Aviator90 Episode 37

[musical introduction]

Man: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator90 from Angle of
Attack. This episode we are going to go in a bit more depth than
usual and get back to some VOR navigation. So let’s talk about the
flight plan.
[0:46] Today we will be flying from Albany, Oregon, which is Sierra
12, to a place called Jasper Ridge, which has an identifier of 77
Sierra. However, we are going to use the Corvallis and Eugene VOR’s
in route which should pose some challenges.

[1:06] Along the way I’ll teach you more about VOR navigation that
builds upon what we learned in the first VOR navigation episode, if
you remember when we went from Newport to Astoria. So let’s jump in
the cockpit and get this party started.

[1:21] All right, headed for the switches, we’re going to go
through the alternator and battery as always. We are going to turn
on the magnetos to both. This thing is kind of hard to see so you
usually have to check to make sure all the detents are right. It’s
ready for the start. Avionics off. Turn the nav and beacon lights
on. Now let’s see, let’s do power now.

[1:51] Full rich on the mixtures. Sea level. Prop is all the way
forward and then we crack the throttle a bit. And I will check the
trend. That is set for take-off as you can see below the throttle,
so we are good there. Then we are just going to go back and we can
now start.

[2:10] So hold the brakes and then we shall start. I’m going to
introduce some fuel to the cylinders with the fuel pump. Should be
enough, just a couple seconds worth and start.

[motor starts]

[2:26] And we have a start. So now we are all started up and I will
increase the RPM to about 1,000 RPM. We’ll just let that warm up
for a second here. I’ll turn the avionics on. That’s all for now.
And then, I’m close to the fuel pump over here so what I’m going to
do is pull forward out of the way just in case someone comes in and
they need to use the fuel pump.

[2:54] I don’t want to be in the way so I’m just going to taxi over
here a little bit and do all my pre-flight stuff out of the way.
Just being polite to other pilots in the area. So we will just come
over here and try to line up somewhat. Just face, I guess it would
be east in this case.

[3:20] And then we will go through most of our pre-flight stuff.
We’re not going to do a run-up on the ramp, that is kind of an
unwritten rule. But I am going to tune my radio to 122.8 which is
the common traffic advisory. Let’s see, 22.8. There we go. Got it
and switch it over to the active. Good to go there.

[3:58] And then, since we can’t get the weather I’m just going to
hit B on the keyboard, or Bravo, and that’ll set our altimeter as
you just saw it jump there. And that’s the lazy man’s way of
setting the altimeter within flight sim.

[4:10] But we were aware of it. We were aware that we needed to do
that so that is a plus, I would say.

[4:19] And then, I already have the VOR set and the Nav 1, here.
So, we will identify that now by clicking here. I’m not picking up
a signal on it yet. So, I’m not too sure why that’s happening.
Maybe, we just have some building obstructions or ground
obstructions. And that’s why we can’t pick up the actual nav
signal.

[4:54] I don’t know. But anyway, we’ve got that identified. You
just heard the Morse code. That’s on the actual map, next to the
VOR information. So, you can follow along if you want. I didn’t on
that one. Then, this is just our little VOR instrument over here.
Pretty simple. We’re going to be headed mostly south to the
Corvallis VOR, but it’s more like a heading of two-one-zero. So,
I’m just going to set that in.

[5:29] Actually, let’s see, I’m trying to think. I’m trying to
think if it’s the reciprocal or if it’s the actual two-one-zero. I
don’t know. I’ll figure it out. Either way, we’ll get to it. All
right. So, I’m going to… I just turned the transponder on
standby. Sorry, I didn’t tell you guys that. Then, just going to
look around the area, here. Looking at the windsock to see what
direction we’re going to takeoff. We’re going to be taking off
toward the south. It’s lightly favoring that runway.

