november 2462 tango

This was our scheduled nighttime cross-country flight. I'd spent some time studying the path from KLWM to KB19 -- Biddeford, Maine, on the advice of a fellow pilot here at work. I called into Tim this morning to confirm plans, and had trouble getting through to him because he was busy with other work.

When I finally talked with him, it was after 2PM. He explained that he really did want me to go to Plymouth, because I'd get practice in a Bravo airspace, and the path we use to get to KPYM is the same you'd use to get to the Cape and Islands. The Biddeford trip is a "milk run" -- a too-easy trip that's good for a first solo cross-country, so I shouldn't ruin it by wimping out now. That left me with an hour and a half (or less) to plot out a trip to Plymouth.

I first tried via Marlborough and Mansfield, in order to try to stay out of the busy Boston airspace as much as possible. I had it all worked out when I realized it would take me far out of my way -- about 25nm (50%) too long. I then replanned at the last minute and marked up my charts for Hanscom (KBED) and Norwood (KOWD) as intermediate points. This was just about 5nm too long, and a doable trip. It's just doable if I stay between 2500 and 3000 feet; above the two Class Deltas and below the Class Bravo, so I flew the whole trip at 2600 feet.

Coming out of Lawrence, I had a bit of a surprise. First, when I called to open the flight plan, the FSS guy warned me about precipitation along the route. It was snowing. The weather reports when I was doing flight planning just an hour ago hadn't said anything about that, but there it was. Then, listening around, I heard one of the nearby airports was reporting IFR on its ATIS. Uh oh. So we started listening to more ATIS and AWOS reports along the flight path. Most were reporting visibility 10 and 6000 or better ceilings. Time to press on.

The next wrinkle I didn't expect, either on the way down or back, was that Boston Approach asked me to stay west of the towers in Framingham. It's quite logical when you look at the map, but not what I was expecting. That messed up my vectoring, but I was able to follow along because of the lights from route 128. Norwood and Hanscom are both near the highway.

On the way out to Plymouth and then back to Norwood, I cheated a bit. I plugged them into the GPS unit in 2462T and just made my track match the indicated heading. This took me pretty much straight there, which is good because the alternative is looking for radial intersections. Plymouth has an odd set-up, with a different frequency for the lights. Fortunately, I had everything written down on a small piece of paper beforehand.

Coming into Plymouth, I was all messed up. I found one of the two runways, but it wasn't the one I should have been setting up, so my mental picture was all wrong. Then I tried to descend and started coming down way too fast -- 1500 feet/min -- because I felt like I was right next to the airport and way too high. I was in a bad spot. Tim took control and brought us around for a more normal approach. Here's the next mistake: I'd written down right traffic for 24. It's not; it's normal left traffic. I was lucky I was the only one up there being stupid.

I eventually got the thing back down on the ground, though not on the centerline, which isn't good when there are snow drifts around, and the runway is only 75 feet wide. I taxied off and called up FSS on the phone to close that flight plan and open the next.

The trip back was a bit less eventful. The one problem was, again, misjudging the distance to the airport when I entered the pattern. Again too low and way too close, though somewhat on course. When I turned base, I just kept turning in order to get to final, because I was that far off. This left me both high and fast, and I ended up rejecting the landing and going around again. The next landing was a bit askew, and still a bit fast, but at least it was smooth.

I think I learned a lot. Being in an unfamiliar airplane doesn't help; I've only flown 2462T twice before. It's a very nice plane, but it's different. It's much newer, and the airspeed is in knots rather than MPH, and all of the important numbers are different. (Before even starting it, I sat in the plane and read through the POH and memorized a few key numbers. That did help some.)

So, now I've got 22 hours of time, 4.1 hours cross-country, and 2 hours night flight, with endorsements for Class Bravo and landing at Beverly. I need a few more hours of each before I can start doing cross-country solo. The next trip (besides my long-awaited third solo) will be up to Portsmouth, where Tim wants to get me familiar with that airport. It's an alternate (along with Beverly) when out in the practice area, and it's where I will be taking my test, so I need to start practicing with it.

Posted at 09:35PM Dec 05, 2007 by carlson in Aviation  |