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Monat: August 2012

aero camping

aero camping

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Visibility: more of a vision, really
Temperature: 26°C
Location: the local outdoor store
Equipment: the battered VISA card

I like outdoor stores. I can spend a lot of time looking at the sophisticated solutions for the simplest form of traveling, dreaming of the great outdoors. I am at the local outdoor-hipster meeting point on my quest for a sleeping bag and an air martess.

The wood-chuck-on-staff recides hight tech materials, qualities and degrees below freezing that the individual models will safe me from. I am actually only interested in packing size. The wood-chuck has a difficult time accepting that I decide against the model that would enable me to go hiking in Barrow, Alaska in January.

The last item on my list is a number of earth anchors. He shows me a few tent pegs of different sizes. I ask for something bigger and he brings a larger version, still not what I had in mind. I ask for something more serious. That seems to grab the wood-chucks’ professional attention. “What do you plan to fasten down?” he wants to know. “an aircraft” I answer with a smile.

Friday evening rush hour

6 p.m. on Friday evening. The weather is gorgeous and the airport is busy. We are number 3 for take-off on runway 05. The small baggage compartment behind the seats is stuffed with a tent, sleeping bags and other camping gear.

The air is smooth as silk. The lowest clouds are in airliner territory, there is no wind. Flying is a dream.

A good friend has invited us to a BBQ party. He lives 10 minutes away from a small, private airfield. The owner will be at the party as well. So the idea came up to fly to the party and camp out for the night. What started as a random idea turned out to be quite feasible and a great adventure.

The flight school lets us have the aircraft over night (“sure, no problem, nice idea!”),
we can camp on the airfield (“people have done that before”),
and we made all of our gear fit into the ultra light two seater (easy!).

Big fish in a small pond

We got “Charly Oskar” for the evening, the new Rider with the 100 hp engine. The trip up north is about 45 minutes. Navigation to the small town is easy. The tricky part will be to find the barely marked grass strip in the middle of other fields. We navigate by roads and ponds and before long, we have the runway in sight. It has a few cars parked on the side and a trailer as the only building.

I call on the unicom frequency but only get a broken up answer. Never mind, I have called before. They know that I am coming. In order to get a feeling for the traffic pattern and to make double sure that other traffic knows that we are coming, I start the approach with a low pass. The pattern is tight and the runway short. This will be fun.

On the second round I set flaps and approach the runway in order to land. I am a bit low and need some gas. So I am not as slow as I would have liked to be on short final. The threshold is coming closer and I begin to flare. Charlie Oskar floats for a long time and just as I start to get nervous, we make contract with the high grass that is the runway.

Two motor glider pilots are on the ground to greet us. We talk aircraft and they are all excited about our ride. I am more used to being the flying scum at other airports…

The party is warm and full of friendly folks. We walk back under the stars and crawl into the tent. What a spectacular day.

Back at 9

The next moring we pack our gear and I walk down the runway before we go. There is quite a depression after the threshold. This is why we were coasting so long last night. The runway is bumpy, in bad condition and in desperate need of mowing. I hope we make it out of here without damage.

We perform a short field take-off. I set flaps, pull on the break and give full gas. When the engine is at max RPM, I release the break and we shoot off. I pull Charlie Oskar up as quickly as I can and after a final hop, we are airborne. I’m glad we have the stronger engine!

As a morning salute, we fly low over our friends house. We see someone waiving, I hope it is not a fist shaking.

The trip back is as smooth as yesterday and as we approach EDAY, I am sad that our little trip is over already. But there is no dawdling, Charlie Oscar has to be back before 9 for a long day of flying lessons. To teach new students, who hopefully will take her aero camping some day.

To be continued…

 

(originally posted on August 19, 2012 by tilbo at aloft.blog.com/aero-camping/)

Check ride

Check ride

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Visibility: more than 10 kilometers
ceiling: more than 5.000 feet
GAFOR: “C” clear skies!
Temperature: 26°C
Wind: 300, 10 knots
QNH: 1021hPa
Location: EDAY (Strausberg)
Equipment: “Kilo Sierra” (Cessna 172)

A check ride is a test of the pilots nerves. Your instructor will not sign you up before he is sure that you are ready. The examiner is not interested in failing you either. So the only thing you realy have to worry about, are your own nerves.

I have had several check-rides. The first one, for my sports pilots license, was the worst. In the beginning, my hands were shaking from nervousness. In the end I passed and found out, that the examiner was both understanding and doing his best to help me calm down.

Today I have my next check ride. I will try to get the class rating for single engine piston aircraft with up to 2 tons of maximum take-off weight.

The day starts with coffee and sandwiches in the flight school. The office manager tells me later on that she always gets sandwiches on the day of a check ride. She found that a snack gives the examiner a good mood and helps the student relax. She is great!