[6:14] A wind that light isn’t a huge deal unless you’re worried
about takeoff performance. I’m going to turn on the taxi light,
here. And then, we can start to taxi out to the runway. And we’re
going to taxi to runway one -six, today. So, I will power up, here.
And we’ll start our taxi, and then I’ll make a radio call.
[speaking on radio] Albany traffic, Cessna two-eight-six, Delta
Lima, taxi runway one-six via Alpha. [pause]

[7:05] And now, we’re just going to do the old taxi, here. Nothing
spectacular. It’s not a complex route. Just right here along the
main taxiway to the runway. And this is a good time to check and
make sure you’re going to the right runway. There have been
instances where people have gone to the wrong runway. One of which
was actually an accident several years ago. Pretty sad. Some Sierra
J pilots took off on the wrong runway.

So, anyway, just keeping it center line, here. I’m doing quite the
dance with my feet. I did a blog post about: [7:36] From rock
drummer to pilot. That’s what it was called. And if you can see the
rudder pedals at the bottom of the video. It’s just, kind of, a
little dance you do. You just control that way. It just takes
really light inputs and you get everything good to go there.

[8:04] So, while I’m doing that, I’ll do flight controls, so
everything is free and correct. Then, we’ll pull up here and, kind
of, see where we’re going to pull off to. Slow it up a little bit.
I don’t want to be doing my run-up with my back to those cars. I
don’t want to spray rocks into them or anything. Not that there’s
lots of rocks laying around but just polite. You never know. I
wouldn’t want to crack someone’s windshield.

[8:42] So what we’re going to do is just kind of line up here on a
45 or a little less than that. And then we can just kind of see
down the final corridor there. See where people are landing and
what not. And then we will do our pre-flight checks here. Like the
run up and stuff like that. All right. So I’m just going to look
here at the bottom right. Look at the RPM. We’re going to push it
up to around 1, 700. Also make sure everything is set there.

[9:47] And then I’m just going, I’m going to do my magneto checks
from this view. And that way, I don’t know. That way I don’t have
to switch back and forth. The old switch back and forth I’ve been
doing before kind of gets old. So let’s check this. And we did left
both and right both and everything checks out on that. So we’ll
cycle the prop now. Everything’s good there.

[10:24] I’m going to pull the mixture out just a little bit and
cycle the prop just one or two more times. Everything’s in the
green, looks good. That pretty much does it. Let’s just do our
lights, camera, action checklist. So, if you remember, you turn on
the landing lights and strobe lights. You turn on the transponder,
and then we also do the actions, the looking around. All right.

[11:08] So in addition to that, I am going to do 10° of flaps today
because the runway is shorter and we are a full load. So that means
we’ll get better takeoff performance for what we’re doing. All
right, so I just turned on the strobe, the landing, and then I
turned off the taxi light. Now I am turning the transponder on to
altitude reporting and clear the final. Look’s good. All right, so
we can power up and get out of here. While we do that, I will make
a radio call.

[over radio]

[11:50] Albany traffic, Cessna Two Eight Six Delta Lima taking one
six departure southbound.

[11:58] As easy as that. Right now if you wanted to, I’m not going
to, but you could do another last second check on the final, just
to be sure. You can never be too careful.

[12:12] Then we’ll just pull around here and line up on center
line. Make sure we get all lined up here. This will be a little
different, I have that notch of flaps. We’re not going to do a
short field takeoff per say, we just want that extra little bit of
performance. So I am going to do full power and hold the brakes,
before I release for the takeoff. Real slow, here comes the power,
and smoothly, smoothly. Then, we monitor the engine instruments
while we are in full power. Everything looks good. We can go, so
release the brakes and here we go.

[12:46] A little light forward pressure on the yoke to keep that
nose wheel steering correctly. We’re bumped on down looking at the
air stream, it’s alive. Engine is still in the green. Now, we’re
looking for rotation speed. Here comes the rotation. Here it comes,
here it comes. We can lift off now and very smooth, not exactly a
high performing take off, but we’re off the ground. We’re at a safe
air speed, so everything is good there.

[13:12] And then, we will get a bit of a straight climb here and
get some altitude before we turn on that 2120 heading. And now, we
will head that direction. So, we have plenty of air speed. I can
also put up that notch of flaps that I used, no more need for that.

