movie of us after our departure from Wichita (August 2010). The boys have silver windshield covers to block the sun and keep the heat gain down in the back. It also means the can watch movies if they have them aboard (we only had one this trip, for the very last leg into California), or rack out since they are usually wiped out from staying up late at the hotel.

For some reason during this summer’s flying I was very aware of the responsibility of carrying the entire family in my hands. Nell takes care of us for the entire year (including delicious breakfasts, Crepes Thursday, and trying to keep a green apple strategically positioned in front of Dexter, all while working in the soul-crushing business that the entertainment industry). Then for forty hours (sometimes eighty if we get to fly on Spring Break or Winter Break) our lives depend on me keeping my skills sharp, wits about me, and my judgement honed. Can we go through that light green on the XM NextRad? Looking out the window, are we safe heading through that canyon? Is the crosswind too much on this runway?

It’s all on me, and it sure keeps me wide awake while we are aloft.

Small person with Brush

The plane needs to be cleaned. Ellie spent over an hour scrubbing it. Adam spent some smarter time finding the reason oil was slipping out of the engine and onto the outside of the plane.

Soon, Adam is going to find out how to put in some blog entries on his own, because he’s already put 125 hours on his plane.

Arch

August 6th and 7th, 2010

This summer little N971RD flew 6,800 nautical miles, helping us traverse the continent, bringing me up to visit Nell while she was on set in Toronto (watch Warehouse 13!), and showing us, again, parts of the country we would never otherwise see. I thought of that as I stared down from the top of the St. Louis arch.

Our two crossings (eastbound and westbound) need to be written up properly, but they have been added to the Crossing the Country page at the bottom, so you can at least check the route. We keep saying that we are going to zig zag across sometime and see a lot more, but then when we are in the plane closing the distance to our destination is very addicting and we all keep the nose pointed straight ahead.

I struggled to spend the entire summer on the East coast, but Nell’s work brought her back to Los Angeles so I hopped a Virgin America flight at JFK to join her (after visiting Dexter for Parents’ Day at Amherst). Five days later, we needed to return to the East coast to collect the boys, and this is how we did it (mileage is in nautical miles, 15% longer than the statute miles non-pilots are used to):

Red Eye

To LAX

Our nephew, Max, picked us up at home and dropped us at LAX. When I first visited Nell in Los Angeles, Max was two and a half, an aficionado of Ernie and Bert. Here he was weeks away from heading off to college in Vermont. When I considered it, I was a little disoriented because it seemed too fantastic. (12 miles total)

I had a long journey ahead of me. Virgin has a minor toehold at LAX (just two gates at the end of a mongrel terminal). I tried to relax after the hell of going through security (there was a shift change right as we put our bags on the belt). Nell roamed the gate area a little, disappointed in the offerings. (I agreed, but had already seen how dismal it was when I arrived on Monday.) As soon as they announced the pre-boarding I swallowed the trusty Lunesta and continued reading my lovely David Mitchell book (The Ten Thousand Autumns of Jakob Zoet). The brilliance of Lunesta is that if you are actively engaged in something it doesn’t affect you, but the moment you are READY for sleep, there it is. Nell and I both wanted window seats, so we are near the back. I am tucked in moments after I sit down and I am asleep before the door is closed on the plane.

The great circle route is evident

Two thousand miles later, I wake up. Most of the passengers, including Nell, are fast asleep. I look out over western New Jersey as the sky turns pale for sunrise. After watching the winking lights of waking towns below me, a layer of clouds slides between me and them. I hope that the layer is high up, so that we are not departing our little airport IFR. I remembered I had Nell’s new 3g iPad with me, so I used it to check the METAR at N07 (Lincoln Park). They were reporting a 9,000 foot ceiling. That would be fine. I sat back in my seat and drifted off a little more until we circled to land.

