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Friday, July 9, 2004
Vol. 1 No. 3 |
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Welcome to the Over the Airwaves aviation newsletter. This irregularly published e-mailing is being sent to members of the E-Pilots listserv. The aim of this e-publication is to promote flight safety, encourage students and new pilots, enhance pilot awareness of upcoming events, and to build enthusiasm for aviation in general. Thank You! Your response to the first two issues of Over the Airwaves has been fantastic. Many of our growing number of upstate pilots wrote in to express appreciation for one or more tips or pieces of useful information they received by reading these two issues. Several of our readers were prompted to wing their way to some of the fly-in events mentioned in this e-publication. Others applauded the safety and training tips that have been offered. Whatever your reason for reading Over the Airwaves, I welcome your participation and encourage you to email me your own opinions, tips, or lessons learned that you would like me to share with our readers. Of course, if you have a dissenting opinion on any topic covered here, please let me know. Listen to those Strange Little Engine Sounds! A big Atta Boy goes to aircraft mechanic, Kevin Rose, owner of Rose Aviation Service at the Akron Airport. Concerned about a ticking sound coming from the engine of a rental Cessna 152, he brought the airplane into the shop for investigation. He ran a compression test and found all four cylinders running up to spec. Undeterred, he pulled a suspicious sounding cylinder and discovered that one half of the piston was missing (see photo below - click on it to enlarge)! The piston on the left shows the missing piece. The piston on the right is normal except for the small chip seen on the piston skirt. Kevin found chunks of the broken piston in the oil sump. Further tear down of the engine revealed damage to each of the other pistons caused by broken pieces banging against the piston skirts. Examination of the oil filter revealed hundreds of tiny piston fragments in the coiled filter paper.
"This engine was within minutes of self-destructing," said Kevin after examining the disassembled engine! How many of us climb into an airplane, put on our noise-attenuating headsets BEFORE starting the engine? Those magnificent noise canceling headsets help to protect our ears, but they also mask out those little warning sounds of possible engine problems. The lesson here is to keep the headsets off our head until we're satisfied that the engine sounds okay. Then, if you hear anything unusual, shut it down immediately and find a qualified A&P to check things out before flying. Airplanes and the engines that power them are incredibly reliable. The failure rate among general aviation aircraft engines is approximately 1 in every 18,000 hours of operation. Statistically, you would have to run through the average life of an engine (1,800 hrs) ten times before experiencing one failure. That's the average. Well maintained engines have much lower failure rates. A good maintenance program includes oil changes every 50 hours (25 hours for engines with oil screens only), oil analysis with each oil change, opening and inspecting the oil filter, and cylinder compression checks every 100 hours. The very best defense against engine failure is an electronic engine analyzer such as a JPI700 or JPI800. These remarkable instruments provide a continuous cylinder-by-cylinder read-out in numeric and graphic form of exhaust gas temperatures (EGTs) and cylinder head temperatures (CHTs). Emerging engine problems nearly always reveal themselves on the engine analyzer BEFORE more serious internal damage results. Flying Lessons Fulfills High School Science Curriculum for Home Schooled Student: Meet David Dulanski, age 16, of Akron, NY. David began preparing for his private pilot certificate earlier this year for two reasons. First, he wanted to learn to fly. Second, he discovered that the private pilot curriculum fulfilled the State Education Department's science requirements for home schooled high school students. It must have worked because David just scored over 1,200 on his SATs. He also completed his first flight solo this past weekend (see photo below - click on it to enlarge). The photo to the left is of David with his instructor, Bob Miller, CFII; the photo on the right is with his mom, dad, and little brother.
Personal Experience with a Presidential Flight Restriction (PFR): In the last issue of Over the Airwaves, I warned of the importance of checking with FSS for any TFRs and PFRs before departing. The seriousness of this was revealed to me on Wednesday, June 23 on a business flight with an accompanying flight student to the Philadelphia area. My pre-departure briefing revealed the presence of a PFR (presidential flight restriction) impacting my planned route of flight and destination airport. Operating on a an IFR flight plan enabled me to penetrate the PFR area and to land at the Doylestown, PA Airport - a non-towered airport..