[13:33] Then, we will start to look for this VOR navigation. By
this point we should have a signal, assuming everything is correct
which I am starting to ask myself or question myself whether it is
or not. Something’s out of place, and now we can trouble shoot.

[13:59] One thing I noticed is that instead of a heading indicator
we have what is called an HSI, horizontal situation indicator, and
I have a feeling that that is Nav 1, and Nav two is the radio below
us. The HIS is Nav 1. The one we’ve been looking at is Nav 2, and
so that signal’s not in there. I need to put 115.4 in the bottom
Nav. So let’s do that now, 115.4 and let’s see. Yep, there it goes.
That needle came alive and we can light it up.

[14:48] You can get the needle and turn the dial until it’s
straight toward the station and then it will tell you, basically,
what heading to turn to the station. Makes it pretty simple. So you
can see that now. We are basically on the reciprocal, actually,
right now. So I’m actually going to, instead of going 0-3-0 for the
heading on the VOR, the bearing, I’m going to turn the opposite,
which is-you can look at the bottom of the dial, it’s just like 2-1
-something-so we’ll haul this around here until we can get that.

[15:31] These, here, alright, kind of in between degrees, there we
go. That should be the one we’ll follow, and then we can turn to
that particular heading that the radial is dialed into and that
should take us to the station. So that’s a much better situation.

[15:49] I’m going to adjust my power now that we are good in the
climb, and after takeoff, so mixture, prop, and power. Make sure
everything’s in the green. I’m just going to pretty much keep it
full open power today.

[16:03] And then I’m going to turn on this little dial down here.
This is the distance measuring equipment, and I will turn it on.
See, so right now the top number is distance to the station. The
middle number is our speed, and the bottom number is our time to
the station. So we’re seven nautical miles away, we’re going 119
knots right now, and we are three minutes away from the station.

[16:39] So we’re coming up on our cruise altitude today, 3500 feet,
because the majority of our route will be an easterly route. Now,
technically, the way you’re supposed to file that is to do your
initial cruise altitude, which… We’re still going to be on a
westerly heading for that initial heading, if that makes sense. I
don’t think I just made sense.

[17:08] But we’re going to be on a westerly heading, which would be
even thousands plus five hundred for what, like two or three
minutes. And then be on the rest of the route for 15 to 20 minutes.

[17:21] I forgot to turn off my lights, turn off strobe and
landing, actually not strobe. Got it.

[17:28] All right, so, what I was saying is westerly is odd
thousands, or even thousands plus 500. And because most of our
route, and it’s a short flight, is in an easterly heading, and
you’ll see here as we turn to the left after we intercept this VOR.

[17:45] I am going to choose an odd thousands plus 500, just
because we’ll be on that type of altitude the majority of the time.
And we’ll only be on the initial altitude for a few minutes. So
that just, it doesn’t make sense to do that, just kind of a
judgment call that I’ll make on that one.

[18:04] So we are getting pretty dang close to the station. We are
currently three nautical miles away, two minutes. And I am off to
the right, so I’m going to slowly adjust for that. But as you
remember, the sensitivity of the VOR deviations is much smaller, or
the sensitivity is greater the closer you are in.

[18:26] So you can see that I just turned a little bit here to the
right and already that needle started to track in.

[18:33] Now, if you see the arrow at the bottom of the VOR dial,
the one on the left. That is the To indication, and when we pass a
station, that one will point behind us which means we are now going
to a From indication, so when it switches from a To to a From, then
that means that we have passed the station, that is what is called
station passage.

[19:08] So we are currently one out of Mallway says one minute, we
are just looking for that station passage. Here on the dial, once
we are, then we can turn on the heading that’s on the chart, which
is 154. And that should take us outbound nicely, and try to pull up
this dial here, here we go.

[19:30] All right, so we’re looking for that station passage. You
can see the needle start to dive off, that’s an indication you’re
close. There we go, no signal and then a From indication. So that
is station passage. We were right over the station, pretty much,
maybe off a couple of feet, and now we can dial in the next
heading, which I’ll do my best to get here, which is 154, and we
will go and track that.