Being at the back of the plane, we had an additional twenty minutes to wait to get off. But the terminal was nearly empty, so we zoomed through it, dragging our bag and planning our escape to the AirTrain. Virgin cross the continent for us in less than six hours, 2,144 miles. (2,156 total)

Drive

Cross the Bronx

The AirTrain dropped us right into Hertz’ lot. The woman at the desk was annoyed that I showed her my license and credit card, “You’re on the board already, since you’re a Gold Club member.” So we wandered to the board and found our little sedan parked in the numbered slot. We had a GPS unit with us, but it still thought we were in Santa Monica. Nell did better with her iPad, and we rocketed across the Cross Bronx Expressway to the George Washington Bridge and out into the Garden State. It was strange driving onto the little field right after being at the forbidden tarmac of JFK. At Lincoln Park you can drive from the road onto the ramp (the parking area for planes), and then right out onto the runway itself. You can do that at our home field, too, but it’s a two thousand dollar fine if you drive onto the runway. At Lincoln Park you have to drive ACROSS the runway to get to the hangars, where N971RD was parked. It was a forty mile drive that ended with a LOT of looking back and forth to make sure the car wasn’t going to meet a plane. (2,196 total)

Fly, Drive, Fly, Drive, Fly

Northward to Northampton

Getting the plane out of the hangar isn’t difficult, but it’s involved. We swapped the plane for the car, and I fired it up. We taxied to the fuel pumps, shut down and topped it off. I sent an email to my Uncle Jeo letting him know we were about to depart NJ. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock and the airport and surrounding town were still weekend-quiet. The runway is short (2,700 feet), and narrow. I knew that I was operating on a little less sleep than usual, so I was taking everything very carefully and slowly. I performed a short field takeoff, holding the brakes for a moment while the engine wound up to full power.

We roared off the runway and out over the greenhouses of the adjacent nursery. It was a great morning to be in the sky, not yet hot and the moisture in the air pulled up into the clouds thousands of feet above. We had a wonderful view of the rolling countryside of Morris County. Nell promptly went back to sleep. I turned on my iPod and listened to Coldplay, Springsteen and Mark Knopfler, dulcet tunes for a peaceful morning flight. Northampton Airport, where I had dropped Dexter back in mid-July, is not as small as Lincoln Park, but it’s not very generous in runway length either. I came in low, made sure I wasn’t too fast, and put the wheels down right on the threshold. Less than an hour spinning the propellor for 113 miles. (2,309 total)

To the Campus

My Uncle Jeo (my mother’s older brother, but not the oldest brother) was already waiting in the parking lot. Northampton is informal, no TSA fences, so he was able to wander right out to the plane as we climbed out. Nell finally got to meet him, after being married to me for sixteen years, and I took Jeo up in the plane so we could circle the town, his current home and his old house. (Everybody, including Nell asks what sort of name Jeo is. My uncle’s name is John, but growing up he was called Giovanni in his family. John is so plain and he was more exciting than that. Giovanni is a little long, so it was shortened. It should really be spelled Gio, but the J from John snuck on there. He told Nell, “I always know when someone calls me Jeo that they know me from WAY back, or they got some old information about me.”)

After parking (I am sure in a spot that wasn’t ideal) the plane, we hopped into Jeo’s car, trundled to Amhert’s campus and snuck Dexter out of the award ceremony (“Dad, I don’t want to sit through the award ceremony, so the earlier you get there, the better.”), and headed right back to the airport. It was probably only an hour visit with Jeo, but Dexter and I had made our way from Amherst to Northampton the previous weekend to have Sunday dinner with Jeo and family. The morning after getting home to Santa Monica the boys were asked what the highlight of their summer was and Dexter piped up with, “Meeting Jeo and his family.” Many thanks for the early morning ride to collect Dexter, twelve miles round trip. (2,321 total)

Crossing State Lines

The flight to Portsmouth, New Hampshire was even shorter than the one up from New Jersey. Dexter was exhausted (they had a dance the last night of his summer program, and the music kept him awake). Fortunately, he had his pillow from his dorm room and went right to sleep on it. There was WAY too much luggage for one little fellow, but it just filled up the seat next to him, and was stuffed into the luggage area behind him. Let’s just say that the packing list for Amherst’s summer program was very conservative.

