Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Hour 56

I received my PPL after 55 hours of training.  This is the story of my 56th hour: my first as a private pilot.

VFR pilots aren't allowed to fly through clouds, but clouds were all that I could see between myself and my home airport.  I was headed west, following the ridge line of the Santa Ynez mountains, looking south towards Santa Barbara and the ocean.  Not that I could see either of them.

A marine layer (low-level fog found in coastal areas) is very common in Santa Barbara.  The clouds form as the temperature cools and gradually creep in from the ocean, swallowing the coast, the freeway and the foothills before getting cut off by the mountains.  I was on the other side, above the layer and several miles to the north of it.  The Santa Ynez valley was clear as could be, but I wasn't sure how I was going to get home.

I thought about picking up some altitude and flying over the clouds to see if there were any decently sized holes that I could drop through, but a quick check of SBA's automated terminal information service disabused me of that notion.  The ceiling was 1,200 ft.  1,200 feet doesn't leave much  room beneath the clouds and above the buildings, hills and towers of our town.  Besides, the weather had been pretty decent when I left SBA and that wasn't too long ago.  The 1,200 foot report was 15 minutes old and it would be another 10 to 15 before I could get there.  As the temperature dropped, things would get worse instead of better.

Situations like this one are why "Aeronautical Decision Making" is a category that would-be pilots must get through during their written and oral exams.  In a car, you can pull over and wait out the weather, ask for directions, or do whatever you have to do.  In a plane, you always have to have a backup plan for getting down safely.

My backup for this trip was Santa Ynez airport (IZA).  IZA is only about 18 nautical miles from SBA, but it's on the other side of the ridge and significantly protected from the encroaching marine layer.  I handed iPad to my wife and talked her through my in-flight navigation app.  I needed the radio frequencies and runway elevation information that I'd need to land at IZA.  I informed the Santa Barbara departure controller that I wanted to cancel flight following and switch frequencies.  Melch read off the numbers I needed and I hopped on the radio to get the weather and announce my intentions to other aircraft.  The wind was 220, so I'd be using runway 26.  The runway was already visible directly ahead of me and a few thousand feet below.

IZA is an un-towered airport, so aircraft are expected to announce their intentions over a common radio frequency that all planes in the area monitor.  Instead of getting instructions from a controller, pilots are expected to fly in a prescribed pattern at a prescribed altitude.  The radio and the pattern combine to make the environment safer for everybody.  I was way above the pattern altitude, and pattern entry is 45 degrees from the downwind side.  I needed to descend, pass the airport, turn around, and re-enter the proper way.  I got on the radio and announced that I would do exactly that.

The pattern and landing were pretty smooth and I taxied off of the active runway and took the first available parking spot.  I needed to get some more information on the weather in order to plan my next move and I needed to use the bathroom.

So how did my first 0.7 hours as a private pilot end with me taking a leak in the men's room on the wrong side of a mountain?

The plan was to take my wife up for her first trip with me.  For a destination, we selected Santa Monica (SMO), where we would stop at the on-airport restaurant for a bite and then return at sunset in order to catch the view over Malibu and the Channel Islands.  We hoped to lift off around 2:30-3:00pm in order to get out there and back before it got completely dark (I am allowed to fly in the dark, but the view isn't as good).

Planning for such a flight begins the night before.  Obsessive checking of the weather can start 24-36 hours out depending on how far ahead the airports offer Terminal Area Forecasts.  Taking it easy on the drinking and partying don't hurt either, even for an afternoon departure.  The forecast called for early morning fog gradually burning off into clear skies in the afternoon.  Apparently I  had picked the perfect time to fly.

Late that morning I went to the gym.  It was a bit cloudy on the way over, but things looked better on the way back.  Santa Monica had been reporting solid fog in the morning, but was only reporting haze by 1:00pm.  Santa Barbara reported few clouds and good visibility.  We headed to the airport.

By the time we got there, Santa Monica was STILL reporting marginal visibility.  We decided to ditch the trip over there since half of the fun would be the view of Malibu and the LA beaches.  No fun if you can barely see them.  Besides, this was my first time flying with non-instructor passengers so I wanted the best weather possible.  Accidents happen when you try to push too many envelopes at once.   For example, I'd be totally willing to fly at night, over mountains, in a plane I'd not flown before or to a place I'd never flown before.  I just wouldn't do any more than one of those things in a single flight!

With Santa Monica out of the picture, we tossed about the idea of going up to Pismo.  Pismo doesn't report weather, but Lompoc and Santa Maria are somewhat nearby and they were both reporting clear skies.  Even so, I knew that Pismo was closer to the coast and therefore more likely to be foggy.  We had a pilot report suggesting that Gaviota was foggy and Gaviota was a third of the way to Pismo.

I contacted a flight briefer and got an updated weather report.  Gaviota and Vandenberg were indeed fogged in, so the coastal route was out.  The inland route was clear though.  Santa Barbara was forecast to remain clear skies for the next 9 hours, with a few scattered clouds off the west end of the airport.  More than enough time for us to get out and back.  I contacted clearance delivery and requested an inland route.

Once I got airborne, the tower sent me off to the west (the coastal route) anyway.  I obliged for a bit but told them that I didn't want to get too far that way since it would mean flying into clouds.  Once I got above the approach path for runway 7, the controller let me have my way and vectored me off to the north and away from the clouds.  I happily climbed out, aiming to get over the mountains near the 154 pass and on my way.

The plane isn't the most powerful in the world, so it took me some time and distance to get high enough to clear the pass.  We made it though and I crossed over and headed for Lake Cachuma.  The clouds had been closer to SBA on climb out than I had expected and I was concerned about taking too long before heading back.  After flying along for a bit I turned back towards the ridge to get a look back at SBA.  I hadn't even been up for 30 minutes yet, but you already know what I saw.

In the end, everything worked out.  We landed at Santa Ynez and I was able to talk with some airport personnel and another couple who had just landed there for the same reason we had.  It turned out that they lived down street from us in SB and had been attempting to return home after a weekend in Tahoe.  The forecast had led them to believe that they would be able to get into SBA with no issues, but they had found it completely covered up by the time they made it over the ridge.  We shared a rental car back to SB and called it an evening.

Lessons?  The good was that I made the right call in not turning back once it became clear that the clouds were coming in fast.  I handled the situation well, executed a textbook diversion and ended up safe and sound on the ground.  The bad was that my very first flight as a "real" pilot required a diversion so quickly.  Looking back, the second that I noticed that the clouds out to the west were far closer to the field than reported, I had time to turn back and call it a day.  Once I made the decision to climb out over the ridge, I committed myself to trusting a weather report that I already had evidence against.  The ugly was probably that I was a little slow in contacting the tower in asking for vectors to the north. I stayed clear of the clouds as required, but I could have been more proactive in communicating the situation and my intentions.

At the end of the day, we were safe and back home in SB.  The only real downside was that I was on the hook for a plane that was at the wrong airport.  What did I do about that?  The answer is hour 57, which is an adventure for another day.

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