Flying through the Totality

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to see something 70 miles wide moving over the landscape at almost 1,700 miles per hour?

I think it was a Carl Sagan essay where I first heard the experience described. He had that very experience standing on a hilltop with hundreds of other people. All expected the experience and understood what was happening. But when a shadow stretching from horizon to horizon appeared and swept over the valleys and grasslands and swallowed the assembled people, some involuntarily screamed.

I am, of course, talking about a total solar eclipse.

Solar eclipses come in four flavors. In each case, the moon interposes itself between the sun and Earth and part of the moon’s shadow falls on Earth.

The moon’s shadow has three primary portions: The umbra, the penumbra, and the antumbra. You’ve probably seen this phenomenon in shadows before with everyday objects and familiar illumination sources, but you probably haven’t thought much about them. You’ve probably noticed that shadows have a dark central part and a less-dark outer part. And, if the observation point is far enough from the obscuring object, there’s not much of a shadow at all.

The umbra is the darkest part of the shadow and it is located directly on the other side of the moon from the sun. It's cone-shaped with the base of the cone on the diameter of the moon and the point at some location in space that varies between 228,000 to 236,000 miles from the moon. It varies because the Earth-moon system’s orbit around the sun is slightly eccentric and the distance of the moon from the sun affects the length of the moon’s umbra.

Additionally, the moon’s orbit around Earth is slightly eccentric and the moon’s distance from Earth varies from about 226,000 miles at perigee to about 252,000 miles at apogee.

If you’ve been paying attention so far, you’re figured out that the moon’s umbra doesn’t always touch Earth during a solar eclipse because the umbra is shorter than the distance between the moon and Earth much of the time. And sometimes the umbra is long enough to reach Earth, but it misses and goes north of the north pole or south of the south pole.

To go completely overboard on the details: Because of the action of tides on Earth, Earth is transferring its rotational momentum to the moon as orbital momentum, which lengthens Earth’s day by about 23 microseconds each year and causes the moon to recede about 38 millimeters each year. Absent a major change, the moon’s umbra will, at some point about 425 million years from now, be unable to reach Earth and no further solar eclipses will occur on Earth.

Where the umbra touches Earth’s surface, observers see the sun entirely obscured by the moon. That’s a total solar eclipse and it’s the most common image you’ll see of a solar eclipse.

The part of the shadow beyond the end of the umbra is called the antumbra. In the antumbra, the angular size of the moon is less than that of the sun, the eclipse is said to be of a magnitude of less than one, and the moon obscures only some part of the central disc of the sun. The disc of the moon moves entirely within the disc of the sun and some of the sun’s disc is visible around the entire disc of the moon. This is called an annular solar eclipse.

At every location that is in the broader shadow called the penumbra, viewers see the moon’s disc partially obscure the sun’s disc but don’t see the moon’s disk entirely obscure, or pass entirely within, the sun’s disc. This is called a partial solar eclipse.

There’s also such a thing as a hybrid eclipse where the umbra touches down in mid-eclipse, so observers on parts of Earth see an annular eclipse and observers on other parts see a total eclipse. As you might imagine, hybrid solar eclipses are very rare.

It’s not hard to see a partial solar eclipse. They happen frequently and are visible from broad areas. It’s not uncommon to be able to see the partial eclipse almost from pole to pole. The penumbra is huge. The umbra, on the other hand, is tiny and can’t be more than about 167 miles wide. Thus it’s rare for a particular place on Earth’s surface to see a total solar eclipse.

There hasn’t been a total solar eclipse visible from the continental United States since 1979. It was visible only in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota.

But on August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will be visible from places all the way across the continental US. It’s the first total eclipse to cross American soil since 1991, the first on the mainland since 1979, and the first to sweep across the entire continental US since 1918. And the next one to be visible from the continental US won’t be until April 8, 2024.

The 2017 total eclipse will have a magnitude of about 1.03, which means that the angular size of the moon will be about 3% larger than that of the sun.

The eclipse will make landfall on the Pacific Coast at Lincoln Beach, Oregon due west of Salem and just south of Siletz Bay Airport (S45) at 17:15:58Z and totality will last a little less than two minutes.

The point of greatest eclipse will be N 36.9664° W 87.6639°. That’s near Cerulean, Kentucky, about 60 miles due west of Bowling Green and about and 14 miles northwest of Hopkinson-Christian County Airport (KHVC). At the point of greatest eclipse, the leading edge of the totality will arrive at 18:24:09Z and the trailing edge will arrive at 18:26:50Z for a duration in totality of 2:41.

The leading edge of the totality hits the east coast near the Francis Marion State Forest near McClellanville, South Carolina about 40 miles northeast of Charleston and 18 miles south of the Georgetown County Airport (KGGE) at 18:46:25Z and the trailing edge goes feet-wet 2:34 later at 18:48:59Z.

By the time the totality has passed over the continental United States, it will have passed over parts of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina.

The leading edge of the totality will travel just over 2,500 great-circle statute miles across the continental US in a about 90 minutes for an average ground speed of something 1,667 statute miles per hour.

There’s plenty of information available about how to best view an eclipse and I leave it as an exercise for the listener to go out and find that information. Carl Sagan found a hilltop with a valley sprawling out below so that he could see not only the eclipse but the onrushing umbral shadow. And he also looked up at the event in the sky using proper viewing filters or other appropriate means.

The only thing that I’ll say about it that is of general interest is that you should never look directly at the sun without safety glasses or other appropriate equipment. I shouldn’t have to say that. You guys know better. Just like you know not to ram the yoke abruptly forward and scream when you’re flying passengers. Unless you’re flying prisoners and you pull out before getting to Vne.

So all of this eclipse stuff is cool. And there’s an extent to which it’s justified simply because it’s cool science and that’s well within the usual coverage of Airspeed. But I have more than that in mind for this one.

Sometimes it’s cloudy at the site that you have picked out to view the eclipse. Sometimes it’s tough to find a good hilltop. Sometimes there are logistical problems with landowners in getting to your site. And if you really want, as I do, to see that umbral shadow sweeping ominously over the ground, you’re going to have to find some high ground. Probably a couple of different places so that you have a backup if the weather is bad at your primary location.

