No Flying....4 days in a row

This week was going to be the one where I got to fly every single day. That is, until the weather had its say. Every morning, starting with Monday, I was planning to go somewhere early with my flying buddy Ron. And every morning the fog kept us on the ground.

Finally today it looked like we would be able to get out of El Monte and go somewhere. But the fog lingered until around 11. So Ron spent the morning redoing the gold stripes on the blue and white Piper Cherokee 140. It looked great when done and when I arrived at around 11 Ron had just noticed that the front strut was sagging again. Again! We've had it fixed, resealed, jimmied and more at least three times in the past three years. In between we were constantly having it filled with nitrogen.

Enough is enough. Ron took the airplane down to Dick at FAST Aviation at the KEMT airport and Dick is going to completely rebuild the strut. It might be ready Friday around 11...about the same time the fog is supposed to be burned off....let's hope!

Van Nuys Under The Clouds

Had a great flight yesterday from El Monte to Van Nuys. On the way there we couldn't climb above 2000 feet or else we would have been in the clouds. We ran along the ridge that is famous for the "Hollywood" sign and then popped over where there was an opening. The Van Nuys area was clear as anything. Ron guided us into a left pattern for runway 16L and put the Cherokee on the ground smoothly and on the centerline. We taxied over to the Air Tel hotel and parked next to a long line of private jets. We felt kinda funny and kinda cool putting our little Cherokee 140 next to all the big stuff. Why did we go? A dry run, if you will. Thursday we are going to go to the Air Tel hotel for a seminar on mountain flying and we wanted to make sure we knew where we were going.

Special VFR

We took a short flight from El Monte to Santa Monica yesterday in hazy skies and upon listening to the ATIS information for KSMO we paused. Visibility was 6 miles, but they mentioned scattered clouds (or was it broken clouds?) with a ceiling of 800 feet. Ron and I were debating whether or not we could land there all the way up until he contacted the tower. When the controller said the field was "below VFR minimums, say intentions" we knew we had to ask for Special VFR.

Special VFR allows a certificated pilot to enter the airspace with only 1 mile visibility and the requirement for cloud clearance is simply to remain clear of clouds. That, we could do. The controller, however, is not allowed to suggest a Special VFR clearance, it must come from the pilot. This can lead to some confusion and it did when we were ready to return to El Monte.

Upon calling Santa Monica's ground controller Ron was informed that the field was less than VFR conditions and to say intentions. It didn't quite register with Ron that he hadn't asked for Special VFR and so he asked if we could take off on runway 3, the downwind runway, so as to avoid the clouds that were west of the field. The controller said the field conditions were less that VFR and to Say Intentions. Ron looked at me with a quizzical expression. I mouthed "s p e c i a l" and he caught it. "We'd like a Special VFR departure" and those were the magic word. However, after ground gave us the clearance, Ron switched to tower and announced that we were at runway 3 for straight-out departure and didn't mention Special VFR. It started all over again. Tower sent us back to ground to get a clearance (which we already had, but by this time Ron was so confused he just did what the tower told him to do...allthough if he had just mentioned "Special" we would have been done with it). We started the whole routine over again with ground and this time everything went smooth. A straight-out departure with the wind at our back turned out to be just fine, we didn't try to climb aggressively and took extra caution.

Despite our bungling of the communicaiton the tower controller was super friendly and even had a discussion with us about our lunch plans. Of course, the field was pretty quite without the usual barrage of VFR flights. It was a good learning experience as we discussed the requirements for Special VFR all the way back home and into the next day.