Canada wildfire smoke and GA

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mryan75

Pattern Altitude
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Jul 28, 2014
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mryan75
I'm sort of surprised there's no discussion of this. What is everyone's take? Around here (KRME) the forecast for today is sky clear, visibility 3-5 miles in "mist", which is of course wildfire smoke. Beyond any safety concern, I just wonder if it's good for an air-cooled engine.

Any thoughts?
 
Unlikely to cause any issues with GA. Particles are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. More harmful to the pilot's lungs. The major impact is that visibilities are in the IFR range. Area airports (KVGC, KRME, KSYR, KITH, KBGM, KFZY) are reporting visibilities under 3 miles most of the day. I'm seriously thinking of filing and logging some approaches.
 
I was out yesterday, Eastern NC - I didn't notice it all that much on the ground at home, or on the drive to the airport. But once airborne, above about 4K MSL it was IMC. I was practicing approaches and didn't need the foggles until descending. I could see below kinda OK, but there was no horizon. We had an Osprey called as traffic, thousand above, and we could barely make him out until we closed to about a mile.
 
Here in northeast Ohio I’m staying indoors with my filtrete furnace filter
 
Flew this morning from GAI (north of DC); the plan was to do some pattern work at FDK. GAI was 5 miles in haze, while at the time FDK was reporting 3 miles. By the time we were in the proximity of FDK, they had dropped back down to 2 1/2 in haze. We considered some airwork but the horizon wasn’t really visible the further north we proceeded. So we turned around back to the GAI hornets nest.
 
chemgeek said:
Unlikely to cause any issues with GA. Particles are less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. More harmful to the pilot's lungs. The major impact is that visibilities are in the IFR range. Area airports (KVGC, KRME, KSYR, KITH, KBGM, KFZY) are reporting visibilities under 3 miles most of the day. I'm seriously thinking of filing and logging some approaches.
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I would love to know how it went for you if you did go. We had 3 NM at Griffiss and I decided not to go; my buddy who was flying safety pilot said he would have gone. We were doing this to help me regain my instrument currency and neither of us are legal right now. Worst case we could have gotten a pop-up, but I felt discretion was the better part of valor and called it off.
 
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