First stop on the Western Flight Tour

Dave with the airplane at Valley View Airport in Estacada, Oregon.

What better way to spend the last day of a holiday weekend then flying with your friend? After sleeping in for a relatively long amount of time this morning, I called Dave and met up with him to head to the airport. We got lunch on the way, and decided while eating that we try to tackle one or more of the airports on the Western Oregon flight tour. I'm tracking my progress here.

At Valley View Airport, a stop on the Western Flight Tour.

We decided we'd try to head over to Valley View airport if the clouds would let us. It's located in Estacada, Oregon. I've been there several times before, but this would be Dave's first time there.

It's only a 20 minute trip, so we got there pretty quickly. Valley View is a cool little neighborhood airport, with a very narrow and long runway – almost 3800 feet long but only 32 feet wide. There are several very nice homes there in the property, each of them with a hanger for a garage. It's a very park-Iike setting. There are even a few empty lots in the neighborhood for sale, which frankly are somewhat tempting to me.

We landed there and took our "evidence" pictures for the flying tour. You have get a photo of you, the plane and something that makes the airport recognizable in the photo. Then Dave asked me to go fly the pattern so he could take some pictures of the airplane landing on the runway. He got some cool shots.

Rather than fly any airports on the tour list today, we decided to fly over to Mulino and have dinner there at the café. That's always a great place to grab a meal.

Then it was back home to Twin Oaks to park the plane for the day. Turned out to be a good way to spend an afternoon, and we knocked one off the air tour list to boot.

Thunderstorms are rather scary

Friday evening was beautiful - Lots of widely scattered billowy clouds, but nothing scary looking. Mostly sunny and a light breeze. A perfect day for flying around the area. I jumped in the plane and headed out over the west practice area and toward the little town of Vernonia to the northwest. I wanted to fly over and take a look at it from the air, since a number of people I know have told me I should fly there sometime. I actually used to live close to Vernonia until last year, and have driven to the airstrip before, but I'd never flown to it. It's a grass strip in the foothills of the coastal range.

I found Vernonia with the help of my GPS and circled the airport a couple times. I decided to skip landing since I wasn't very familiar with the current state of the runway, couldn't locate a windsock, and because the hills around the strip present some challenges that I just wasn't interested in deciphering in my mind in real time. I'll probably head back there soon with my friend Dave or someone else who's flown there before. It looks like a fun place to land.

After my circles of Vernonia I spent some time flying various maneuvers and running the engine at high power, then headed back over to Hillsboro, where I did a series of touch and goes. As I was finishing up an area of heavy precipitation and convective weather started to build - quick quickly - south of Hillsboro and right between the Hillsboro airport and my destination, Twin Oaks Airpark. In retrospect, I could easily have flown through the rain to Twin Oaks at the time and landed. It would have been really wet, but that isn't a problem for flying. I would've been able to see fine, and the winds were a non-event (at that point).

View of the line of heavy rain over Twin Oaks from the east after flying over Newberg.But I decided to avoid that heavier rain altogether, and instead headed south of the area, where the weather was clearer. I flew over the Newberg valley with the intent to take a look from the other side of Twin Oaks to see if the way was clear from that side of the rain storm.

I shot a quick photo from the plane of the storm and wall of heavy rain that was falling directly on Twin Oaks Airpark. In fact, a line of heavy rain ran almost from Hillsboro Airport to Twin Oaks, and then further south from there to the ridge I had just flown on the other side of. Weather often stalls here for some reason. I'm sure someone could probably explain why, but all I know is that it happens.

The cloud layer that the rain was falling from was pretty dark and I later found out why: The bottom of the clouds was at about 3000 feet above the ground, but the tops were almost 28,000 feet when the storm got to its worst. When the photos on the right were taken, the storm had not fully built up yet. That was still to come.

One thing was clear: I was flying in weather that was still perfectly safe, but things were rapidly getting more intense. This was proven about a minute after I shot the photo of the rain line, when I heard a couple static pops in my airplane's intercom through my headset. Then, a couple seconds later, another pop and off to my left, in the area of north Portland and Vancouver, a bright flash in the distance.

