mtv wrote:Good job, CFOT in using all the tools, and developing a good plan well in advance, then executing the plan, including the escape option. Having a good plan ahead of time makes your decision making a lot easier when things get dicey.

MTV

x2

I've been meaning to write up my recent smoke experience for this and another site that had a very good discussion. It was truly a "I learned from that" or "Never again" type of experience.

I realize that the forum readership is constantly changing and I've not been as active lately, so by way of background, I'm an instrument-rated commercial pilot with over four thousand hours, maybe 10-20% of that in actual or simulated IMC. Almost all my IFR time is in my ten year old Cirrus with an Avidyne PFD.

I've been gone from home most of this summer, hand flying my VFR-only 1964 Cessna 182 amphibious float plane across 18 states, spread out over 5 weeks, attending Oshkosh, exploring, and visiting friends old and new. The culmination was observing the solar eclipse from a quiet spot on a lake with a friend.

On the way to Prineville, Oregon, from Yreka, CA the morning of the eclipse, the smoke was bad. On my way down from Prineville to Yreka the day before, I had climbed to 13,000' MSL to get on top of it. Now, with my passenger, slowly climbing up through it, one day later, it seemed even worse. Although it was legal VFR, it kinda doesn't matter if the viz is 3 SM or 8 SM. You have no visual reference to a horizon, the air stinks, your eyes are burning, and you have to fly by reference to instruments.

This plane has a traditional small attitude indicator, based on an old vacuum pump driven gyro. I rarely reference it or the old DG very much as most of the time I'm either flying somewhere familiar and I use pilotage, that is, I look out the window and fly where I want to go; or I reference the Garmin 696 I installed a couple of years ago.

Also, the instruments are not arranged into a nice, tight "T" scan. The DG is a ways from the AI, as are the ASI and altimeter, and at all different levels, kinda random. The 696 is off to the right, and the suction gauge and oil pressure gauge are all the way over near the right door. The JPI engine monitor is down low, and needs to have a small button pressed repeatedly to scan one cylinder at a time.

Of course, I had read about, and listened closely to hangar stories about, vertigo, spatial disorientation, or "a bad case of the leans" as one white-haired retired Air Force pilot described it. It had never happened to me. In discussions on this forum, I've always remained in the camp of "it could happen to me", although, to be honest, I think I figured since it hadn't yet, with this much experience, it probably never would. I was wrong.

At some point, in a slow, wallowy climb (with the big 3400 lb displacement floats and no autopilot, this plane requires constant attention and control input), I found myself glancing repeatedly "around the horn" from the JPI engine gauge down low, to keep an eye on CHT's in the climb, to the heading and desired track on the 696, to checking on oil pressure and suction (I had to trust that AI), back to the AI, to the DG, to airspeed, to altimeter, and again.

It must have been all that rapid eye movement, coupled with head movement; oh and the whole time, I am nonchalantly carrying on a conversation with my friend about various topics. Suddenly I had trouble making visual sense of anything. It was not a visual acuity issue, more like spinning, but not really spinning, but I had lost it. I had to pull it together quickly and I didn't want to alarm my passenger as she had zero aviation training and I didn't want to have to manage a scared passenger!

I think I remember hearing that old F4 Phantom Jet driver's voice telling me his story about losing it, getting that "bad case of the leans", at night, over Europe. He was certain they were in a slow roll to the right and was trying to correct. His RIO was fine and yelled at him to stare at the AI and trust it. (Dan, if you still read this forum, I think you were with me!)

I did a long, slow blink, and when I opened my eyes, I stared at the AI only for about a two count, then went to DG, back to AI, to ASI, to AI, Altimeter, repeat, with no head movement, ignored the 696, ignored engine instruments, oil pressure, suction, etc. for a while. While the primary instruments were not well arranged for a tight, efficient scan, by eliminating all the other far-flung ones, things steadied back down, and I was fine.

While I went through a few moments of internal fear, I must have had a good poker face because my guest never stopped chatting and never sensed I had any sort of problem. I don't need all the fingers on one hand to count how many times I've scared myself in an airplane. This was one of them.

