03.23.08
Buzzing Sunday River, Maine with new pilot
Ez and yours truly with the Piper!
On our second excursion out in the Piper Warrior Feb. 17, Ezra flew me up to Maine to buzz his favorite place, the Sunday River ski area in Bethel where he loves to snowboard (and so do I, but lucky dog Ez has a season pass!)
Ez always checks the updated weather before our departure, both for Laconia and for where we are going.
A pilot navigates by homing in on airport beacons (if they have one) and by using flight navigation maps.
Some of Ezra’s flight and route prep notes.
our takeoff from Laconia airport…
Mount Washington was sure pretty clear this day!
Circling above Sunday River ski slopes, Bethel Maine.
Buzzing Sunday River, saying hi to Scott!
Ezra’s buddy Scott was on the mountain skiing and watching out for us to fly over as Ez dipped his wings a few times. Minutes later Ez received a text message that Scott had seen us! Too funny!
This flight was different in character from our first time out and had some interesting incidents. Leaving Laconia heading northeast we had a terrific tailwind, averaging about 140 knots groundspeed, so we reached Bethel Maine REALLY quickly. Ezra had intended to do a practice landing on Bethel’s air strip, and he made a steep approach after buzzing the ski slopes on the mountains; however, the little-used runway looked excessively icy and caution won out, so we just did a flyover at Bethel.
Steep approach to Bethel runway, bailing out when observing too much ice on the runway for a practice landing!
I am happy to say that Ez IS cautious, and methodical to a fault, so he has all the qualities to make a skilled and also a SAFETY-conscious pilot. There WAS a little incident starting out– before we left the ground, when he first fired up the plane’s engine for the routine high-RPM engine check, the thing ran really rough, shaking the whole plane, and we both were startled. Ez even told me then we might not be going up after all…
But he fiddled with the throttle and fooled with it and tested it several more times revving it up, and decided it was OK after all… it smoothed out and ran fine on those succeeding checks. Afterwards Ez explained to me how the engine has two magnitos (things with spark plugs in them, you fly on one, and the other magnito is a backup) and you test each one individually before takeoff.
The problem had been with one of the magnitos; he figured that a spark plug had gotten carbonned-up from running too rich on the plane’s last flight or on landing, and by adjusting his fuel/air mixtures while on the ground he was able to clear it up by running the engine hot for a while.
Turns out Ez had read about this happening sometimes, and how to fix it, in a flight magazine; it was not part of his flight training lessons per se. So it’s sure helpful to know something about engine mechanics as well as operating the controls and reading the gauges and navigating! And he loves flying so much he reads a lot about it.
Anyhow, our other interesting incident was on our return flight. We knew there was a huge front approaching from the southwest (hence that terrific tailwind on our outbound leg) and Ezra knew when the front was expected to set in at Laconia (having dutifully done his weather checks before takeoff). The issue was, we had to be on the GROUND in Laconia before the ceiling (cloud layer) coming in on that front got too low for a VFR landing (Visual Flight Rating), because Ezra is not rated for IFR landing (INSTRUMENT Flight Rating). In other words, he’s not trained yet to land through a cloud.
The cloudbank moving towards us while we were flying towards IT!!
Well, flying INTO this headwind so reduced our groundspeed (to less than 80 knots) that it was taking twice as long to return to the airport as it took to get TO Bethel. And that was a LONG flight back let me tell you, because we were both looking at the approaching front the whole time, and Ez was periodically checking with Laconia station reports for how LOW the ceiling was at Laconia. If I could have been a passive passenger, I never would have known to get nervous about it, but I had to know what was going on and so I WAS a bit nervous, and so was Ezra a little.
The ceiling at Laconia was about 3,800 feet when we made our landing, and Ezra says he needed about a 3,000 foot ceiling for landing, so if I should have been sweating bullets I didn’t know it. We came in under a solid cloud layer that stretched away in three directions. Ez was calm at least outwardly, and everything was cool. I’ll tell myself he planned it just right and not that he was cutting it close that time.
I guess worst case scenario, if Laconia had gotten socked in before we made it back, we would have had to backtrack and land at some other airport that was clear enough to land at, and then we would have been stuck there until the weather cleared… not anyone’s idea of a good time, and possibly an expensive mistake too if Sky Bright wanted to charge extra rental time on the plane for that!
I did say he wasn’t foolhardy, didn’t I???
See more videos of small plane flights in my youtube videos.
