Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings I thought I thought of everything
-Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly
. . . but there are no old, bold pilots.
Thus spake my grandfather, a veteran of combat in three wars, with thousands of hours of flying time behind him by the time he retired in 1972 after thirty years of service, mostly as a bomber pilot.
Pretty sure that's him on the upper right, a skinny young navigator in Australia in 1942 or 43.
On the occasion of his 104th birthday, I spent a little quality time alone on Friday, learning the sagacity of his advice. Peg's still a little sore about it.
Last Friday I was scheduled for an evidentiary hearing on a motion to dismiss for invalid service of process, sort of a rarity in my world. The hearing was supposed to end by noon, and I'd planned to fly back to NY afterward because all of my in-person stuff for this week had cancelled. No use living as a hermit in an empty condo for no real purpose.
All morning I'd been watching the weather warily, as a monster line of thunderstorms seemed to form out of nowhere and begin racing east from Louisiana. I was pessimistic about beating the storms out of Panama City, but figured I would see how it looked when the hearing ended, and make my decision then.
To my pleasant surprise, the formerly north-south line of storms had drooped clockwise into a southwest-northeast orientation as the section closest to the Gulf began to slow. It looked like if I could be in the air by one, I would depart ECP just as the system approached from the northwest. The plan would require flying east for a bit to get around the northernmost reaches of the severe weather, which by then was already approaching Atlanta and roaring east with surprising speed.
Arriving at Sheltair, I found a scene of chaos. The lobby was filled with families waiting for their private jets to whisk them out of Florida; the staff declared themselves too busy to open the gate so I could drop off my bags at the plane. No one seemed to know whether the Columbia had been refueled. Meanwhile, the winds were howling outside, and the skies were already beginning to darken.
I found a luggage cart and schlepped my stuff past the front desk and out onto the tarmac, dumping the bags unceremoniously next to the cargo door of 3SM and leaving the cart next to a hangar. The plane was, in fact, fully fueled, and I performed a hurried walkaround and climbed into the cockpit for what was planned at a 3 + 47 trip to NY.
Seeming to sense my haste, tower cleared me to an intersection takeoff, advising me to expedite to get airborne ahead of a King Air on final. It was with much relief that I found myself at a few minutes after one banking off in the clouds to the east, following a flight plan that would take me past Tallahassee, then over Alma, Georgia before heading almost due north to Elmira.
But the storms were moving a little faster than planned. I was already getting bumped around at 15,000 feet over Tallahassee, surprised to see pop-up cumulonimbus not only on my left, but also at one o'clock. I saw a gap between cells, and decided to try to shoot through and ahead of the storms.
They call those gaps "sucker holes" in the Air Force for good reason. Soon I was pretty much surrounded by moderate precip on the radar, bouncing around in soup and wondering where in the hell all this weather came from.
A few minutes later I noticed a little ice starting to form on the leading edges of the wings, then on the windscreen. Then more ice, piling up just ahead of where the deicer could melt it. I punched on the deicing system all the same, to keep the stuff from coating the wings, then activated the propeller heat and the defrost for the windscreen. Pushing the buttons was a challenge, because by this time I was on a bit of a rollercoaster ride, punctuated by abrupt drops and elevator rides up a couple hundred feet at a time. That would be the height of an eighteen story building, up then down then up again. But I'd be out of this stuff in a few minutes, thinking I could see where the clouds gave way to blue sky just ahead.
That turned out to be incorrect. As I approached Alma expecting to turn north, it was obvious the line of thunderstorms had beaten me there, and I needed to continue east. The air traffic controllers were accommodating, and all of us, mostly airliners, filled the radio with chatter trying to find some smooth air with no ice.
Now the old autopilot decided to get in on the act. I watched my airspeed decay from 153 knots indicated down to 95, and began wondering if the pitot static system was icing over despite the pitot heat. The autopilot became confused by the input, and with a blaring aural alarm knocked itself offline. I started hand-flying, turbulence kicking the Columbia around with gusto now. "Three sierra mike, I need you at one five thousand. Showing you at 14,700."