It was funny to take off from a short 3,000 foot strip and then land at Portsmouth, the former Pease Air Force base, which has an 11,000 foot runway. Right as we were landing the handles of Nell’s bag bumped the flap switch, moving us from landing flaps to no flaps. For a moment I wasn’t sure why we weren’t slowing down faster as we floated down the runway. If we were somewhere other than Pease I would have gone around. As it was, we just ate up a bunch of the runway before the wheels finally touched. (The rest of our flights had the handles for the bag tucked to the side, that was definitely an anomaly.) We taxied over to the FBO, which had the promised crew car ready for us. We threw all of Dexter’s non-clothing luggage into the trunk and headed to get Rudy. Only a 91 mile flight. (2,412 total)

Second Campus of the Day

I was glad that Dexter and I had come to visit Rudy on campus a few weeks before, because I knew my way from the airport to Exeter. We met Rudy by his dorm and loaded all HIS stuff into the trunk of the crew car. It was clearly way too much to fit into the plane, but we were all hungry, so I couldn’t worry about it. We lunch at an epic place called Epoch, and I snoozed while we waited for the food. I appreciated the sugar and caffeine in my beverage. Soon we rolled back northward, with a stop at a Mailboxes joint to ship a three foot cube of belongings home to California. We didn’t hit any traffic, I didn’t miss any turns, not bad for a twenty mile round trip on the ground. (2,432 total)

Everyone was so happy to be together. Dexter and Rudy were chattering away about their games and occasionally stopping to hug Nell. I packed everything up into the plane, happy that it would all fit, loaded Nell in and then the boys (otherwise we are tail heavy and sit on the skid), and started my usual walk around. As I reached into to get the fuel tester Nell said, “Oh, I’m sure it’s fine, you don’t need to do that this time.” I was just tired enough for the joke to work and I laughed during the whole rest of my pre-flight. I think that means I was punchy. More VERY careful flight procedures and plane operation. We climbed out over the super-long runway and I pointed out to the boys that the air force base used to keep their munitions on the south side of the field, off near the river, in bunkers that you could look down and see. “What’s in them now?” asked Dexter. I had asked the same thing when we flew in before and the tower controller told me, “Bats. Lots of bats.”

Skimming back to NYC

Now it was hot. Now it was a sweltering summer day, and I was thankful for every cloud we were ducking under, since it was a little less direct sunlight into the cockpit. I put up as many of the little shade devices as I could find, but it was still hot until we were up above six thousand feet. Once we leveled out, Nell and the boys promptly fell asleep. It would have been nearly six hours to drive up to get Rudy from NYC (plus another six to get back) and I loved traversing a portion of the eastern seaboard in less than two hours to bring him back. Even sweaty, it was nicer to be in the plane than in traffic down below. And there was definitely a lot of weekend traffic down below, especially near the beaches.

The New York approach controllers didn’t really want to deal with me and they cut me loose as I crossed the Hudson, right over Croton-on-Hudson. That was fine, there was very little aircraft traffic ahead of me, and we were gliding in slow. I announced my position a LOT on the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency on the way into Lincoln Park. My friend TW, who was letting us use his hangar, said that being based at N07 has made him a better pilot. I can believe that, since you have to really be in control of your airspeed and confident of your aircraft control as you are coming down into Lincoln Park. If you are wandering from the centerline you are going to be in the grass in short order (the runway is only ten feet wider than my wingspan), and if you come in too fast you’ll be off the end before you know it. I did a good job, ending our 201 mile trip with a slight bump and some firm braking action before taxiing to the hangar row. (2,633 total)

Final Drive

Tunnel Trip

The boys helped hauling the bags out of the plane and packed up the rental car. I was a little beat and I think without their help pushing the plane into the hangar I might have called the FBO to send over the golf cart/small plane tug. But they each pushed mightily on a wing root on each side and the main landing gear bumped up over the concrete threshold into the space. The electric motor whined as the door closed, protecting N971RD from various thunderstorms that would sweep through in the next week, the harsh summer sun, and a few dive bombing birds. It was very nice to have a hangar for a few weeks.

Nell offered to drive into the city, but I’ve driven these roads into the Lincoln Tunnel so many times that I could probably do it asleep, blind-folded and steering from the back seat. We stopped for a Slushee (mmmm, cola-flavored, super-cooled liquid) which made the wait at the Lincoln Tunnel entrance a lot easier to take. There was only light traffic in the city, so we were in the Village in a few minutes. After dropping the boys, Nell and all of the luggage in front of 43 West, I circled the block back up to University and returned the Hertz car to their depot only a block east. I was pretty tired walking that last block home, but the drive in (23 miles) was a lot easier than I had hoped, and now we were finally all together again. (2,656 total)

Survived the Flight

N3989L managed to bring home Kylee, a dog for Ellie’s birthday. Usually the dog is carsick and Adam was a little worried about the interior of the plane, but the flight went okay. Kylee is a rescue dog. On arrival at Adam’s house the dog took off for a night away, which convinced her that the warm house was a better alternative.