The return flight later that day
nearly resulted in a serious violation - or worse!. The
weather was perfect VFR. I had filed my IFR flight plan back
to Buffalo earlier that morning. WRONG! The PFR prohibited ALL VFR flights within the restricted area. This meant that I would have to pick up my IFR clearance on the ground prior to launching. This is no different than obtaining a clearance void time (CVT) . . . which I attempted to do by cell phone with my engine running in the run-up area. The only problem was, Philadelphia Approach was holding ALL aircraft on the ground within a 30 mile radius of the President's location - which included Doylestown. Millville Radio, from whom I was attempting to pick up my clearance by cell phone, gave me the telephone number for PHL Approach Control and instructed me to pick up my clearance directly from them. The PHL Approach controller advised me that a ground stop was in process and suggested I call him back every 10 minutes or so. I shut the engine down and began to wait patiently for my clearance. It did not take long before the Doylestown Airport began to jam up with IFR departures waiting to get out . . . and no tower or ground controller to sort things out. Taxiways on both sides of the Doylestown's only runway were blocked by a/c waiting to depart. The problem was complicated by the fact that ATC was still allowing inbound IFR flights to land at Doylestown. With both taxiways blocked, only one runway, and a string of inbound IFR arrivals, and several IFR departures, including me, waiting to get out . . . and no control tower, you can quickly see the emerging problem. Landing aircraft - who had cancelled on short final discovered they had to back-taxi on the active runway to a mid-field turn-off to the ramp - in the face of inbound IFR arrivals.
The faint-of-heart pilot might have said, "Bag it . . . I'm going back to the ramp until the PFR is lifted." Trouble was the taxiways were all blocked. There was simply no way to get back to the ramp. I had no choice but to keep checking with Philly Approach by cell phone. See the next problem emerging?? Every ground stopped pilot in the region was trying to do the same thing - causing the telephone lines going into the PHL Approach Control facility to become jammed. Thus, frequent busy signals necessitated continuous re-calls to get through. "Hmmm. . . I wondered, how much battery time do I have left on my cell phone?" "If the battery died, how could I communicate with ATC?" "Which FAR governs the requirement to have a cell phone in the cockpit?" "Is a cell phone included among the approved electrical devices that can be used in an airplane in the first place?" I can see another chapter in Adventures in Flight coming! Finally, after waiting about 45 minutes, I got through to PHL Approach and received my IFR clearance. The void time window was only four minutes wide! I started the still-warm engine, did a quick mag and instrument check, and taxied swiftly to the active runway, advanced the throttle, and departed. As I climbed out, I wondered what would have happened if I had simply departed VFR and tried to pick up my IFR clearance in the air? I wondered just how close I may have come to Air Force One? I wondered if I would have been the first civilian aircraft to have been shot down? If I was escorted to the ground by a Blackhawk helicopter, I wondered how secure my future as a flight instructor might have been? The message here is simple . . . whether you are a VFR pilot or an IFR pilot, operations in the national airspace system today are changing faster than Jennifer Lopez selects her husbands. The standard private and instrument pilot training syllabus and Practical Test Standards (PTS) does not address much of what pilots were expected to do that day in Doylestown. If you ever plan to fly beyond 50 miles of your home aerodrome, I suggest you secure some meaningful recurrent training.
We left KBUF last Wednesday, June 30, at 9am, landed in St. Augustine, FL 5.4 hours later to refuel, then flew 1.2 hours to Orlando to visit relatives and a quick visit to Disneyworld. We departed the next morning for Ft. Pierce, FL for breakfast and to pick up the necessary Bahamian customs forms. With an IFR fight plan in hand, we departed for Abaco Island via the Freeport VOR, then direct destination. The weather was picture perfect as we left the sight of land and ventured forth to our island destination. Everything went perfectly. The return portion of our trip was a bit more problematic. Telephone service between Abaco Island and the U.S. mainland was out of order on the morning of our planned departure. Fortunately, I had called U.S. Customs the evening before to schedule our planned arrival time at Ft Pierce, FL the next morning. They gave me a 30 minute window either side of my planned 1300Z arrival time to land and clear customs. Failure to call U.S. Customs prior to arrival is results in a $5,000 fine! Without phone service on our departure morning, I was unable to file the required flight plan to re-enter the United States. Hmmmm . . . . what to do?