But these factors are not problems for you and me. We’re pilots, after all.

The total eclipse of 2017 is a long time from now. But, when it happens, I plan to be at about 10,000 feet MSL in an airplane somewhere along the center of the path of totality and have a front-row seat to see the umbral shadow coming at me at something like local Mach 2. I’m going to fly through the totality. And you can, too.

Here’s what I have in mind. You can look at this as a mere thought experiment or as an action plan. It’s fun any way you look at it.

First off, what are you going to see? Out in the penumbral shadow, things won’t get very dark at all. Maybe something like dusk. I’ve been in the penumbral shadows of several eclipses and that’s a pretty fair description.

Sagan said that there was a discernable wall of umbral shadow of the eclipse about which he wrote. But it’ll be fuzzy. It won’t be a brignt-line division. Remember that we’re out in the last 10,000 miles or so of the umbral shadow and it’s going to be fuzzy.

That’s where I think that being in an aircraft at altitude will be helpful. Being a mile or more above where the shadow makes contact with the ground or cloud tops ought to allow me to see the big picture and give me the best chance of seeing the motion of the shadow over the ground.

I plan to fly perpendicular to the path of the totality. There are those who give more than a little thought to flying away from the oncoming totality so as to extend their time within it. But at a maximum true airspeed of something like 110 or 130 knots, you’re only going to extend your time in the totality by a second or two. I’d rather fly perpendicular to the path and see it coming.

By the way, there was a plan afoot to fly the Concorde in the umbral shadow, but the accident involving Air France Flight 4590 put an end to it prematurely. A group did get up in 1992 and viewed the eclipse from at DC-10 at FL410 and there’s another account in Wired Magazine of a 2010 chase at FL 390 that extended the time in the totality to 9:23 (well beyond the theoretical maximum of 7:32 possible from a fixed spot on Earth’s surface.

What about the practical and legal aspects of flying around in the dark?

If the FARs are the same at the time of the eclipse as they are now, you won’t have to be night current in order to fly through the umbra. Generally speaking, FAR 61.57(b) presently provides that “no person may act as pilot in command of an aircraft carrying passengers during the period beginning 1 hour after sunset and ending 1 hour before sunrise, unless within the preceding 90 days that person has made at least three takeoffs and three landings to a full stop during the period beginning 1 hour after sunset and ending 1 hour before sunrise, and (i) That person acted as sole manipulator of the flight controls; and (ii) The required takeoffs and landings were performed in an aircraft of the same category, class, and type (if a type rating is required).”

There are other places in the FARs where “night” matters, such as in rules governing visibility, cloud clearances and other matters having to do with operation in various parts of the National Airspace System. FAR 1.1 presently defines “night” as “the time between the end of evening civil twilight and the beginning of morning civil twilight, as published in the American Air Almanac, converted to local time.”

The closest that it’ll be to night local time during the eclipse will be when the totality goes feet wet on the east coast, where it’ll be a little before 3:00 p.m. local time. The sun won’t even set there until 7:58 pm local. If you think about it, it’s pretty obvious. You can’t fly through the totality of an eclipse after sunset. You need – er – the sun.

If you’re like me, you’ll plan to launch at least 30 minutes prior to the arrival of the umbral shadow and land shortly after the umbral shadow passes. You won’t be taking off or landing any time near “night” as defined by the FARs.

In almost any case, it’s going to be pretty dark in the penumbra around that time. And the partial eclipse, with its penumbral shadow, last a long time. The sun will be in at least partial eclipse for almost three hours. The penumbra is huge. During this eclipse, it’ll as far north as the north pole and as far south as the northern part of South America.

We pilots are (or ought to be) pretty good at knowing the difference between what’s legal and what’s smart. And the difference between current and proficient.

I plan to be both night current and night proficient before launching. If you’re the least bit uncomfortable flying in the dark, don’t launch. In fact, you ought to seriously consider getting some actual or simulated night instrument work in before the event. If you’re a confident VFR night pilot and you live near inhabited areas with lots of lights on the ground, think about how much your comfort derives from having those lights on the ground to use as references. It’s almost a sure bet that the street lights and other outdoor lighting will not be on during the passage of the umbral shadow. All of that stuff is on timers and there’s almost zero chance that anyone is going to think to flip the switch or change the timers for this event.

You also need to be sure that all of the lights inside the aircraft are working and that you know how to operate them. Many of us don’t fly much at night and many of us don’t even know where the light switches or dimmers are.

I ran into this when doing my initial training in a G1000-equipped aircraft. I had just become comfortable with the PFD presentation of airspeed, altitude, and other indications and was feeling pretty good about things. On the flight in question, the sun had already set by the time I was 20 miles out from Pontiac. The PFD and MFD each have an automatic dimming function that dims the display down as the ambient light fades. The displays dimmed much faster than the ambient light demanded and I found myself in the pattern with both displays nearly dark. The light control knobs on the panel only controlled the pedestal and other lights in the cockpit. The G1000 displays can be set manually, but that requires going through the menus to the manual settings – not something you want to try to figure out while you’re in the pattern. I landed using the backup round airspeed indicator. No problem. But I’ve since gone back and figured out where the display brightness lives in the G1000 menu system and I even put the procedure in the little cheat sheet that I use whenever I fly that aircraft.

I’d like to see the event VFR in clear air so that I can see the umbral shadow moving along the ground. But I’ll bet that VFR on top of a cloud deck would be pretty cool, too. In any case, it would be a good idea to be instrument rated, current, and proficient. That will help both in terms of getting on top of a local overcast and in terms of going somewhere else if there’s a high overcast or other adverse weather at the initially-planned interface location.

There’s some chance that your aircraft will not be the only aircraft up there doing exactly what you’re doing. Some nutjob with an aviation podcast got the word out more than five years before the big day and now the skies are darkening with airplanes, to say nothing of the moon.

And, sad, to say, it’s possible and even likely that you’ll be sharing the skies with a lot of people who aren’t anywhere near as prepared as you are.

Assume that August 21, 2017 will be just like that first nice weekend day in the spring in the northern US when every Tom, Dick, and Harry at the local GA airport drags out his airplane and decides that today’s the day to knock off the rust and make you number four to land on a busy CTAF.

