IMC Club Weekend Edition

IMC Weekend Edition 4 May 2013

by IMC News Service — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:42:11 GMT

Weight, Balance and Density Altitude

By Peter Conant - This past Wednesday I listened to a small part of the Plane Talk webcast on IMC Radio, with Radek, Derek and Dave discussing performance charts. The topic is near and dear to my heart since I've had a few experiences flying at gross weight (and even over gross) in high density altitude conditions which hammered home the need to "run the numbers" when I am near the limits of the chart. As Derek said at one point, "Flying at gross weight is like you're flying a whole different airplane."

Which is a good way to put it. Those of us who fly out of sea-level fields can get a bit blasé about those performance numbers. On one hot and humid afternoon in Maryland, soon after earning my PPL, I offered a high school friend along with his wife and daughter a sightseeing flight in my Archer. I checked the weight and balance but didn't look too closely at the performance numbers. Sure enough, we were slow to accelerate, took fifty percent more runway to lift off and sort of staggered up in the warm moist air. If you've never had the opportunity to fly at or near gross weight on a hot day (even at a sea level airport) you don't really know how your plane performs (or doesn't perform) at the limits of the envelope. It's truly like flying "a whole different airplane."

Or try this: head out to the Rocky Mountain states and see how things are done. I was in Albuquerque some years ago and was sightseeing in a Skyhawk with an instructor. The runup procedures were unique and something I hadn't seen before. Rather than departing with the mixture at full rich from a high altitude field, the instructor held the brakes, ran the engine up to 2,200 RPM, and then leaned the mixture from rich down to a point where the RPMs increased to around 2,350. He then throttled back, pushed the mixture knob in about 1/8th inch, and said "Now the engine is leaned for max power." I think I had read about this but never seen it done before. And on approach to landing, he never went "full rich" as I expected. Something to remember.

Likewise, flying out of Centennial Airport in Colorado, elevation about 4,500 MSL with a friend and my daughter on a clear cool morning, my daughter asked ìWhy is it taking so long for us to get off the runway?î Same deal. The Bonanza A36 I was flying supposedly had an altitude-compensating engine driven fuel pump so that, according to the POH, the need for leaning at a high altitude takeoff was not necessary. Uh huh. I think I'll do the "leaning on the ground" drill every time I'm in high country.

But the all-time weight and balance winner in my logbook is my ferry flight in a Cherokee Six from Maine to Greece back in 1996. This was a delivery to a Greek buyer who had learned to fly in Massachusetts and bought a plane which he promptly outfitted with new interior, avionics, engine and paint. I've written about this before but thought I would repeat the experience here since it certainly got my attention. My co-pilot and I had an extra 100 gallon ferry tank behind the front seats, so with 180 gallons of fuel we could comfortably fly for fourteen hours, meaning at any point we could do a 180 back to our point of departure. (That's 180 degrees, not 180 gallons.) Anyway, the morning of our departure out of Reykjavik Iceland was chilly and cloudy but with clear skies forecast over the North Atlantic enroute to Norway, passing over the Faroe and Shetland Islands.

We were near or slightly over gross weight with our six hundred pound ferry tank, though we made sure that we were within CG limits and knew we'd be flying out of airports with long runways. We had had no problems flying in and out of Labrador and Greenland the day before so we did not anticipate any problems. The clouds were forecast to contain a "chance" of ice.

Turning east and climbing to our assigned altitude of 9,000 MSL, we entered the clouds at 4,500 feet. And there was the ice. Our plane had the 260 horsepower engine and we were a bit over gross weight, but now we were picking up a bit of rime along the leading edges and wrapping around the VHF antennas strung from the top of the vertical fin to the left wingtip and from the wingtip to the top of the fuselage.

Our rate of climb began to decrease: 600 FPM, 400 FPM, 200 FPM. At 100 FPM, we were barely climbing at 65 knots indicated and 7,000 feet. It felt like trying to coax a reluctant elephant up a ramp! And then came the point where the climb stopped. Any further back pressure only produced a loss of airspeed (60 knots), with a distinct pre-stall rumble felt through the yoke. Time to activate plan B. We were cleared to descend down to 4,000 where we were out of the clouds, ice melting off and clear of terrain. As we crossed the coast and headed out over the ocean, the clouds parted and clear skies prevailed.

Flying over gross weight in IMC while picking up ice over hostile terrain is not one of my fondest memories. Thankfully my "co-pilot" was a pilot in the Norwegian Air Force who had made over a dozen Atlantic crossings. And the only ice we saw during the entire 35 hours of flying was in Iceland. Go figure.

IMC Weekend Edition 27 April 2013

by IMC News Service — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 15:07:33 GMT

NORDO

By Peter Conant - We don't think a whole lot about our radios. Our communications with ground, tower, departure, center and EFIS are automatic. I started carrying a portable radio after an incident in Lansing, Michigan where I lost communication with the tower on final, but the second radio in the panel made this event a non-event. And ever since packing a portable comm I've never once had to use it. Complacency? You bet.

Now that I'm renting things with wings, a lot of different panel equipment connects to my headset jacks. Sometimes the plugs need buffing (I'm told using a soft pencil eraser helps burnish the contacts) or often the plug receptacle is loose or wobbly, resulting in a sporadic connection. I carry a Leatherman to help tighten any loose bolts and often have to contort my frame under the panel for a proper fix. Sometimes there is bleed over on the audio signal from the ADF identifier or transponder, or perhaps the audio panel gives off a mysterious rhythmic clicking, which often drives me nuts.

Staying ahead of the checklist, going through the familiar motions we all take for granted, is a potential trap. Just as we cycle the prop, check the mags, carb heat (if you fly a carbureted engine) and ammeter, I believe that checking the radios and their connections is just as critical. My "plug in and go" mentality is now undergoing some serious revision, especially now that I'm thinking more like a flight instructor. Do I really understand all the intricacies of this particular audio panel? Do I check each light, switch, marker beacon and annunciator before EVERY flight? I think the trap is when our checklists are seen only as something to be completed before we fly and our focus is getting into the air instead of exploring in detail all the items that could malfunction while we're still on the ground.

A friend of mine who learned to fly at a non-towered field south of Boston would always, before launching, check with Unicom to confirm both radios were operational. A good idea for any pilot, but especially when you are about to launch into the clouds. At our last IMC Chapter meeting here in Norwood, MA we were presented with a scenario where an IFR flight in low clouds was cleared into Teterboro, NJ for an approach and promptly found the radios had died. What to do? I realized this "what if?" question rarely crosses my mind, intent as I am on frequencies, altitudes, speed and chart profile during an approach. So here was this pilot, coming into some of the busiest airspace in the country, with no means of communication. I suppose squawking 7600 would help, but that was about the only transmission available. Several scenarios were presented: exit the terminal area, descend and find a VFR airport (bad idea), go to the filed alternate, complete the approach, and so forth.

After the discussion, I realized I would be definitely behind the airplane if something like this happened to me. So I am now becoming a zealot when it comes to studying accident reports containing communications failures and committing to memory the procedures specified for such an event. As we all know, it's much nicer being on the ground wishing you were in the air, than being in the air wishing you were on the ground. My radio check is now a much more detailed process than just seeing if I can transmit and be heard.

IMC Weekend Edition 6 April 2013

by IMC News Service — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 17:16:02 GMT

IMC Club Expands Board of Directors

By Peter Conant - When EAA's Sun-N-Fun starts next week in Lakeland Florida, your IMC Club will be there to celebrate our growing numbers of Chapters around the country and indeed around the globe. We are especially pleased to report that our Board of Directors now includes some big name aviation personalities from the worlds of manufacturing, flight training, aerobatics and more. This year, Redbird Flight Simulations has generously agreed to share their exhibit space with us at Lakeland-Linder Airport.

Our board meeting next week in Lakeland will be the first time all the new directors will have the chance to meet together and plan for your IMC Club's continuing expansion. "Organized Hangar Flying" is our method of involvement at the Chapter level, and with the addition of people like Jack Pelton, Michael Goulian, Joe Brown and Jerry Gregoire we are poised to expand into new areas of pilot training and continuous sharing of experience.

Jerry Gregoire is the founder and Chairman of Redbird Flight Simulations, Inc., the worldís largest manufacturer of full-motion flight simulators for universities and flight schools. Jerry holds an Airline Transport Pilot rating and a single-pilot type rating for Cessna Citation 525 jets.

Joe Brown is Chief Operating Officer of Hartzell Propellers. Joe has a passion for the principles of lean manufacturing, waste reduction and development of self-directed work teams. He is an instrument rated pilot and a Lifetime Member of the IMC Club International, Inc.

Millions of airshow spectators around the globe have witnessed the ferocity of a Mike Goulian airshow performance. He has won the United States Unlimited Aerobatic Championship and was honored to represent the United States at the World Aerobatic Champion on three separate occasions.
As an airshow superstar, Mike continues to redefine what is possible in the air.

Jack Pelton retired as Chairman of Cessna Aircraft Company in 2011. In his career Jack has had more than three decades of extensive aviation experience. He is now the Chairman of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and serves on the boards of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Corporate Angel Network. While at Cessna, Jack was responsible for new aircraft design and development, flight testing and improvements, and certification.

Other board members include Steve Sullivan, Chairman of the Board and founder of Wild Blue Flight Simulators; Gary Oberstein, Managing Partner at Nixon Peabody, a national firm of attorneys; Radek Wyrzykowski, IMC Club's Founder and President Founder and President; and myself.

As you can imagine, we are thrilled to have this caliber of aviation professional available to us at the IMC Club. And if you're at Lakeland-Linder Airport next week, please look for the Redbird Flight Simulations display booth. We look forward to your stopping by to say hello to the Redbird staff and the IMC Club International's people. See you there!

IMC Weekend Edition 16 March 2013

by IMC News Service — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:32:48 GMT

New Airplane Questions

By Peter Conanat - Being something of a dinosaur, I am thinking that perhaps I should investigate what's going on with all the new glass technologies and new airplanes. For the record, I have virtually no time flying behind a glass cockpit display, except for two VFR flights in a new Mooney Ovation and a recent Columbia 350, both with a Garmin 1000 system. Both these flights were with an instructor. I have a portable Lowrance 2000 GPS which I bought at Sun-N-Fun a few years ago. The simple graphics are an amazing aid to situational awareness in the clouds and over water. But I know nothing about using an iPad in the cockpit, much less TAWS, TCAS, XM Weather, ADS-B and electronic PFD's and MFD's except for what I have read. Yes, I was "checked out" in the Columbia but would never go up by myself without more instruction and study. I've only flown one GPS approach using a Northstar M3 without a moving map. I thought the digital readouts were simple to follow.

A while back before I had my Lowrance, I flew an AngelFlight from Boston's Logan airport down to Martha's Vineyard. My passengers were an Aquinnah Indian and his wife. It was a clear, calm day in the fall with visibility practically unlimited. After settling them in the rear seats of the Cherokee Six (easier for loading disabled adults than having them step up on the wing), I outfitted them with headsets and prepared for departure. After starting the engine and activating the intercom, the wife spoke up and said "Most of the other pilots we fly with have a moving map. Since you don't have one, I'm wondering if you're going to be able to find Martha's Vineyard!"

I assured her that it would be no problem, and continued with my passenger briefing. But it got me to thinking. If passengers are becoming accustomed to glass cockpits, am I unknowingly causing them some anxiety by flying "steam gauges" or legacy gauges as they are now called? Is the airplane or even the pilot flying with mechanical analog indicators now seen as an antique relic of the goggles, silk scarf and leather helmet days? Or is the new technology just another gimmick to sell airplanes? And if you're a pilot who has never flown behind legacy gauges, can you step into a glass cockpit without a thorough familiarization and study of all the systems? I don't think so.

Since I'm in the process of getting my CFI rating I realize I'm going to have to know how to use the new and the old cockpit displays. What is going to be the best way to do this, do you think? A Cirrus SR22 rents for over $250 per hour, wet. A Cessna 172 with a Garmin 1000 display rents for $155 per hour, wet. No problem making a decision there. And I'm aware that Garmin, King Schools and YouTube have courses to train with. I think that's probably where I should start. The iPad looks like a winner also, and is relatively cheap with affordable apps from ForeFlight and many others. At a recent Air Safety Institute event I attended, Bruce Landsberg asked how many pilots were flying with iPads. About a third of the 500 participants raised their hands.Does anyone out there know if an Android tablet can do the same things as the iPad?

So, in my attempt to morph from a coelacanth to a modern day aviator, I'm also considering buying an airplane. I've been really interested in diesel engine technology and most recently in the Cessna 182 JT-A. The 230 HP engine, built in France by SMA, has been certified to a 2,400 hour TBO, burns jet fuel at 11 GPH (as opposed to the 235 HP Continental Engine which burns closer to 15 GPH), and helps solve the problem of what all the 100 LL burning piston engines are going to do when the EPA and other environmental groups lower the hammer. Jet fuel is going to be available into the foreseeable future, although only at the larger airports. On the other hand, I know about the trials suffered by Thielert diesel engines in the Diamond Twinstar.

Someone told me once, though, that the lead additives necessary to run a 100 LL engine are so lethal that if you took a barrel of the vile stuff and dumped in into the Mediterranean, it would be a devastating catastrophe of unimaginable proportions for all people and animals that live near the shore and under the water. Hmmm.

Lots for me to think about, for sure. Added to which, the projected price for the Jet-A burning Cessna 182 is north of half a million dollars. Not exactly affordable at my pay grade. However, I do have an idea.

Diamond Aircraft recently unveiled a program they call Diamond Shares. A single pilot owner can contract with other pilots to pay $995 per month to rent a DA-40 XLS for 100 hours per year. This is a dry rate: the non-owner pilots pay for gas and landing fees. This works out to about $120 per hour dry. Certainly not cheap, but just a little more expensive than a G1000 172 and not nearly as much as the Cirrus SR22. The maximum number of pilots for any particular airplane is limited to 4 or 5, after which the insurance premiums skyrocket since the carrier assumes you are operating the plane as a flight school or a club. All pilots would be named insured on the policy, and scheduling would be through a simple Google calendar.

My question then is this: What do our IMC Club members think of spending $995 per month for 100 hours a year of access to a Jet-A diesel engine Cessna? I plan to try this out at Norwood and see what the response is. With three shareholders plus myself, it looks financially feasible to carry a note. Of course, there's also the need to come up with a 20 percent down payment.

Having owned four airplanes in the course of my 33 years of flying, I can say from experience that having a small group is definitely the way to go. I would be extremely interested and grateful for any thoughts my readership has about glass technology, diesel engines, or a small group of named pilots flying a new airplane.

Please stay tuned for my reports of how this goes. Cessna aircraft are not my aircraft of choice (except for aerial photography) because I'm rather tall (some refer to it as my "freakish height") and it's hard to see out the side windows. Is there an STC for putting a diesel engine in a low-wing bird? Does Diamond plan to offer their Austro Diesel engine on the DA-40? Your thoughts, comments, and wisecracks are always appreciated and fun to read.

IMC Weekend Edition 23 February 2013

by IMC News Service — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 01:14:07 GMT

Twins: Twice As Much Fun?

By Peter Conant - Although I have a twin-engine rating I don't have a lot of twin time, maybe 80 hours. My twin rating was done in a Piper Seneca I, which wasn't all that much faster than an Arrow but was a good learning tool. I took a trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan in the Seneca soon after receiving my rating in October, 1993. Crossing Lake Erie after dark in a snowstorm is something I would never do in a single, but the presence of that second engine gave me and my wife a sense of security. Later I found out just what a false sense of security that could be. Still, I enjoyed the snow being lit by the strobes over Lake Erie as a sort of stop-action film. It was a clear night in Kalamazoo and I appreciated the tower clearing me for the visual, but I asked for and got the ILS. Note to self: always fly an approach, if there is one, after dark when landing at an unfamiliar airport, especially one with lots of lights and three runways.

A few years later I checked out in an older Cessna 310. Whereas the Seneca had, as I remember, 160 HP engines, the 310 had 265 HP on each side. It had a phenomenal climb rate, huge amounts of space inside, great load hauling capability and great flying qualities. My checkout was in February with the whole drill again that I'd seen in the Seneca: stalls, single engine minimum controllable airspeed, Vyse climbs (single engine best rate), single engine landings, instrument approaches under the hood with an engine failure inside the marker, go around procedures and more. My instructor told me to remember "puff" for a go around: Power, Undercarriage, Flaps, Flaps (for cowl flaps). The 310 didn't have cowl flaps though.

In late July of that same year, my wife and I decided to fly up to Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, Canada. Grand Manan is sometimes referred to as the cork in the Bay of Fundy. Grand Manan airport only had an NDB approach but we saw clear skies forecast for the trip of just under two and a half hours from Bedford, Massachusetts.

It was a hot day when we departed after 1 PM from Bedford. After climbing to 5,000 MSL I leveled out, brought back the engines to 65% power in cruise, and started leaning the mixtures just as I had been taught.

Without warning, the right engine began to surge. We were swinging left and then back to center as the right engine died, coughed, caught, coughed, died and generally acted cranky. The first thing I did was to shove the mixtures to rich. The second thing was to calm my wife, who was asking "Is this normal?" Oh sure, I said, we practice this all the time in training, all the while thinking "What the hell is going on with these engines?" I kept the mixtures full rich for about 20 minutes before cautiously leaning them. Whatever the problem was had apparently gone away. Blocked fuel lines? Air bubbles in the fuel? Faulty maintenance? I just could not think what the problem had been.

The Bay of Fundy was shrouded in clouds when the arrived and I prepared for the NDB approach. But just then, the island showed through a break in the clouds. The entire island no less, radiating enough heat through the fog to create its own column of rising air. Or maybe we just got lucky. I made a great landing (he said modestly) and even impressed myself. Grand Manan airport is an Airport of Entry, allowing us to clear customs in record time. Our rental car was waiting for us and the driver, also the rental agent, took us to his house where we signed the necessary documents at his kitchen table. It turned out the car was his own personal car and we were being given the use of it for the weekend. A very pleasant, laid back and congenial way to start our visit to Atlantic Canada.

Grand Manan was once the center of a thriving sardine industry. It also produces dulse, a dried seaweed which the Canadians eat like potato chips, but to us was way too salty. The sardine docks and packing houses are largely abandoned but a few have been bought up by a New York architect and remodeled into his waterfront vacation home. He even has one building identified with a sign as the "Sardine Hall of Fame" with displays of Grand Manan's historic past. To top that off, he's got a boat in the harbor in the shape of a sardine can with the top partly rolled back.

We enjoyed our hikes to the cliffs, dipping our toes in the cold ocean waters, touring the lighthouse and enjoying the geology of this unspoiled island. Had we more time we would have gone on a whale watch or taken an afternoon trip to Seal Island to watch the pinnipeds and puffins in their native environment. The weather was cool in the afternoons and cold in the evenings. In the morning as we were getting set to leave, we stopped by a fish market which sold us cod which had just been brought in on the fishing boats. Then to a local baker who sold us several loaves of freshly baked bread, and wished us goodbye by saying ìGood Appetite!î Atlantic Canada still has its remnants of French culture, which although more concentrated in Quebec still remains alive along the New Brunswick seacoast. I realized as we drove away that what he had said was "Bon Appetit" in English!

The weather at the airport was close to zero-zero. I walked the length of the runway to check the visibility and by the time I reached the middle I could not see either end. Even with a twin, I was not prepared to take off in those conditions. We still had the rental car, which the owned said he would pick up later at the airport, so we headed back into town to do some serious beachcombing and get warm with hot coffee.

After a few hours we returned to the airport, only to find the airport manager politely telling us that the Canadian Air Traffic Control people were looking for us. Oops! I hadn't realized that in Canada you need to cancel your IFR flight plan rather than just let it run out. Unless they hear from you by radio or phone, they assume you have departed and have lost communications. Whoops! Big mistake. I re-filed the IFR, apologizing to the very tolerant and understanding flight service people.

We waited until the ceiling got to what I estimated as 200 to 300 feet with a half-mile visibility. I decided to launch. Everything went fine and we popped out on top at 2,500 and took up our course to Bangor, Maine. I leaned the engines with no ill effects. By now it was mid-afternoon and after landing we decided to stay in Bangor for the night. The next day dawned bright and clear and warm. I fired up the 310, launched the big bird and turned toward Bedford. Leveling off at 6,000 I leaned the engines.

And guess what? A surging right engine greeted me! As we rocked and rolled from side to side I set the mixtures back to full rich which cleared up whatever the engine problem was. Again, after about 20 minutes I was able to lean without any difficulty.