[19:55] Now, because we overflew the station, we basically have to
get back to the VOR. So I am going to turn just a little more than
154, say 145 or something? And then that’ll allow me to intercept
the new radial that we would like to follow. So I hope that makes
sense. We’re still at 3, 500 here. I’ll just make another radial
call here, kind of a good time.

[20:30] Corvallis traffic, Cessna Q86DL, is over the city 3,500
feet southbound.

[20:49] Alright, so from here it is pretty dang simple, we are just
going to follow, we are just going to follow that radial. We are
going to have to intercept it, so as I said, we’re coming back to
the left more or more of an easterly heading to get back on track.
I’ll just even give it a little more heading here to intercept, and
then we will catch that.

[21:22] Once we intercept that and start to follow that radio, then
we can dial in. Maybe, we should do that now. We can dial in the
Eugene VOR in NAV number one. So, let’s do that. That’s 112. So,
112.9 is the Eugene VOR, and then we’ll do…let’s see here. Let me
pull up this HSI here. Then, we’ll dial in 354. Let’s see. Is that
right? Let me check the map here. It looks like 332 is our heading.
I will pull that in for us.

[22:44] All right. So we have the Corvallis VOR which is behind us.
It’s pretty much dialed in, and I can turn back to my right to get
on that 154 heading. Then, I also have the Eugene VOR which is
tuned in. You’ll notice that we have a two indication on the Eugene
VOR which means that we are going to the station. And on the
Corvalis VOR we have a firm indication. And both needles are pretty
much lined up together so that means we are on the Victor airway.

[23:20] And then here on the DME, the distance measuring equipment,
I can actually switch this over to tell me Nav1, so it’s just a
little white button, top right corner. That switches between Nav1
and 2, tells you the again, distance, speed, and time for that
travel. And that should make things pretty simple there.

[23:52] So that’s pretty much it for this time. This is a pretty
short flight. Otherwise, at this point it really starts to get
boring because you are just navigating and going through the skies.
One thing we will be doing as we get up here to Eugene, which will
mix it up a bit, is we are going to give the Eugene tower a call.
And we technically aren’t required to because we should be at a
good enough altitude, maybe.

[24:28] But at the same time I usually like to call the controlling
agencies and just make sure that I am in communication with them
when I am coming through or near their air space. So even though
you may not be penetrating their air space, I think it’s still
smart to give them a call and let them know where you are if you
are close.

[24:48] And since we’re going to be passing right over the airport
I’m going to dial in their tower frequency, which is 18…Let’s
see, 118.9. And so we’ll dial that in there, switch it over. And at
10 miles I will give Eugene tower a call. So we will bump along
here, shoot the breeze, and wait for that. So only in a few seconds
here we shall give them a call.

[25:43] Looking for 10 miles on the DME. There it is.

[25:50] All right, let’s give them a call.

[25:52] Eugene tower, Cessna 286 Delta Lima, 10 miles north,
transitioning to Jasper Ridge. And we are currently 3, 500.

Tower: [26:02] Cessna 286 Delta Lima, Eugene Tower, Maintain VFR. Advise
this frequency leaving the Eugene class Delta.

Man: [26:10] Wilco. 286 Delta Lima.
[26:13] All right guys. So that does it for now.

[26:15] What I’m going to do is I’m going to allow you to navigate
to the station on your own. We will pick things back up once we get
over the airport, in which case we are going to make out turn
towards Jasper Ridge. And then we will try to look for it.

[26:30] So I will talk to you guys in just a few seconds here. And
this will save us about four minutes on the video, so hang with me.

[27:13] All right. So we are really close to the station. We are
going to watch for station passage here, as we talked about before.

[27:22] We are one mile away, one minute away, so should be any
second here.

[27:30] We’ll just wait for it. Still waiting for it, there’s the
station passage. We’ve got a two to a from indication. Now I’m
going to turn on the heading, about one zero zero and head towards
Jasper Ridge and we’ll see if we can’t find it.

[27:54] I’ve never been to this airport before so it might be a
challenge but we’ll see. Those grass strips or even gravel are hard
to spot sometimes so it’s going to be kind of difficult.