If I delayed at my
planned departure time I'd miss my U.S. Customs slot time and,
without phone service, there would be no way to reschedule it.
Thus, I elected to depart without a flight plan with the intention
of calling Miami Radio to file somewhere enroute. Keep in mind
that entry into the U.S. without either a VFR or IFR flight plan on
file is prohibited. It took several repeated attempts to reach
Miami Radio, but finally after passing Freeport I managed to get
through and file my plan. The confusion generated by the
telephone outage caused me to arrive at Ft. Pierce nearly one hour
after my scheduled customs arrival slot. Wondering what
penalties might result, I taxied up to the Ft Pierce Customs office
midst a conga line of about 15 airplanes waiting to be cleared.
This unusual delay was apparently caused by in a pilot caught
earlier that morning attempting to smuggle in a small quantity of
marijuana. This caused us all to go through an intense
clearance inspection. Hopefully they arrested the smuggler and
threw away the key. The only remaining wrinkle in the return portion of our trip was negotiating a large area of thunderstorms covering portions of northern Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. As you can see from the photo (right) I shot of my instrument panel, both the WX500 stormscope and radar screen vividly displayed the weather challenge just ahead. We were cruising at 15,000 feet with clearance from Jacksonville Center to maneuver as necessary to get around each quickly developing cell. Click on photo to enlarge. We were able to maintain a smooth and dry ride through this ugly weather thanks to the miracle of modern weather detection equipment. Without this equipment, we would have likely waited out this weather on the ground. This trip will be described in full in the next chapter Adventures in Flight.` You can find this book at HERE
B-29 and B-24 Aero Club of Buffalo Barbeque Scheduled for Thursday, August 5: Here's your chance to crawl through the last remaining flying B-29 in the world. The event will be held at Prior Aviation, Veridian Hangar beginning at 6pm. Dress will be informal/picnic. You will be receive reservation information within the next couple of weeks. Advanced IFR Training Available: Passing the IFR rating checkride opens the door to instrument flight . . . but it is a long way from preparing you for the challenges of IFR flight into and out of the big east coast airports . . . especially in IMC conditions on a busy Friday night! Miss a radio call, altitude or heading assignment, or amendments to your routing and you're looking at an FAR 91.123 and 91.13 violation. Enter the wrong squawk code in the box and you could be looking at a Blackhawk Helo on your wing. Single pilot IFR in IMC conditions is tough! Landing at Teterboro without an airport destination plan in mind will cause considerable confusion as you taxi off the active runway (TEB has five FBOs)! Landing at JFK after 2pm results in a $200 landing fee (before 2pm it's only $25). Landing at Philadelphia International in IMC conditions . . . expect to get the PRM/ILS approach. Are you qualified to accept this? They don't teach you these things in the typical instrument pilot course. Sure, it's easy to say that you will never plan to fly into the NY TRACON . . . but that short-circuits the utility of your airplane to carry you into the most exciting cities in the world. That's dumb! You can acquire the skills and build the confidence to handle the nation's Class B airports by enrolling in a one-day Advanced IFR Training program. Click HERE for details. Wonderful World of Flight: Be sure to visit (and save as a favorite) the Wonderful World of Flight webpage. You can find it by clicking on http://www.rjma.com/flight/homepage.htm. This frequently updated website contains a wealth of useful aviation information to both the recreational and serious pilot. Drill down through its many links to discover valuable training tips, upcoming events, and interesting stories and photos of local aviators. Send Over the Airwaves to a Friend: Click HERE to have Over the Airwaves e-mailed regularly to a friend.
Safe Flying,
Bob Miller, CFII
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AOPA
President Phil Boyer to Address the Aero Club of Buffalo on
September 23: Phil
Boyer will be bringing news on Governor Pataki's plan to install
aggressive security measures at all of NYS's general aviation
airports. Pilot security badges, fenced in airport, locked gates, and
pilot background investigations is what our governor has in mind.
You not want to miss this informative meeting. More
information will follow next month.