Cross-Country (part 5): Take-off at KABE

The day of our cross-country flight arrives, the weather looks decent: broken clouds at about 4,500 feet with light winds and visibility of greater than 6 nautical miles. If the clouds are to pose a problem, I knew that both Rob and the Cherokee are rated for flight under instrument flight rules (aka above the clouds). I'll tell you now that the clouds will not be an issue. In fact, the sky will get clearer as the afternoon wears on. So, we will not have to go above the clouds.

I am psyched.

I am at the airport, finally finding the hanger were I am to meet Rob. We go out to the plane, a Piper Cherokee. Rob goes through his pre-flight check list both outside and inside the Cherokee. One important item is checking the fuel level, so he arranges to add fuel to the two tanks (one on each wing). Once inside he checks various instruments inside the cockpit including the radios. He sets the navigation radio to the frequency for the Sparta VOR, and sets the two bands on the communications radio, one to the frequency for ground control. He sets the other band to a frequency that we will use a little later.

He sets up the transponder. The transponder, a Mode C transponder, is a special piece of aviation equipment that will be required later in our flight. It communicates the position of our Cherokee to the radar used by various controllers along our route. He sets it to 1200, the code for VFR flight. Later in the flight, Rob will be directed by one of the controllers, to change this code (aka squawk) to another code.

After Rob is finished with the all the pre-flight checks, using his check lists, he radios ground control who gives him instructions on where to taxi, telling him to hold at area kilo where he does a final check, called a run-up (a check of the engine among other things). Ground also tells Rob that we will be taking off on runway 24. After Rob completes the run-up, we hold at kilo to wait while another plane clears the runway.

The take-off will be handled by the Air Traffic Control Tower (ATC). It is finally time, and Rob taxis to runway 24. This is not the first time I have been at KABE, I was at KABE about seven months on a scenic ride observing a maneuver called touch and goes where the pilot lands and then immediately take-off again. Not all airports allow touch and goes, KABE does. I had also flown on commercial flights out of KABE.

But this is different. I am in the cockpit of the Cherokee looking down a 7,000 ft runway at a decent sized international airport. There was something magical about this take-off. For me flying is peaceful and freeing. it is hard to explain but a part of the magic is sitting in the cockpit looking down at this long runway. This is so different from sitting in the back of a Boeing 717-200 on the way to Chicago.

I hear the familiar and comforting sound of the engine as our speed increased and we lift off. I am free. There is comfort in the communications with the controller at the tower who guides us through the take-off before giving Rob a course and an altitude.

Soon ATC will hand us over to Allentown departure, on another frequency and then Allentown Departure would hand us over to New York Approach on still another frequency. I trust Rob and all of the controllers to keep us -- Rob, myself, and the Cherokee -- safe. And the Cherokee, she is doing what she does so well, flying. I look out the windows watching the ground shrink as we climb to our cruising altitude of 5,500 feet. I sit, taking in the freedom. I am home.

Landing at KABE

Sorry everyone. I got distracted with various things including diagnosing and then sending off my Pentax DSLR for in-warranty repair, so I never finished today's article in my series on my cross-country flight. That article will post tomorrow, barring unforeseen circumstances. In the meantime, I found this video on youtube of a Cherokee landing at Lehigh Valley International Airport (KABE). You may recall that my pilot Rob and I took off from KABE for our cross country. Enjoy!

Upcoming articles about my cross-country flight

My cross country flight was not only about seeing first hand some of the things that I learned in ground school. It was also about the joy of flying. I may never be a pilot, but I can and do fly in my own ways, so to speak. This flight was part of that experience.

Upcoming articles about my cross-country flight:

• October 29: part 5 - take-off from KABE
• November 1: part 6 - navigation and radio communications
• November 3: part 7 - more on radio communications
• November 5: part 8 - Tappen Zee Bridge and KHPN
• November 8: part 9 - return flight to KABE
• November 10: part 10 - references

Cross-Country (part 4): plotting the course

The night before my cross-country flight I checked the weather forecasts and planned a possible route that for the scenic ride from Lehigh Valley International Airport (KABE) to Westchester County Airport (KHPN). The weather looked to be good for the flight the next day with low winds and good conditions for a flight under visual flight rules.