I reported the incident to the owner and to the flight school I had rented from. Several months later, my instructor called me to say he had been looking over the POH and found this statement: "When flying at altitudes over 12,000 feet MSL, or when operating in extremely high temperatures, do not attempt to lean the mixtures until at least 15 minutes after takeoff. Allow the fuel flow to stabilize, after which leaning procedures can be attempted." The 310 had no cowl flaps, and the heat-soaked engines were vaporizing the fuel in the lines. Even though these were fuel-injected engines, the heat of the day plus the heat of the engine acted to block the fuel lines, which were located at the top of the engine block.

Flying in new conditions, atmospheric or otherwise, should always bring with it skepticism about whether the airplane will perform the same way it did when you were checked out. And now I ALWAYS read every word of the POH for whatever airplane I'm flying.

IMC Weekend Edition 9 February 2013

by IMC News Service — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:09:44 GMT

Embedded CBs
(reprinted from "Things My Flight Instructor Never Told Me" by Michael Leighton)

In 1990 I finally had bought an airplane that was capable of serious cross-country flight and I was enjoying it. The 1977 Mooney M-20J was pretty well equipped for a light plane of its time, with dual Nav-Coms, ADF, DME, audio panel with intercom, and a Century 2 autopilot. It was a step up in performance from the Cessna Cutlass I had gotten my instrument ticket in.

I had owned the plane for several months and received plenty of dual from a very experienced instructor I had befriended when I moved to Florida. Feeling good about the airplane and myself, I decided it was time to take the Mooney cross-country. My wife and I headed off with another couple from our base in West Palm Beach, Florida toward Morristown, New Jersey. The weather was typical east coast in the early summer. Haze and low flight visibilities, surface temps in the 90s along the entire route of flight and, of course, the possibility of thunderstorms.

In Florida, if you don't fly anytime there is a chance of thunderstorms in the forecast, you may only be able to fly 25 days a year. But in Florida, thunderstorms are easy to see and avoid, and typical flight visibilities in the summer are better than 10 miles. I completed my preflight and got an updated weather briefing. The trip, from West Palm to Morristown with a fuel stop in Florence South Carolina, would take about seven hours.

The first leg to Florence went well. Early morning skies over Florida were clear and as we crossed into Georgia we began to see the haze. The visibility at Florence was a questionable five miles, but clear of clouds. While we fueled I checked the weather. The radar was showing a small line developing west of Victor 3 on a roughly northwest-southeast line, moving east at 20 miles per hour. I elected to amend our flight plan to take us up Victor 1, which runs parallel to Victor 3 but is 80 miles to the east on average. The destination weather was good and once north of Richmond, Virginia it appeared we should have a nice trip.

As we taxied out, we were advised of a new sigmet which had just been issued for our route of flight. After takeoff I called flight watch for an update on that sigmet. The line of thunderstorms I had viewed on the radar less than 20 minutes earlier had turned nasty. We had filed for 7,000 feet and as we approached Richmond we began to hear aircraft asking for deviations from the weather. Again, I called flight watch to check on the situation, just as I had been taught. Flight visibilities were now nil, and we were in solid IMC at 7,000 feet. Flight watch reported that the line was moving as before and that we were at least five miles east of the nearest echo. Switching back on the center frequency we could now hear regional airliners frantically requesting course deviations for weather.

Less than a minute later it got really dark in the cockpit. The sky turned that grayish green color that you know is associated with nasty weather. Then I saw the first lightning flash. I turned to my passengers and told them to tighten their seat belts. Then we hit the updraft. I'll never know how strong it really was because the VSI was pinned in the 3,000 fpm up position. I turned off the autopilot, closed the throttle, lowered the landing gear and put the nose down and trimmed to maneuvering speed. Still going up. As we went through 9,000 feet, center asked me to say my altitude. I told them 9,000 and climbing. He asked if I had been assigned 7,000. I answered affirmative but that I was in a cell right now and was just trying to keep the wings level.

He cleared me to deviate as necessary and suggested a heading of 088 degrees. Just as he gave us that heading we hit the downdraft. The VSI swung around in the other direction. Full power, gear up, nose up to Vy and still going down . . . in excess of 3,000 fpm! At that point we penetrated the rain shaft. The noise was unbelievable. The turbulence wracked the plane left and right and as I attempted to turn to the right toward the assigned heading, the plane went up on the right wing at close to 90 degrees of bank. Full left aileron and rudder took nearly five seconds to recover to wings level.

All of a sudden, we popped out of the side of the towering Cu into a clear blue cloudless sky. The feeling of relief lasted on a few seconds as an horrendous sound filled the airplane. It was the sound of 2 to 3 inch hail striking the airframe at nearly 200 mph. We had penetrated the cell from behind and came out the front, under the anvil and the falling hail. We had survived the encounter with the storm only to be assaulted in clear air by ice balls the size of golf balls.

The full extent of the damage didn't become apparent until we deplaned. The entire leading edge of both wings, the tail and top of the rudder looked as if a madman had attacked us with a ball peen hammer. Blue fuel stains on the bottom of the wings indicated we had ruptured every fuel tank seam on the plane. It was a miracle we didn't lose the windshield.

That night I lay in bed replaying the day over and over in my mind. I did everything right, everything I had been trained to do. So how did I get so close to becoming a footnote on an NTSB report? Nowhere in any of my instrument training had anyone ever mentioned that you should never, ever fly in IMC in embedded thunderstorms. That thunderstorm avoidance is strictly a visual thing. And that thunderstorm avoidance gear such as Stormscope and radar (which was not that common in singles in 1990) are absolutely mandatory and still not foolproof for operating in those conditions.

What I should have done, and now do, is operate at an altitude that puts me above the haze so I can see the buildups. I fly around what I can't fly over. This often means operating at 10,000 to 12,000 feet or higher in the summertime. All my aircraft have been equipped with storm detection equipment of one sort or another and I carry a small portable oxygen bottle.

I now make it a point when giving instrument dual to take my students on a cross-country trip that puts them in this situation so they can see for themselves what you can and can't safely fly through. Even fast building Cumulus that haven't begun to spark yet can be dangerous.

The bottom line: DO NOT FLY IN INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS WHEN EMBEDDED THUNDERSTORMS ARE PRESENT OR FORECAST! Something my flight instructor never told me.

IMC Weekend Edition 2 February 2013

by IMC News Service — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 23:28:22 GMT

Watching Good Training in Action
(reprinted from "Things My Fight Instructor Never Told Me" by Michael Leighton)

The other night I had an interesting experience. After a long day of flying, we got back to our base airport well after dark. My chief pilot, who flies his Cessna 172 to work from his home on a private grass strip just seven miles from the one I live on, agreed to fly me home and spare me the hour plus drive.

His airplane, a mid-1970's model 172, featured a new engine and a Powerflow exhaust system. The rest of the plane is factory standard 172. We did our run up, called the tower and departed. I commented on how nicely his plane climbed with two on board. The tower cleared us out of the Class D to the south. My buddy reached up to flip off the landing light and when he did, the lights in the cockpit dimmed. I looked at the amp meter, which was showing full deflection discharge, and snapped on the flashlight that I always have in my hand or nearby when flying at night.

I pointed out the anomaly. He went through the usual checks, resetting the alternator breaker, turning the master switch off and then back on. It only got worse.

So, here we were 2,000 feet over somewhere in the dark with a flashlight. The ceiling was 2,500 feet. We knew this because we had just flown through it a half hour before.

There was no moon. It dawned on me that to most pilots this would constitute at least a minor emergency. But the attitude in the cockpit was more of "Okay, let's work the problem" rather than of some impending doom. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to get the electrical system back on line, my buddy turned on one radio and called Palm Beach approach.

He advised approach of our situation and that we were going to a private field west of town. He saw us as a primary radar target, thanked us for letting him know we were running around out there with no lights or transponder, and asked if there was anything else he could do. We told him no, and that we would call him when we were in the pattern. My buddy turned off the master switch to save whatever juice he could for the landing light.

(This was not the first time this had happened to me. Eight years earlier, on a training flight with a commercial student, the voltage regulator in my Maule welded itself in the open position, and was continuously pumping 40 amps into the battery. I had my student turn off the master switch and fly home in the dark with a flashlight, only turning the power back on just before landing. If we hadn't done that, the battery would have melted down. In that aircraft, the battery is under the copilot's side: my seat.)

As we approached the private grass field in the dark, my buddy once again fired up the radio and contacted Palm Bach to let the controller know we had the runway in sight. Wouldn't you know that another aircraft arrived at the airport at exactly the same time, forcing us to maneuver some more in the dark and realign ourselves with the runway.

The touchdown and taxi back were uneventful, except that the charging system came back to life, creating more frustration and speculation as to the source of its failure.

What I did not experience was any sort of stress or anxiety. We went through the failure procedures like we had done it a thousand times before. It was exactly the sort of failure we train for all the time. When it happened, we just fell back on the training and did what we were supposed to do. What I had witnessed was a textbook example of good training in action.

It turned out that the main bus cable had develop a break in itself sometime in its 25 year lifetime, and chose that exact moment to limit the number of electrons it was going to allow to pass through it. A simple failure that could neither be predicted nor prevented created a situation that required specific action. That is what all the training is for.

IMC Weekend Edition 26 January 2013

by IMC News Service — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 02:45:54 GMT

Hard IFR
(Reprinted and condensed from "Things My Flight Instructor Never Told Me" by Michael Leighton)

Experience is by far the best teacher. When it comes to learning things in aviation, I have found that it is always more comfortable to venture beyond your own personal experience while in the company of some who has been there and done that. That way, if thing do go to hell in a hand basket you have the voice of experience to listen to. But if you fly long enough, the day will arrive when you know a lesson is coming and you're going to have to learn it alone.

So it was for me on the morning of March 4th. Our charter company had a trip scheduled in a King Air and, me being the lowest time captain in our group, it was decided that I would fly this particular trip.

The morning weather map was a classic late winter picture. A cold front extending from over the Great Lakes into the Gulf of Mexico was dumping snow all over the Midwest. A warm front, created from the remnants of the last cold front, had backed up over the state of Florida and was moving north, attached to a low moving northeast out of the Gulf up the cold front.

Our trip was from our base in Palm Beach, Florida up to Jacksonville, pick up our client and then on to Teterboro, NJ for the night. The next morning we were to go on to Bradley International in Hartford, CT, pick up three more passengers and return to Jacksonville, and then on home to Palm Beach.