[28:11] All right, we’re rolling out on a heading of one zero zero
and we will start to come down here.

[28:44] This is a cool fuel indicator that this aircraft has. It’s
pretty nifty; it tells us a lot of stuff. If you hit gallons
remaining, you can see that gallons used, gallons remaining. You
can also switch this knob to different information. Not all of it
works but some of it does.

[29:02] You can see your endurance there, it says we can currently
fly for 6.2 hours, which is a long time. That’s a lot of endurance,
that’s how long you can stay in the air and it might not be a bad
idea to keep it on, endurance, but I’m just going to keep it on the
amount of fuel we have left so I don’t really need to mess with
right now, it’s not necessarily important.

[29:32] So, we will just start getting ready to come on down, and
what I’m going to do is I’m going to fast forward here for a few
minutes and we are going to get forward to the Jasper Ridge
Airport.

[29:51] Keep looking for the airport. You’ll see me searching
around, and I will see you guys in a few minutes as we get closer
to Jasper Ridge.

[silence]

[29:59] All right. So, I’m going to involve you in this search
process. And this will show you just how difficult it can be to
spot an airport. So, we have this little area down in here that
might be a grass strip. We have an area over there that looks like
it might be our gravel strip. So, we will go over and check that
out.

[30:59] So basically, you’re looking for fields and different voids
in buildings. So yeah, that looks pretty close to an airport, but I
don’t know. It doesn’t look like there’s enough buildings there, or
any buildings. It looks like just a nicely plowed farm. And you
don’t want to land on some farmer’s land without his permission.
I’m sure he would not like that.

[31:26] So we don’t want to do that. I’m going to come to the right
here a little bit so that airport is off to my left and then I can
look down and see if that’s it. If it’s not, then the search
continues.

[31:38] So all the while, while you are doing this, you can compare
landmarks with the chart to what you’re doing. And that’s
definitely not the airport. That’s not a strip, so we are again
looking. I wonder if it’s off to my right. I don’t see anything
over there that looks like it could be it. I really think we are
too far to the west still. I think that would be too close to that
other airport as seen on the chart, which would just make it out of
reach. So I’m still not seeing it.

[32:15] I am going to turn northbound now, well more like northeast
bound and then we’ll go and check it out again over here because I
think if we kind of hug that other side of the valley we might be
able to see it. And all the while I’m scanning out the window
looking for the airport, terrorizing the town. I’m sure they’re
wondering what’s going on.

[32:48] I will continue to look. It’s very, very difficult to spot
airports sometimes. So we are looking. Nothing down there. Again,
you can use your chart and try to see where you’re at. And what I
see is that there’s kind of a void. There’s no town where this
particular airport is. And it looks like it’s on the west side of
the river. See, it’s not over there. That’s just a field. Not the
west side but the east side of the river, so I think it’s over here
somewhere.

[33:33] I’m going to power up and kind of climb here. It might be
up in these hills so we’ll look here, too. Not too far in the
hills. It can’t be way back here because it should be pretty close
to that river. I’m still not seeing anything. The clearings are
fine. Those are just meadows, it looks like. So still nothing.

[34:07] A whole lot of nothing. So I’m just going to turn
northbound and go along this ridge and see if I can spot it. Maybe
even a look down to the valley gives us a good viewpoint from a
different direction. I’m still not seeing anything.

[34:33] All these clearings are pretty normal, I don’t see any
grass strips. Buildings, just some roads, let’s see… That road on
the middle kind of looks like something, but it just doesn’t look
right. It’s not right, it’s not a strip there. It’s not on the
south end of town, hmm…

[34:58] And now we’re getting back in the population, and you can
see population on the map on the sectional chart. And that is
depicted as yellow, so that is typically densely populated areas.
So we’re too far north of Jasper now.

[35:21] Having a heck of a time finding us airport. So I’m going to
turn back to the west, the south west here, see if you can spot it.
We’re scanning still, although in town, it’s going to be up here.

