Mother Nature Creates A "Cessminole"

A few posts back, I posted a few photos of the mishap from a few weeks ago involving a Cessna 172SP and a Piper Seminole. My photos were taken from a distance while taxiing (co-pilot had the controls while I took the photos).

My friend Kim was at Gateway when the storm hit. She took a bunch of close-up photos and was nice enough to share them. Thanks Kim!

What can you say to the person that failed to properly tie down the Seminole other than "Man, it sucks to be you".

Living In Aviator's Paradise Does Have Down Sides

One of them is practice traffic. There is a LOT of it. Yesterday alone, I burned 2 hours dual without fully executing a single approach.

The Stanfield VOR (TFD) is in the Southwest Practice Area. Stanfield is the initial approach fix for the GPS and ILS approaches into Casa Grande (KCGZ). Everyone on God's Green Earth goes here because it is the only uncontrolled ILS approach within a reasonable distance of Phoenix.

The altitude for the procedure hold at TFD is 3,500, with 500 foot increments for vertical spacing. Practice holds are at 6,000 feet and above. Well yesterday, when we were 10 miles out, we called for top of stack and the reply was Seminole N***** is currently top of stack at 6,500. Crap! That means there are already 7 aircraft in the hold. In 10 minutes, we would probably enter at 6,000. At roughly 4 minutes per hold, we're talking about 25 minutes, just to get to the bottom of the stack and go inbound, which is still 5 1/2 minutes from the runway at 90kts!

Since we only have 2 hours total for this flight, we decide to blow off Casa Grande and do the 4R GPS into Chandler (KCHD). After briefing the approach, I try calling Phoenix approach. 30 seconds...no reply. I heard her talking to other traffic. I know we're on frequency. Let's try again..."Phoenix Approach, Cherokee N113ND with request"...let's give them 45 seconds. Again NOTHING. We're coming up on the IAF and bravo airspace, so we circle. Meanwhile, there are NO other aircraft calling on 123.7. We give it a few more minutes and call again. Finally a man comes on and acknowledges us. Must have been a shift change. Anyway, he gives us vectors to an approach fix that is 12 miles from the one we're right next to. We politely ask for vectors to DECTU, which is the fix that puts you on the final approach course. Negative, proceed as vectored. Why? There's no other traffic, nothing going on. OK. Finally we get to DEKTU and approach hands us off to Chandler, who promptly tells us they can't handle any practice approaches. Not even a missed above TPA? NOPE. They vector us out of their airspace and instruct us to squawk VFR. We're going to continue with approaches elsewhere, can we retain current squawk? Negative, squawk VFR. CRAP! Strike two.

OK, let's try the VOR 30C approach for Gateway. Phoenix approach is vectoring us to Gateway. I'm doing partial panel with no DME and things are going great. Just as we're about to enter KIWA airspace, Phoenix tells us that KIWA isn't accepting practice approaches at this time. CRAP X2. At this point, we might as well give up and land. We call up approach and request full stop. To make a long story short, they had two Harriers in the pattern. That's the reason they weren't accepting our practice approach request. Three 10,000' runways and they can't let us do the approach because of two Harriers? To add insult to injury, right after we were acknowledged by Gateway tower, they approved the guy less than 2 minutes behind us for the 30C VOR approach. CRAP X3.

1.8 on the Hobbs, almost $300 and nothing to show for it but frustration. Dang. Oh well, I'm ready for the stage 2 check ride no matter what.

Photos As Promised

About a week ago, a pretty severe thunderstorm hit KIWA. A couple of ATP aircraft, one Piper Seminole and one Cessna 172SP, were nearly destroyed. An 85-90 knot gust picked up the Seminole, turned it upside down and dropped it on top of the 172. From what I understand, someone was attempting to tie down the Seminole when the wind gust hit. Luckily, nobody was injured. Here are a couple of photos of the remains.















A friend has photos of the aircraft when before they were separated. Hopefully I'll have that photo soon and will add it.

Gymnastics, Earthquakes, Shakespeare & Latin

-RANT ON- About a century ago, I was getting close to my stage 2 check, which is a requirement for part 141 instrument training. Well, after 4 maintenance cancellations and 4 weather cancellations, I'm finally ready. One last quick flight tomorrow morning and, weather permitting, it will finally be time for the check.

Stage 2 is the most difficult part of instrument training. Stage two basically involves learning holds and approaches, but it's not that easy. Picture yourself doing a handstand during an earthquake while reciting Shakespeare in Latin and you'll get a pretty good idea of what it's like for a simple minded doofus like me.

My dilemma is this: Instrument ground school ended today and Commercial ground school begins next Wednesday. From what I'm hearing, in order to begin Commercial ground school, students have to be at least up for their Stage 3 instrument check prior to beginning Commercial ground. If that's the case, we have a problem. I need to fly to Flagstaff, Tucson and San Diego, in addition to successfully completing Stage 2 by next Wednesday.

My argument is this: 1. They initially assigned me an instructor that was about as compatible with me as Ralph Nader is with General Motors 2. I had to cancel four LONG flights due to maintenance problems (2 for things that had been previously squawked and blown-off by maintenance) and 3. I have met every aspect of the training guidelines (Never missed a class, flight, ground brief or stage check).

They need to make an exception. First of all, commercial is much easier than instrument. Second, it won't affect my ability to finish instrument. Third, I can't take a month off from school. Working full-time makes school a real challenge. If I take a month off, it will affect my retention.-RANT OFF-

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About the weather

This week we have seen some pretty amazing weather here in Phoenix. On Tuesday night, my house received over 3" of rain. It was incredible, something you never see in the desert. The lightning was some of the most intense I've ever witnessed. If it wasn't raining so hard, I would have set up the tripod to get some cool photos.