Wingtips

Just behind Adam’s plane (N3989L, with the snazzy red paint job) you can see the wingtip of the business jet. It’s a loop of some sort. I’ve never seen anything like it. Neither had Adam, which is why we have a snap of it.

KSEZ: Sedona, Arizona – Red Rock Aviation
This is our standard first stop out of Los Angeles, this fuel stop introduces us to the idea that people are going to be outgoing, friendly, and helpful as we make our way across the country. The plane was fueled quickly and cleanly while we took a short walk around the airport. My younger son left his laptop charger in the passenger lounge (not technically part of Red Rock’s business), and the Red Rock guys located it, called us, and mailed it back to us on the East Coast. Outstanding service from great people.

KSAF: Santa Fe, New Mexico – Santa Fe Jet Center
I am pretty sure we were the poor cousins landing at this place. Santa Fe is a destination for a lot of second wives on their journey to find themselves, so NetJets and the other charter operations land here regularly. The crew car we borrowed really was a car for a jet crew and the FBO wanted it back in two hours. That gave us just enough time to nip into town, stroll a little in the heat, and grab a bite. Rudy reviewed the restaurant on Yelp! which was great to see. Oddly, the FBO is not on AirNav. I’m not sure why such a large operation would let themselves slip off that page. On our return there were four Citations waiting for their aura-aligned passengers to return from Santa Fe and nearby Taos.

KLBL: Liberal, Kansas – Lydden Aero Center
This is the real deal. We were coming in very close to ten o’clock at night, their closing time, from Santa Fe. I was worried they would be closed, but figured if they were we would self-serve fuel and hop to the closest 24hr place for the night. Jesus was there to wave us in after we announced our arrival on the CTAF. He not only helped us pick out a hotel for the night (not good enough to recommend, not bad enough to warn you off of), he let us have a crew car for the entire night. With two sleepy little boys dragging their luggage around, he was really kind, helpful and spot on. After we got to the hotel we realized that we had flown into a new time zone and it was, in fact, eleven o’clock instead. In the morning the plane was topped off as requested and the morning staff was just as pleasant. This is an FBO from another time.

KMKC: Kansas City, Missouri – Executive Beechcraft
I was sad to hear that EB would be switching over to the Signature brand in the coming months. They were the remnants of a great, iconic name in general aviation. We stopped here on the way across the country so our boys could have some real Kansas City BBQ. EB dropped us at Jack Stack’s, and when it turned out it was too long a wait for a table they zipped back to pick us up at the take-away window. We had our delicious lunch in their break room. It required multiple calls to the front desk and they could not have been more pleasant and friendly.

KHUF: Terre Haute, Indiana – Terre Haute Air Services
Although it was a little difficult to find (they recently moved into the terminal building itself), the FBO was very friendly. They are a complete training facility, so they are familiar with student pilots and little planes. They fueled the plane for our quick turn and were polite and helpful.

KISZ: Blue Ash, Ohio – Blue Ash Aviation
Was a little nervous given the recent comment, but had a great experience. Apparently when their fuel delivery is missed (not their fault) they are forced to limit transient customers. Delivery was on time this week, I guess. Terry stayed past his 7pm quitting time to make sure I got tied down and fueled tonight so I can leave early tomorrow. He suggested the Wyndham and said there was an $83 special. I will stop here again.

KELM: Elmira, New York – Atlantic Aviation
This was a compulsory forty-five minute stop on a day with two long legs, so it was nice to be in a spot that offered some comfort. There’s a soft serve ice cream machine, a popcorn machine, and some vending machines. Our two boys had ice cream with crumbled cookies as topping. The Corning Glass Museum is ten minutes away and they offered us a crew car to go check it out, but we decided to push on. We didn’t pay a ramp or handling fee and the fuel price seemed reasonable for that large an airport. They were very friendly and we will be back.