639MR on the ground at Aurora, waiting out the storm. Looking west toward the nastier area.Lightning. Now, understand that I have absolutely no interest in finding out what it's like when a small airplane gets caught in the path of a lightning bolt. It was time to make a decision. I flew away from the storm to the south, back over a small airport at Newberg call Sportsman Airpark. I decided against landing there for a couple reasons. First of all, I was 3,000 feet above the airport and not too far away from the building storm. I really just wanted to be further away, and it was clear my plane flying at normal speed was going to travel much, much faster than the storm was moving. Plus, Sportsman's windsock is hard to see, especially from that altitude, and there's no real-time weather information available about the airport on the aircraft radio.

So, I decided to head east, away from the weather and to a larger airport that's about five minutes away called Aurora State. It has a much larger runway, was farm enough away to make me feel comfortable, and has automoted weather broadcasts that tell pilots exactly what's happening on the ground, updated every minute.

Landing was uneventful, and the winds were fairly light. I taxied over the Aurora Aviation and parked the plane, and took a quick photo looking back toward the Hillsboro area. The sun, which was getting lower in the sky, was shining through under the storm clouds, but was still providing plenty of heat energy up the west side of the storm clouds. I went inside and looked at the radar information. The tops were nearly 28,000 feet by this time and areas of hail and very heavy rain were covering all of Hillsboro and Twin Oaks. It was a good time to be on the ground.

Soon the winds kicked up and got quite gusty. Rain stated to pour down, and I tied down the plane and got soaked in the process. I waited out the weather along with a family of three who had also just landed there on a flight in their small plane from the Seattle area. From under cover we watched lightening storm build and brew over Hillsboro. The total wait was a little over an hour. When the weather calmed and the lightening stopped I called the Flight Service weather briefer to find out how things were looking. He told me that the sun had just set and so the storm was quickly losing its energy, and that the forecasted change was for substantially improved weather in about 15 minutes. I might run into some light to moderate rain, but I should be good to go by the time I got in the air to fly back to Hillsboro and Twin Oaks. "Just don't fly south" was the message from the weather pros. Roger that.

Storm clouds looming as the storm builds up. Shortly after this photo was taken the heavens let loose with stromg winds, rain and more lightning.I took my time and got ready to depart. As I was taxiing to the end of the runway to depart, another aircraft - a big twin engine plane - was landing. The pilot of that plane asked me how long I'd been there and what the weather had been like, then asked me where I was headed. I told him Twin Oaks, about 10 minutes away, and that I had just spoken to the briefer and checked the live weather images. He said that yes, he had just seen it was good toward Twin Oaks and that I should be good to go, and that I'd be able to see any large amounts of falling water and just go around them. I thanked him and departed.

Turns out I had to head through some light to moderate rain, then discovered there was a pretty dark wall of water between me and Twin Oaks that was probably technically legal to fly through, but which didn't appeal to me. It just wasn't worth the chance, should the visibility for any reason get worse. So, I again flew along the Newberg vallley to the south, the same way I'd come earlier in the evening. Once on the other side of the rain, I was able to see Twin Oaks clearly on the ground, between me and the rain. It was a quick and easy trip over and a completely uneventful landing.

I learned a lot today from a hands-on perspective. Among the lessons:

• Weather, especially convective storm weather, can build very quickly.
• You can always land somewhere, and if in doubt you should do just that.
• Lightning is intimidating. I already knew that from some past personal experience, but got a new perspective in the air. It's much more fun to watch from the ground.
• Don't wait until the weather gets crappy to land. I landed at Aurora 20-30 minutes before it went to crap, so my timing was good.
• If your gut tells you, even just once, that it's time to get to a safe place, DO IT.
• Had I still been in the air when the crappy weather blew through, I could have stayed flying but it would have been extremely stressful for a solo pilot in a small plane. It would not have been a positive experience and potentially could have ended up with a violated pilot ticket, damaged aircraft, and dead pilot. Which is why I didn't go anywhere close to that point.

Anyhow, I know it helps me when I memorialize these types of things. Maybe it's a form of self-accountability. This was an experience I am glad I had. I wasn't in danger, but was tested to make the right decisions in a real-world situation. And maybe if someone else reads this it will be useful to them, as well.

Anyone else ever been in that sort of situation?

