Monday February 27, 2006
Monday February 27, 2006
9NC8 - KHOU
I just got back from flying my plane to Houston. I've had a small fuel leak that I needed to get repaired in addition to some other squawks and the folks at FletchAir are pretty much experts at fixing the fuel leaks in planes like mine. So even though it was pretty far I didn't have much choice.
The airport in Houston that I was going to isn't the "big" airport there but it is still quite busy and the entire area is in class B airspace. It was going to be the biggest airport I'd ever landed at.
With ordinary wind conditions it would take about 7.5 hours to fly from NC which I could normally do with a single stop. Because of my left wing tank leak I was being cautious about how much fuel I put in it so I was planning two stops, one in Georgia and one in Mississippi.
I'd been watching the weather all week and it looked like no matter what at least part of the flight was likely to be IFR. My original intention was to fly to Mississippi the first day (Fri.) and finish the trip on Sat. and then fly home commercial on Sun. By late Thurs. it looked like the weather in La. and Texas was going to not be very good on Sat. so it would be better to try and do it all on Friday if it was possible.
Friday morning the weather here was great. Checking the forecast the high had moved into a very favorable position and it looked like I would even get a tail wind most of the way. Usually going west you just hope the wind isn't right in your face, a bit of a tail would be great.
I took off and had no trouble getting my clearance to the first stop. I was making good time, almost 140 knots across the ground. I got to Thomaston in no time. This is just south of Atlanta and I expected going in that the controller would be real busy so I expected to try and get my clearance on the ground for simplicities sake. As it turned out the controller wasn't really that busy.
I refueled, filed the next plan and took off. I contacted Atlanta and got a transponder code but no clearance. Then when the controller called back when I answered he didn't hear me. Ah crap. I tried the other radio, still no good. I tried both radios back and forth still nothing. Finally another pilot on frequency told Atlanta what was happening and the controller told them to try and relay a new frequency to me (I could hear Atlanta fine). I switched frequency and immediately got thru. Whew I was not looking forward to trying to figure out what frequency to try.
Now I'm off to Mississippi and the wind is even better I'm doing a little over 150 knots this time. In two hours I'm landing again.
Now I have to make the decision do I go the rest of the way now or not. Checking the radar it looks good. A call to flight service and it is as expected it'll be actual IFR most of the way but nothing convective and the ceilings are quite high in Houston. I'll probably have to do a real approach (only my 4th "real" approach since being IFR rated) but it should be a piece of cake. I cancel my hotel room in Mississippi and take off. In about a 1/2 an hour I'm in the clouds. It's real smooth, 58 degrees, and raining. As flying in the clouds go it was quite easy. The first 45 minutes or so I'm having no trouble. Then I got near some airspace ATC didn't want me in so they vector me straight west for 15 minutes or so. It's out of my way but no big deal. I'm told that I'll soon be back on my course. Well when they put me back on the course I'm told "join victor 212 and then as filed". Now I filed direct so this was a bit of a strange clearance but whatever.
Unfortunately I've got to find victor 212 first. Which requires reading the map. Here's where it gets fun. Flying IFR single pilot can be a pain if you don't have an autopilot and now you have to divert your attention from the instruments to read a map. It's especially painful today. Because of my fuel leak my fuel strategy is to burn my left wing mostly empty and then switch to the right. This causes the plane to be right wing heavy so it really wants to turn right bad. In some planes from the cockpit you can trim this out, but not in my plane. Usually I burn one wing for 1/2 hours at a time to try and keep it with reaonable trim.
So everytime I look at the map trying to find V-212 and the VOR and the radial the plane tries to give me an "unusual attitudes" lesson. It was not much fun. I finally find it and figure out what to tune my radio to and things are fine again.
In 20 minutes or so the controller asks if I'm going to be doing the ROKIT-7 STAR (standard terminal arrival). I say I haven't been assigned it but I'll do what they want. So they assign ROKIT-7. So I have an IFR certified GPS and it has the STARs builtin, I've never done on but I know how to call it up. I call it up and now it want to know which transition I'm going to do. Crap now I have to go look in the approach procedures book to figure out which one I have to do. Once again it's unusual attitudes time". I figure out the transition and now the GPS is happy and I'm back to it being easy again. I don't actually end up doing the whole STAR bacuase after the 3rd waypoint they switch over to just vectoring me around. They ask if I want to do the ILS or if I want to try and just get vectored for straight in. After all this I want a real approach so I ask for the ILS. They didn't really want that answer because the ILS is for 12 right (a big runway) and they want me on 12 left so I'm out of the way of the heavy traffic. So they tell me that once I break ought and see the runway they want me to sidestep to 12-L. So as it was I only got to fly the ILS for a short time but at least I got the chance.The landing was uneventful and it ended up taking just over 6 1/2 hours of flying time. Not bad I definitely lucked out on the wind.
I got my plane ticket switch to Saturday from Sunday and got home a day earlier than expected. Based on the weather on Saturday I definitely made the right choice pushing thru on Friday. The weather was bad enough I might very well have been stuck in Mississippi until Sunday.
Now all I have left to worry about is how much all the work on my plane is going to cost...
Feb 27 2006, 11:37:54 AM EST
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