The northbound trip was a cinch, featuring clear skies and great visibilities, not to mention a 25 knot tailwind ahead of the approaching cold front. We landed within five minutes of our projected ETA. After putting the plane to bed and catching some dinner, my copilot and I sat down to look at tomorrow's forecast.

The weather in the morning in the northeast would be fine. The front would not make its presence felt there until later afternoon, at which time we would be a thousand miles away. But as the warm front (now across northern Georgia) moved north, a trough emanating from the low over Louisiana would begin to move north and east. The same features that gave us those welcome tailwinds would now create strong headwinds, and it was likely we would not be able to make the trip from Hartford to Jacksonville non-stop.

But the die was cast. We were supposed to be professional pilots. The chief pilot didn't want to hear about weather. The customer didn't want to hear about weather, and I was pretty sure the three passengers we were picking up in Hartford didn't want to hear about it either.

Fortunately, my client is a pilot and a close friend as well and does not suffer from "get-there-it is" at all. So I always had the "wait until tomorrow" card to play if the weather exceeded my personal comfort level. Knowing this, I went to bed early because one way of another, tomorrow was going to be a long day.

After checking the winds and weather, I dialed up the "Wind Optimize" feature on my laptop. Tell the computer what you want to do and it will tell you which altitude will give you best speed vs. best fuel burn. No matter how I sliced it, we were not making it non-stop without eating into our one hour fuel reserve. I filed for a fuel stop in Salisbury, MD where the weather was forecast to be VFR through the morning.

The next morning, our first leg from Teterboro up to Hartford and the second down to Salisbury went off without a hitch. But it was apparent that the winds were definitely stronger than forecast and our groundspeed confirmed this. When we picked up the weather at Salisbury for our trip to Jacksonville, it was showing airmets for turbulence at almost all altitudes, sigmets for ice and low ceilings, with our destination weather forecast to be 1,500 and three on arrival. Higher altitudes meant higher headwinds, but also much lower temperatures, thus a lower chance of severe icing, plus better fuel burns.
We filed for 22,000 feet.

100 miles south of Salisbury we were in solid IMC and minus 22C. We didn't see any ice until well south of Norfolk. By the time we were north of Charlotte, NC we were picking up ice fast enough that I had to cycle the boots every few minutes. The big feature was the wind. The groundspeed was down to 130 knots, a hundred knots right on the nose.

Approaching Savannah, the controllers advised us of convective sigmet Echo 21 for a line of thunderstorms 30 miles west of Jacksonville to Ft. Myers, moving northeast at twenty knots. We were now in a horse race. I figured we had about an hour until the line of thunderstorms reached Jacksonville. South of Savannah, Jacksonville was reporting better than 5,000 and five. Descending through 8,000 feet we could see the coast through the undercast and the line of thunderstorms appearing on the edge of our airborne radar's range. We were told to expect the visual to runway 14.

As we turned base to final the radar swept to the west revealing the imminent deluge lurking in the gloom just west of the field. As we taxied in, a lightning bolt struck a tower on the airport. As my passengers deplaned, the first large super-cooled water droplets began to fall on the ramp. We waited in the FBO for an hour until the storm passed to the east and we were able to proceed to Palm Beach. We touched down 12 hours to the minute from departure at Teterboro.

The moral of the story? If I had been in a lesser aircraft and not a twin-engine turboprop with all of its high altitude and known ice protection, we would not have gone. Our decision making process was sound and based on aircraft and pilot capabilities. Having the "out" plan ready if the destination weather went to hell prior to arrival as well as the command authority to "just say no" in the first place all played a role in flight planning.

There is nothing that I can think of in my flight-training syllabus that could have prepared me for this decision train.

IMC Weekend Edition 12 January 2013

by IMC News Service — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:14:59 GMT

Real World Flight Training

By Peter Conant - In this month's issue of Flying Magazine, Robert Goyer talks about clouds. His focus is how we train primary students to decide when they are in over their heads and how to get out of deteriorating flight conditions. We all remember when, as newly minted pilots, we flew into weather which was beyond our capabilities. Goyer then talks about how new pilots and even many seasoned pilots are reluctant to divert to another airport. He has a number of suggestions about how new students are, in many cases, not exposed to real world conditions.

All this is of interest to me because this month I will begin my training as a CFI. I am fortunate to have the best of the best, Radek Wyrzykowski, as my instructor. Radek told me last week that flight instruction is about teaching and how an instructor goes about imparting years of experience in a structured, methodical and systematic way. Flying is the subject matter, of course, but the real test is examining the way in which a CFI prepares his or her student.

I would therefore like to offer some of my own ideas for how to make flight instruction challenging and relevant for the novice pilot. There is a book I would recommend, Things My Flight Instructor Never Told Me, by Mike Leighton, which lays out a number of his own mishaps and difficulties he handled throughout his career. Many of these have to do with ground operations, interactions with ATC, and mechanical glitches.

My own flying began in 1979. In those days, just as I do now, I loved to take long cross-country trips in a Piper Archer. This was before the days of GPS, Nexrad, TCAS and such. My pilotage skills were pretty sharp and I made it from Boston out to Minnesota on more than one occasion, also flying to Oshkosh and down to Maryland. I think it may still be valuable to teach pilotage and navigation but I wonder if anyone does this anymore, with inexpensive portable GPS units so available. I think pilotage and looking out the window are things I would want to cover with my new students.

On the matter of diversion, obviously knowing where you are is rather important. You can press the "nearest" buttons and find yourself on a moving map, but I think I would have been better served had I practiced a diversion to a new and unfamiliar airport during my training. And I wonder what you, my growing readership, think is the best way to quickly get the information needed when a diversion is necessary. My AOPA Airport Directory always accompanies me and I find this more helpful than an AFD. But for recent diversions I find myself looking at the instrument approach charts (assuming my diversion airport has an published IAP) to quickly get the runway diagram, elevation, length, and frequencies. Would it make sense to train a VFR student pilot in the use of the NOAA IFR approach charts? I would welcome your ideas.

Diverting in Arizona some years ago to a gravel strip without an IAP found me breaking out the AOPA Directory in heavy turbulence while flying toward a thunderstorm. Nowadays I would simply use my Lowrance 2000 for airport information. Is there any use in carrying an AFD? Well, I suppose one reason is that the AOPA Directory is not an approved source of aviation data. Handy, but not approved. Nor is, I don't believe, a handheld GPS.

Besides training with a hood, I also wonder if a new student might benefit from an actual trip inside a cloud. That is something I never did in training and wish I had. After receiving my PPL, I once advertently flew into clouds south of Albany, over the Catskills. I did a one-eighty and landed at a small uncontrolled field, waiting until the weather blew itself out. That was my first time in actual, and it felt totally different from being under the hood.

I once had an instructor who showed me his method of making a short field landing in the Archer. As we were settling in the flare toward the runway, he retracted one notch of flaps and set us firmly on the pavement. "Don't ever tell anyone I showed you this" he warned. But since the statute of limitations has probably run out on this instructional maneuver, I think I might show this to a new student when they are getting sharp on their landings. I know I have used this many times when I'm landing on a grass or short field. Get the wheels down firmly on the surface so you don't bounce back up. Makes the braking more effective, too.

So I'm hoping you pilots out there can help me here with your stories and ideas of what you think real world flight instruction should include. For example, my first really difficult crosswind landing was at Akron-Canton Ohio. A stiff west wind was gusting enthusiastically but only the north-south runway was available. Talk about the need to make a diversion! But, just as Goyer tells it, many long trips end with a laser focus on the intended airport and the idea of going somewhere else just doesn't occur. That landing had me up on the right wheel, full aileron deflection into the wind, and the left wheel just refusing to come down. It was something I'd never seen before and wished that I had practiced earlier, rolling down the runway with a pronounced thirty degree tilt.

IMC New Year Edition 1 January 2013

by IMC News Service — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 23:27:58 GMT

My First Experience in IMC

By Peter Conant - Here is another story entered in our essay contest about your first time boring holes in the clouds. I found this one interesting because the instructor described in this story made what to me are some rather questionable decisions during two training flights. I will reserve my comments for next week and, in the interim, welcome your opinions about how you think these instructional flights were handled by the student and by his instructor. Terrence Rogers is the pilot writing this. His story is written quite clearly and has been ever so slightly edited by me.

"My first experience in IMC was as a student pilot on a VFR cross country with my instructor. The weather wasn't due to get bad but living on the coast weather fronts can build rather quickly. We had just completed our second leg of the cross country and my instructor had me under the hood for part of that second leg. We completed the flight, landed and went over my abilities and discussed what improvements I needed to make to better control the aircraft. We checked the weather and our final destination was showing VFR conditions. We climbed into the aircraft and we took off with no issues, but as I turned toward our home field it was evident that we weren't going direct. Clouds were building along the coast and so we headed inland and requested a weather update from center. Center indicated clear skies between us and our destination; we proceeded to give then a pilot report and informed them of our conditions. My instructor wanted me to handle the communications so he sat back and only advised me I should do as I saw fit, so it was up to me now.

I continued to track along the leading edge of the cloud bank but it became obvious that we would have to either enter the IMC conditions or go to an alternate airport. I informed Center that I would need a lower altitude to stay VFR and that if conditions worsened I would have to go to an alternate airport. That was when my instructor broke in on the radio an informed Center that I was a VFR student on a cross country and requested an "on the fly" IFR flight plan. He then told me to get ready to give Center the information they would need for the IFR request. I fumbled with my flight plan paperwork and flipped the page over to IFR. As Center came back with the request for the IFR information I started calling out what was listed on the plan. Center cleared us IFR to our home airport and gave us a cruising altitude that took us into the clouds and clear of any obstacles. This was my first time in IMC and we were getting bounced around a bit but my instructor just kept telling me to watch my instruments and fly the plane. As we got closer to the airport I turned the second radio to the AWOS frequency to get the weather and they were stating VFR conditions with 10 miles, clear and no ceiling. I looked at my instructor and questioned the report, but he stated that they were only reporting the weather inside the airport dome and that it could actually be clear.

As we got closer, the clouds did start to break up and when Center transferred us to the Tower, we had broken VFR conditions as the Tower vectored me around to the active runway. We broke out of the clouds and sure enough the airport was clear, but for me it was an experience that made me pursue my instrument rating. Which brings me to my next story.

