![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Well, we're heading on out of here in the morning. If we ride hell for leather and we have good winds, we'll make it home late tomorrow night. Otherwise we'll overnight in Tucson again.
It was indeed a good distraction. I forgot to check my voice mail today! Forgot! (Rob remembered.)
It was indeed a good distraction. I forgot to check my voice mail today! Forgot! (Rob remembered.)
no subject
Have a safe flight, and I'm glad the ickiness was pushed away for awhile!
no subject
no subject
I might as well tell you the story -- I haven't gotten to do any hangar flying in a long time. (I'm pretty sure I haven't told you this story. Stop me if you've heard it before ... oh wait, you can't. I guess you'll just have to read it again!
We were on our way home from Florida, and we were less than 30 or 40 miles out. Tom was also a very skilled, careful, conservative pilot and CFII. It was rainy and foggy and our home airport (which had no instrument approach) was juuuust at minimums, and Tom said if it didn't get any worse we could make it. We had a tired, hungry, ADHD 3-year-old in the back seat who had been cooped up in her car seat for most of two days, and we had all our luggage from a week away, and the thought of getting stuck somewhere else was repugnant.
Fortunately it did get worse, so the decision was out of our hands. But as we called the airports with ILS's in the area, each one said conditions were deteriorating and advised it would likely be below minimums by the time we got there. The question became not should we try for home, but could we get in anywhere before everything closed down!
The only airport that was still open was Baltimore Washington International because of its long runways and more sophisticated ILS. Even so it was right AT minimums -- I think they were 200' and 2400', if I remember correctly. (This is 22 years ago! But it was such a terrifying moment it's impressed in my mind, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. The MDA was 100' for commercial aircraft, but 200' for us with our equipment.)
Tom said later it was the scariest landing he'd ever made, and he had something like 6,000 hours. As copilot I was assigned to handle the radio and to look out the side window and look out my side window for the runway while Tom concentrated on staying on the glide path in the gusty winds. We broke out right at 200' over tall trees that seemed to be almost scraping the belly of the airplane. I couldn't see any runway, just those damn treetops. I looked out the windshield and it was still just solid gray. I never realized 200' was that close to the ground! I was as scared as I've ever been in my life.
I told Tom we were over the trees and I couldn't see anything but trees, but he saw the runway out of his side -- he was only slightly to the right of the centerline ... just enough to scare the hell out of me. It was a bumpy landing but we made it down in one piece.
It wasn't until we were taxiing that we found out it had actually gone below the RVR minimum while we were on final approach! No wonder we couldn't see a thing out the windshield! I don't remember if we were too low to break off the approach or if they knew nothing else was open and we had to get down, but they let us land. While we were taxiing Ground told us were the last aircraft into the airport. They had actually closed it while we were still on final. =shiver= If Tom hadn't been such a damn good pilot you might have read about us on the back page of an old mid-80's issue of "Flying" instead of getting to know me on LJ!
Anyway, that was the memory that made me urge you to take care when you talked about riding hell for leather, not that I have the slightest doubts of Rob's and your skills as pilot and copilot!
no subject
Yikes, that approach sounds like it was hair-raising. We had an approach right down to minimums once too, and it was shortly after Rob got his instrument ticket. The IFR flight was mostly VMC, but the marine layer over Santa Barbara -- maybe 800' thick, but opaque -- went right down to 200'. Rob told me what he wanted me to do: call out altitudes, as "600 for 200", and look out the windows while he remained plastered to the instruments. At maybe 210 feet I saw the approach lights, thus clearing us to drop to 100 because we saw "the runway environment". I called out "200 for 100". We saw the runway just before Rob was going to push the throttle forward for the missed. As we were taxiing in, we heard a plane approach, heard its engines spool up as he went missed, and for just one second saw his lights appear through the muck. He clearly didn't have a second pair of eyes on board. It was the only way we could have done it.
Our situation wasn't nearly as dire as yours, though. The airport was legally open, though at minimums, and there were others open within our fuel range. But the feeling of an approach low enough to really want your copilot is an experience we share!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject