Acknowledgements: AIR FACTS (John
Zimmerman)
You don’t have to fly IFR at 10,000 feet to travel efficiently
by general aviation. I was reminded of this fact after logging 15 enjoyable
hours over the past month – all at 500 feet and 100 knots in VFR-only aircraft.
Even with some weather to deal with, I went exactly where I wanted, with only
minimal delays, and had a lot of fun. That doesn’t mean it was boring! Over the
course of one trip in particular, I hit a few speed bumps, and in the process re-learned
some important lessons about weather, decision-making and technology. Most
importantly, I learned that flexibility pays off when you’re VFR.
Departing
It didn’t look promising. Low clouds and fog - and not just in
the valleys where it had been forecast. I headed to the airport to complete my
pre-flight, hoping the rising sun would burn off the clouds. An hour later the
METAR was stubbornly stuck at 600 feet overcast. This was more than just
inconvenient, since developing thunderstorms at my destination made every delay
potentially serious on this hot summer day. I wanted to be on the ground before
things got too convective.
After nervously eyeing the sky every 30 seconds, trying to will
the clouds into parting, I recognised a potential trap and hit the pause
button. I was spring-loaded to go flying the
minute blue sky appeared overhead, potentially chasing a sucker hole just to
stay on schedule. While I’m a proponent of “taking a look” when flying VFR,
this approach brings with it great pressure. If you’ve been waiting for two
hours and then take off, are you really going to turn around and
land if things aren’t as VFR as you hoped? It’s awfully hard to do! Recognising
this mistake, I told myself that I would only look at the weather in 30 minute
increments, to prevent me from chasing temporary changes. Overkill? Perhaps,
but it worked. I took off 90 minutes later than planned, but by then the
weather had cleared significantly and my departure was uneventful.
Lesson one: If
you’ve been waiting on marginal weather to lift, don’t take off until you think
there’s a very good chance of success – you probably won’t turn around. Be
patient and wait until the trend is clearly in your favour.
En-route
After an hour and a half in cruise, skirting around a little bit
of leftover scud, the white cumulus clouds began to grow faster and turn grey.
A quick look at Fore-Flight showed thunderstorms popping up all over the place
– Mother Nature’s popcorn, as a memorable instructor once told me. There was no
major weather system at work here, just the remains of a weak stationary front.
The real work was being done by the heat of the day, as ground temperatures
soared. While a thunderstorm is always a threat, the difference between
afternoon pop-ups and a line of severe storms ahead of a cold front is
significant. Since these storms were not organized, I could deviate around them
fairly easily by dodging the rain shafts (by a wide margin). We had a
smooth ride all the way. Still, I was happy to be on the ground at 1pm.
Lesson two: Know
your air mass. Unstable or stable? Frontal or pop-up? It makes a difference.
Perhaps easier to remember is the old advice that, in the summer, it’s best to
finish flying by noon.
Fuel
The weather concerns were over, but the next day brought a new
challenge. My destination was a convenient general aviation airport, but it
lacked fuel, so the plan was to fly to a neighbouring airport for a top off
before giving rides to some local kids. For the first time in my life a
self-serve fuel pump let me down. There were no NOTAMs suggesting it was
inoperative and I had used the airport often, but when I flipped the switch to
turn on the pump I heard only the silence of a quiet country airport. After 10
minutes of troubleshooting, it became clear that there would be no fixing it,
and unfortunately there were no fuel trucks.
The only option left was to fly to another airport for fuel, but
with 2+ hours of flying logged already, range was limited. There was
another small airport over the next ridge, but I wasn’t certain we could get
fuel there, and it was time to take a sure thing. I decided Downtown Knoxville
was reachable with a safe fuel reserve. Before taking off, I called the FBO to
verify their self-serve pump was functional, and that their fuel truck was
available as a back-up. As a worst case, Knoxville had a crew car and hotels to
stay in if needed.
Lesson three: Always
have an out, and preferably a sure thing. I was dangerously close to being
stuck at a remote airport with no options. When it was time for Plan B, I went
with certainty over convenience.