After taking IFR instruction during my time off from work (working 6 weeks on and 6 weeks off) it was hard to carry over the lessons learned during my previous instruction periods (usually 2 hours a week when I could fit it in). My instructor had me on our usual flight plan, flying to a VOR near a neighboring airport then into a hold followed by a GPS at the second airport, then back to the ILS/LOC at our home airport. We left on a clear day and I had filed my flight plan and picked up my clearance. We took off and the tower transferred me over to ATC, but when I contacted ATC they came back with a Direct To clearance. I informed Center that I was on a training flight and that I had requested the VOR approach. Center came back with the "Direct To" the VOR and then asked how the flight would terminate. I stated that it would be a miss and that I would then enter the hold. I made the VOR approach with little difficulty and when I contacted Center letting them know I had gone missed, the same ATC controller asked my intentions. I stated that I was on a training flight and requested the Hold. He came back and gave me a "Direct To" the hold point. Well at this time I didn't have the GPS up and my instructor was a little ticked at the controller so my instructor jumped on the radio and stated that I was flying on standard instrumentation and would fly the intercept course that the approached called for.

Well, this didn't sit well with the controller and it wasn't doing me much good either because it was a distraction that I didn't need. ATC came back with a vector and informed me to turn to that heading. I confirmed the vector and made my heading change. Looking down at the approach plate I noticed that I was parallel rather than perpendicular to the intercept. I flew as directed until my instructor had enough and he contacted ATC informing them that we would continue to the hold on our own and would contact them for the rest of our clearance once we had completed the hold. He then instructed me to the hold point and told me to bring up the GPS.

As I did so the whole matter got me flustered and in doing so I missed some of my time during my hold. Once I was back on track my instructor told me to contact ATC once I complete the hold. As I came to the hold point I contacted ATC and the controller again came back "what are your intentions" at this my instructor had had enough and told them to cancel the IFR flight plan, requested flight following and told them we would be using our own navigation to my next airport. They confirm the request and from then on I took my directions from my instructor. The day was a nightmare but all in all I did learn to handle distractions and that at time ATC may not be aware of your situation and or your skills so it best to inform them when you need their assistance in getting where you want to go. Also my instructor showed me that sometime you need to tell ATC how you are going to address their requests."

I have some strong opinions about this instructor's decisions. Please let me hear yours. This is real life stuff. I know an instructor's attitudes and decisions become primary and formative experiences for a student. How well do you think this instructor performed? I'm always interested in learning something new and in hearing your comments.

IMC Holiday Edition 20 December 2012

by IMC News Service — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:46:01 GMT

And the Winner Is . . .

By Peter Conant - I have had a difficult time selecting the winning essay about the "first time in real IMC on your own". It is just so INTERESTING to read about the situations and reactions and emotions you've all described. When you're up there all alone for the very first time, it does become a rite of passage when you've successful kept your cool, relied on your training and controlled the panic. For me, reading all these stories has been like having a virtual IMC Club Chapter meeting on my computer.

But here is the one, selected from the hundreds of submissions (I wish) that I think sums up best what preparation and execution of an IFR flight is all about. It was submitted by Eric Tallberg. For your enlightenment, KPYM is Plymouth, MA, KASH is Nashua, New Hampshire and KBGR is Bangor, Maine. Eric's writing has been ever so slightly edited by me.

* * *

I had 2 "first IMC" flights. The first was really a "gentleman's IFR" where cloud bases were well above minimums and above my personal limits. The route I chose, for the sake of taking my first flight without my instructor, was to KPYM from KASH this past summer. The landing was interesting due to winds splitting 2 runways almost 45* to each of them at about 19-35 knots.

The second, which I consider my first real test, was a flight I took just before the Canadian Thanksgiving this past October into St. John NB, flying their ILS 5 approach, DME arc, which I'd never flown in my training. With my Garmin 430W working, an 800' ceiling and 2 non-pilot passengers after sunset, I descended from our 9000' cruise into the clouds at around 2500' until breaking out with the ALS flashing brightly beneath us, exactly where it needed to be. We cleared customs, then filed IFR to Digby, NS with a GPS 24 approach down to the 1000' minimums to simple REILs that shone nicely from 3 miles out. Both flights were done in the dark and the training I'd done before with my instructor was brought to full use and at no time was I worried that I was making a bad decision as the orientation was well understood. I had contacted the airports ahead of time to get "the skinny" on any unusual anomalies around the aerodromes. We had plenty of fuel and fully expected to go around at any point, but found that unnecessary and, in a way, almost disappointing in.

After 4 days in our neighbor's home enjoying their turkey and stuffing, we boarded again for KASH with clear skies and a light headwind via KBGR to clear customs.

* * *

The thing I like about these two descriptions is Eric getting his feet wet with a first flight when the weather was above minimums. The second is his flying a DME arc for the first time to an ILS after dark.

The third is his carrying a lot of fuel, and the fourth is his calling ahead to find out as much as he could about airport conditions before launching. The fact that he had non-pilot passengers points up how trusting most people are who have never flown through the clouds. Almost everyone I have flown with expresses some anxiety when the fog envelops the bird, but assumes the pilot can pull this off. Probably not a good time to tell the other occupants "Now, I've never flown an arc before . . ."

I now have several of these stories, many of which go into great detail as to what happened when and how flustered the pilot became. Eric's story for me is a good example of Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. I'll be sharing the other adventures in coming editions.

* * *

Eric Tallberg is our winner of this beautiful

BrightLine B-10 Classic flight bag.

IMC Weekend Edition 8 December 2012

by IMC News Service — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 01:11:51 GMT

Further Adventures of Flying in IMC without a DG

By Peter Conant - I love it when other pilot's comments write this column for me. Here are some responses to the article I shared from AOPA's LinkedIn website. As you remember, this was a story about flying an AngelFlight without a functioning directional gyro in IMC to a destination more than two hours away. First, some further information from the pilot himself:

"I am so sorry to have omitted important facts from the initial scenario at the beginning of this dialogue. My aircraft had both an updated IFR certified GPS (non-weather reporting KLN-89B) as well as a yoke mounted non-IFR GPS with weather display. The purpose of the GPS in both cases was to provide tracked heading, distances from waypoints, as well as general position, one acting as a crosscheck on the other.

I typically do not totally rely upon the visual representation for these two instruments to indicate my location. Instead, through out every flight I use all other nav devices to determine actual position (and when possible, actually involve the passenger to tune in the signals and provide me the bearings, and show our position on the chart): Two (2) VORs and one (1) ADF.

The above activities typically give the passenger knowledge, keep one's mind on positive thoughts, and because it is easier for me to supervise rather than actually do the chores myself, I focus flying the aircraft. I try to involve the passenger(s) on all my mission flights if they are willing, and this fact was included in my decision making process. Numerous resources were available. I think the first "negative" comment in this thread was based upon an assumption I was not using a certified (and current) IFR GPS.

In any event, I totally agree one has to utilize whatever resources are available -- which is why I ALWAYS attempt to engage my willing passengers in meaningful and delegatable tasks. In a single pilot aircraft, additional support personnel are usually welcome. Referring back to the DG incident, I recollect ATC discussing with me whether I desired to declare an emergency. I said for me to do so, would not make the situation more safe. I had the ability to navigate and fly the aircraft, knowing references to the wet compass would not be reliable in non-stable flight and I could rely on two (2) GPSs and ATC reports to provide me with tracking information. I must reiterate all of the controllers along the route were extremely helpful. Interestingly, I provided numerous pilot reports during the journey (thanks to the passenger who entered the information into the IFR GPS calculator as I provided the steps and raw data)."

And now some responses:

1. "It seems to me that this was not a no-gyro situation. With both a panel mount and a portable GPS in the cockpit, the pilot had excellent directional information available. Only the DG was dead, not the whole vacuum system. With a still- working attitude indicator, I would probably have followed the same course of action. Of course prudence and regulation require telling ATC about the failure. It's always good to know they're watching out for you too."

2. "I am two days away from being IR, assuming all goes well with the ride, so I am the newby of this discussion. However, one consistent thing that was drilled in my head from the beginning of IR training, in fact, since the beginning of PP training, was to use whatever I had available to me to get me back safely when other equipment went south. But I think Donn was really suggesting that the decision to press on BECAUSE one had a portable GPS was a malformed decision IF there were other alternatives available. Alan clarified there were no VMC airports available so it sounds like he made a great choice."

3. "I never want to read about "portable GPS", or portable non-certificated "anything" being used in IMC conditions. I care not to share airspace with that sort of behavior."

4. "I agree with you that anyone who uses a portable GPS as a primary tool in IFR flying is a primary fool. But you really missed the point here. A good quality portable is a pretty good safety backup. I won't leave home without my Garmin 796. The moving map display is larger than the one on my 650GTN, so is therefore useful in augmenting my situational awareness. It is also my source of XM weather, and the Safetaxi feature is priceless. More situational awareness! It is a tool that aids in the cockpit. Like any other tool in the kit, it is useful, and by no means primary... but...

Last April, on a trip from Toronto to Ft Lauderdale, at 8000 feet in IMC just 8 miles south of the Clarksburg VOR, I had a total electrical failure. I had been talking to Clarksburg Approach controllers when the radios went dead. In the space of less than 5 minutes, everything on the panel run by electricity died (except my Garmin transponder, which apparently will run in Mode A on as little as 4.5 volts). Blind, deaf and dumb in cloud, the only thing left working was the vacuum suite, and the battery operated Garmin 796. Guess how I found my way to Clarksburg airport?

Granted we eventually all find ourselves in one corner or another, and are faced with solving problems as best we can. However, to make the assumption that the use of these ever-popular gadgets alleviates the responsibility for being properly prepared and equipped is just plain maladaptive thinking."

Lots to think about, for sure. And it's always interesting to me when pilots get so passionate about their point of view. I know that, for myself, flying without a functioning DG would not have been at all comfortable regardless of how many backup devices were available. After all, the initial article talked about how it took this pilot about a half hour to get lined up on the ILS. But it sounds like he has a lot more IMC time than I do. What I take away from this is, first, know your limitations. If something feels wrong, it is wrong. Secondly, I read somewhere that "you're only as smart as the airplane you're flying."

Words to remember, at least for me.

I AM STILL WAITING HOPEFULLY FOR A FEW MORE SHORT STORIES ABOUT WHAT YOU EXPERIENCED DURING YOUR FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH IMC WITHOUT AN INSTRUCTOR. DONíT FORGET THERE IS A BRIGHTLINE FLIGHT BAG BEING AWARDED TO THE WINNER. THIS WEEK IS THE CUTOFF SO LET'S GET CRACKING. IF YOU TAKE MORE THAN EIGHT MINUTES WRITING ABOUT YOUR FIRST TIME IN IMC, I'D SAY YOU ARE OVERTHINKING THE ASSIGNMENT. SHORT AND SIMPLE IS THE BEST. DON'T THINK, JUST WRITE! WOULD BE MY ADVICE.