Western Flight Tour of Oregon for 2012

LebanAir is sponsoring their second Western Flight Tour this year. It runs through September 21st and the goal is to visit a bunch of airports and get a passbook filled out. I'm going to be getting a late start, but am going to see if I can get to them all this summer before the deadline to round out my list of airports in this area that I've flown to. Some of these I have been to before, but will have to return to again in order to get the required pictures, etc.

The airport stops are (a strike-out means I've made it there on the tour):

• Ashland (S03)
• Astoria (AST)  [have been there before]
• Brookings (BOK)
• Chiloquin (2S7)
• Crescent Lake (5S2)
• George Felt (5S1)
• Illinois Valley (3S4)
• Joseph (JSY)
• Lakeside (9S3)
• Madras (S33)
• Nehalem Bay (3S7)  [have been there before]
• Salem (SLE)  [have been there before]
• Valley View (5S9)  [have been there before]

Back flying with a "new" engine

The new, upgraded engine being mounted back onto the airframe after overhaul.My checkbook is now about a zillion dollars lighter, but last week I got the Warrior back with a freshly-overhauled engine, some new exhaust parts, ten additional horses in the powerplant, a fixed-up and re-pitched prop, and fresh annual inspection. Once my heart settled down from the final bill (hey, it's all part of owning your own airplane), I was able to kick back and enjoy the fresh engine.

I get all my aircraft maintenance done by Danny and crew over at Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark. They're awesome folks there, and they treat people very well and put up with guys like me who want to learn how things work, and so tend to ask a lot of noob-type questions. In other words, they're freakin' saints hah.

Danny broke the bad news about the engine to me several weeks ago during the plane's annual inspection, which I described here before. When I bought the Warrior three years ago I knew that it had been sitting for about three years without being flown. Thanks to gravity, airplane engines that don't get run regularly lose their protective oil coating inside. All the oil on the internal engine parts slowly flows off the metal and down into the lower part of the engine, leaving the cam shaft and cylinders up top high and dry, so to speak). Once the protective oil layer is gone, the engine can rust and corrode inside. And corroded engines just don't last as long - They wear out faster. And that's exactly what happened to mine. It ran great for a few years, then started to wear. That's what I was told could happen when I bought it, so I went into the deal aware and with both eyes open, and negotiated a reasonable purchase price on the plane with that in mind.

But hey, that was then. Now there's a fresh engine on the plane that's ready to provide a couple thousand hours of high-flying fun times. The folks over at Premier Aircraft's engine shop in Troutdale did the overhaul and upgraded it to 160HP using a STC (supplemental type certificate - sort of like a license to use a patent) from Ly-Con. Premier is a professional engine rebuilder, a great shop that does high-quality overhaul work. Theirs is no back-woods engine repair. Premier probably costs a bit more than a lot of the quick and dirty engine rebuilders out there but they have a good warranty, rebuild a lot of engines in their state of the art facility (which they gave me a tour of), have the best equipment and a top-notch reputation for their work.

Once the pros got the engine back on the airframe, the next step was to take a 40 minute flight with Danny as a passenger and curious observer while he checked the operation of the engine and made certain everything ran as expected. Then, over the next few days I flew about 6.5 hours of break-in time. The initial phases and hours of running the new engine are critical. You have to operate it under specific guidelines, at high power settings and making sure you don't shock-cool or overheat the engine. The purpose of the break-in period, which extends 25+ hours in total, is to ensure the new piston rings wear and seat properly in the new cylinders. The short explanation of how to fly during break-in is basically "don't baby the engine or be nice to it, run it up high and fly it pretty hard, and stay below 5000 feet." But, it's important to watch the temperatures (no leaning for the first several hours) and they admonish you not to operate it for short runs, period. The engine needs to warm up all the way and stay warmed up and under load for extended periods of time, and short flights lead to glazed cylinder walls - a bad thing. In fact, the first flight I did after the initial check-out flight was for nearly three hours, running at close to full power almost the whole time, as instructed.

