Flying (through) Cloud
At this moment in my training basically the only thing that was left to do was the dual cross country. As it happened Nick had a n unplanned day off so he called me and offered his services for the whole day. Quick vacation arrangements done and I could go as well.
I asked him where he would like to go, knowing that the ‘regular’ route for instrument rating XC is IA24-KALO-KMCW-KIKV-IA24, to which he responded ‘Surprise me’. You don’t have to tell me that twice. Keeping in mind his desire to expose students to class Bravo I’ve fired up my iPad and looked around. I’ve been to St. Louis class B two weeks ago, so let’s pick Minneapolis.
Few minutes later I had planned route. IA24 – Waterloo/KALO (with LOC BC 30 approach) – Mason City/KMCW (with VOR/DME 18 approach) – Flying Cloud Minneapolis/KFMC (with ILS 10R approach. For the return trip I’ve decided that we either reverse trip up (which would give me another 3 approaches) or in case we needed to get down faster we could go direct (as direct as airways allow, but still pretty direct).
Now the biggest problem, weather. When we met in the airport office at 8 am I saw from his face that he doesn’t like what he sees outside. Visibility was around 1 mile with mist and patches of fog. Both of us were concerned about icing possibility. It’s late November after all. But checking all available charts and PIREPS suggested that there will be no icing in the clouds. RUC soundings suggested that cloud tops will be around 3000ft and that there is strong low level temperature inversion that will keep us safe once we get airborne.
We have analyzed our possible options and alternatives and decided that it’s a go. Few minutes later we were airborn. It turned out that skewT diagram was absolutely right. The lowest temperatures we saw wat +1C and it was on the ground at Green Castle. The higher we went, the higher the temperature was topping at about +10C at 4000ft.
It was my first “real” IMC flight. By real I mean that I did not have to use foggles even for a minute. Shortly after taking off we went into clouds. Strange feeling not seeing anything outside. But short few minutes later we emerged from the clouds and for next 40 minutes everything around looked like on this picture:
Nice uh? Anyway, flying on top of solid overcast is even harder than I expected. Your theoretically see, but you still have to fly precisely and you can’t really trust what you see because cloud layers tend to be sloped and create false horizons. Anyway, what seemed to be just minutes later, it was time to prepare for my first approach of the day. I flew this particular one four times before already so it wasn’t anything new except of two things. First – strange feeling when ‘diving into cloud’ and very warm experience when I saw runway lights exactly were they were supposed to be when we came down from the clouds. So that’s what the whole instrument flying is all about! You spent hour(s) up there baking your face in the sun alone, then you dive through the clouds and the runway is exactly where it’s supposed to be.
After quick touch and go off we went to our second destination. Nothing different here. The controller cut us loose about 20 miles from the airport with ask to report back on the frequency after missed approach. Which we did few minutes later and were kindly greeted with N7717U Minneapolis Center, report reaching 4000ft and established on V505. Uh? Short glance ant the map told us what was going on. Mason City is in the area where minimum radar altitude is around 4500ft so controller could not see us. Few minutes later he started reporting us to an airliner going the opposite way. To make his work easier we requested climb to 6000ft and shortly after started blinking on his radar. That made his (and ours) work much easier and the rest of the flight went uneventful.
Minneapolis Approach was a little busier than St. Louis’ one but nothing really bad. I’ve heard Cedar Rapids as busy as this one was at times. I understand that they have plethora of frequencies so I probably did not hear half of it but I did not care as long as I could understand what they wanted from me to do and could comply.
Looking at the time we’ve decided to head back directly to KCID. Quick weather check revealed that conditions did not improve and that we may need to land in KCID. Again quick file and off we went. I’ve flew quite a lot to and from class C airports so nothing new here other than one thing – I got instructed to line up and wait. There was a lot of buzz about that phrase recently so I should be familiar with it, but I’ve never received it in real life so my brain did not record it properly (yes, I was expecting ‘clear for takeoff’) and it took me a second to process it. After that everything else was easy. We took off and headed down south. With a little bit of tailwind, which made our mighty Skyhawk to break the barrier of 100knots ground speed, it took us just above 2h to get down to Cedar Rapids.
Weather check revealed that conditions in Cedar Rapids did not improve much. Visibility was 1 1/2 miles and ceiling was 800ft overcast. Sounds bad? Not really. If I was a VFR pilot it was definitely ‘stay on the ground’ day. But for an IFR practice/training flight – perfect weather. Which was promptly confirmed on the frequency. The air was busy with all kind of airplanes shooting approaches one after one. After all not every day you get 800feet solid overcast with tops at 3000ft and completely no icing hazard in late November.
I shot ILS 27 approach and then requested special VFR back to Green Castle which was promptly granted. As it turned out there was also another club member waiting impatiently on the ground for the Skyhawk to return so he could get some real IMC time before his instrument checkride. That’s airplane utilization – it was less than 15 minutes on the ground!
With this flight I fulfilled almost all experience requirements for my training. At this moment I have 1.2h required instrument time lest which I’m going to use to brush up my maneuvering and partial panel skills.
5.7h (5.5h inst) : 6 to/ldg logged
150.5h (38.8h inst): 476 to/ldg total