Lesson learned. Not coincidentally, I spent a lot of time at Oshkosh going between the various avionics booths. I am going to invest in a new panel. Right now, I am eagerly awaiting an announcement from Dynon that the panel they had on display in a 172, will soon be certified for the 182. If that starts to drag, then Aspen is my second favorite. The new, low cost autopilot from Trio looked pretty nice too. While this is still primarily a VFR aircraft, if I plan to do more long cross country flights with it, then some modern avionics with IFR capability, and an autopilot, will make it more enjoyable and safer.

I was reminded of an old interview with Alan Klapmeier. He was asked what the greatest safety feature of his new CIrrus airplane was. Everyone expected him to reply "the chute". But instead, he said it was that big, bright, blue over brown attitude indicator on the PFD. I have "known" this for years, but I gained a new depth of "knowing" what he meant! I felt I was a pretty competent instrument pilot, but almost all my IFR time is sitting behind that PFD, with the nice tight "T" arrangement of primary instruments.

I believe that if I didn't have as much experience as I had, in all sorts of conditions, that I might not have handled this and would have succumbed to a "JFK Junior" scenario.

Pierre

Good post Pierre, thanks.

I have a similarly dysfunctional panel layout in my '63 182. It is near the top of my list for upcoming mods as I find the scan laborious.

I have zero instrument time so I'm not tempted to flirt with anything near the junction of good VFR and IMC. I've missed a lot of flying days this summer due to local smoke.

Very relevant topic for sure this summer! My son and I were heading home from 88NV on Sunday and it had been smoky on and off out there but not real bad. We were planning on departing earlier but the airport had been closed due to someone making a gear up landing. So we departed at 4pm with 2:45 of fuel on board. The plan was to stop at Red Bluff to fuel up then head home to Fortuna. Everything was just fine, we picked up some virga near Mt Lassen and visibility was good. I was checking the yoke-mounted Garmin and all of a sudden it showed 'low battery'. It was being powered from the cigarette lighter socket so that was an 'uh oh' moment. Checked the volt meter and it showed about 6 volts...uh oh is right.

My '60 182 has the Interav alternator conversion so checked the breakers and sure enough, the main alternator breaker had popped. Reset it and boom, voltage shot back up, but not fully to 14volts. Then I'm watching it like a hawk and sure enough it's dropping again. Meanwhile we were on the ipad and iphone, both with Foreflight (can't say enough good things about Foreflight) and RBL was showing MFVR in smoke. I have to say, a little bit of 'gethomeitis' hit for sure and the decision-making process went like this: Do I try to land at Red Bluff with no radios, no lights, unfamiliar airport, possible traffic in the valley, hot, have to hand prop to go again (or just be there for who knows how long), or just continue on at 8500' with 45min of fuel reserve, compass and Foreflight working, land at a familiar airport. Decision made, kept going. Had the sun still there to guide us, kept the compass at 285, wings level, checking FF every once in a while to confirm. Couldn't see the ground much but engine was running just fine. I tell ya what, a finer feeling is not ever felt than "I've got the airport". I'll include a photo of what it looked like as we came in over Fortuna, looking west.

Electrical failure. Yikes! Just what you need to add to your workload on an already difficult flight.

I was in a similar situation earlier this summer. I was a on a long flight from BC to Alberta where I had to do a big (like 1 hour) deviation because of unforcast weather that I ultimately couldn't go over, under or through. Preflight briefing didn't predict the clouds or the smoke that we ran into, and the iPad + Stratux didn't get any radar info once we were in flight (too remote for ADS-B, apparently). I tried a huge end-run around the smoke and weather to our destination, but threw in the towel when it started raining. The nearest alternate was about 60 miles away over level ground and still reporting decent ceiling and visibility, so I made a beeline for it. I wound up off of the paper charts I had on board.

At this point, I'd been flying for about 3.5. I had plenty of fuel remaining, but I was getting tired. I found myself over unfamiliar territory with the iPad and Foreflight as my primary navigation resource. There were no VORs within range that would help guide me to the alternate. The cheap cigar lighter USB charger and even my big lithium ion Kmashi battery weren't enough to keep my iPad from discharging. I was down to 18% battery on the iPad, so I dimmed the display to the minimum I needed to be able to see it.