By this time, I was hot, frustrated and thinking about the kids
who were not going to get their ride anytime soon. That’s obviously the last
thing I should have been thinking about, and sure
enough I got my come-uppance: the left fuel cap, which I had removed in
anticipation of fuelling, rattled to the ground. In my haste to get going, I
hadn’t taken the time to do a real walk around. Fortunately, I noticed it
before starting the engine, but I was embarrassed at my mistake.
Lesson four: When
things go wrong, and especially when you’re frustrated, force yourself to slow
down and double check your last few steps. Create some personal circuit
breakers that pop anytime you’re in a hurry.
Headed
home
The fuel-stop and the rides both worked out fine, so all that
was left a day later was to fly home. The weather was excellent at destination,
but the first 50 miles looked marginal. Unfortunately, those 50 miles were over
some fairly remote terrain. That meant METARs were few and far between. The
METARs that were available looked pretty good, and the radar showed just two
tiny showers over the hills. Given those positive reports and my experience
flying in the area, I took off. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the
reported 3600 feet overcast was not the reality in between airports. Those two
small showers were barely registering on the radar, but the rain was just
enough to create some low clouds in the valleys. In between the rain showers
conditions were VFR, but barely. Those METARs weren’t wrong; they simply didn’t represent the
weather eight miles to the east, where moisture and terrain were brewing up a
whole different micro-climate.
Lesson five: Terrain
matters, and not just for avoiding the rocks. Mountains and weather interact in
all kinds of ways, so what is true in the plains does not necessarily hold in
the hills. Be careful extrapolating too much between distant airports when the
terrain is different. Any
time the weather does not meet expectations, the faster you accept
reality the better.
I was below radar coverage, so there was no use complaining. It
was time to make a new plan. While good VFR had become marginal VFR, I was
still legal, safe, and comfortable with the conditions. I still had a solid
escape route to the east if I didn’t like what I saw further down the
road. My new plan was to break the flight down into a series of shorter
flights, flying one ridge at a time. I evaluated the terrain and the weather,
and simply flew where the conditions were best: blue sky good, grey rain shafts
bad. If that meant a 30-mile detour, then fine. While it felt like I was
weaving all over the sky, my track log revealed a surprisingly straight path,
with less than five minutes’ worth of deviations.
Lesson six: Be
flexible. Don’t get locked into your first plan; and reject the subtle pressure
of the magenta line pointing to direct. Take what the terrain and weather give
you.
Once the hills and rain showers were behind me, the rest of the
flight turned into a perfect VFR trip. A fuel-stop in London, Kentucky,
featured fully functional self-serve pumps and a well-stocked vending machine.
The sprawling horse farms of Lexington provided excellent sightseeing, the air
was smooth and I landed back home exactly on time.
Technology
One final lesson hit me
the next day, as I reviewed the flight in my mind: Be unapologetic about using
technology. Sure,
this trip could have been safely completed without any modern gadgets, and some
purists might scoff at flying such a basic flight with a portable GPS, an iPad
and all the other goodies. But datalink weather, GPS moving maps and terrain
alerts made it significantly easier – and safer.
It’s one thing to hope the
weather is better over that next ridge; it’s another to know for
a fact the terrain drops 500 ft. in five miles and
all the rain is behind you. Likewise, making fuel calculations is a whole lot
easier when you can get an accurate winds-aloft forecast from your iPhone, and
even call the FBO to verify the fuel pump is working. Oftentimes you are on
your own as a VFR pilot down low, so the more tools you can use the better. And if you’re an IFR pilot who panics at the
thought of flying without a flight plan, take a low-level trip in a
VFR airplane sometime. It’s a great learning experience, and in some ways, it’s
easier at 500 feet than it is at 5,500 feet. As I learned on my way home, such
flights often become a series of 25-mile flights, where you simply take what
you get and enjoy the scenery. And isn’t that what flying is all about?
FLY SAFE!
Thanks Tony
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