Spread out and give everybody some room. The path of totality over the continental US is going to be more than 2,500 miles long. There’s really no reason to do it near Cerulean, Kentucky. The duration of the totality will be only 50 seconds longer at Cerulean than it will be on the west coast. You’re going to get about two minutes of totality at minimum no matter where along the path you fly. Go someplace away from the crowds and get some elbow room.

It would be entirely reasonable to get flight following so that you can obtain traffic advisories. It would also be a good idea to use an aircraft that’s TIS-enabled and fly in an area that supports automated traffic reporting. It might even be a good idea to tell the controller what you’re doing and have a couple of navaids in mind to use in telling the controller where you’ll be. If the controller is handling a dozen eclipse-viewing flights and one has a solid and easily-describable flight profile, who do you think is going to get favors from the controller if they need them?

If you’re going to make use of your instrument ticket to get on top to see the shadow, it might be best to pick a nice holding spot on an airway and then ask for a hold with nice long legs. Alternatively, it might be a good idea to file two IFR flight plans: One to get on top (which you’ll then cancel and pick up a convenient 500-foot-increment cruising altitude) and one to open when you’re ready to go back through to land. Again, if there’s a lot of traffic on top and everybody wants to air-file for return, who do you think is going to get the best handling? The guy or gal with the IFR flight plan already on file? Yep. I thought so.

Without adding yet another factor into the age-old high-wing/low-wing debate, the kind of aircraft that you fly is going to be important. And it’ll depend on what you want to see.

If, like me, you want to see the umbral shadow, a high-wing aircraft is going to be your best bet. Unless your high-wing aircraft has a good overhead window, you’re probably going to miss the eclipse itself altogether. At local solar noon at the point of greatest eclipse in Kentucky (about 1:49 pm local), the sun will be about 64 degrees above the horizon. And it won’t really be a lot lower than that during the eclipse. You can pretty much forget about banking steeply enough to see the eclipse itself. Night acro is not my idea of fun and it’s probably not yours either.

If you want to see the eclipse itself and you care less about what’s going on on the ground, I suppose a low-wing aircraft would better. If you fly at an angle to the oncoming umbral shadow wall and stay wings-level, you’re probably get a good view of the ground and could still look up and see the eclipse itself. But, when you add all of the fussy stuff involving safety glasses and other concerns about safely viewing the eclipse itself, you begin to get overly preoccupied with something that’s going on a quarter million miles away and aren’t paying sufficient attention to the conduct of the flight. Especially if the pilot flying wants a look.

Frankly, if it’s really important to get a look at the eclipse itself, you’re better off not being in an airplane in the first place. Stay on the ground and enjoy. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ve tried to identify accidents or incidents associated with prior total eclipses in the continental US. This is not by any means the first total eclipse to be visible from the continental US since general aviation has been widespread. There have been five since 1950. I’ve tried to identity accidents or incidents associated with flying through the totality, but I haven’t found any. That could have something to do with what you can imagine happens when you try to do a Google search for “eclipse” and “accident.” There’s just too much noise in the search data.

Viewing an eclipse itself from the ground is underwhelming. You can't really look directly at it. Indirect viewing is okay, but it's remarkably like the pictures that you'll see on the 'net the next day. Ho-um. I've never seen a total eclipse on the ground, but I've seen several partials. The cool part for the partials was the relative darkness. Thus, I'm about chasing the darkness.

There is one thing you'll miss that you might care about. At totality, if there are enough naked-eye planets within view, you can get a real sense of the ecliptic of the solar system because you can see the sun and planets at the same time in the same hemisphere of sky. For the 2017 eclipse, you should be able to see Venus and Jupiter fairly clearly. Mars will technically be visible, but it will be very close to being on the other side of the sun (conjunction occurs July 26, 2017 and Mars will be something like 2.4 AU away). Saturn will be below the eastern horizon. But, in any case, you can sweep your eyes across the sky and see the sun, Jupiter, and Venus. I've heard that, once you see the solar system's ecliptic during an eclipse, you realize that you're standing at an angle and leaning 45 to 55 degrees out from the planet's surface over the ecliptic. And I've heard that it'll induce vertigo and that it's a memorable experience. But it requires very clear skies and a broad field of view.

So that’s my plan. Even if I don’t end up doing it, it’s a great exercise that combines the sciences of aviation and astronomy. But I’m planning to do it. I wonder if the local FBO will take a reservation for the RG for 2017 . . .

Links:

The Wikipedia entry on the eclipse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_August_21,_2017

A NASA page that includes a Google map
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEgoogle/SEgoogle2001/SE2017Aug21Tgoogle.html
An animated sequence of images taken by the Eumetsat satellite during the total eclipse of the sun on 29 March 2006. You can see the umbral shadow move across Earth’s surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR8eGWRT3BA

The lead image shows the moon's shadow on Earth, as seen from the International Space Station at an altitude of 230 miles on March 29, 2006. NASA photo used per NASA’s photo policy.

Many thanks to John Walker and those who built Your Sky, the interactive planetarium of the Web (http://www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky/). The sky map showing the planetary locations at the time of the 2017 eclipse comes from that fine web resource.

The Pile of Awesome on My Desk: IFR Currency, L-39 Editing, NESA MAS Part 3, and Acro Camp Rough Cut

This is a regular blog post that updates listeners and viewers on events in the Airspeed world. Airspeed is an audio and video Internet media source that brings the best in aviation and aerospace to media devices and desktops everywhere. If you’re looking for the audio and video content, please check the other entries on the site. It’s all here! In the meantime, enjoy this update about what’s going on in Airspeed’s world.

I’m slowly getting back to the point of editing down some of this summer’s content into episodes. Airshow season here in the northern climes is essentially over, the last aerobatic contest in the area was last weekend, and things are calming down to the low roar that precedes ICAS in December.