IMC Weekend Edition 1 December 2012

by IMC News Service — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 20:04:21 GMT

ILS Approach Without a Working DG

Editors Note: I found this posting on the AOPA LinkedIn page. Whether you agree with the decisions each pilot made on the Angel Flight described, it reads like a "What would you do if" scenario to be chewed over at an IMC Club Chapter meeting. For me, the risk of flying an ILS without a working DG , especially with a medical passenger on board, seems questionable when other VFR airports are available. And departing into IMC from an airport which is closed due to ice seems more risky than I would feel comfortable with. You know you can't get back in to land. I would like to read your comments about this.

* * *

Many years ago, prior to an IFR departure from MIA (in a 172), ATC gave me a SID as part of the clearance.

My IFR instructors only taught what was necessary to pass the FAA IFR exam. It was my own responsibility to continue the learning process.

Rather than "freak out" and decline the SID, I accepted the clearance and told ATC I would get back to them if I had any questions. While located on the ramp sitting in the cockpit I located the SID in my approach plate reference, carefully studied it, and realized the SID saved considerable effort when writing down the clearance and getting a preview of the vectoring I might expect during the departure process. I now readily accept and use SIDs and STARs.

I have also discovered ATC will give the verbal details for an unidentified SID or STAR which only applies to a turbojet. By reference to the instructions, I can easily get an overview of what to expect during the departure or approach.

When I realized I needed XM weather in the cockpit as a bare necessity to help me navigate on Angel Flight missions during inclement weather, I added a basic AnywhereMap system with XM. This enabled me to see almost what ATC was seeing on their scopes and to better interpret their reports with what I could actually see around me.

Accordingly, I learned that ATC radar is not always 100% accurate and there are time delays which can significantly affect navigation. Accordingly I learned how to work with ATC to provide them with real time weather updates, including wind direction/speed, turbulence, precipitation, cloud bases/tops and other facts which could affect flight for a small aircraft similar to what I fly.

All of this involves risk taking, but on the basis of taking an action and having one or more possible "Plan Bs" which can be used if required.

A few years ago on an Angel Flight with passenger, I lost the DG while in IMC immediately after departure from a non-towered airport. My Angel Flight destination was a major airport about two hours distant. I considered the risks to attempt a return to the airport behind me which had one ILS/GPS runway and the inability for ATC to see me on the radar due to altitude versus flying two hours in IMC without a DG and landing at major airport with a variety of emergency support facilities. Having six and one half hours of fuel on board, I made the decision to fly to my destination. I explained everything to the passenger and invited the passenger to be "involved" in the decision making. She concurred.

The story is not over. I was to conduct a hand-off of my passenger to another pilot for the second leg of the mission. Midway, my destination airport shutdown due to unexpected icing conditions. I diverted to another major airport 100 miles south which had IMC conditions, but had superb support services available as well. ATC at my request relayed a message to my second leg pilot to change airports.

The second leg pilot departed from the original destination airport to the new field when the weather allowed it, despite the fact that landings were not possible.

Landing an aircraft in IMC conditions down to minimums without a DG would be a new experience, and I still had options of going elsewhere where there was no IMC. ATC calmly worked with me on the approach which took about 30 minutes before I could nail the ILS and land.

Upon landing, ground control asked how much fuel I had left. I responded that I had at least four hours remaining.

The key to risk taking is the decision process: evaluating probable outcomes and choosing the plan which has the best possible outcome until an event occurs which requires further decision making.

(Name Withheld)

IMC Weekend Edition 17 November 2012

by IMC News Service — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 12:38:12 GMT

Decisions in Ice

By Peter Conant - A few months ago our local chapter in Norwood, Massachusetts was discussing an unanticipated icing event in a Skylane and what course of action would be best: divert to the closest airport, return to point of departure, keep going, declare an emergency, and some other options. As I remember the discussion, an airplane in Gardner, Massachusetts was due back in Northampton, but the pilot was only VFR rated and the weather was IFR with forecasts of low ceilings with a chance of icing. An IFR pilot in central Massachusetts was contacted, and this pilot offered to drive to Gardner and fly the plane back to Northampton, which was reporting VFR.

The reason I was reminded about this discussion was that the FAA today sent me a notice of a safety seminar entitled "Flying Attitudes". At first I thought this would involve attitude instrument flying, but in reading the description it was clear the topic was decision making and our attitudes about what sort of risk taking we as pilots are comfortable with.

Now, I don't know any pilots who consider themselves unsafe, macho, or thrill seeking cowboys and was about to write off this seminar as one that could not possibly hold any interest for me. But then I remembered that chapter meeting and how one instructor's conclusion really made me stop and think. And I realized that I myself might have fallen into the subtle trap this instructor was pointing out.

Now, I've been flying for a while and remember each and every one of my icing events while in IMC like it was yesterday. I think I've had about nine or ten encounters with it. The standard definitions include rime ice and clear ice with accumulation rates considered as light, moderate or severe (I don't know if there is a category for "extreme" icing as there is with turbulence). For me, ANY ice is a wakeup call and a reason to get out of it NOW. I've seen rime ice, clear ice, and a pebbly film of ice cover my windshield at night as my plane descended out of 15 degree air into an unseen cloud. I've flown my well-chilled plane out of the clouds only to run into freezing rain which splattered onto the wings and tail, then promptly froze into splashy shapes I had never seen before (or since). I've flown into wet snow which did not exactly freeze, but long ropy strands would form on the leading edges and then be blown back like white snakes wriggling toward the ailerons.

Back to our chapter discussion. We settled on a solution: a quick turn toward a tower-controlled field in Worcester with an ILS at each end of the long east-west runway. (Obviously the ice wasn't totally unanticipated; the IFR pilot was just unlucky enough to be the first to fly through that piece of sky.) And to declare an emergency so that the pilot would receive priority handling. All very logical and proactive.

Except for one thing. A rather big thing. I know that I like to fly as well as the next person, and I could see myself having volunteered for this mission. After all, I have lot of experience, have been in similar circumstances where a diversion is required, would be flying toward better conditions, and consider myself prudent and cautious. So what was the one thing that this instructor questioned that brought me up short?
Maybe I should not give away the answer too soon. Perhaps I will only reveal it to those of you who write me with a short story about your own icing encounter, or a story of the first time you entered IMC after you got your ticket (still hoping for those stories, boys and girls).

But I will magnanimously tell you what hit me like a ton of bricks. What did I KNOW about this airplane, its maintenance history, capabilities, avionics and radio stack, autopilot, and IFR currencies? Would I have asked before driving to Gardner what GPS system was installed, when the latest VOR check had been done, whether there were any backup instruments or power sources?

I felt rather ashamed of myself when I thought it over after our chapter meeting. Eager as always to get into the air, I would probably have trusted my training and experience and ASSUMED that because the airplane was IFR equipped that all was set to go. Yes, I would have done a thorough preflight, checked the pitot heat and defroster, carefully considered alternates and places to put down if necessary. But my attitude, I realized, would have been to try and help someone out, never really considering that this was a totally foreign airplane.

To hop into a new and unfamiliar airplane and fly it in low IFR with a "chance" of icing along the way, strikes me now as being the height of foolishness. So perhaps I do need an "attitude" refresher. I don't write this to confess my sins, but it amazed me how easily I (and perhaps others) might get sucked into a bad situation. "Sure, I can do that."

IMC Weekend Edition 10 November 2012

by IMC News Service — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 20:35:59 GMT

"Flight"

By Peter Conant - In the new movie "Flight", Captain Whip Whittaker (Denzel Washington) performs a miraculous recovery from an uncontrolled dive in an MD-80. The plane's elevator is stuck in a full down deflection and will not respond, both engines are on fire, and he and his passengers are definitely not having a good day. Just before impact, Whittaker is able to arrest the dive by rolling the big jet inverted, flying 500 feet above the ground with no engines. At the last minute he rolls right side up and glides toward a field he has spotted earlier, neatly slicing off the top of a church steeple with his right wingtip. In typical Denzel Washington fashion, he has saved the day.

Except that he hasn't. Whip Whittaker is an alcoholic and cocaine user, and the story takes on the task of examining his addictions and personal hang-ups. At the beginning of the film, while standing in the airplane's galley, explaining to the passengers the unusually rough air they have just flown through, he is simultaneously pouring three small bottles of vodka, one after the other, into his carafe of orange juice, with one hand just out of the passengers' sight.

I am a big Denzel Washington fan. His role in "Flight" is an unusual departure for him and one that I welcome. Critics have panned the movie as a ho-hum treatment of Whip Whittaker's addictions and denials, while my take on the story is a bit different. For someone to perform at the peak of his abilities and prioritize tasks while mentally and physically compromised is a study in multi-tasking which I believe we can all learn from.

Yesterday I was flying a Cessna 172 with a friend, doing some aerial photo work over northeast Connecticut. My friend is just starting his flight training at East Coast Aero Club in Bedford, MA. While watching me contact Providence approach, checking the airport facilities directory while managing power, attitude and configuration, he said ìIt looks like there is a lot to keep in mind when you're the pilot.î And I suppose that's true. After the photo shoot, we landed at North Central airport in Rhode Island and switched seats. I guided him through his takeoff and short flight back to Mansfield, MA, identifier 1B9 ("one benign") and gave him a little help with the landing. He said "I can't imagine doing that just by reference to the cockpit instruments." I can remember once, years ago, thinking just the same thing

One of the best comparisons I've ever read was written by Peter Garrison of Flying magazine. He said that flying is a lot like cooking. When you start cooking, you're trying to multi-task, preparing the raw ingredients, reading the cookbook, getting utensils ready, checking temperatures and times, and generally trying to keep many things in mind at once. But after you've been doing it for a while, you naturally settle into the rhythms of the activity. You know you can wait on the onions while the garlic is sautéing, open the can of crushed tomatoes late in the game, add the spices toward the end of the process and generally relax, knowing you've got the Big Picture.