I admit that I had paid that much attention to the navigational aide known as a VOR since before I passed the FAA written private pilot exam. So, I wanted another opportunity to observe VOR navigation. The VOR is a ground based radio beacon that pilots use to navigate by referring to an instrument in the cockpit. The VOR transmits its signals in 360 degrees.

I planned for a route flying first to the navigational aide known as the Sparta VOR (SAX) and then proceeding to Westchester County Airport (KHPN). I wanted to show you the route that I plotted, so I went to the FAA website where I downloaded the NY Sectional raster file. the files are very large, so I cropped and saved a smaller image. I then drew the course on the image, adding some labels. The Sparta VOR (navigational aid) is circled. On this route, if the controllers let us into class B airspace, we will only be in class B airspace for a shorter time compared with the alternative of a direct route to KHPN.

I added the distance and true course to the image, but it may be a little hard to read.

KABE to Sparta VOR: 48 nautical miles, 70 degrees.
Sparta VOR to KHPN: 38 nautical miles, 102 degrees.

Nautical miles (or knots) are used in aviation. One nautical mile equals approximately 1.15 miles.

Aeronautical charts take some getting used, but I wanted you to see what one looks like. However, I thought that some of you might want to see the route plotted using more conventional maps. So, I went into Google Earth and using an aeronautical chart overlay, I added a marker for the Sparta VOR. I then deleted this overlay, reverting back to a normal image.

Next up, I'll get to the flight itself and talk about starting out from Lehigh Valley International Airport.

Cross Country (Part 3): Planning for the flight

A student pilot will sit down the night before a cross-country flight, look at the aviation weather forecasts for the next day with an eye towards the forecasted winds. Information they would like at includes but is not limited to:

• forecasted wind speed and direction,
• fuel capacity of the plane from the airplanes manual (aka pilot operating handbook or POH),
• gallons of gas used per hour (from the POH),
• nautical miles to be traveled (determined using the aeronautical charts),
• information about the destination airport(s) including but not limited to a diagram of the airport, runway information, radio frequencies used, etc., and
• noting all radio frequencies for the flight, including frequencies used by navigation aids.

On the morning of the flight, a student pilot/pilot will check the aviation weather forecast again, and adjust any calculations, if necessary. Finally, they would check for temporary flight restrictions (TFRs) and Notices to Airman (NOTAM) along their planned route.

This is a scenic ride, and I am not a pilot student or otherwise, nor am in flight training. Nevertheless, I did take a look at the weather forecasts the night before and the morning of the scenic ride. I made sure that I had a copy of airport diagrams, and noted radio frequencies that the pilot might use on the flight. I looked for TFRs and NOTAMs that might affect the route of the scenic ride prior to leaving for the airport.

In addition to the experience of a longer flight, I was especially interested in navigation and listening to radio communications. I will continue to write more about what I did before the flight in my next post. I will get to navigation, radio communications, and more in later articles. Stay tuned!

Cross-Country (part 2) - what is a cross country?

I want to take a little time to talk about what a cross-country flight is and it's role in flight training of student pilots. While I am not a student pilot nor am I in flight training, I wanted the experience of taking a scenic ride in the form of a cross-country flight.

Students seeking their private pilot's certificate (single-engine) have to complete a variety of piloting tasks, both dual time with their instructor as well as solo time. Before flying solo as a student, the instructor endorses their pilot log book for the specific solo task. One of these tasks is to log a certain number of solo cross-country flights. It is way beyond the scope of this article to go into these definitions and requirements, but one of the articles that I am including in this series of articles about my cross-country flight will focus on where you can go for more information about flight training and aviation safety.

What I can say is that when I was ground school, the instructors discussed cross-country flights, saying that a cross-country flight is a flight of at least 50 nautical miles (NM) to another airport where you land at the airport and come to a full stop. We also spent some time in ground school talking about all that must be done by the student pilot before going on a cross-country flight. In addition to ground school time, students spend time with their individual instructors going over the their cross-country flight in some detail.

As I understand it, Cross-country flights come after a student pilot has learned take-offs and landings, climbing and descending, straight and level flight, radio communications, navigation skills, weather advisory services, flight planning, runway markings, temporary flight restrictions, and the hand signals that ground crew members use as you are preparing to park your plane. A student pilot's first cross-country flight will be with their instructor (dual time).