Our house two levels with an atrium in the center. The atrium has two drains that run to the sewer, which we thought was overkill...until Tuesday night. Here are a few photos of the water. Our neighbors across the street didn't opt to have drains installed in their atrium and spent the better part of the night bailing water by the bucket. Ours came within an inch of coming in the house.

Overall, the rain was really enjoyable. The downside was that we lost power at midnight and it didn't come back on until 5 a.m. It was too hot to sleep and I had a 6 a.m. flight and a 7 p.m. flight scheduled for Wednesday. Yeah, Wednesday sucked. Luckily, I had a chance to get a little nap in before the night flight. Thanks K.

Things Are Getting Busy Around Here

Whew! This has been one of the busiest weeks I can recall. Things are starting to get interesting at school. I'm finally done in the simulators and have spent the last three days practicing instrument approaches. For anyone getting ready to pursue and instrument rating, be ready for LONG flights.

I can understand why it takes many people such a long time to earn an instrument rating. Here in Arizona, we're blessed and cursed at the same time with our weather. It's damn hot, but you can count on flying weather almost every day. In addition, there are a dozen or so airports within a reasonable distance of KIWA with instrument approaches. There's a lot of variety.

In one 4 hour flight last night, we were able to shoot the GPS RWY23 for Casa Grande, the NDB RWY4L at Chandler, the VOR/DME RWY5 for Coolidge, the ILS RWY23 for Casa Grande, the VOR 30C and the ILS 30C for Gateway. We also did the published miss for Gateway, Casa Grande and practiced several different holds.

Doing approaches at night is a real challenge for a beginner like me. It's very difficult on the eyes to keep changing the ambient light in order to read charts. Plus, the crap weasel Cadets we use have very poor dash lighting, which doesn't help either. One nice thing about night flying, there are hardly any other aircraft out training, so there is a LOT less holding.

Oh, and it was 40C at 8:00 when we took off and still 36C when we landed at midnight. That's life when you live in Phoenix, which I lovingly refer to as "The Surface of the Sun". We were lucky to get 300FPM climb at Vy. It's times like this that make me wish we had 180HP 172's. We'd at least get 600FPM at Vy, more elbow room and much better ventilation. Oh well...wish in one hand and...you know the rest.

I was supposed to fly this morning and do it all over again except with partial panel (lots of fun). The aircraft had a dead battery, putting us off until tomorrow morning. If all goes well tomorrow and I don't bust any altitudes, it will finally be time for the stage 2 check ride required by CFR Part 141.

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It's Monsoon season here in Arizona and that means high dew point, high temperatures and massive thunderstorms. It was kind of funny on Thursday. We were just finishing up ground school and happened to be talking about weather. When we pulled up the Convective Sigmet (CB) chart, there was a cell headed directly to KIWA with tops at 59,000 feet. About an hour later, it hit brining winds in excess of 85 miles per hour. An ATP Piper Seminole wasn't properly tied down, was blown upside down and on top of another ATP 172SP. Both planes were totaled. Luckily, the person struggling to tie down the Seminole wasn't injured. A friend got some great photos. As soon as I have them, I'll post them.

Final Stimulator Lesson

Today we put 2.3 hours on the AST Hawk Hobbs meter. I think I might have mentioned before that I don't care for the demonically posessed crapweasel FTD. I know, it allows you to do multiple holds and approaches in a relatively short period of time, but does it have to be so awful to fly? Could it be less realistic? Doubtful. I guess the good part is that if you can shoot an approach and nail it in the FTD, you damn sure can do it in the plane.

Tomorrow morning, I get to fly a real airplane and then one last FTD lesson. From then on, it's all real flying for the remainder of instrument. My next FTD adventure will at least be in the Level 6 Seneca FTD for my commercial multi engine, which will begin in August and coincide with my commercial.

My 141 stage two check should be next weekend and then it's a bunch of cross countries. I'm hoping for San Diego, either Brown or Palomar for one of the long ones.

Right now, I'm sitting at 82 hours TTL. At this rate, I'll have instrument at about the 100 hour mark. Yikes...

By the way, I got my hard private license in the mail yesterday. Five weeks. That's pretty fast for the Federal Government. I was expecting twelve weeks.

Day Out With The Girls

Today was my wife's first flight with me. She had been in a small aircraft once before, but not with me at the controls. She was apprehensive at first, because it had been so long since she had been in a small plane that she didn't know what to expect.

Since I'm writing this, we obviously survived (a little sarcasm for my wife).

My parents had my boys over for the weekend, so it was just me, my wife and daughter. We decided to head out from Stellar over Sacaton and Coolidge and then into Williams Gateway for breakfast at the Left Seat restaurant, located inside the building where Gateway Aviation is. The Left Seat has pretty decent, reasonably priced food and windows with views of the transient ramp and runway 12R. The people at Gateway Aviation are really nice. Even though we didn't buy fuel, they still sent someone out to direct us to a parking spot, chocked the aircraft and offered a variety of services.

Anyway, after a short breakfast, we were up and on our way back to Stellar. We flew over our house on the way there.

Another benefit of taking my wife was having a personal photographer. I got her a Canon Digital Rebel earlier this year and she has used it almost daily. Great investment. Here are some photos:










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An interesting side note about the weather. The photos might look a little hazy for Arizona. This morning, the dew point spread was only 4 degrees and there was visible fog over the Superstition Mountains. I wish I had a photo that showed it. It's VERY strange for Arizona, especially this time of year.