The Big Picture is what Captain Whittaker amply demonstrated as he examined his options and what controls still functioned. As a former Navy pilot whose father was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, he had clearly gone to the edges of the flight envelope and beyond, and knew instinctively what he could do with an airplane. What must have seemed like a superhuman effort to the non-flying movie audience was an unusual but logical use of a machine which by design is able to function in all three dimensions. And that instinctive part of flying, when it becomes second nature, is a skill set only achieved by long hours of study, discussion, thoughtful recollection and lots of time behind a yoke. Whittaker is cool hand Luke just when his novice first officer is losing it.

Of course, relying on instinct may have been what got the Air France Airbus into trouble after leaving Brazil and flying into a thunderstorm over the Atlantic, with all three pitot tubes iced over. This was apparently a situation the pilots had never encountered, much less trained for. The multi-tasking demonstrated by Captain Whittaker resulted from a practiced consideration of all options available. An experienced Boeing 747 pilot once said to me "Fast eyes, slow hands" is the way to deal with an emergency, since there is no problem that we as pilots cannot make much, much worse by doing the wrong thing. What I came away with from the movie "Flight" is my firm belief that the best safety device in any airplane is a well trained pilot, someone who is able to even overcome physical and mental handicaps and trust that his training and his experience will get the job done.

IMC Weekend Edition 3 November 2012

by IMC News Service — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 19:21:32 GMT

Hurricane Flyers
(The following is a transcript of an NPR interview with an Air Force Reserve pilot who regularly flies into hurricanes. The interview relates this pilot's recent journey into the center of hurricane Sandy.)

Lisa Mullins: It is because storms and floods such as Sandy are global concerns that the US air force deploys some of its men and women into the middle of catastrophic events. Major Brad Boudreaux is an Air Force Reserve pilot with the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. The squadron is also known as the Hurricane Hunters. It's based out of Biloxi, Mississippi. Major Boudreaux has spent thousands of hours flying C-130 planes into the most severe storms about ten thousand feet up. He and his colleagues gather vital information that satellites can't see and drones can't collect and they share the data with any nation that needs it. In the case of Sandy, that included Haiti, Cuba, and Canada. Major Boudreaux flew into Hurricane Sandy more times than he can remember.

Brad Boudreaux: You know, to be honest with you, I lost count. I know the last flight we did six penetrations through the center of the storm, and I believe the flight before that maybe four or five.

Mullins: So how long does each one take?

Boudreaux: It depends. Sometimes we're anywhere from four to six hours in the storm environment. Last flight I believe we were delayed almost six hours in the storm.

Mullins: Wow. Tell us what you were doing.

Boudreaux: We're flying through the middle of the storm, so we go in the outer bands of the storm. We're collecting data as far as pressure, wind, temperature, all that information, we're constantly collecting it and we're taking readings and what we're basically doing is we're tracking it as far as pinpointing the exact center location of the storm.

Mullins: Take us on one of your flights through Sandy.

Boudreaux: To be honest, sometimes it can be long and boring, but . . .

Mullins: I don't think so.

Boudreaux: . . . there are plenty of time also where it can be extremely exciting and a little scary.

Mullins: It takes a real veteran, a Hurricane Hunter, to say sometimes it can be pretty boring flying through a hurricane.

Boudreaux: Yeah. Every storm is different. Every time we talk to somebody about that, I try to emphasize how every storm's a little different.

Mullins: And what was Sandy like?

Boudreaux: Sandy was different in the sense that here were had this tropical storm and when we followed it down by Cuba, it was all the characteristics that we would expect to see in a hurricane where as your stronger winds are close to your eyewall, closer to the center of the storm. Once this thing started building up and it started mixing up with some of the winter air and this jetstream coming down from the north, the storm actually became a very large storm. It was not a very powerful storm, but we were seeing hurricane force winds, they were up to a hundred and fifty miles from the center of the storm.

Mullins: And is that unusual?

Boudreaux: That is unusual. Usually the stronger winds are much closer to the eyewall, the center of the storm. This one, when we got closer into the storm, the winds were really not the strong at a center, which was a little unusual compared to all the other storms that I've flown.

Mullins: So when something like Hurricane Sandy has a wider grasp like that, something that you say you hadn't really seen before, how do you feel that when you're on the Cc-130?

Boudreaux: It just depends. When it's mixing up and that dry air is mixing up with some of the moister air, a lot of times you get a lot of convection in the storm in that area and these things can build up pretty fast and that's when it has the most effect on us because you're dealing now with these updrafts and downdrafts and we were in Rafael a few weeks ago and we were experiencing this. It was transitioning from a tropical storm into a hurricane. So it was barely a hurricane and it doubled in size while we were in the storm and we had a lot of severe turbulence to extreme turbulence and it was probably the roughest ride I've ever been on.

Mullins: So this is, you're talking about Hurricane Rafael . . .

Boudreaux: This was Rafael.

Mullins: . . . right around Bermuda, correct?

Boudreaux: Right. Close to the Bermuda Triangle. And we can see on the radar that this was going to be a rough ride. We could tell by the indications on our radarscope that this was going very turbulent. So I did tell everybody in the plane, ìHey, make sure you're strapping in. It's going to get very bumpy.î So we had everybody strapped in tight, kind of hanging on for the ride, but as we went in there and we experienced this basically airborne tornado. The plane basically tried to flip over on us. I had to go ahead and take the airplane and I pushed the nose down towards the ground just to get the airspeed because we were at max power, trying to maintain that ten thousand feet.

Mullins: So what's the threat there?

Boudreaux: The threat is that you stall the airplane out and the airplane just falls out of the sky. Air speed keeps you flying, and I was actually having a student on board, a new co-pilot flying with us and so I was actually instructing her at the same time as flying through the storm. So as this is going on I'm also trying to explain to her, "I'm going to lose some altitude in order to gain my air speed back," and that's exactly what we did. We put the nose down, got our air speed back, we climbed back up to our altitude, and it was back to a normal, well, what we consider normal, flight.

Mullins: Were you still in the hurricane, in the cyclone within the hurricane at that point? Or had you flown out?

Boudreaux: We were still in the cyclone. We were right in the eyewall of the storm. We were basically in the worst possible area of the storm at the world possible time, when it was rapidly intensifying. While we were in the storm, in the eyewall, this storm had actually doubled in size.

Mullins: Did your mother know you do this?

Boudreaux: She prays a lot.

Mullins: Major Brad Boudreaux, Hurricane Hunter. Ever wonder what the eye of a tropical storm looks like from above? We've got a slideshow. It's at theworld.org.

IMC Weekend Edition 27 October 2012

by IMC News Service — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 20:53:59 GMT

Aerobatics

By Peter Conant - In 1990 I flew my Bonanza V-35 from Norwood down to Pompano Beach, Florida for a ten hour aerobatics course in a Pitts 2 Special. The Pitts is a fabric covered stubby-winged tail-dragger biplane with tandem seating and an amazing roll rate. All one needs to do is just THINK about lifting an aileron and the plane is banked over to vertical.

What does all this have to do with instrument flying, you ask? Patience, gentle reader, and all will be revealed. I wanted to cast some light into the dark corners of the flight envelope and experience what it felt like to roll knife edge and beyond. I had been using my Bonanza for aerial photography and was growing increasingly confident with sixty degree banks. One session in bumpy weather had me unexpectedly rolling near vertical, which felt quite daring and unnerving at the same time. I had read about Pompano Air Center (PAC) in a recent issue of Flying and decided to take a vacation to Florida in February.

PAC had a host of cool equipment. And right across the field from their location was a hangar for one of the GoodYear blimps which was regularly flying for sporting events. I saw Extra 300's, Patty Wagstaff's preferred weapon, a new Sukhoi complete with radial engine and what I took to be cowl flaps which enclosed the propeller shaft like the iris on an old-fashioned SLR camera. The Pitts, in comparison, looked a bit dowdy. I sat in front and my instructor, Tom Teidt, managed takeoffs and landings from the back.

My schedule was to fly one hour each morning and one hour every afternoon, Monday through Friday. On our first lesson, Tom demonstrated the basics: rolls, loops, spins, inverted flight. He kept telling me that flying is essentially a three dimensional activity but most pilots never get beyond steep banks or climbs. The rolls were disorienting and nausea inducing whereas the loops were a total blast. Full power, nose down slightly to gain airspeed, then stick full after with lots of right rudder, handing upside down and still pulling, looking overhead for the horizon to appear, throttle to idle down the backside, continue to pull through the drive, and there you were, back to straight and level and hopefully not too far from your initial altitude.

The afternoon introduced some classics: chandelles, Immelmans (half loop with a roll to right side up at the top), hammerheads, inverted spins, and something called a humpty-bump, where you climb straight up and just before running out of elevator control push the nose over aggressively to experience negative G's as you go from straight up to straight down. Amazing.

The following days included four and eight point hesitation rolls, snap rolls, Cuban eights, split-S's and tail slides, always trying for more precision with my headings and footwork. When you are knife-edge in a hesitation roll, the rudder is horizontal and acts as an elevator, so that when you find yourself in a left hand knife-edge hesitation turn, you step on the right rudder to maintain altitude. Very strange indeed.

Not only did I sweep away a lot of cobwebs and fears from my closet of "what would I do if?" scenarios, I found I was more comfortable with all my flying. For example, I would fly at a much slower airspeed on final because I knew that a stall was still a long ways away. Someone once asked me why most Bonanza drivers fly too fast on final, to which I answered that the Bonanza wing does not provide any real pre-stall buffet: when you power back and hold altitude you're flying, you're flying, you're flying. . . you're NOT flying. Most learn to stay well away from the stall. But after Pompano I was more attuned to the nuances of the wing and could better feel when elevator authority was about to end. Plus, stall recovery was now second nature.

Similarly, turbulence became less of a threat since I had seen what happens when the plane is flipped over or perhaps upset by wingtip vortices from a departing jet. I'm still not willing to do a low inverted approach fifty feet off the runway or dive and do a demonstration bombing run, but the edges of the flight envelope are now old friends and not a haunting terror.

The benefits of aerobatic training for instrument flight are obvious: better low speed control, better awareness of what the airplane is telling you, better coordination of pitch, power and attitude. Perhaps the most beneficial thing I have taken away from wringing out the performance envelope is an increased confidence in my flying and knowing that I handle almost anything the weather or the controllers might dish out.

