JHW
En-Route
A few rambling thoughts from our last couple days (beechlist x-post)
Early morning on the 23rd I was woken by a frantic phone call from someone I’ve only met in passing. It was a friend of a friend who is crewing on one of the smaller boats in the boxing day Sydney-hobart race. They had damaged something on the boat on the way up to Sydney from Tasmania and arrived late. It was worse than they first thought and the desperately needed some parts from their home on the north coast of Tasmania. After collecting what they needed it was far too much to put in the 210 they had available, and they wanted to know if there was any way I could make a run to Sydney in the king air.
After a little sidebar the girls agreed that yes, they’d spend Christmas in Sydney and have a little warmth compared to Tasmania. It became apparent that the plane would be stuffed to the gills so we bought them one-way jetstar tickets for ~$100 apiece (hard to compete with that).
As it turns out I was glad they weren’t along. I’ve spend the last year flying between a couple dairy farm strips and old mining airports. No congested airspace of any kind. It was an IFR day the whole way up and approaching Sydney I started to make mistakes. I missed a couple radio calls and got a vector wrong. I’d like to blame it on the rushed nature of the trip but the truth is I am just plain rusty. Probably more rusty than I’ve ever been. While I didn’t do anything grossly unsafe, I felt very unsafe. Constantly behind both the airplane and the controllers. I haven’t been so glad to land a plane in a long time.
We unloaded all the gear into a hired van and the sailor’s were gone, I might have liked to see their boat but they were going to be very busy and the last thing they needed was a tourist. So I met the girls and spent the night at the rocks. Christmas eve morning the girls wanted to see bondi beach. It was windy, cool, cloudy. Not a nice day at all. My 9-year old proclaimed that we should be at home for Christmas and this beach was no better than the beaches in Tasmania and it had too many people on it. We couldn’t argue with any of that so we packed up, went to the airport and headed home.
It was another IFR day and I had a tinge of nervousness copying a clearance that included multiple altitudes and waypoints. The further we got from that airspace the calmer I got. The radio got quiet crossing bass strait and although we couldn’t see the island for the clouds, it started to feel like home. Dropping out of the clouds on an instrument approach I looked over my shoulder and saw the hills of ben lohman sticking up into the clouds. I can tell right away from the shape of the hill that there was about 2500ft of ceiling above the valley. That’s worth a look, we cancel and turn toward the farm. There is a smaller range of hills to clear and after passing them I can see a bright spot way down near tunbridge. If this doesn’t work out for the farm there is a glider club there with wide open approaches, so I’m good to continue. Coming down the last valley to the farm in a light drizzle with the hills to the east disappearing into clouds, I found myself completely at peace and my mind drifted to the thread here recently where someone was saying they needed to get their instrument rating.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that scud running down a valley with obscured granite is safer than IFR flying. As a blanket statement, it’s not. But it occurred to me that this part of the flight where I’m in my element doing something I’ve practiced many times, I was safer than the previous day making an instrument approach in controlled airspace with guaranteed obstruction clearance. We play the way we practice. An instrument rating and fancy avionics are great. But no matter what piece of paper we have in our wallet, if we don’t practice in the right playground then it’s just another example of what’s legal isn’t necessarily safe and vice-versa.
So anyway, sorry for the rambling but I just found myself struck by the dichotomy of how I felt flying each end of the trip.
Early morning on the 23rd I was woken by a frantic phone call from someone I’ve only met in passing. It was a friend of a friend who is crewing on one of the smaller boats in the boxing day Sydney-hobart race. They had damaged something on the boat on the way up to Sydney from Tasmania and arrived late. It was worse than they first thought and the desperately needed some parts from their home on the north coast of Tasmania. After collecting what they needed it was far too much to put in the 210 they had available, and they wanted to know if there was any way I could make a run to Sydney in the king air.
After a little sidebar the girls agreed that yes, they’d spend Christmas in Sydney and have a little warmth compared to Tasmania. It became apparent that the plane would be stuffed to the gills so we bought them one-way jetstar tickets for ~$100 apiece (hard to compete with that).
As it turns out I was glad they weren’t along. I’ve spend the last year flying between a couple dairy farm strips and old mining airports. No congested airspace of any kind. It was an IFR day the whole way up and approaching Sydney I started to make mistakes. I missed a couple radio calls and got a vector wrong. I’d like to blame it on the rushed nature of the trip but the truth is I am just plain rusty. Probably more rusty than I’ve ever been. While I didn’t do anything grossly unsafe, I felt very unsafe. Constantly behind both the airplane and the controllers. I haven’t been so glad to land a plane in a long time.
We unloaded all the gear into a hired van and the sailor’s were gone, I might have liked to see their boat but they were going to be very busy and the last thing they needed was a tourist. So I met the girls and spent the night at the rocks. Christmas eve morning the girls wanted to see bondi beach. It was windy, cool, cloudy. Not a nice day at all. My 9-year old proclaimed that we should be at home for Christmas and this beach was no better than the beaches in Tasmania and it had too many people on it. We couldn’t argue with any of that so we packed up, went to the airport and headed home.
It was another IFR day and I had a tinge of nervousness copying a clearance that included multiple altitudes and waypoints. The further we got from that airspace the calmer I got. The radio got quiet crossing bass strait and although we couldn’t see the island for the clouds, it started to feel like home. Dropping out of the clouds on an instrument approach I looked over my shoulder and saw the hills of ben lohman sticking up into the clouds. I can tell right away from the shape of the hill that there was about 2500ft of ceiling above the valley. That’s worth a look, we cancel and turn toward the farm. There is a smaller range of hills to clear and after passing them I can see a bright spot way down near tunbridge. If this doesn’t work out for the farm there is a glider club there with wide open approaches, so I’m good to continue. Coming down the last valley to the farm in a light drizzle with the hills to the east disappearing into clouds, I found myself completely at peace and my mind drifted to the thread here recently where someone was saying they needed to get their instrument rating.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that scud running down a valley with obscured granite is safer than IFR flying. As a blanket statement, it’s not. But it occurred to me that this part of the flight where I’m in my element doing something I’ve practiced many times, I was safer than the previous day making an instrument approach in controlled airspace with guaranteed obstruction clearance. We play the way we practice. An instrument rating and fancy avionics are great. But no matter what piece of paper we have in our wallet, if we don’t practice in the right playground then it’s just another example of what’s legal isn’t necessarily safe and vice-versa.
So anyway, sorry for the rambling but I just found myself struck by the dichotomy of how I felt flying each end of the trip.
.