[35:45] I’m still coming around, coming around the mountain. You
would’ve cleared your way back, made sure terrain was OK for that
turn before you actually did it because that could’ve been a
dangerous turn. Still looking for the airport here, see if it’s on
the edge here. Well, would you look there. There it is. Finally,
we’ve got a hangar, we’ve got a grass strip. That looks like where
we’re going.

[36:26] So I’m going to go straight ahead here. It looks like
there’s pretty much one way in which is to the south, so I am going
to go straight ahead here and then I’m going to do a right hand
descending, very low power turn and we are going to get to that
safe flap operating range. And I don’t want to do too steep of a
bank because I am going to introduce flaps during this.

[36:51] So during this process I want to make sure that my aircraft
is completely coordinated, that we have plenty of airspeed and we
can start to bring those flaps down. Let’s hurry and turn the
landing light on, quickly, quickly. We’re just going to bring this
on around, see if we can’t drop this thing in here at Jasper Ridge.

All right, it should be coming around. There it is. And I am idle
power, full flaps. And the aircraft is still just wanting to go
really, really fast and this is not looking good. I’m going to try
to do what’s called a forward slip to land here, basically full
right rudder then we keep directional control of the
[unintelligible 37: [37:18] 46] in the opposite direction.

[37:48] We’re just way too fast. This isn’t going to work. So I am
going to perform a go-around full power, as you already heard and
climb straight ahead and pull up the first two notches of flaps
immediately. That will get us climbing. And then, I will set up for
more of a structured pattern here. So, you can see why a pattern is
actually pretty dang important. It keeps things very structured.

[38:18] With that said, this airport doesn’t exactly have the nice
visual landmarks around it. We’re basically in our right crosswind
now. We’re going to come around here, and we will look for our
right down wind. The clouds disappeared. That’s scary.

[38:47] All right. So, there it is. You can see off to your right,
just out that window. We are on a right downward basically. We’re
going a lot slower this time. I still have that first notch of
flaps in. So I want to make sure that I get nice and set up this
time, a much smoother approach.

[39:06] So, I am at idle power now. I’m basically going to get full
flaps before I bring this thing on in, and we are just going to
ease on down to make sure that we are taking it a lot slower this
time. This should do the trick. So, we’re on about a right base
now.

[39:34] You can see we’re not as high. We’re breathing shallow
right now, so I am full flaps and just a little bit of power, not
much because I’m basically level right now. All right, so no power.
We’re idling now. I’m going to try to bring this down on in. Here
we go. Here we go, very intense.

[40:08] All right. We’ve got to get it down. Got to get it down.
Got to get it down. Got to get it down. OK, we’re down.

[40:17] Full back pressure, brakes, brakes! Here we go! Oh no, oh
no, no, no, no! [machine noise] Oh boy. We are cutting trees. This
is not good. I do not know how the aircraft’s held together.

[40:41] Ah, I have craft detection off. And now you can see exactly
why.

[40:46] So, what did I learn from this? I learned that two go
rounds is completely fine. My aircraft is still looking like it’s
flyable. If this was real life, it would no longer be flyable. And,
at the same time, if it was real life, that depth perception of our
speed and the runway and everything would have been a lot easier to
perceive and I would have known that it would have been impossible.

[41:12] However, we crashed. It’s an accident. And I’m not going to
say it happens to everybody, because it doesn’t. But just remember
that even good pilots can make mistakes, and even you can screw up.

Now here’s the challenge: [41:24] the first person that can record
a successful landing at Jasper Creek gets a free Angle of Attack
product of their choice. Whether that be now or in the future, that
could be a 747 product, could be a 767 product, it could be a
subscription to Aviator Pro, or if you want to check out the Pilots
Speak eBook, you’re welcome to do that as well.

[41:53] But you need to film this, just a really simple filming of
your Jasper landing. And the first person to post that, say to
YouTube or Vimeo or somewhere else, I will give that product. So go
out there and try it out, input your video, and you could win. And
that will make you a better pilot than me for a day.

[42:16] Fly safe, fly smart, and I will see you next time. Until
then, throttle on!

Transcription by CastingWords