taking off from kemt (el monte) runway 1

Beer Run!

My flying buddy Ron and I flew from El Monte to Redlands, California yesterday to visit the Hangar 24 Brewery. They make their own beer there and we like it. I had my Growler (holds about a six-pack) refilled and Ron bought a Growler. After we got back home it sure tasted good!

It was a cloudy day, we stayed low all the way there and had a great flight.

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!

More Barry Schiff Wisdom...

Another great piece of advice from Barry Schiff's seminar I attended. As most people know, when you fly into a high altitude airport everyone is thinking about the takeoff that you will be making when you leave. Will the plane have enough power, is the runway long enough, etc., etc.

But one thing they don't think about is....what if my landing attempt is messed up in some way and I need to make a missed approach (or a go-around for VFR pilots)? You will be in much worse shape for your missed approach because you have not leaned the engine for max power and you have your flaps down. It is all to easy to try a missed approach by shoving the throttle forward, dumping the flaps and then sinking into the runway.

So Barry offers 2 pieces of advice. Number 1 is to practice a missed approach on the downwind leg. Yep. Throttle back to landing power, set your flaps, and then pretend like you're going to do a go-around. Note if the airplane sinks, or mushes, or climbs just fine.

Tip Number 2 was: Maybe you shouldn't use all three notches of flaps. Now this entrigued me because my flying buddy likes to land with 2 notches of flaps and a little faster than me. I've always fretted and worried about this because I didn't know how much this would affect the stall speed. The book only tells you a stall speed for no flaps and full flaps. But Barry explained that the flaps achieve almost all of their affect after you go to the first notch. The next notch only improves the stall speed about 10 percent. The added flaps do contribute to drag and slow the airplane though. The third notch of flaps basically don't help your stall speed, they just add more drag.

So, Barry says why not use one notch of flaps until you are almost to the runway (I forget the term he used...something like "on the property") and then pull the 2nd notch of flaps. So, if your landing is screwy before you get too close to the airport you can do your go-around starting with only one notch of flaps down. And if it goes bad near the runway you're still better off with only two notches instead of all three.

El Monte Takeoff

Taking off from an airport is a unique experience. Here, the little airplane that could (Piper Cherokee 140) takes off from El Monte Airport (KEMT) early in the morning and turns left crosswind.

Father's Day Spin

After a nice BBQ at pilot buddy Ron's house, the inevitable words finally were spoken, "Wanna take a spin around the patch?" There is only one answer to that question and so we headed down to El Monte Airport at 6:15 p.m. and pulled N6794J out of hangar Tango 4. Wait, that IS a tongue-twister, isn't it? Sometimes we accidentally say Hango Tanger 4 and the other day the ATC ground guy make the same mistake. We all had a good laugh about it. We asked if in the future could we just say "taxi to Tango" and he affirmed that it would be just fine by him. Anyway, I digress. So, we fired up Juliet and headed toward the Paradise VOR at 2500 feet. Called Chino tower to transition through their airspace and they oblighed. Once out of Chino airspace and pretty much over the VOR we contacted Riverside tower and asked to transition through their airspace. With the affirmative answer we turned North/Northeast and headed for Rialto airport. Just read an article in GA news about the "Art Scholl Airport" and how it's going to be closing down so we thought we'd take a visit. It was a beautiful day to fly with the sun low on the horizon. Everything had a special glow to it and and the fact that two fathers were out flying on Father's Day made it more special. We ended each final call to the various airports with a "Happy Father's Day to all" and were acknowledged with a double click on the mic.

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.