And what does this do?

Kilo Sierra is waiting for us on the apron. We start with a thorough pre-flight check. I keep talking and comment the checks I perform. I learned early on that this is important. The examiner follows me around the aircraft and asks many questions. More than I expected. And then he gets me.

He points at the air intake behind the propeller. A small device, driven by a belt is mounted there. “So, what does this do?” he asks.

My instructor is very much a pilot and not so much a technician. We never took the cowling off, I have never examined the engine except for the parts visible through the oil filler door. “Alternator, generator, starter…?” I try to guess. The examiner smiles, “yes, one of the above”.

After he tells me that we are looking at the alternator, he wants to see me fly.

Turn, stall, glide

We take-off and go towards Neuhardenberg. On the way over there we do full circles in various degrees of bank as well as some stall drills and slow flight. Nobody answers my calls in Neuhardenberg (as expected) and so we use the runway for a low pass and go-arround maneuver.

We climb out and go over to Eggersdorf for the more demanding part of the check ride. Various start- and landing drills. We perform a short field landing and take-off, a landing without engine power and a landing without flaps. Finally we simulate an engine failure shortly after take-off. In this maneuver, everything has to be very fast (nose down, flaps out, watch your speed, flare, land). We have trained this many times and I know the drill.

The examiners check list is complete and we go back to Strausberg (track of the route, Google Earth plug-in required). I land and while we taxi back to the apron, he asks me for the times of the landings in Eggersdorf. He’s got me again, I did not write them down. Stupid mistake! I tell him that I will have to call the tower in Eggersdorf and ask for the times. “They will role their eyes at you” he says and tells me that he has got them.

I’m unhappy about the stupid mistakes. The examiner is cool about it. He smiles and congratulates me. The rest must have been enough for the rating.

To be continued…

 

(originally posted on August 15, 2012 by tilbo at aloft.blog.com/check-ride/)

North German Plain

North German Plain

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Visibility: more than 10 kilometers
ceiling: more than 2.000 feet
GAFOR: “O” open skies
Temperature: 21°C
Wind: 260, 10 knots
QNH: 1024hPa
Location: EDOP (Parchim)
Equipment: D-EARE (Cessna 150)

My flying friend Bernd has a work assignment. He needs to take areal pictures of a pipeline. A co-pilot, who can fly while he takes the pictures, would make the job much easier for him. So he asks me and I – of course – am game!

We meet in Parchim (EDOP). The airport is large but not busy. Our plan was to fly in a Cessna 172. But unfortunately it had technical problems and we have to use a much smaller Cessna 150 as back-up. D-EARE (“Romeo Echo”) is old and very basic. She does not even have a VOR on board. But she flies, I am certified to fly her and am familiar with the type, and I get to fly for free. So I will not complain!

After checking out the aircraft, we go over the route for today. Bernd has several way points that he has marked on the map. One of them is north of the rest, noticeably off the route. He smiles and says something about a private detour but does not tell me more.

Bernd wants to do take-offs and landings to practice. The rest of the flying is basically for me. He will navigate and take pictures. This is much better than I had anticipated!

“The impact is still visible”

“Romeo Echo” handles well, just like “Lima X-Ray“. We stay low between the picture sites. Eventually, Bernd guides me toward the single site that is apart from the others. It is a farm close to a small town, right by a lake. It looks very scenic. In the wheat field closest to the farm house, there is a track visible. “This is were I made an emergency landing.” Bernd says.

So this is the “private business” he did not want to go into details about before we left. Now he tells me the whole story. He owns a motorized hang glider. Two weeks ago, he had engine problems and had to land on this very field. When his engine quit, he looked for a possible landing site and carried out a decent touch-down. Just as he was trained to do. The damage was minimal and no one got hurt. I am impressed.

The farmer family helped him and was very friendly. That is why he decided to take pictures of the farm as a present to them.

Fish for lunch

The trip takes us well over three hours. We fly past the city of Hamburg and cross the mighty Elbe river. Close to the coast, the area gets less interesting from above. The north German plains are just that, plain.

The last site on Bernd’s list is close to the city of Leer. After we have taken all the pictures, we land there for fuel for both, aircraft and crew. The airport in Leer has a nice restaurant with a terrace looking onto the runway. We have fish for lunch and two colleagues from the local construction office join us.

The way back is very easy. We take the scenic route along the coast, cross Jade Bight and come even closer to Hamburg before we turn south.

We arrive back in Parchim with well over six flight hours under our belts. This is a lot of flying in one day for a low time pilot and I am beat. What a day!

To be continued…

 

(originally posted on August 12, 2012 by tilbo at aloft.blog.com/north-german-plain/)