Ice is forming on the tips of my wings Unheeded warnings, I thought, I thought of everything No navigator to find my way home Unladened empty and turned to stone There's no sensation to compare with this Suspended animation, a state of bliss Can't keep my mind from the circling skies Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I
-Pink Floyd
Learning to Fly
Back up in the Southern Tier on a lovely, gray autumn morning. Thirty-three and frosty, with a chance of flurries later this morning.
Dean's dozing in my lap, purring and trying to nudge his head under my hand for a scratch. Peg's at work, and I have a mediation in a few minutes.
I decided to come on back to Corning after I could not get a mediation tomorrow rescheduled, which meant my trip to Texas to help Mom and Bobby sort through assisted living arrangements would've stretched into next week, and I would've been away from P for nearly four weeks. I sort of lose my way when we're not together, so I decided to fly north for rest and to recage my gyros after two-and-a-half weeks of separation.
That meant spending the middle of yesterday driving back from Panama City to Perry, where the airplane sat parked for the last two weeks. The weather up and down the eastern seaboard was as good as it's ever going to get, and with 10-20 knots of tailwind I could make it to ELM in a little over four hours.
Departing Perry I had a brush with disaster climbing through about four thousand feet, where I scattered a flock of geese. I was surprised to find them at that altitude, and hitting one or two would've had the potential to prompt an emergency landing.
The winds led me to climb a little higher than usual, 13,000, which mean donning the cannula for the first time. It took me a while to remember how to work the system, but finally I felt a surge of cold air flowing up my nose, and the gauges on the instrument panel and the flow meter on the cannula itself showed I was getting a steady stream of O2. I also checked my nails to see if they were turning blue, and their pinkness told me all was well.
Directly over Spartanburg, I encountered some stratus clouds that extended a thousand feet or so below and another couple above. The panel showed the outside air temperature at minus four celsius. Rather suddenly, I couldn't see a thing out of the windscreen as it became covered in ice. This was not in the forecast. Glancing left and right, I could see rime ice forming over the leading edges of the wings and starting to spread along the upper surfaces.
Ice will kill you in an airplane, sure as anything. Your weight increases dramatically, and the camber of the wing changes enough to degrade the wing's ability to create lift. Icing can also kill your engine if it starts swallowing ice through the induction system.
Thankfully, we bought a Columbia with a de-icing system for just such situations. Pressing a button I started dribbling antifreeze from the leading edge of the wings and horizontal stabilizer over the tops of both. I hit another button and the propeller heat ensured I wouldn't have a potentially disastrous accumulation on the blades.
Then I calmly asked the controller for a lower altitude, and descended out of the clouds to 11,000. It was still freezing there, so the ice didn't melt right away, but the deicing system left only a couple pockets of rime on the leading edges, and soon even those were gone. Crisis averted.
Of course, the lower the altitude, the more the fuel burn and the less tailwind, so now I found myself recalculating fuels and trip duration as the sun set over North Carolina. Dropping two thousand feet would add less than ten minutes to the trip, and I'd still land at Elmira with twenty gallons of gas, enough to stay aloft for over an hour. All good.
The radios quieted as night fell, except for the occasional moron chanting "Let's Go Brandon" on the guard frequency. Airline callsigns gave way to UPS and FedEx flights that tend to dominate the jet routes at night.
I battled boredom for a couple hours from there, until boredom gave way to anxiety and a bit of fear somewhere north of State College, PA, when the engine chugged and I lurched forward in the seat. Then it did it again. The engine gauges all looked good, and I had plenty of fuel. I started thinking of divert fields if the propeller stopped turning. The Columbia's panel features a "NRST" window that shows bearing and distance to the nearest airfield, with info on the length of the runway and the traffic frequency. If you do everything right, the plane can glide a number of miles equal to 1.5 times your altitude. So I had fifteen miles or so I that could float along and touch down somewhere (remember the terrain was around a thousand feet, so it's 1.5 times ten, not eleven).
But scanning the NRST fields, none were within fifteen miles. And it was black as pitch out there in northern Pennsylvania, with no moon and an undercast that covered what I knew from prior trips to be some pretty rugged hills. If the prop stopped, there was a fair chance I was toast.
Thankfully that didn't happen, although the episode repeated itself as I was descending into Elmira through that undercast. This time I turned on the backup fuel pump, ran the mixture to full rich and monitored for a drop in manifold pressure that would signal induction icing. The chugging stopped, and I flew an uneventful approach into ELM, landing four hours and twenty minutes after breaking ground in Perry. That still amazes me.
One thing most folks don't understand about flying is that it's more about airmanship than stick-and-rudder skills. I can teach anyone to takeoff, land, and cruise along at altitude. What's harder to teach is the accumulation of experiences that allow an old pilot like me to work through icing, ATC changing your flight plan in-flight (that happened last night, as well), mechanical issues, other airplanes whizzing past, and a host of other moments that can make a good pilot great if he survives them, and a not-so-good pilot complacent. Those guys don't last long. Flying isn't all that hard, but it's damn unforgiving of poor judgment.
I was practically skipping as I alighted from the Columbia and made my way to the FBO, where I knew Peggy was waiting because I could see the pickup in the parking lot as I was on short final. If I'd had a tail, it would've been wagging.
P was lovely, of course, and had a well deserved and much appreciated Proper Twelve on the rocks waiting in the truck for me. We came home, ate stuffed grape leaves washed down with a nice Amarone, and sat up talking until way, way too late.
And the mighty Columbia spent the night safely tucked in at the hangar.
Watching a few snow flurries float past the window, the first of the fall I believe. Time to slip on a tie and mediate.
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