A busman's holiday

Hooray for spring, sunshine and warmer weather. I made my first flight in "my" corporate twin engine Cessna sans clouds a couple of weeks ago.

It was pure pleasure. We went south around 12,500 feet high and returned home later in the day at 8,500, the lowest altitude where I could find smooth air, but, then, it is spring in the mid-northern latitudes. Yes, I know we've had a few mild weather days all winter, but somehow I get scheduled to fly only on those days with clouds close to the ground and plenty of airframe icing at normal cruising levels.

For general aviation pilots to fly in clouds, one has to file a flight plan and then cruise high enough to be in radar contact with air traffic control centers. In this area, we are normally controlled by Denver Center.

Their radar antenna is inside the big "golf ball" alongside the highway to North Platte. The controller is physically located in Denver and speaks to pilots over remote radio antennas located who knows where. About Holdrege and on east, one talks to and is controlled from a person working in Minneapolis. On south the controller is in Kansas City. Anyhow , the remote locations and sparse radar coverage at low altitudes in the area requires that we fly as high as 5000 feet or on up to 10,000 feet altitude, just where the icing is generally the worst.

To illustrate, I'll recount a recent flight to Aberdeen, S.D., some 400 miles north and a little east of McCook. We launched into a murky, clammy gray day with a solid cloud ceiling about 400 feet above the runway. A couple of minutes later, we popped out of the clouds into a beautiful clear blue sky. Just above the brilliant white clouds I spotted a "pilot's halo," the shadow of one's airplane surrounded by a complete circle rainbow all in living color racing along just below! From out of the gloom into pure beauty. I've had the experience a hundred times but am ever thrilled with the privilege. "Why yes, I fly airplanes, why do you ask?"

I had filed for 9,000 feet, but the headwind was stronger up high so I negotiated with Center to allow me to level off just above the solid cloud deck about 5500 feet above sea level where the wind was less strong. There were periods when I'd be out of radar contact, but Center asked only that I report over certain cities along the way. Then about the middle of South Dakota the clouds broke up a bit and we could see partially snow covered terrain below.

The weather forecast for Aberdeen had been for partial cloudiness at the time of my arrival. Seeing the broken clouds below my hopes buoyed for an easy arrival. Fifty miles out the cloud layer below thickened with no more ground in sight. Not a problem, our aircraft is equipped with a modern suite of GPS navigation and flight instruments that will couple up with the very capable autopilot. "Just let George do it." I elected to fly the ILS (Instrument Landing System, a ground based set of radio "beams" to guide the pilot down a "glide path" to the runway.) The Approach Controller directed me to fly headings to align with the final approach course.

I was encouraged to hear the jet pilot some 10 minutes ahead of me report that he could see the runway about six miles out and canceled his instrument flight plan to land visually. It was not to be for me, though, for some reason in those few short minutes before our arrival the clouds thickened and all during my descent my view outside was about like looking out from the inside of a milk bottle.

A minimum height of 200 feet above the ground is where a pilot has to commit to land or go around. Flying at a little over 100 MPH one has about 20 seconds to break out of the clouds and land on the runway. If at least a portion of the runway is not in sight at 200 feet its go around and try again. The "go" in my airplane consists of advancing six engine control levers, click off the autopilot, select landing gear switch to up, pitching the nose up to climb, keeping wings level and flying straight ahead all solely by reference to instruments. It is a handful! This time it didn't happen, at 200 feet I spied a couple hundred yards of the runway and plunked down happy to be safe, sound and out of the klag.

Airline pilots fly instrument approaches to even lower cloud ceilings but they sit there monitoring an autopilot driven by three independent computers constantly voting to throw out bad data all with a second pilot also watching. For guys flying solo like me the experience is much more intense! Then try it with a student flying and not very capably. I think I'm ready for better weather.

To add insult, minutes after our arrival at Aberdeen the clouds mostly cleared away and thousands of geese took flight. Several hours later, when we departed for home, the day had warmed so clouds mostly went away. We had a beautiful flight back home. And yes what you hear is true. Those people have a real excess of water on the ground at the moment. We saw miles of flooded field with streams overrunning their banks up to a hundred miles south of Aberdeen. Kind of normal for that country.

As a sign of hope I planted potatoes and onion sets so warm weather can't be far off.

That is the way I saw it.