Between the fact that the engine is freshly overhauled and the 10-horsepower increase, I was very pleased to discover the plane climbs and cruises quite a bit faster than it used to - It's very noticible. I can make 700-1000 feet per minute climbing if I configure the plane right (used to be 500-700 fpm). Some portion of those improved cllimb-rate numbers can be attributed to the micro-vortex generators I installed on the plane last year. In the straight-and-level department, I've been flying it at 130+ MPH at full cruise power, sometimes maintaining speeds as high as 140 MPH if I get it trimmed just right - and that's at fairly low altitudes during break-in. Pretty impressive considering 120-125MPH cruise speeds were considered a good day on the old engine. And all of that for a trade-off of less than four pounds additional weight from the switched-out engine components.

There are a few little glitches and adjustments to work through, but that's not unsual. I need to replace the carbeurator soon with a new/overhauled one. Mine works fine but the butterfly valve has some play, so it doesn't seal as well as it should, and the mixture control horn is also a bit worn. As a result it doesn't idle or shut down quite as smoothly as I'd like. So that's probably next on the list.

Today I changed the break-in oil in the new engine for the first time (I have yet to figure out a good way to get that oil filter off without making a complete mess in the engine compartment). I also removed some no-longer-valid placard decals from the airframe (fuel-related, plus some old stickers left over from the previous owner) using a heat gun that Danny loaned me.

Aircraft ownership is expensive. Flying in general is expensive, actually, whether you rent or own. But it's worth it. Although the expense of overhauling and replacing the engine (plus the additional wortk that needed to be done) is pretty substantial, I now have a fresh engine that I will always know the history of, with no questions about how it was flown maintained, etc. That means a lot on an airplane. So my wallet's lighter and I won't be refurbishing the interior or replacing radios in the near future, but my plane and spirits are both flying high.

Considering an upgrade to the radio stack

While the Warrior is down for the count getting an engine overhauled, I've been researching avionics and thinking about improving the radios and navigation equiment in the airplane's panel. The existing radios for communication and navigation are pretty ancient by today's standards. And while there's no way I'm going to invest the sort of money required to get the newest, coolest Garmin GPS navigation/commmunication radios, there are some fairly decent and less-ancient used GPS/NAV/COMM options out there. People with tons of money to spend on the newest stuff are often replacing the previous generation equipment (which is still very nice, and is a couple generations newer than mine).

The current panel in 639MR. The radios (center) are circa-1970s and the portable GPS (right side) is about 10 years old but provides great info. Only the old-school radios and navigation indicators (round dials on the left) are certified for IFR flight. Under the radios is the newer transponder, and to the left of that and under the 396 GPS is the DME radio.The plane's existing 1970s-era radio stack includes a junky old audio switching panel, an old King KX170B Nav/Com radio and a slightly-newer digital relacement version of that radio called am MX-170B. Add to that an older distance measuring equipment radio (DME).

There are a couple things I've already added or changed. I removed an old automatic direction finder (ADF) radio a couple years ago, since it was basically just not useful (other than for listening to AM radio stations). I also replaced the old, beat up transponder with a modern, digital slide-in replacement about two years ago. Shortly after I bought the airplane plane, I picked up a Garmin 396 portable aviation GPS, which is relatively quite modern (at least compared to the other stuff). Eventually I added to to the instrument panel, in a portable GPS docking tray. The Garmin 396 provides VFR navigation, lots of great information about airports and terrain warnings, XM weather and radio, and via a Zaon air-traffic-detection device it even announces and displays traffic alerts when other airplanes are nearby. Frankly, it's a very capable device that provides lots of great information for situational awareness and navigation in visual flight rules (VFR) conditions.

I've done some cross-country flying with the current radio stack, and it does a good enough job in combination with the paper charts and my iPad with ForeFlight running on it. But none of the flying I have done has been in the clouds. I am limited (due to the type of pilot certificate and rating I have right now) to flying in conditions where I can see thehorizon and the area around me. The old radios and navigation indicators are legal for flying in the clouds if there's an instrument-rated pilot on board, but honestly it's old and limited technology. Great when it was new, but there's much more advanced options available now.

Since my goals include longer and more frequent cross-country trips as well as the ability to fly places without necessarily having to wait for clear enough weather, I am working on completing my instrument pilot rating. Whether flying in instrument conditions or clear weather, long trips would benefit from better radios, more advanced navigation capabilities, and hardware that's not as old and at risk of dying of old age.