IMC Weekend Edition 20 October 2012

by IMC News Service — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:37:58 GMT

Flying Programs

By Peter Conant - I am always amazed to discover and then, by next month, to rediscover how much aviation software has been developed with the assumption that pilots are now flying with either a portable electronic hardware display or some panel-mounted device. I remember reading years ago how Bill Gates decided to start a company which concentrated on software development and operating systems, rather than on hardware. Apple, of course, did both right from the start. Starting with his partnership with Steve Wozniac, Steve Jobs was obsessed with great product design and hardware functionality, in addition to creating the sports-car of operating systems. Whenever Microsoft came out with a newish system such as Windows XP or Windows 2000, Apple users would typically scoff and say "Who can get excited about a new Buick when we've already got the Ferrari?"

My Lowrance 2000 is positively ancient compared to these latest devices, such as an iPad, iPhone or other displays such as the Garmin 696 or 796. Even the earlier Garmins are adaptable for use as PFDs and MFDs. As I'm sure most of my readers know, programs for ADS-B, Nexrad weather graphics and DUATS are now being used by a growing number of pilots who rely on real time weather information to safely navigate and keep ahead of the airplane. Flying a long cross country is now easier and safer with all this additional help, although there are some caveats about using Nexrad radar information for staying clear of buildups and lightning. I used to fly a plane equipped with a strike finder which was a great help in finding out just where the electric discharges were located. I even flew a Lance once with onboard radar hidden in the wing which was just phenomenal at keeping me aware of what was inside those clouds I would be entering.

I flew a Mooney and a Columbia 350 both of which had the Garmin 1000 integrated glass cockpit and the Garmin 700 autopilot. My thought was then, and still is now, that this made things way too easy. Flying the Columbia was an especially cool experience, with an authentic side stick (as opposed to the Cirrus' side yoke). The Columbia had gobs of power and flying it was delightful, but landing was always a humbling experience. The plane is heavy and does not have the best glide ration in a power off descent. Near the ground, the elevator runs out of authority if you're doing less than 60 knots. A pilot quickly learns to keep a little power in the flare, since the elevator alone won't stop your descent as your airspeed bleeds off.

This month's Flying Magazine has an article about pilots trained only in glass cockpits who struggle with basic aircraft control if the glass display suddenly dies. I have not read the article in its entirety, and I've written about this before, so let me just say that while the advent of superior cockpit information and weather display is one of the greatest safety improvements I have seen in my thirty-plus years of instrument flying, the overuse of so much automation for the Primary Flight Display is a potential trap waiting to be sprung. I remember once doing an Angel Flight with an Indian gentleman and his wife flying from Boston to Albany. This guy was so interesting and interested in everything about flying, he was telling me about all the other flights he had been on where the pilot would take off and immediately engage the autopilot in the climb out. He would always ask them, 'Isn't it more fun to fly by hand?" To which the pilots would reply "I don't want to have fun, and this is easier." He told me I was the only pilot he'd ever flown with who didn't use the autopilot for a long cross country trip. I'm not sure what message to take away from this. All I know is that my next purchase will either be an iPad or a Garmin 696 or 796, to be used occasionally as a PFD backup.

To change the subject slightly, stories about "My First Time" in IMC without an instructor aboard, or making a missed approach for the first time in IMC on your own, are still being solicited for our contest. You could, as the winner, receive a BrightLine Flight Bag and have your story published here in IMC Weekend Edition. Contest deadline is December 15, 2012 with the winner announced before Christmas. I've received a few stories but would appreciate reading a whole lot more. Actually, this is partly a selfish maneuver since I plan to publish many of your stories, not just the one winning entry. So please help out your editor and send along your "first time" story, relating your feelings, procedures and thoughts as you skillfully managed the situation. Talk to me, people! Keep those cards and letters coming.

WIN this B-10 Flight Bag!

Please submit your entry to peter@imcclubs.org

IMC Weekend Edition 14 October 2012

by IMC News Service — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 16:01:31 GMT

First Time

By Peter Conant - Last week, Steven Wilkinson wrote about the first time he entered actual IMC on his own without an instructor on board, and this got me to thinking about all of the many stories which could be told about each of our first times in "actual". Not to mention this first time each of us had to make actual missed approach, either because the needles just wouldn't settle down as we proceeded towards the MAP (missed approach point) or when we reached the DH (decision height) discovered the runway was nowhere in sight. And l am sure we've all had the temptation on an approach to minimums (I know I have) to go just a "little" lower because we were just starting to break out. A definite no-no.

(I am spelling out the abbreviations for MAP and DH because I received an email last week questioning just what IMC stood for: Instrument Meteorological Conditions.)

Anyway, we here at the IMC Club in Norwood, MA would like to encourage you to write us with a short description of your "first time" in actual IMC or an actual "first time" missed approach. One of the reasons for the IMC Club's existence is to share such events so that we can all learn from them. Too often after we get our lFR tickets, we plod through the clouds without having access to a debriefing on what we did, why we did it, how it made us feel and what we learned from it.

Our encouragement is in the form of a contest with the prize being a Brlghtline Flight Bag. We are soliciting your stories, experiences and written reflections on your first time in actual, first time in a missed approach, or other stories which you feel would be instructional and fun to read. Send them to us as an email by December 15, and we will review them all. The winner will be announced before Christmas, and will receive the Flight Bag along with your story being published in Weekend Edition. I expect there will be many examples of good stories and great writing which I would like to draw on for future Weekend Editions.

In my own case, I remember first boring holes in the clouds with my family, flying from Norwood to College Park, Maryland. It has been said that some of your best instrument flying is done just after receiving your ticket since your training is firmly in your mind. In my case, entering the clouds was pretty exciting but not especially terrifying. We climbed to our cruising altitude of 6,000 feet MSL (mean sea level) and were proceeding around the west side of the New York Class B airspace, or Terminal Control Area as it was called at that time. I was staying ahead of the airplane, anticipating the next VOR change and talking with the controllers, when I got a routing change. Hey, no problem. Except I was told to proceed direct to East Texas. Say again? I looked all over my chart since I had never seen nor even heard of East Texas before this. When I sheepishly asked where it was, some unknown pilot chimed in that I should look near the Huguenot and Wilkes Barre VORs. Except these were located on a different chart, one that I had to retrieve, unfold, re-fold and scan. Aha, there it was! Not a big problem since we were winging along through calm skies and using the autopilot, but I wished I had had this type of interruption more often in my training.

My first missed approach was a bit more interesting. I was flying some colleagues to a job site in Belfast, Maine. I had studied the NDB (non directional beacon) approach carefully the night before, but when it came time to fly using the ADF (automatic direction finder) I had a devil of a time flying the tail of the needle after having passed the beacon enroute to the field. I descended to minimums and was in and out of the bases but never saw the airport. Deciding to go to my alternate, Augusta and rent a car, I set up for the ILS (instrument landing system) and could not get the localizer and glide slope to keep from drifting. Missed approach. Coming around for the second time I nailed it. Oh, the joys of relying on airplanes to make a schedule. One of my pilot friends is fond of saying, "if you've got time to spare, go by air."

Then there was an IPC (instrument proficiency check) where my evil instructor had me enter a hold and then gave me a full route clearance to copy in the middle of timing the inbound leg and correcting for wind. Or another IPC when approach vectored me to intercept the localizer right over the outer marker. "Happens all the time in real life" he said nonchalantly. Well, not to me ever before it hadn't.

Please consider this a fun exercise, writing up your stories about what went right and what didn't go so right during your first forays into the clouds. I hope you have as much fun writing about your flying as I have every week writing about mine, or those I read about. Remember, all writing is rewriting. I usually go through at least ten edits to get my own thoughts on paper.

Lastly, having explained every abbreviation in this Weekend Edition, I'll tell you what I think. I think it's silly and I'm not going to do this ever again. Sorry, but that's it! I refuse! All abbreviations can be found in the AIM (no, I'm not going to explain) or the FARs. You can ask your flying friends as a way of fostering communications and camaraderie. And please use abbreviations as you see fit in your stories. I look forward to hearing from all of you.

Please submit your entry to peter@imcclubs.org

IMC Weekend Edition 6 October 2012

by IMC News Service — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 23:20:58 GMT

Departing Wiscasset

By Steven Wilkinson (IMC Club Member) - I've been a Private Pilot for about four years, and got my Instrument Rating in 2010 though, despite my best intentions, was not very good about staying instrument current during the first year or so after passing the test. Realizing this was a bad practice, I began to focus on doing an approach with every possible flight and a hold, at least, every couple of months. However, I hadn't filed in a while. How fortunate it was that I decided to renew that skill upon departure from Norwood to a weekend in Maine, despite VFR. conditions. The planning for that flight to Wiscasset proved to be good practice for our encounter on the return trip.

We'd spent a great weekend on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine, with a smooth mid-day boat crossing to the mainland. Heading south, it started to rain just as we reached Moody's Diner, our lunch destination. By the time we finished eating, it was steadily raining and the briefing forecast, when we reached Wiscasset Airport, was for thunderstorms. Fortunately, the Wiscasset Motor Lodge was just around the corner so we were dropped off there to spend the night.

Next morning, it was a short walk to the airport where conditions were overcast, about 1800', with three miles visibility, just within my personal minimums of 1,000' and three miles. The forecast called for rain, late in the day, to continue for the next few days. It was time for some actual and I was glad I'd gotten so focused on staying current.

Being unsure whether I could hear my mobile with the engine running, I attempted to get clearance before starting the engine. Air Traffic Control wouldn't go for that so we did our taxi and runup and, when ready to go, I was pleased that bringing the engine to idle let me easily hear the clearance.

Off we went, into the clouds! Despite knowing what to expect and having experienced the sensation with my instructor, the likely scenario ensued. After what seemed like a long time, but was probably only one or two seconds of disorientation, I heard my instructor saying, "Get your head in the cockpit and focus on your instruments!" "Okay, Paul!" All that instruction and experience kicked in and I was swiftly on heading, steadily climbing, scanning the instrument panel and trying to raise Air Traffic Control. Shortly after that, we established communications and continued climbing above the clouds where the sun came out. It was gorgeous! We leveled off at 4,000' and continued on our flight plan.

The rest of the flight was uneventful and included one more bit of practice, though the clouds had cleared at our destination, with a GPS. approach. Practice makes perfect!

(Editor's note: This story, from an IMC Club member, is a great example of how we can all benefit from our colleagues' experiences. Here, flying for the first time in "actual" IMC conditions without an instructor,a pilot relies on his training and experience to focus on the task at hand. Thank you, Steve! Contributions of more stories of this type are always welcome.Anyone who has flown instruments has a tale to relate, I'm sure.)