I didn’t fly at all in September. Not for lack of trying! I had three attempts get rained or ceilinged out before finally getting up in a glass CAP C-182T on Wednesday to try to claw back some instrument proficiency. After devoting the summer to flying upside down or training for the commercial maneuvers, I had precious little time under the hood or in the clouds. I nailed down my six approaches in April and May, but they were about to fall off for currency purposes. So I launched with Capt Malek in the right seat as safety pilot and banged out four approaches in rapid succession: VOR-A 77G with the published miss and a hold, RNAV 27 77G, RNAV 19 77G, and ILS 9R KPTK. I hand-flew the VOR and ILS and let the G1000 and GFC700 handle the RNAVs. We landed about 40 minutes after sunset and, though the landing didn’t count for night currency, it was pretty darned dark.

I’ve taken to putting two cases of bottled water in the back of the C-182T when flying with just two aircrew. The CG is really far forward in the aircraft with no scanner(s) in the back, and the extra 50 lbs in Cargo Area B helps to take some of the nose-heaviness out of the equation. I love the G1000. I just don’t like to see the nose strut poking through it. The aircraft behaves sooooo much better in the flare with a slightly more aft CG!

I have an annual stan/eval ride coming up in the airplane this month, and I think I’m pretty much ready for that, pending only a little sim time to get my switchology polished.

Otherwise, I have a number of projects that I’m able to dive into.

I need to get the Hoppers promo video done. You’ll recall that I embedded with the team in July and shot two four-ship sorties with seven cameras plus audio, and then went up myself in the 3 and 4 ships to shoot hand-held video. The sky was gray and crappy for the flights, but there are enough good moments to make a primo promotional video for the team.

I need to do the last ingestion of the footage from the Acro Camp shoot at Ray in August and then get the footage of some of the crew guys out to them on a hard drive that Larry Overstreet has kindly sent to me, but that has been sitting on the desk staring at me. I also need to get David Allen’s footage to him so that he can crank out some OPA episodes.

I also need to edit the last part of the NESA MAS series and put together the huge 30,000-word single-MP3 edition, complete with an associated PDF file that will have the full text and pictures.

And, lastly, I need to finish a rough cut of the first rough cut of the first Acro Camp movie. That’s going to take some serious time. But it’s doable.

Thanks for all the downloads last month! Pretty good for the off-season and it suggests that core subscribership is up.

And I have proposals on desks at one Air Force unit and one Navy unit for jet media/orientation flights for the upcoming season of the show. As always, there’s no guarantee with respect to any flight, but the proposals are solid, you guys are a great audience, and the intrepid video, audio, and still crew is locked and loaded if and when the word comes. Airspeed changed the game in aviation new media this year with the T-38 episode. And it’s ready to continue pushing the boundaries.

But you knew that!

Instrument Rating Checkride - Part 1

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At last! I’ve finally had the opportunity to edit the audio from my instrument checkride and I’m going to bring it to you in this two-episode series.

There’s relatively little editing here. If I left something out, it was usually because it consisted of a lot of silence or other radio chatter by other people or because it just wasn’t a very interesting part of the flight. I didn’t edit our any blunders, so they’re all here for you to enjoy. As you guys know, Airspeed is about the real experience of flight. Most of what you’re going to hear is a great instrument checkride and I’m proud enough of it to hold it out as containing stuff that you may want to incorporate into your own instrument checkride if you have one coming up. There’s only one real blunder and I’ll point it out in the second part of this series when we get there. It involves Korea. More on that later.

To set the stage, it’s October 25, 2007. This is the fourth planned session for the instrument checkride. I had to cancel the first two for weather and, even though the weather was good enough to do the oral portion on the third try, the ceiling and winds kept us from flying on the third appointment. So finally it’s a nicer day. There’s a low scattered layer at around 4,000 feet, but we should be fine as long as they don’t come any lower. Surface winds are a little brisk at 10 to 15 knots, but the crosswind component of those winds shouldn’t affect us much. The winds aloft are another story. They’re really howling from the northeast. The forecast is for 30 or 40 knots. So I’ll have to watch that.

Work and lots of other things had really intervened in my flight training and it was hard to put together a string of instrument training flights. I flew on August 2, 6, and 31 and September 17 and 24. I got a little flight time in the Otter at Skydive Chicago on September 25, but then went without flying the actual airplane for almost a month. I flew a lot of simulator time by myself, but was worried that I might get to the checkride without having flown in an airplane for a month. Fortunately, I got up in the morning on October 23, two days before, for two hours and three approaches. I had actually planned to do the checkride that afternoon after flying with by instructor, but the weather didn’t permit.

So, the morning of the 25th, I showed up pre-dawn and did my preflight, then headed over to DTC Aviation to fly an hour of simulator. Then back to Tradewinds to meet the examiner.

The airplane is a 2004 or 2005 Cessna 172R that’s outfitted with a KLN 94 GPS and a two-axis autopilot. It’s one of two aircraft on the line at Tradewinds that have non-glass cockpits but don’t have Automatic Direction Finders (or “ADFs”). On the assumption that any instrument in the airplane is fair game for the examiner, I decided early on that I didn’t want to fly any NDB approaches and resolved that I’d do my checkride in an aircraft with no ADF so I wouldn’t have to shoot any NDB approaches. For those who don’t know about NDBs, they’re “non-directional beacons” and they’re some of the most primitive navaids in the system. NDB approaches require much higher minimums and can be a pain to fly if you’re out of practice. And the FAA is phasing them out in droves. I flew the required NDB approaches in the training and I don’t have any philosophical problems with NDB approaches. But I was a raving, sleep-deprived stress monkey for weeks as I balanced work, family, and training for this rating and, if I could eliminate some small element from the list of things I might be required to do by merely selecting the right airplane, I was going to select that airplane.

Note that I could have flown an NDB approach using the GPS, but it seemed unlikely that the examiner would make me do that. I had never done a GPS-overlay NDB approach before, but I was confident that I could do it if it came down to brass tacks.

But no ADF and no NDB approaches. Tradewinds is usually very good about making sure that you get the airplane you want for important stuff like checkrides. But, just to be sure, I told Steve the week before that I was bringing a hammer and an “INOP” sticker to the checkride just in case.

In the right seat is designated examiner Mary Carpenter. Mary did my private checkride in 2004 and I really enjoy her style. She’s living proof that you can be all about adherence to the practical test standards and competence as an aviator while still putting the candidate at ease, not being afraid to laugh a little, and always managing to teach you something in the process. And I’m not just saying this because she passed me on both the private and instrument checkrides. I earned each of those passes. She just made it the objective and even pleasant experience that any checkride can be if you walk onto the ramp the obvious master of the aircraft and the examiner puts you through the required paces in a fair and constructive way.