If I am remembering my ground school training correctly, with the possible exception of looking at the charts and planning a route, most of the pre-flight planning done by the pilot prior to a cross-country flight requires an idea of the weather forecast as well as checking for any flight restrictions that might be in place along the planned route. Most of the real pre-flight planning, including checking for new flight restrictions, happens either the night before or the day of the flight. For example, a current wind forecast is an important component of any pre-flight planning, and might be available 12 to 18 hours before take-off time. On a flight into the wind (aka a head wind), ground speed -- how fast the airplane is moving relative to the ground -- the flying time to the destination will be longer. Conversely, if the wind is at the tail of the aircraft (aka a tail wind), you will get to your destination a little quicker. Ground speed affects fuel consumption.&

Stay tuned for my next post in this series where I will be writing about what I did to the night before/morning of my cross-country scenic flight.

And speaking of my next post in this series, I am still in the process of developing an outline of the series of posts that I will be writing on my cross-country scenic ride. I'll try to post some sort of outline in a day or so. I know that I promised some more pictures, but they don't really fit into today's article. I will be posting one last set of pictures from this scenic ride in a later article, I promise.

Cross-Country: part 1

I'm posting a few photos that I took today before I started on my cross-country scenic ride. The plane for this scenic ride is a Piper PA-128-140 Cherokee. We departed from Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, PA (KABE). I'll post more about my cross-country, an article and some more pictures on Friday. She is a nice plane. The door into the plane is on the passenger side of the plane, requiring that you step up on the wing to enter. Note the clouds, broken clouds at about 4 to 5,000 feet. By the time we flew back, we had scattered clouds (more blue sky and fewer clouds).

Piper Cherokee

Planes

Taxiways at KABE

Taxiway at KABE

I was standing on the wing on the other side (outside the cockpit door) of the Cherokee

Standing on the wing looking towards the rear

CAL FIRE TV Report: Oct. 18. 2010

I did go on my cross-country with Rob today. We had a great time. I had some photos that I intended to post taken from our departure airport. Unfortunately, the photos will have to wait because blogger has disabled image uploads for a couple of hours due to some scheduled maintenance. I'll post the photos when I am able, probably tomorrow. I am going to do a write-up of my cross-country flight that I will post on Friday with more pictures. So, stay tuned.

In the meantime, CAL FIRE does a weekly report on the fire situation in the State on their CAL FIRE TV youtube channel. I found this week's report interesting because they report on wind events that frequently happen this time of year in CA, e.g. Santa Anna winds. Santa Anna winds may lead to wildfires, so I have been trying to monitor the situation in California. To that end, I think that there has been some rain in southern California in the last day or so. But I suppose that things could change quickly. A few days of no rain might dry fuels out, and then the winds could kick in . . .

Another flight into the winds

Yesterday, I went for a scenic flight with a pilot (Mike) on a windy day. As I told the folk at the airport when I arrived, it is important to me to fly in windy conditions because tanker and helo pilots often fly windy and turbulent conditions. It is my hope that going on flights in windy conditions will make me a better writer. I knew that it was safe for us to fly, otherwise I would have gotten a phone call canceling the flight. Their concern was for my comfort, and being sure that the pilot and I knew where the barf bags were. I am happy to say that I did not need the barf bags, nor was I queasy.

The flight was within safe limits for the Cessna 172, but still windy. The winds were from the north west (330 degrees), sustained at about 8 knots (10 mph) with gusts to 17 knots.  (20 mph). We took off into the wind (a headwind). This was by far the windiest conditions that I have experienced on take-off (and landing), to date. Mike, whom I have flown with on a couple of occasions a few months ago, did all the right things on the take-off. We left the ground as soon as plausible in order to get the plane off the ground and not subject to the winds on the ground. It was rather bumpy and turbulent as we climbed to about 2,500 feet. Interestingly, the winds aloft were not as bad as either of us expected.

We flew for about 30 minutes. Mike gave me a brief explanation about how he was handling the plane in these winds. I wish that I could have taken notes, but in those winds, I knew that I could not. Anyway, I learned a lot. The landing was a little bumpy, but we got down.