KLEB: Lebanon, New Hampshire – Signal Aviation
I am confused by my three years of experience with Signal Aviation. I have called to have the plane pulled up for my arrival so it’s easier to load, and it’s still at the tie down. But the second time I flew out this summer it was right up next to the FBO like it was a jet. Sometimes when I land there’s no one there to help with the plane, or the lineman that shows up seems put out, other times they are all over it. It’s a mixed bag and I have told myself that they are the only FBO on the field (so there’s no competition to respond to), and it is vacation land, so I try to switch over to “island time.” They have also done a lot that is great customer service, like calling us in the rental car when we left something behind, and driving us over to the terminal when our rental car was over there.

KRUT: Rutland, Vermont – Columbia Air Services
Don’t use the email address; I sent several emails to it over a week-long period and there was never a response. But this FBO definitely went above-and-beyond during the five days I was based at Rutland. They worked hard to get a rental car up from town and out onto the tarmac even through I would be returning to the field after they were closed. I was flying in and out in the middle of July and they let my passengers cool off inside while I was pre-flighting the plane. They had the plane fueled right when I needed it, and had a suggestion for a maintenance possibility when I was curious about getting the oil changed. Other than the email problem, a top notch FBO even though it is a small operation.

1B2: Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts – Katama Airfield
As soon as you have enough hours to comfortable do a turf landing, you should journey out to this little gem. Our DA40 has a little longer (low) wingspan and the taxiways aren’t mowed quite wide enough for it, so we picked up a few grass stains on the ailerons on the way in. But it is worth it. The diner (The Right Fork) is great. Our group had burgers, floats and salads. All delicious. The parking wasn’t outrageously expensive. Airnav doesn’t have a diagram of the field, which is too bad. We parked by the diner, but there’s another parking ramp that is steps from the sand of South Beach. We walked out there instead and swam for two hours. It was fantastic.

KPSM: Portsmouth, New Hampshire – Port City Air
I flew in on July 17th to visit my son at nearby Exeter. They obviously monitor the frequencies and a lineman was trotting out to guide us in even before we were on the ramp. They were very helpful with directions, arranging the rental car, and discussing the fueling arrangements. It was the middle of a heat wave and for just $20 they put the little Diamondstar in the shade of one of the quonset huts. Those WW2 shelters are so cool I had to go out and take a photo of the plane tucked into one. This is a very professional operation with great people.

7B2: North Hampton, Massachusetts – Northampton Aeronautics
This was one of the smaller airports we had landed at recently and we’re flying a little single engine piston. We were treated like we had rolled out on the ramp at Jackson Hole in a Gulfstream. They had a golf cart take us back out to the plane, used the cart to tow the plane to the pumps, ran back to get us a funnel to dump in the quart of oil, and kept us entertained the whole time. Our rental car was ready and waiting, the bathrooms are clean, and the air conditioning was blowing full blast. A wonderful place to have stopped.

N07: Lincoln Park, NJ – Lincoln Park Aviation
This place is a gem, hidden away in the hills of Morris County. If your plane is small enough to land here, you should. This isn’t really an FBO (or, at least, I didn’t find the passenger lounge), but they collected me from the bus stop, did great maintenance work on the little Diamondstar (oil change, found a cracked spark plug), and were friendly every time I called. The field is straight out of the fifties, so small that people stroll across the runway to get to their hangar. There’s a delicious grill on the field with a patio overlooking the runway. It was hopping with live music when I landed on Sunday night. This is my new base when I am in New York City.

I’m going to keep this summary up at the top of the blog until I complete all the daily entries, then I will let it age down into the archive.

Here are the days of flying for the summer, all the way from Santa Monica, California to New Lebanon, New Hampshire, up into Canada and down to Morristown, New Jersey before the return trip home.

Friday, July 30: Santa Monica, CA to Jackson Hole, WY

Saturday, July 31: Jackson Hole, WY to Madison, WI

Sunday, August 1: Madison, WI to Lebanon, NH

Thursday, August 6: Lebanon, NH to Parry Sound, Ontario

Tuesday, August 11: Parry Sound, Ontario to Antrium County, MI

Wednesday, August 12: Antrium County, MI to Traverse City, MI

Friday, August 13: Traverse City, MI to Morristown, NJ

Saturday, August 22: Morristown, NJ to Springfield, IL

Sunday, August 23: Springfield, IL to Albuquerque, NM

Monday, August 24: Albuquerque, NM to Santa Monica, CA