Fortunately, the iPad showed current METARs at my alternate and other airports, so I was confident that we could fly VFR underneath the cloud deck to the alternate or someplace else. I was worried, though, that the iPad would go dark. If that happened, I'd be up the creek without a paddle. I got out pen and paper and noted the heading to the alternate and distance and also where the airport was in relation to the river and the highway. I landed with an hour and a half of fuel on board and 13% battery on the iPad. I was 15 minutes past the arrival time on my flight plan, and my cell phone showed that I'd missed a call from the Flight Information Center. I called them immediately and let them know we where we were and that all was well.

There were many lessons for me on this flight. Among them: 1) always get all of the paper charts within a few hundred miles of the destination, even if you don't think you'll be going that way. 2) having a backup GPS is great insurance (my portable Garmin blew up just before the trip when I tried to update the database, so I didn't have it along like I usually do). 3) when it comes to long trips over remote territory, you can't have too much fuel or too much supplemental oxygen (I had two O2 tanks and used them both). 4) plan alternates that are within range, but far away from your final destination in case something big and unforcast shows up, like a huge area of smoke and weather. 5) brief and file everything directly with FIC in Canada, not through a third party on-line service. Their service is incomparable. 6) whatever the primary navigation source is, it needs to be rock-solid reliable. I need to install a charger that will keep a full charge on the iPad. More likely, I will put in a full-boat panel mount GPS ADS-B solution and keep the iPad and portable Garmin along as backups.

All of these things are hedges against risk, but risk can't be eliminated. I was both lucky and unlucky on this flight. As it turned out, I had the reserves, equipment and outs that I needed to keep things safe. That said, there was more luck involved than I'm comfortable with personally. If the weather between me and my alternate was worse, if we'd encountered worse headwinds etc. I might have had to make a precautionary landing in a sparsely populated area. That's not something I want in the family vacation photos.

CAVU /temp MVFR

Why I'm not flying.



The clear pictures or what it should look like. The ones with smoke and fog is live. Cheers Rob

Pierre_R wrote:I've been meaning to write up my recent smoke experience for this and another site that had a very good discussion. It was truly a "I learned from that" or "Never again" type of experience.

I realize that the forum readership is constantly changing and I've not been as active lately, so by way of background, I'm an instrument-rated commercial pilot with over four thousand hours, maybe 10-20% of that in actual or simulated IMC. Almost all my IFR time is in my ten year old Cirrus with an Avidyne PFD.

I've been gone from home most of this summer, hand flying my VFR-only 1964 Cessna 182 amphibious float plane across 18 states, spread out over 5 weeks, attending Oshkosh, exploring, and visiting friends old and new. The culmination was observing the solar eclipse from a quiet spot on a lake with a friend.

On the way to Prineville, Oregon, from Yreka, CA the morning of the eclipse, the smoke was bad. On my way down from Prineville to Yreka the day before, I had climbed to 13,000' MSL to get on top of it. Now, with my passenger, slowly climbing up through it, one day later, it seemed even worse. Although it was legal VFR, it kinda doesn't matter if the viz is 3 SM or 8 SM. You have no visual reference to a horizon, the air stinks, your eyes are burning, and you have to fly by reference to instruments.

This plane has a traditional small attitude indicator, based on an old vacuum pump driven gyro. I rarely reference it or the old DG very much as most of the time I'm either flying somewhere familiar and I use pilotage, that is, I look out the window and fly where I want to go; or I reference the Garmin 696 I installed a couple of years ago.

Also, the instruments are not arranged into a nice, tight "T" scan. The DG is a ways from the AI, as are the ASI and altimeter, and at all different levels, kinda random. The 696 is off to the right, and the suction gauge and oil pressure gauge are all the way over near the right door. The JPI engine monitor is down low, and needs to have a small button pressed repeatedly to scan one cylinder at a time.

