Dan’s Pilot Times

This past Sunday I finally made it to Kealy’s Kafe at Janesville (KJVL)!  I was supposed to fly there 2 weekends ago, but because of an airsick passenger, I had to turn that trip around.  The weather for the day was brisk and cold (around 15-20°F), slightly windy, but not a cloud in the sky.  After getting the aircraft keys and looking at the aircraft log, I saw that the Cessna 172SP hadn’t flown in about 3 days.  Furthermore, once I got to the plane to pre-flight it, the engine heater wasn’t plugged in.  To compound that, when checking the oil level, the oil was a very slick sludge.  I knew it would be difficult to get the plane started.  Sure enough, I almost didn’t get the plane started and almost didn’t make it to Kealy’s yet again.

As per the 172SP checklist, before attempting to start a cold engine, you are supposed to run the auxiliary fuel pump until the fuel flow meter starts to move.  It’s only supposed to take under 10 seconds to get that needle to move. I turned on the pump and let 5 seconds tick by, then 10, 15, 18… and no movement.  I decided to stop the pump then (I didn’t want to flood the engine) and try cranking.  Nothing.  I tried the pump a little more, still no movement.  Cranked again and nothing.  Kept cranking, and I hear the battery starting to get taxed and run down.  I opened the door and looked outside and saw fuel under the exhaust…I definitely flooded the engine (crap).  I follow the flooded engine procedure in the operating handbook: to basically crank with the throttle open (to use up the fuel in the flooded engine).  I hear it starting to use up the fuel, but nothing firing well, the battery is definitely getting dangerously low.   I decide to plug the plane in and let it warm up for 5 minutes (and hopefully recharge the battery a bit).  After 5 minutes, I try the flooded engine procedure again without success (crap again).  I decide I’m going wait another 5 minutes and try one final time.  Luckily, that’s what the plane needed.  After 6 minutes (one minute extra for good luck), the battery had just enough juice and the flooded engine procedure worked!  The plane started and I let it warm for quite a while before starting on our journey.

The trip to Janesville went fine.  I actually did some reading up on the autopilot system this past week so I was able to fully use it to navigate to Janesville.  That autopilot making flying way too easy.  Lunch at Kealy’s was very nice, I’ll definitely go there again.  It was great to have a little more experience flying into a towered airport as well.

The plane started fine for our return leg, but it was funny/reassuring to see that the pilot parked next to us at Janesville had trouble starting his engine (although I never wish to see troubles for any pilot).  This morning I read another pilot at Westosha (Evan) had scary troubles of his own this weekend.  Apparently it was a rough weekend to fly.  Luckily everything worked out fine for me.   Oh, and I DID plug the plane in when I returned it at the end of the day…I wouldn’t want the next person to have the same difficulties starting the engine as I did.

I logged 1.2 hours of pilot-in-command time this flight.

I had my first cross country (with instructor) yesterday and it was a BLAST!  My plan had us doing a large loop to the north and west of Westosha – hitting Dodge County (UNU), Madison (MSN), Janesville (JVL), and back to Westosha (5K6).  Being a computer-guy, I used a lot of the free online and offline software tools available to help me plan my flight with ease.  My favorites are SkyVector.com and CSC DUATS Golden Eagle flight prep software.  They are both free and you get most of the hard calculations of flight planning out the way.  Furthermore, the Golden Eagle software pulls the weather and winds aloft from DUATS, so it’ll calculate EVERYTHING for you if you want.  This being my first cross-country, though, and since I’d have my CFI double-checking everything, I went the old-fashioned route and did the calculations by hand (trusty E6B) and then put everything in an Excel spreadsheet so I could keep all the pertinent information handy and printed neatly.

The flight itself went very smooth.  The weather looked threatening, but my weather briefer said nothing should really be an issue…and he was right.  The long leg (59.0 nm) to Dodge County was a little cloudy along the way for the first half, so we kept a little lower than anticipated (2500 ft.)  Other than that, though, the afternoon was gorgeous!  I was hitting all my checkpoints +/- 40 seconds of my calculations, which I was very happy with.  The landing at Dodge County went perfect, I probably could have went touch-and-go, but I felt I had to full stop just to say I really was somewhere for more than 30 seconds.  I should mention that my plane doesn’t have any GPS or LORAN navigation systems, just VOR radios.  So, my pilotage was dead reckoning and VOR tracking (the good ‘ole stuff)!

After Dodge, we headed over to Madison (MSN).  I was very excited about this leg because this was the first “big” airport I would be flying into.  I’d get to really test my radio skills and well, I think it’s just cool to land at the same airport United jets fly into!  Sure enough, approaching along the same time with me was a Skywest jet.  It felt very cool to be sharing the air and radiowaves with the big boys (even though honestly I hate flying as a passenger on those commuter jets).  Apparently our controller was in training as well, since during a few calls he had to repeat himself and even his instructor clarified a direction from him.  My CFI thought it was hilarious. 

After Madison we headed over to Janesville for another towered approach (which I wanted more experience with).  That went very smoothly again and before I knew it I was touching-and-going and back to Westosha.  The last leg to Westosha was quick and back under the overcast sky, almost a little depressing.  But, upon landing, I knew I had really GONE to places!  Plus, this was really the first flight where I got to enjoy flying the plane and navigating, less worrying about time critical manuevers and such….it was liberating and like I said before, a BLAST!

This flight I logged 2.4 hours of dual cross-country flight.  My next flight will probably be my first solo cross-country…where to go, where to go!?