A local avionics shop has this GNS 480 (bottom) with a MX-20 multifunction display (middle). My recently-purchased (and not yet installed) audio selection/intercom panel is the small box sitting on top of the MFD.So, I'm looking at the options out there for GPS Nav/Comm radios and related equipment, as well as improvements to the intercom and in-cabin audio system (which is also ancient and pretty crappy). I've been watching eBay and other common aviation sales channels to see what's out there and what people are paying. It's never cheap. But with Garmin's just-released GTN series of fancy-dancy touch-screen GPS radios beging installed by people with lots of money out there, some truly solid GPS radios are being pulled out of airplanes at replacement time. Namely, I've been looking mostly at GNS 430W and GNS 480/CX-80 devices.

What do these newer devices get you when installed in an airplane? Well, first of all they are certified equipment, approved for use in IFR (instrument flight rules) flights. That means you can fly in the clouds and on instruments only (assuming you have the proper training, pilot certificate and an instrument pilot rating, of course). The GNS devices I am looking at have WAAS capability, a GPS enhancement that makes them very accurate and allows you to land at airports where the clouds are quite low. So, in other words, they open up more and more options to pilots who want to be able to make trips when it's wet out.

A local avionics shop has a GNS 480 plus a MX-20 multifunction display (pictured at right, along with my recently-acquired new audio panel stacked on top), which they just pulled from an airplane where they just replaced those devices with Garmin's latest and greatest. I don't have $45K spare sitting around to buy the same brand-new, modern panel like that guy did, but one option I might have is to take the gear they pulled from his fancy plane and put it in mine. Heck, it was installed in 2007 new, which makes it much more capable and newer than my old stuff. And even if it's not those actual pieces of equipment that I end up with, this is the sort of thing I'm thinking would work well for me, given my budget and given my flying needs anticipated over the next few years.

Of course, this is mostly just research and thinking out loud at this point. Between the engine repair, radios and the thoughts of refreshing the interior (seats and trim are pretty worn out), it's quite an undertaking, in terms of money, time and effort.

Engine out - literally

During the annual inspection a few weeks ago they found a couple cracked cylinders (not too unexpected given the age of the plane and time on the engine). So, when removing those cylinders to inspect, they looked up in the engine to see how things looked and found corrosion on the cam shaft surfaces. Not horrible corrosion but enough to indicate things would start getting worse soon enough.

Once the engine shop got it and tore the engine down for a complete inspection it became apparent the time had arrived to overhaul it. So, it's in the shop and when it comes back it will have graduated from 150 to 160HP. Meanwhile I'm doing some other work on it (stuff that I can do myself) and patiently waiting through the first few nice weekends of spring for the engine to come back.

Use the tools you have available

On an instrument flight lesson yesterday, while shooting a non-precision approach under the hood (at least as I remember it): 

Instructor: "Look at your GPS here, see where you are? Wait, are you ever looking at your GPS?"

Me: "No, I thought I wasn't allowed to."

Instructor: "Oh gosh no, look at it. I mean, you can't use it as primary means of navigation but yeesh it makes your life easier so use it."

Hah. Good point. There I was flying the approach, looking only at the VOR indicators, and he pointed out that there's more info on the panel that I might find useful. In my mind, using the information on the portable aviation GPS (a Garmin 396 model, which is not legal to use for IFR flight primary navigation) would be cheating. The oinly proper navigation instruments to use - again in my mind - were the IFR-certified ones: The VOR indicators. But in reality, using the information from the GPS (which, ironically, provides more accurate information than the VOR radios and indicators) enhances situational awareness substantially.

For that matter, if my autopilot worked properly (it just came back from the repair shop and is going to be re-installed I think later today), I could also use that to help fly headings and keep the plane going in the right direction, not to mention wings-level.

Conversely, I suppose there's something to be said for using just the basic tools and becoming proficient with those, rather than relying on the extras early in the training. I looked at the GPS a couple times after that, but honestly it still felt like cheating. So, I think I might ask if we can just turn it off sometimes. Call me a rebel... :)

Experiencing the first few instrument flight lessons

I've spent about five-ish hours "under the hood" now flying with my instructors (they're a pair) for my instrument rating training. For those who want the super-short summary version of what it's like, I'll just say this:

"My brain hurts."