I’ve planned a cross-country flight under instrument flight rules, or “IFR,” and we’re ostensibly going to Traverse City (KTVC), which is about an hour and a half away under the usual wind conditions. The checkride will start out with Mary giving me a clearance to Traverse City and I’ll fly that clearance just as though I were actually going there. At some intermediate point, if she’s satisfied that I could make my way to Traverse City, she’ll announce that we’re not going there and we’ll do some other elements of the checkride.

In the course of the flight, we’re going to shoot three instrument approaches. Instrument approaches are published by the FAA and they lay out the procedures and the navigation aids that you use to safely descend through the clouds to land at an airport that you might not be able to see out the window until you’re as low as 200 feet off the ground and a half mile from the runway threshold. I’ll post links to the approach plates on the website as part of the blog entry for this episode.

Flint RNAV Runway 18: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/KFNT-RNAV-18.pdf
Flint VOR Runway 9: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/KFNT-VOR-9.pdf
Pontiac ILS 9R: http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/KPTK-ILS-9R.pdf

A few technical notes.

You’ll hear me say on a few occasions something like “I’ve got my altitude.” That usually means that I’ve identified that I’m off my altitude by some amount, but tells the examiner that I know that and that I’m correcting. I usually point to the instrument as well to reinfore that I know what I’m doing or not doing.

An approach briefing is a self-brief where the pilot goes over the essential parts of the approach out loud in order to prepare to fly the approach. You generally want to get them done far enough before the initial approach fix that you’re comfortable with the procedure and can devote your attentions to flying the approach without having to refer to the approach plate or tune radios and do other things at a time when you’re flying closer and closer to the ground with tighter and tighter tolerances without looking out the windows. My approach briefing consists of:

ATIS
Markers
Tune and identify navaids
Courses
Entry
Altitudes
Times
Missed approach
Button of Death (the GPS/Nav selector for Nav 1)

(The Button of Death is the bane of my existence. There are two kinds of pilots. Those who have blown through approach courses with the BoD in the wrong mode and those who will.)

You’re going to hear bits and pieces of approach briefings in the audio here. I really wanted to John King the self-briefs and checklists but one of two things usually happened. One, I got interrupted by ATC or the examiner or I looked up to find myself about to bust an altitude. Or, two, there was just too much chatter on the frequency and you wouldn’t be able to make any sense out of what was going on. But be assured that I went through each of the briefings completely, even if it didn’t make for pretty audio.

So climb into the back seat. You’ll have to slouch down so Mary can’t see you. I’ve got full fuel aboard so you being in the back seat there would throw the weight and balance all off. But try to get a peek every now and then and, if I’m off course, tap me on the shoulder toward the approach course!

We’ll pick up the audio just after I turn on the avionics master and we’ll do the rest of the start-up and pre-taxi checklist and then taxi.

[Audio 01]

As we taxi, I do some of the instrument checks. I want to see that the magnetic compass, directional gyro, turn coordinator, and the ball all respond as they’re supposed to. The “needle” part here is not entirely correct because I have a turn coordinator and not the older turn-and-slip indicator, but Don Fuller, one of my instructors for the private ticket, used to use this terminology and it just stuck.

One other thing here. I always forget to do these checks before I get to the run-up area. I have not remembered to do them this way before or since. I just happened to have my John King on as we taxied.

[Audio 02]

Here’s the runup. We’re still on the ground near the end of the runway and this is where we do the final checks of the airplane’s systems to make sure that it’s safe to fly.

[Audio 03]

Next, we’re ready to take off. I’ll call the tower and get a takeoff clearance.

Mary has already given me an IFR clearance to Traverse City to copy and I have that ready to go on my kneeboard.

We’re going to be under Visual Flight Rules (or “VFR”). I’m going to be wearing a view limiting device for most of the flight so that I can only see the instruments in front of me and, in any case, I can’t see out the window. You’ll hear Mary take the flight controls at about 200 feet off the ground so that I can swing the device down over my eyes and then I’m flying again.

The scattered layer turns out to be lower than expected, so we have to fly lower than expected.

Mary clears me to intercept a course line extending 118 degrees (that’s roughly east southeast) from the Flint VOR and then track it inbound to Flint. So we start heading for that radial.

[Audio 4]

So we intercept the inbound course to Flint and get the ATIS - or automated terminal information system - broadcast in preparation for going in to Flint’s airspace. As you can hear, Mary keeps questioning me throughout the process. It becomes apparent that all the time with the flash cards and other materials is paying off.

[Audio 5]

Mary’s satisfied with the initial part of the flight and announces that we’re not going to Traverse City. She gives me a right turn, which is probably going to be a “clearing turn” so she can look around for other airplanes and set up to put me through some maneuvers.

[Audio 6]

We’re going to do some unusual attitudes now. Mary is going to take the controls and I have to close my eyes and put my chin on my chest. She’s going to maneuver around to get me disoriented and then put the plane in a nose-high or nose-low attitude with a bank in one direction or the other. When she gives me back the airplane, I have to look up at the instruments and immediately recover the stated attitude, altitude, and airspeed solely by reference to the instruments. If I’m nose-high, I have to immediately go to full power, get the nose down to the horizon, and level the wings – In that order. If I’m nose-low, I have to pull out the power, roll wings-level, and then bring the nose back up – In that order. There are reasons for the order that I won’t dwell on here, but suffice it to say that you have about three seconds to start doing something and it had better be the right thing. I’ve only genuinely scared instructors twice that I know of and once was when I pulled when I should have pushed. Stall horn. Shouting. Hitting. Bad juju. It’s ugly. Don’t do that.

I’ve noticed that no PC-based flight training device seems to have a random unusual attitude generator for use in practicing unusual attitudes. Sure, an instructor can put you into those attitudes, but it’d be nice it the machine would just do it so you could spend a couple of hours just practicing. You really need to be able to just look up and understand all of the six primary instruments (or such of them as haven’t tumbled their gyros by that point) at a glance if you’re going to reliably do the right thing. And there’s no way of doing that without a lot of practice. I got through the unusual attitude training well enough to pass this checkride, but I’d be a lot better it I could just go use a simulator that would just throw these at me automatically.