Of course, I had read about, and listened closely to hangar stories about, vertigo, spatial disorientation, or "a bad case of the leans" as one white-haired retired Air Force pilot described it. It had never happened to me. In discussions on this forum, I've always remained in the camp of "it could happen to me", although, to be honest, I think I figured since it hadn't yet, with this much experience, it probably never would. I was wrong.

At some point, in a slow, wallowy climb (with the big 3400 lb displacement floats and no autopilot, this plane requires constant attention and control input), I found myself glancing repeatedly "around the horn" from the JPI engine gauge down low, to keep an eye on CHT's in the climb, to the heading and desired track on the 696, to checking on oil pressure and suction (I had to trust that AI), back to the AI, to the DG, to airspeed, to altimeter, and again.

It must have been all that rapid eye movement, coupled with head movement; oh and the whole time, I am nonchalantly carrying on a conversation with my friend about various topics. Suddenly I had trouble making visual sense of anything. It was not a visual acuity issue, more like spinning, but not really spinning, but I had lost it. I had to pull it together quickly and I didn't want to alarm my passenger as she had zero aviation training and I didn't want to have to manage a scared passenger!

I think I remember hearing that old F4 Phantom Jet driver's voice telling me his story about losing it, getting that "bad case of the leans", at night, over Europe. He was certain they were in a slow roll to the right and was trying to correct. His RIO was fine and yelled at him to stare at the AI and trust it. (Dan, if you still read this forum, I think you were with me!)

I did a long, slow blink, and when I opened my eyes, I stared at the AI only for about a two count, then went to DG, back to AI, to ASI, to AI, Altimeter, repeat, with no head movement, ignored the 696, ignored engine instruments, oil pressure, suction, etc. for a while. While the primary instruments were not well arranged for a tight, efficient scan, by eliminating all the other far-flung ones, things steadied back down, and I was fine.

While I went through a few moments of internal fear, I must have had a good poker face because my guest never stopped chatting and never sensed I had any sort of problem. I don't need all the fingers on one hand to count how many times I've scared myself in an airplane. This was one of them.

Lesson learned. Not coincidentally, I spent a lot of time at Oshkosh going between the various avionics booths. I am going to invest in a new panel. Right now, I am eagerly awaiting an announcement from Dynon that the panel they had on display in a 172, will soon be certified for the 182. If that starts to drag, then Aspen is my second favorite. The new, low cost autopilot from Trio looked pretty nice too. While this is still primarily a VFR aircraft, if I plan to do more long cross country flights with it, then some modern avionics with IFR capability, and an autopilot, will make it more enjoyable and safer.

I was reminded of an old interview with Alan Klapmeier. He was asked what the greatest safety feature of his new CIrrus airplane was. Everyone expected him to reply "the chute". But instead, he said it was that big, bright, blue over brown attitude indicator on the PFD. I have "known" this for years, but I gained a new depth of "knowing" what he meant! I felt I was a pretty competent instrument pilot, but almost all my IFR time is sitting behind that PFD, with the nice tight "T" arrangement of primary instruments.

I believe that if I didn't have as much experience as I had, in all sorts of conditions, that I might not have handled this and would have succumbed to a "JFK Junior" scenario.

Pierre

When I bought my airplane 13 3/4 years ago, it also had Cessna's "throw the instruments at the panel and see where they stick" arrangement. Within a few weeks after getting it back from the new engine, the OEM AI rolled over and died, and soon thereafter the DG became problematic. When my IA obtained rebuilts to replace them, he offered to re-orient the panel into a more modern 6 pack/T arrangement--it wasn't a big deal to do. When you're accustomed to that as normal, it's sure hard to fly on instruments when they're randomly tossed here and there!

Since then, a year and a half ago I swapped out that rebuilt AI for a Sandia Quattro, which is electric/digital (which also has airspeed and altitude tapes and a digital "ball") and has a backup battery built in to keep it running for an hour minimum, more if I turn down the backlight. A few years ago, I replaced the failing OEM Airpath compass with a much better (and not much more expensive) SIRS compass, which is very accurate. It's very comforting to know that if either the alternator or the vacuum pump bellies up, I have the ability to get down safely without resorting to traditional "partial panel".

Cary