The young pilot, Rob, who took me on scenic rides during the spring and over the summer, has moved on to a job at a flight school based at a larger airport not far from me. Later today, I am renting a plane, a Cherokee, with Rob as the pilot. Rob is going to take me on a special kind of scenic ride, a longer flight sometimes known as cross-country flight. A cross-country flight involves flying to and landing at an airport that is over 50 miles from where you departed. Bad weather has canceled this flight three times. The winds today should be calmer then yesterday and the skies look clear.

Stay tuned, and I'll write about the cross-country in a couple of days.

Update: after I posted this article, I got a call from Rob, postponing the cross-country until Wed. afternoon. The reason being that our departure airport is under a TFR later this afternoon into this evening because the Vice President is visiting.

Aerial resources slow the fire down

I think that it is fair to say that I have probably had no experience in being up close and personal with a wildland fire. For that I am lucky. However, I have been close to a couple of structure fires in urban areas many years ago. So, I do know what fires can do. In both of these cases I was lucky, no damage to my apartment buildings. Live streams from news helos of wildland fires has afforded me the opportunity to see aerial resources and ground crews working wildland fires. I always learn something from watching these live streams. Sometimes, I am in touch with one of my tanker pilot friends as he is we are both watching the same live stream.

Such was the case one evening a couple of months ago. My friend sent me an e-mail with a link to a live stream of the Largo Vista Fire that was burning in Valyermo CA the night of August 20. Sometimes when he has sent me a note about a live stream of a fire, the news outlet is no longer showing live streams by the time I read get the opportunity to read my e-mail. This was not the case that night. At the same time that I was the live stream, I was also listening to live scanner feed from the LA County Sheriff Department.

My friend is great. When I asked him,

"is that an Air Crane that I see?"

He responded:

"Yes, it is one of Siller Brothers Cranes ."

I then saw a CAL Fire S-2T tanker making a drop, my friend identified it has one of CAL Fire's S-2T's out of Hemet-Ryan Air Attack Base. Later, we both saw a Neptune P-2V making a drop along with what looked like a LA County helo make a drop. Then one of the Crane's made another drop.

But this time, the live stream was not just about the air show. Just before the aforementioned (LA County?) Helo was making a drop, the news helo had zoomed in on some ground crews working the fire. I saw what to me looked like the helo nailing the drop, making the drop just in the right place not all that far from where the ground crews were working. Not only was this drop effective, but it seemed to me that the ground crews were safely out of the way of the drop zone.

So, I wrote my friend:

"Nice drop, did you see that drop? A LA County Helo?

He wrote back:

"I did, a perfect drop." And he went on to say, "that was the absolute best example of the relationship of aerial resources and ground crews, we slow it down so the ground crews can pounce on it. It doesn't get any better than that!"

The fire was declared out on the evening of August 22. Final acreage was 120. For more information see this inciweb page and this initial attack thread in Wildland Fire.

A peek inside a CAL Fire S2-T

While I am working out the final details on the article that I hope to post later today, I want to offer this video showing you the inside of one of CAL Fire's S-2T tankers. Enjoy! And stay tuned!

Reading takes me into the cockpit

Over the last few months I have taken to reading books by or about pilots with related books about aviators and/or their airplanes. I love reading these books for often I am taken into the cockpit. At other times I may an observer, watching the action. Most, but not all, of the pilots have not flown tankers. That doesn't matter for they are pilots. I may not be able to obtain a pilot's certificate, but when I am reading these books, that doesn't matter. My prior studies at ground school, along with scenic flights serve me well for those times when basic terminology about flying airplanes is not included in a glossary or explained in the text. And when basic terminology is explained, I can draw on that which I have learned and acquire a greater and deeper knowledge about flying.

As I write this, I have some of the books that I have read piled next to me. There are eight books, not including one that was borrowed and since returned to my local library. One, the recent autobiography written by Chelsey "Sully" Sullenberger, the captain of US Air flight # 1549 that "landed" in the Hudson River in NYC, is on loan to a friend. Another, Fate is the Hunter, by Ernest Gann, is in my to read pile. From time to time I'll write about some of these books.

I will be writing about Fire Bomber into Hell by Linc Alexander in a few days, stay tuned.

So for me, reading about flying is not only something I do to pass the time or for those subtle ways that I hope it helps to make me a better writer. Reading about flying is about who I am.