Microsoft, are you listening? How about something in the next version of Flight Simulator? And how about you On Top guys?

Toward the end I mention that I have the “leans.” That’s IFR-speak for being spatially disoriented. You feel like you’re leaning one way or the other even though you’re flying straight and level. Much of instrument flight is learning to ignore that leaning sensation and believe what your instruments are telling you. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to get the leans. But you’ll also be surprised at how quickly you get over them if you’re disciplined and train hard. You’ll still feel that leaning sensation, but the little voice in your head that tells you to obey your kinesthetic senses gets a lot quieter than the voice that tells you to get on the gages and believe them.

[Audio 7]

We also did some steep turns and other basic attitude instrument flight at that time. Basic maneuvers that allow the candidate to demonstrate that he or she can control the airplane solely by reference to instruments.

Now it’s time to go in to Flint and do some approaches. We start out by obtaining the ATIS information for Flint. You’ll note that the ILSs are out of service. I knew that ahead of time and Mary and I planned to do approaches other than the ILSs.

Mary says we’re going to shoot the RNAV 18 and the VOR 9. Each of these are non-precision approaches, meaning that they don’t have the precision of an ILS approach and that, if we were actually flying in the soup, we’d have to break out of the clouds and be able to see the runway at a higher altitude if we were going to land.

The RNAV approach is flown with the GPS unit. You’ll hear me fumbling around with the approach charts to figure out which initial approach fix we’ll probably be assigned. We’ll probably get a waypoint called FIBIN, so I set that up in the GPS as we’re waiting for the clearance.

[Audio 8]

Here’s the last part of the approach briefing for the RNAV 18 approach. You can hear that I’m holding the pen in my teeth as I read through it. Basically, the approach is a capital T. We’re going to enter the T at the right-hand side of the crossbar, proceed along the crossbar to where it meets the stem, and then turn south and fly down the stem to the runway, which is at the bottom of the stem of the T.

We’re doing a “circle to land,” which is that you’d do if you were flying an approach to one runway but wanted to land on a different runway. You might do this for any number of reasons. You might be flying in from the north but the winds are howling out of the east, so you’d shoot an approach for Runway 18 and then circle around to land on Runway 9. Or Ukrainian terrorists could have taken over all of the navaids for all runways except for 18 (a la Die Hard 2), making it the only operational approach, even though you actually wanted to land on Runway 27.

In this case, we’re going to be flying south on the approach until we get within a mile of Runway 18, which is oriented north-south, and then we’re going to turn to the right and make a quarter circle before turning left to land eastbound on Runway 9. I get to look out the window for the circling part because we’re assuming that there’s at least a mile of visibility and, as long as I stay within a mile of the runway complex, I’d be able to see the runway upon which I intended to land.

[Audio 9]

Here’s where we go part techno-cool and part smartass. There’s a feature on the KLN 94 GPS unit that calculates the winds aloft. You tell the GPS your magnetic heading and true airspeed and it calculates the wind direction and speed based on your drift. I run the calculations, both because I actually want to know what the wind is doing up there so I can set up a good crab angle for the approach and because I want to show off how much I know about the GPS. If what I tell the GPS is correct, I’m going to have a crosswind at the initial altitude of close to 50 knots. Considering that my true airspeed is about 110 knots more or less out of the east and that I’ll be flying this approach more or less directly south, that’s a monster crosswind. Mary’s going to be looking at the runway almost out of her side window. I don’t get to look at the runway for another 10 or 15 miles and more than 1,000 vertical feet, so I don’t care just now.

Anyway, I report the winds aloft to the approach controller. She seems incredulous, but admits that surface winds are getting a little brisk, too.

[Audio 10]

If you’re following along on the approach charts, I’ve started the approach from the northeast initial approach fix on the “T”-shaped approach. That’s called “FIBIN.” No doubt named for somebody’s pet hamster. From there, I fly more or less directly west and reach the intersection of the “T” shape, which is called “JUBER.” I think I went to elementary school with that one’s namesake. From there, I turn more or less directly south to the final approach fix, “CODAG.” The next communication comes when I’m just short of CODAG – Five or six miles from the runway threshold and at 2,400 feet getting ready to descend to 1,280 feet.

Now it’s over to the tower. I’m cleared to complete the approach and to do my circle to land northwest of the airport and then I’m cleared for the option to Runway 9. It’s a good time to do my pre-landing checklist, so I get that out of the way.

[Audio 11]

I get down to the minimum circling altitude of 1,280 feet and, a mile out, Mary tells me that I can come out from under the hood and fly the rest of the approach. I’m flying this approach at speeds that place me as either a Category A or B aircraft, meaning that the circling minimums give me obstacle clearance 1.3 to 1.5 miles out from the airport. We’re pretending that visibility is one mile, so I’m keeping the airplane within that one mile.

I turn right and make a counterclockwise circuit a quarter of the way around the airport and then, when I’m on the extended centerline of Runway 9, Mary tells me to descend to the runway threshold and prepare to land. On a quarter-mile final, she’s satisfied that I could make the landing and tells me to bring the hood back down while she flies the airplane and becomes my eyes again.

I call up the tower and then departure and we start setting up for the next approach – The VOR for Runway 9. Note that both I and the controller are pretty busy and there’s a momentary misunderstanding about which approach is next. Obviously, we’re going for Runway 9 and not Runway 27 and we clear that up pretty quickly. Imagine shooting an approach for 27 at normal power settings with a 50-knot tailwind! Might get me a ground track of 140 knots inbound. Maybe good at Edwards Air Force Base, but not here at Flint.

Note that I give departure control my tower-assigned heading and altitude. This isn’t standard, but I often find that departure at Flint asks me for this information. I’ve gotten so that I provide it almost automatically. As long as the frequency isn’t jammed, I recommend proactively filling in any information that controllers at that facility tend to request. Flint handles a fair amount of airline traffic and there are bigger fish to handle than me. Anything I can do to help out the controller sort out and facilitate FLIBs like me I try to do.

