Monday, January 19, 2009

Long cross-country to the coast...

Flight #: 116 [Commercial VFR61]
CFI: Kristie E.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N779SH
Duration, as PIC: 4.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 142.0hrs

I'm going to do this blog post with minimal text. Just three words to describe it:

IT
WAS
AWESOME


Leg 1 of 3: Hillsboro (KHIO) to Tillamook (KTMK)

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Leg 2 of 3: Tillamook (KTMK) to Independence (7S5)

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Leg 3 of 3: Independence (7S5) to Hillsboro (KHIO)
Sadly, the battery in my iPhone died. Have to fake it a bit.

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Friday, January 2, 2009

Solo, Live ATC Streaming Radio, GPS Tracks

Flight #: 114 [Commercial VFR61]
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N2304W
Duration, as PIC: 1.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 136.5hrs

Been quite a while since a blog post. It's not that I'm losing interest in flying or anything, it is purely a perfect storm of Oregon weather, holidays and maintenance.

Oregon weather this time of year just plain sucks. Really, it is the inconsistency that gets you. Some days, like right now, it is cool and sunny. Others, rain. Others, pure white-out of clouds. Blech!

Holidays... friends, family and just fun take up time - and they get priority.

Maintenance... there had been a few times where friends or family wanted to go up for a spin, but depending on out combined weight, we would only be able to fly in the "Flying Tractor" a.k.a. the Schewizer 300CB. That sucker went in for its 100hr maintenance rebuild. There are very few people that fly the tractor, so it does not get priority... and so it sat. Almost 8 weeks.

Solo:
Anyway, I FINALLY got up the other day. Kind of a crazy day, actually. The weather was cold, a little windy, but relatively clear.

Headed out to, what is now a pretty common and mindless run for me, Portland Mulino Airport. 25nm South East of the airport. Takes you over some nice areas... and this is generally the flight I take friends on. The less "work" I have to do to fly, the more I can relax. A new place... I need 100% concentration and I can't answer any of the "hey, what is that?" type questions from passengers. It is their first flight, they could care less where we are going.

Anyway, good flight out. Ran in to some nimrod fixed wing dude who got his runways mixed up and was landing the wrong direction... wind at his tail. So, I had to loop around and wait for him to figure it out - with some help from me. Did a few patterns, headed back. As soon as I started looking North West, I noticed a serious weather cell coming in... and it appeared to be about 20nm west of HIO. I tried to tune in ATIS (Weather Reporting) for KHIO, but was getting too much static, so had to climb a little to listen in. Things sounded fine, so I headed back, via UAO, like I normally would. About 10nm from Mulio, I tried ATIS again, but things had not yet changed... however, the cell seemed to be quite a bit closer and looked really ominous. I tuned in to the tower frequency and heard them talking about gusts etc.

It was at this point where I decided to high-tail it back to the airport to see if I could stay ahead of the weather. I figured I had about 15 minutes before it hit... and I needed less than 10 to get there. Nosed 04W down, and brought it up to about 90kias and headed in. I was rather high at the time, 2500ft, and I started to encounter some precipitation, not freezing yet, but close. Then a few flakes started to hit the windscreen. We've been taught to have a real eye for ice. Not only does ice add extra weight to an aircraft... it spoils the aerodynamics. If you get build-up on the rotors... bad news. The last thing you want is your rotor lift efficiency to decrease.

So, we're taught to keep an eye on droplets on the window... do they freeze? Then, you also continually look at your skids. They are easily visible from the pilot seat, are direct into the wind, cold metal, and will get ice (most of the time) before any other part... especially any moving part. No ice, but I did not feel like taking any chances so I descended to about 700ft. The lower you go the warmer it should be... but the less time you have if you run in to an engine issue and need to execute an emergency landing. Hunch paid off, and things started to warm up and I was left with a little bit of spitting rain.

So, not going to ice up, but that weather cell was getting really serious. I was on Tower Frequency and they started talking about wind changing directions, gusts to 15knots. Not really dangerous stuff... yet, but it was certainly not the best choice of landing weather.

I requested access to the airspace, was granted and came in. On my way in, I started hearing chatter on the radio about the field "going IFR" (weather conditions bad enough to require special instrumentation and training). Luckily I was in a hover right off the end of my landing spot when the field did go IFR.

So, little bit of excitement.

Couple cool things as a result of this flight. I found Live ATC broadcasts, and recordings. This site broadcasts tower communications over net radio. So, you can listen in to the chatter for almost any towered airport. fly-geek, I know, but still cool. If you want to listen in to Portland-Hillsboro Airport (KHIO), you just search, or click this link.

The really cool part of it is that they archive the streams as MP3 files for up to 30 days. And, well, here is the audio from the 2nd half of the flight - the return. Apparently the feed was down for the first part, but that's fine since I was just requesting a south departure.



@3:20
Me: "Hillsboro Tower, Helicopter 2304W, 7 miles south with Siera. Request parking."
Tower: "Winds calm. Correction, Wind 260 at 15. Helicopter 2304W, Hillsboro Tower. Report 1 mile south."
Me: "Report 1 south, 04W."

@5:49
Me: "04W is 1 mile south."
Tower: "Helicopter 04W, not in sight, proceed to HAI"
Me: "Proceed to HAI, 04W."


If you are interested, take a listen. I've noted (above) the approximate time into the MP3 file these comms happen. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be downloading ALL my flights recordings from now on.
Live ATC Streaming Radio


GPS Tracks:
So far, I've been estimating my flight tracks with Google Maps, and their ability to superimpose a line over a particular map. I've done that here with this flight:

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The fun thing is that I've just purchased ($7.99) a great little iPhone Application, MotionX GPS. (iTunes Download) Anyway, it allows you to track, to a very high accuracy, the location of your phone, save the points, and then post them up on Google Maps to provide a very accurate map of where you have been. So, I set it up, throw it in my jacket pocket, and off I go.

Now, it would be really cool if I knew how to use the application before this flight... cause I have a really impressive GPS track of me walking out to the aircraft. Next time, I know what to do, and it will be sooooo cool.