Seriously. Similar to the learning "hump" pretty much every private pilot student runs up against at some point in flight training - often just before solo time - my experience in instrument training thus far has been one of true brain drain. The main differences in this phase of training are that instrument flying is much more precise and the hump you have to work over and through comes much, much sooner. As in almost immediately.

I'll have to shoot some video of a flight lesson or two and post it here to try to show how complicated the process of flying the plane with a hood blocking your vision can be. Everything's blocked from sight except the instruments on the panel (dashboard) directly in front of you. There's no option to look outside through any windows. And you're situated like that for quite a long time, too: I've spent a full hour that way a number of times now. Your instructor sits in the seat next to you and looks outside for other aircraft and obstacles, while you fly the plane around in the sky, essentially blind to anything in the outside world.

To add to the complexity, while you're under the hood making turns and climbs and descents, your body completely lies to you as far as what you feel like the airplane is doing vs. what it's actually doing. Think of it as being a lot like when you were a kid, spinning around in circles really fast, getting all dizzy and then trying to walk normally. Add blinders so you can only see the world right in front of you. It doesn't work to fly by feel. And doing so without the ability to see outside and view the ground/horizon can kill you. So instrument flying proficiency is important.

When flying with the hood on, you body (specifically the fluid activity in your inner ear) gets thrown off with the turns, climbs and dives, and your brain doesn't have the benefit of any visual cues to counteract the physical signals going to your brain. So you get "the leans," meaning your body tell you you're in a turn or a climb or a dive (or some combination thereof) while the instruments clearly show otherwise. So, the tendency for new instrument flight students is to "feel" their way around and fly all over the place. One of the primary purposes of early instrument flying with the hood is to train the pilot to overcome the tendency to rely on feeling and sight, ignore the signals that will incorrectly guide you in flying the airplane, and to rely solely on the instruments on the panel, which tell you how fast you're going, ascent and descent speed, turning bank, direction, altitude and other key information.

It doesn't come naturally. And it's a *lot* of information to process while your head and body are sending you false and conflicting information. Hence the brain pain.

But, it's a lot of fun. For me, there's nothing cooler than the technical challenges associated with flying and doing it well. So instrument training, while somewhat intimidating and definitely difficult, represents some serious fun in my book.

And it's a great skill to develop and rating to achieve as a pilot. Not only does the instrument rating allow a pilot to fly though and in clouds (which can open up the ability to make trips otherwise impossible), it also makes people overall better pilots. And that's a good thing.

I'll post some specific flight lesson experiences in the near future, to try to share with others what this second major phase of flight training (after the private pilot phase) is like. Instrument training is pretty much universally described as the most difficult flight training pilots do. So I think sharing some information and details can be helpful. Plus it will help me to reinforce what I am learning and experiencing in my own training process.

Short list of airfields around Portland I have yet to land at

I got out the Seattle sectional this evening and made a quick list of airports in the Portland area (on the Oregon side of the river) that I have not yet ever landed at - which means I need to go there. Turns out the list is pretty darned short:

• Skyport
• Sandy River
• Vernonia

I've driven to each of those, but never flown. All the other airports in the area - at least the ones open to the public - I've flown to at some point (as well as many of the private airfields).

On the Washington side of the Columbia River the list is slightly longer, but not much. I'll tackle those another time.

Considering an interior refurb

I spent about an hour today trying to determine whether or not I can reasonably redo the interior of my not-worth-too-much airplane. Looks like I can do it for a relatively reasonable price and make it much, much nicer inside. Pretty sure interior on the plane is 37 years old - all original.

When the aircraft is worth around $30K (and I paid substantially less than that when I bought it), you just can't easily justify investing thousands and thousands of dollars into seats, carpeting and trim. But if I could make it work on a budget and get good quality for what I would spend, an interior upgrade could breathe a substantial amount of new life into a tired and worn out cabin. The airplane itself - meaning the airframe and engine - are great. It runs strong and is solid structurally. But he seat cushions are old, flattened and worn out, the fabric is faded, plus the window and wall trim is mostly warped, cracked and generally gross. In other words, it looks like it was made int he 70s and has been used since then.

I intend to fly this airplane for years to come, so I'm thinking an interior redo is in order. But refitting teh interior means not doing other things, like avionics upgrades or other changes. At any rate, I'll try to document some of the changes and the decisions here as I go, along with some of my flying experiences.