[Audio 12]

So that’s the first part of the checkride. Join me in the second installment for a partial-panel VOR approach to Runway 9, getting kicked off the miss for lack of cloud clearance, the hold at the Pontiac VOR and the ILS approach for Runway 9R at Pontiac. And that little part about Korea.

Checkride Update for 25 October - IFR Checkride Complete!

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I passed the checkride this morning! Thanks for the cards and letters. They meant (and continue to mean) a lot.I received approval from the examiner to include audio from the checkride in a future episode, so you can expect to hear the highlights sometime soon.

In the meantime, it's back to Airspeed as usual. Upcoming episodes include an interview with Castrol aerobatic and racing pilot Mike Goulian, flying skydivers in the Super Otter with Dave Schwartz of Skydive Radio, and lots more.

Thanks for hanging in there with me. If you were beginning to be annoyed at the constant Checkride Updates, all I can say is "You and me both!" I never thought it would take four tries to get flyable weather, but that's my beloved State of Michigan in October for you.

It has its upsides. I arrived at the checkride with more than 15 hours of actual, which is off-scale high for an instrument candidate, and I have the local weather and some excellent flight instructors to thank for that. And I think that it made me a better IFR pilot. But it gets a little tedious doing the flight planning each time and having to keep the knowledge for the oral current and ready for recall.

Back to our regularly-scheduled podcast. And some great adventures ahead!

Checkride Update for 23 October - My Letter of Discontinuance

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Got 1.9 this morning, including 0.8 actual, and shot the VOR full procedure 18 at KFNT, the ILS 27 at KFNT, and the RNAV 18 at KFNT before heading back and shooting the ILR 9R at KPTK. This was a warm-up flight to prepare for the checkride this afternoon. I flew well other than getting a little far off to the right on the RNAV 18 and having the GPS conk out just short of HEBUB (thereby depriving me of the ability to descend below 1,560 or so).




Here's a pretty indicative picture of circumstances. Nice generally, but scattered between 800 and 2,500 with broken or overcast layers between 1,800 and 6,500. Not enough to go and do the flight portion of the checkride.






The radio stack showing the first leg of the RNAV 18 heading for JUBER.

Anyway, I got through the oral in fine form. The studying paid off and I either answered decisively or could just look the examiner in the eye and tell her that I didn't know the answer. Only missed two questions and I'll have that information together when I return on Thurssday.

The ceilings and scattered layer made the flight portion impracticable, so I've rescheduled for Thursday. I therefore have a nice new Letter of Discontinuance from the examiner. The letter basically declares what I've completed and says that I can pick up where I left off between now and December 22.

Ready to go for Thursday, but I stopped at DCT Aviation and got my card loaded up with another two hours. The plan is to show up on Thursday morning around 7:00 at Tradewinds and preflight the aircraft. Then I head for DCT around the corner when Pontiac Air Center opens at 8:00 and fly sim for an hour before coming back to Tradewinds to meet the examiner at 9:30.

Then it's time to fly the ride. Light touch on the yoke and trim, trim, trim! Needle in the donut, baby!

Checkride Update 14 October 2007 - Checkride Rescheduled - T-Minus Five Days to Checkride

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Checkride rescheduled for Friday, October 19. Ceilings were too low (TAF at Flint called for 2,200 AGL, which might have been enough, but why try to run scud with the FAA in the right seat? Actually, I would have gladly done the ride in IMC except for the unusual attitudes, etc., but one could forgive the examiner for wanting solid VFR.

So I left on Friday for my cousin's wedding in Rhode Island and recorded the update while walking around Newport.

Note the sign above. Never met the guy, so there might be something to it when people say, as they often do, that I don't know Jagschitz.

My brother, Dave, at the marina. He's a sailing nut whose primary toy in retirement will be a sailboat of some kind. There way plenty to drool over at the marina.

The crew of teh CRJ that I took from Providence to Reagan National. I love CRJs. Solid feel, maneuverable, and efficient.

A shot from the layover at Reagan National. A group of US Airways employees seeing off a jet that presumably carried US military personnel. I got a glimpse of the banner as the bus drove by from the aircraft to the terminal, but didn't catch whether the personnel were on their ways home or on their ways out. Either way, I thought it was a class act on the part of US Airways. Way to go, guys!

Checkride Update 6 October - T-minus 5 Days until Checkride

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Also listen to 3 October's Checkride Update at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedCheckrideUpdate2007-10-03.mp3.

Flew more than two hours of sim today. Lots of approaches. Some partial panel. Here's a shot just after breaking out when shooting the ILS 27 at KFNT. Even went on to fly the miss to PETLI even though N920TA, the aircraft I'm going to fly for the checkride, doesn't have an ADF in it. I might have to fly the miss for this approach using the GPS to itendify the holding fix. Crap! The more I prep, the more I realize how much I don't know and how much the checkride is going to depend on the examiner having the same idiosynchasies and predilections as my flight instructor have had over the years.

Here's the whole unit. There's a curtain that comes out to sequester the student and hide the instructor's workstation. I usually just keep the instructor station there and don't look at it unless I've exhausted all of my options there at the console (which usually means that I placed myself too close to the approach course and have long since flown through it).

There are four or more of these at DCT Aviation in the back of the Pontiac Air Center on Airport Road southeast of the approach end of 27L.

Like all other simulators I've flown, these suck in pitch. But they suck less than the Frasca 142 at Tradewinds. Plus, this pretty well simulates the C-172R where the Frasca has an HSI and an unfamiliar communications stack.

The airplane is so much easier to fly! Trim actually works in the aircraft. It's really tough to trim the sim.

As much as I bitch, though, I've really improved in the cockpit after starting to fly sim reasonably regularly. A lot of instrument flight is establishing and maintaining routines and you can't effectively establish routines unless you walk through them regularly. The sim lets me fly six to eight approaches per hour and lets me build the routine. That packs the routine into my available bandwidth and lets me stay a little but ahead (or less far behind) the airplane.

Here's the ground track for the hold at KATTY, which is about 10 miles east of KFNT. As you can see on the right hand side of the screen, I set up a pretty fierce crosswind from the north (which is pretty common in my experience) and then proceeded to fly mutant-kidney-bean-shaped patterns as the wind ate my lunch. I nailed the last time around by flying a 60-degree offset heading on the outbound leg and then hit the intersection at just about exactly a minute inbound. Query where that minute starts because the outbound leg and the turn inbound were pretty nonstandard, but I'll take it.