"Jax Center, three sierra mike is in moderate turbulence, moderate icing. I'll get back on altitude as soon as I can." I cobbed in as much power as I could, pushed slightly forward to regain some speed, and began a bumpy climb back up to 15,000 feet.
"Three sierra mike, would you like a different altitude?" Jax center knew that ice was a real problem in a small airplane, even with a deicing system.
"Roger, 3 SM would like to try 11,000."
"Three sierra mike, cleared down to 11" was the immediate response.
The temperature at 15,000 feet was -8 celsius, or about 17 degrees Fahrenheit. Dropping down to 11,000 it was still bumpy as hell, but the temperature was now -2. The deicer began to catch up. The air slowly began to smooth, and I could see the Atlantic coast off the starboard wing as I eased back to a northerly heading, advising ATC after a few minutes that I was back on course direct to Elmira. By this time I was approaching Sumter, South Carolina, Shaw AFB sprawling in front of me. I'd been in the air an hour and twenty minutes. It felt like longer.
Approaching the North Carolina line I'd left the nastiness over my left shoulder, flying above a broken deck that soon gave way to a few scattered clouds. There was still some turbulence, but the larger issue was that my serpentine diversion across south Georgia had burned a lot of fuel. The original flight plan had me landing in Elmira with twenty gallons in the tanks. Now the computer showed me on the deck with maybe six gallons. That's too close for comfort.
Thankfully, the ATC folks continued to accommodate. I amended my flight plan to drop into Winchester, Virginia, where P and I had stopped on our way up to New York going on two years ago. The approach into the busy field was uneventful, and after refueling and shooting a quick text to P to let her know I was on my way, I took off on the one hour flight to KELM.
It was a blessedly uneventful ride. I pushed up the throttles a bit, figuring I could afford to burn a couple extra gallons to save a little time. There were 98 gallons in the tanks, and the flight home would take around twenty.
Elmira approach and tower know the mighty Columbia by now, and I took vectors to a visual approach into Runway 6, my biggest challenge getting the plane to slow down on final. It seemed 3SM was as eager for a little rest in its hangar as I was to see P after eight days. Following an uneventful landing I taxied over to Premier, where Bobby the line guy stood ready to marshal me up to the hangar doors. I crawled out and made small-talk with him as I emptied the cargo hold.
"Did you see Peggy in the lobby?"
"Nope. Is she coming to get you?"
"Well, I thought so."
I texted her that I'd arrived, but as it turned out FlightAware, the software she uses to track my progress on these trips, told her not to expect me for another hour. She called and said she was on her way from the house, and a few minutes later I watched the Ridgeline bound past the window at Premier on its way to the pile of luggage next to the plane.
It's always a mixed bag when you learn something new after several decades of flying. I figured for all the world that I'd be able to beat the weather system, and did so at least to the extent it hadn't arrived yet when I left Panama City, but would bring tornadoes and destruction not long after I was airborne. The northern strand of the system was moving a lot faster, however, and surprised me by blocking my planned route of flight. I was also surprised by the ice, patches of which hung around on the wings all the way into Virginia. What should I have done? P would probably suggest not leaving at all that day, but the weather was such that I'd likely have just gotten home last night, or maybe this morning, if I'd hung around another hour.
Probably the better course would've been to listen to the controllers who said to avoid the weather I'd have to fly due east all the way to Savannah, then north, which would've avoided a lot of the unpleasantness. My Nexrad display said that wasn't necessary, but the images lag reality by several minutes, and when a system is moving that fast the delay makes a difference. Their real-time imaging on the ground showed storms in my path that didn't exist on my screen. And I wanted to believe my reality was correct, because it still held out the possibility of a one-hop to get home. Hanging onto that plan a little too long made for an exciting, if never particularly dangerous, hour or two of responding to the Columbia's attempt to fly in some fairly tough conditions.
On the upside, I have a lot more confidence in those systems. I won't go there again, at least not on purpose, but at least I know the plane can handle some real ice, real turbulence, and come out the other side just fine. That might not have been the case in the Cardinal.
Settling into my lovely, French blue office for a day of office work punctuated by a Zoom hearing and a couple conference calls later. It's beautiful outside; maybe I'll sneak a run onto the agenda.
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