Coming out of annual I always feel rusty as it's the longest time I go each year without flying. This year was no exception so I have been training in anticipation of next year's travel. I started by regaining night currency. Then to celebrate I took CC for a nice night flight. We started the engines 30 minutes after sunset which is official night. It had been a clear afternoon but the forecast was for low clouds. Departing we had clear skies but as we headed North, there was a definite undercast.
Even though we departed at official nighttime, when you climb you still get the faint glow of twilight. The phone takes a slow picture and makes it look a lot brighter than it appears to our eyes. You can see the clouds in the picture above. Fernandina was still reporting VFR but looking down if was overcast. We headed South and took a look at the Saint Augustine lights before heading home. Descending through 800' we could see a noticeable haze as the layer was starting to develop.
Today I headed back to the plane and was not sure what I would do, the weather had been fickle from blue skies to overcast. I checked the latest METARs or Meteorological Terminal Air Reports, a fancy way of saying the latest weather observation and Saint Augustine still had clouds even though it was sunny in Jacksonville. I decided to head out for some instrument practice. The best practice is in actual conditions so I filed to Saint Augustine and headed down. In this case my worry was that the weather was improving and that by the time I got there I would not have actual Instrument Meteorological conditions.
As it turned out, it stayed just cloudy enough and I shot the GPS 31. The controller turned me on final with plenty of room but high. I was actually above the glideslope. I was doing this approach with the autopilot. Some systems can't handle a capture from above but the KFC-200 does not care. Rolling onto final I dropped the gear, reduced power and commanded pitch down. The the glideslope centered, the AP locked and I reset approach power. It's important to know how your AP will handle captures from above as you will eventually be put in this situation.
After chatting a bit with local pilots, I headed home. The METARs once again indicated good weather but METARs are history. I had a feeling things were deteriorating so even though I had sunny skies down South, I filed a flight plan that I could pick up in the air if needed. Departing Saint Augustine, I headed over the coast and climbed in blue skies to 4500. What I saw to my West was not the promised broken to scattered clouds but rather a solid layer stretching as far as I could see. So much for METARs, they were history.
I enjoyed floating over the fluffy clouds for a bit but then it was time to head home. Jacksonville approach had my clearance and I was soon tracking direct to JEVAG to shoot the the ILS 32 circle to 5. The controller gave me a tight turn which kept me ahead of two slower aircraft and I was soon on final with needles centered. Since the last approach was on AP, I hand flew this one. The wind was only 7 knots so I asked for a straight in and tower worked it out. This reduced my taxi time and added to the training experience.
The FAA requires pilots to study the current weather and forecasts but that can lull you into a false sense of security. The current observations are not current by the time you read them and the forecasts while generally good can be off by quite a bit. Study the weather but always assume it can be worse than forecast and have a backup plan. Today the worse than expected weather meant I got some good training opportunities which I had not expected.