Retardant drops are complicated

Several days ago, I was showing my nephew some pictures of tankers making retardant drops. He asked me how fast the retardant was falling when it came out of the tanker.

There is no simple answer to the speed at which the retardant drops out of the airplane onto the ground. The answer is, It depends. Some of you may recall that I wrote about retardant drops here, and information on retardant coverage levels from the USFS may be found here. The best drop is one that drops straight down as a heavy rain of retardant where all the retardant reaches the ground. In reality, this is hard to achieve, depending on a few different factors that all have to come together.

I'll start with the concept of the safe drop height. This is defined as the height above the ground that the tanker needs to fly in order for the retardant to drop straight down in a heavy rain of retardant where all forward momentum is lost. Drop to low and the forward momentum is not lost, resulting in possible injuries or even death to firefighters on the ground either from flying debris or from the retardant itself. Drop too high and the retardant disperses before it reaches the ground. To make it slightly more complicated the safe drop height varies depending on how much retardant is drop and the rate of flow from the tank.

How low are these tankers flying when they are making retardant drops? The multi-engine tankers are flying anywhere from 150 to 300 feet above the ground. Single-engine tankers are flying about 100 feet above ground level. This is dangerous flying, and the pilots know it. If something happens to the airplane when they are flying so low with a load of retardant (it is heavy), even the best and most experienced pilot may not be able to avoid a fatal crash.

Winds can affect the drop. A tanker pilot can take low winds into account when making the drop by either starting the drop before or after the start of the drop target depending on whether it is head or tail wind. But this only goes so far for sometimes the winds are too strong and dropping in conditions that are too windy can cause the retardant to miss the drop target. Sometimes the winds are too strong for the tankers to fly safely, not only will retardant drops in such conditions be ineffective, but strong winds can bring an airplane down.

Aircraft speed also affects the accuracy of the drop. The temperature and elevation affects aircraft performance which affects the accuracy of the drop.

What can I say to wrap this up? I'll quote one of my tanker pilot friends who keeps reminding me, "see I told you that the tanker business is complicated."

So, I think that the answer to my nephew's questions is, it depends because flying tankers is complicated.

Another great airtanker video

I have been thinking about a question my 11-year old nephew asked me a few days about retardant drops and have been working what could be an answer that I think will be a good article. However, I need a little more time to work on this article. In the meantime, a friend of mine pointed me to this great airtanker video that may have been shot from a lead plane. Enjoy!

great article on recent fires in Colorado

I just came across a really great article on Global Aviation Resource about the recent wildfires in Colorado. He writes about tanker and helo operations, lead planes, air attack planes, and how a USFS King Air with a thermal image infrared camera is used at night. There are interviews in the article, including an interview with someone on the ground who provided an account of how the tankers helped save a town from wildfires. And you will see lots of great pictures. This article is a must read. There are other very interesting articles about aviation on this site.

2010 Blue Angels Jones Beach

The video that I first two videos that I embedded here were removed by the users. Here is another video shot at the 2010 Blue Angels show at Jones Beach in NY, direct link to youtube video

2010 Blue Angels San Francisco Flyover

The Blue Angels Video that I originally embedded was removed by the user, so I found this video shot in 2010 in San Francisco.

Enjoy!

Revised Nov. 17, 2010

Tropical rainstorm: flooding in eastern PA

The worst of the heavy rain has finally left most of the mid-atlantic region heading for New England as I write this. Earlier this morning there was major flooding in NYC and NJ as reported by myfoxny.

I was checking out myfoxphilly a short time ago. I knew that they had significant rainfall yesterday later in the morning and through the afternoon when much of NJ was seeing little rainfall, I wanted to see how they made out. In my corner of NJ, we had a couple of hours of heavy rain that ended before 8AM yesterday morning, seeing light rain for the rest of day into the evening. After these bands passed through NJ yesterday morning, eastern PA continued to see heavy rainfall from late morning and into the afternoon or early evening. Our bands of rain in NJ came through sometime between 2 and 5 AM this morning, possibly hitting eastern PA first.

I found these two reports, one is raw video of flooding in Chester, PA. The other is a report on a rescue of a Darby PA man that was trapped in his house by flood waters.