At least I didn't have to fly this. This old unit has been sitting in the sim room for as long as I've been flying the sims there. Really mechanical. I wonder how effective it is/was.

Cole joined me at the FBO. We went directly from a soccer game. I set him up with his DVD player and a Speed Racer DVD and some food. He sat still for two hours plus and even asked a few questions about the sim.

On to more study! Five days to go!

Checkride Update 1 October 2007: T-Minus 10 Days to Checkride

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Also listen to 29 September's Checkride Update at http://media.libsyn.com/media/airspeed/AirspeedCheckRideUpdate2007-09-29.mp3.

Off to a slow start. Spent most of the weekend and all day today at work. Went to Kirby's Koney for dinner and edited a bit more of the book.

Going to go fly some sim in the morning. Probably partial-panel approaches to some relevant airports. Trying to get work out of the way so I can spend a few evenings studying my hiney off.

Final Part 141 Stage Check Complete! On to the Checkride!

This is a regular blog post. If you're looking for show notes for an episode, please see below.

Completed the stage check this afternoon for the Part 141 instrument rating program at Tradewinds. Yeah, baby! 2.4 hours Hobbs, two takeoffs, two landings, ILS 27 KFNT with circle to land 18, RNAV 18 KFNT with published miss and hold, VOR 18 full procedure KFNT, and VOR 27L KPTK partial panel. Less of a workout than last week, if only in that I've done a lot more approach work of late and and am more comfortable with the approach environment than I am handling rapid deviations from flight plans, holding at odd places, and doing DME arcs.

So now it's on the the checkride with Mary Carpenter, the designated examiner who did my private checkride more than three years ago. She was great on the private ride and I expect a fair and objective ride with her this time, too.

I'm walking into the checkride with an 88 on the FAA Knowledge Test (wanted 90%+, but I'll take the 88), which should put me on good footing, both because I know about 88% of the stuff and because Mary will have reason to think that I've studied prior to the ride.

Here's N916TA, the trusty steed that I flew for the stage check and one of two aircraft that are candidates for the checkride. Either should be fine. I'll probably try for 16 because I've flown her more recently, but I'd have no problem going with N920TA, which is essentially the same airplane, only newer. I probably have 15+ hours in each, so no problem.

Stay tuned for more on the checkride! Planning for the second week of October.

Stage Check Almost Complete

I'd consider throwing all of my approach plates in the lake at this point, but I fear that, even with dual VORs, IFR-certified GPS, and vectors, I'd have trouble finding the lake.

I had my final stage check this afternoon - well, most of it. 2.1 under the hood with rapid-fire changes of clearance, two holds (one VOR and one at an airway waypoint), a DME arc, unusual attitude recoveries (both full and partial panel), compass turns, approach and departure stalls under the hood, and a takeoff under the hood. That's f%&$ing work! I was a noodle by the end.

My check pilot (the senior training pilot at Tradewinds) had a headset malfunction when the portion near the plug separated and made it tough for him to hear. So we shouted at each other for most of the maneuvers (par for the course on some of my flights, even when the instructor's headset is fully funcitonal) and packed it in at the end.

We'll do the approaches and clean up the other stuff soon. Gotta go fly some sim between now and then, especially partial-panel approaches.

Here's N916TA, a Cessna 172R in which I've probably logged 20-30 hours. It and its sister aircraft, N920TA, have two-axis autopilots and an audio Aux input (great for iPod addition to your avionics). 16 and 20 are contemporaries of N918TA, the subject of the So Long, One-Eight! episode. Nice aircraft and none older than 2002. N915TA is a glass-panel (Garmin G-1000) is also on the line, but I'm going to finish up the rating with the steam gages and then maybe transition.

Wonder why I like Tradewinds? Here's my walk from the lobby to the Pilot Center flight line. Right past the King Airs and the Hawkers. Got to like that. And look at the floor! Could you eat off of that or what?

Last thing: I'm the guest on Episode 3 of The Pilot's Flight PodLog, which you'll recall is Will Hawkins' new podcast. Check it out and subscribe to Will's new podcast at iTunes or your favorite other podcatcher or listen online at http://media.libsyn.com/media/pilotwill/pilots_flight_podcast_3.mp3.

2.5 with VOR 27 FNT with Published Miss, RNAV 18 FNT, ILS 27 FNT, VOR 18 FNT, LOC B/C 27L PTK

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Can anyone think of a better way to spend a Monday morning than weaving up and down through a 500-700 foot thick overcast layer shooting instrument approaches? So can I, but Winona Ryder was unavailable.

Nailed five of them (summarized in the title to this post). Flew it mostly with the hood up because I like to have two fully-functional pilots in the cockpit when I'm in actual. Plus, even the cockpit of a C-172 seems a lot bigger without the hood on.

That's Steve Roemer, CFII extraordinaire. Former air cav pilot in Viet Nam. Sometimes I think that I'd have to be inverted before he'd intervene, but I'll flatter myself and believe that his calm disposition is a result of my nailing the approaches. (Wait 'till we get out there VFR and he can fail by vacuum gages - Then we'll see who's nailing what!)

My eminently-organized kneeboard. ATIS and clearances on the left. Approach briefing cheat sheet at the top right of the pad. Climb, cruise, descent, and pre-landing checklist usually on top on the right followed by other approach plates, the IFR low-altitude en route charts, spare taxi diagrams, then my leg. Energency checklist dangles on the side to my left in the third panel of the kneeboard. Don't know how I'm ever going to fly center stick because I really like this kneeboard configuration. At least I can still keep the pen Velcro-ed to my noggin.

The multimedia capture area (sometime known as the back seat). M-Audio MicroTrack 96/24 on the right to capture audio. Old Sony Handicam with analog video input in the center. Battery pack for the bullet cam next to the Sony. Bullet cam is mounted with Velcro to the top of the mag compass in front. No apparent adverse effect on the mag compass.

Wish I had remembered to hit REC once I confirmed that I had signal! Anyway, I'll get some video on the next appropriate flight.