Old Man Winter

It was cold Tuesday morning.  Not mind numbing, bone chilling cold, but Florida cold.  I was going down to New Smyrna to to address an issue with the heater.  I have been having issues and we had some issues properly diagnosing why I was having problems.  The iris valve which lets in outside air and must be open to run the heater was not always opening.

My heater is part of my auto climate control. The iris valve is controled by the system through a servo.  We had narrowed it down to either the controller board or the wiring.  The company had sent a controller board for us to swap out as we had looked at the wiring and saw no obvious defects.

The heater is in the nose and while most stuff is really hard to access on the Baron and requires a lot of screrw removal, the nose is held on by 3 fasteners and a safety pin  (A big metal one, not the thing used in sewing).  It goes on and off in less than a minute.  The controller is hidden under the nose baggage floor and that requires removal of lots of fasteners.  Luckily the controller has a connector so it is easy to swap once you get to it.  Swapping the controller did nothing so we put the original back after wasting too much time and started looking at the wires again.

Back on the subject of cold, it was low 40s when I got to the airport.  It had been 40 overnight.  My new hangar has great insulation and today the low temp inside over the last 24 hours was 59 degrees.  It made preflight nice and after pulling out, and getting in, the cockpit was nice, not warm, nice.  Usually it is cold soaked and your hands freeze on the controls.  It also made warm up just a bit quicker as I was starting 20 degrees warmer.  

The flight down was pretty with the sun low on the horizon.  It was a bit windy for arrival but mostly down the runway.  The cold air was also nice, I climed to 6000 in 4 minutes in a gentle cruise climb.  I even had a big tailwind.  

After looking a bit closer we found the servo wire to the computer had a connector which when jiggled in a certain way made the iris valve go the wrong way.  After fixing this everything tested good.  I fired up and headed over to self serve to top off, I had 3 hours left but the price was good so why not.  As I was approaching a tanker truck pulled up and blocked the pump.  A few months back I had shown up for gas and the tanker had just arrived and taken the pump out of service.

There was no Notam so I asked ground and they did not know what was going on.  Luckily there were two airport ops trucks and I motioned to the lead guy and pointed to the gas pump.  He gave me a thumbs up and had the truck pull up a bit which gave me room to slide into the fueling area.  The truck was the Jet A shipment so I was in luck.  After topping off, I fired up, took off, retested the heater in flight and it passed. YEAH!!!  Then it was a long slog up the coast with those same winds on my nose.  Soon enough the plane was back in the hangar.  

This was my last flight of 2025.  I did not get to fly as much as I wanted this year but am looking forward to 2026.  I have a flight set for January 1 so hopefully this will start the year right.

Faster than the airlines and better

Google maps says my trip today was 10 hours and 8 minutes of driving.  With stops, at least 11 hours.  I did it in 4 but only 2.6 were in the air.  Samantha, my daughter was in Mt. Pleasant, SC and wanted to stop by home to see us for the holidays.  I also had borrowed some electronics from a person in Georgia which I needed to return.  

Samantha was originally going to rent a car and drive down but since I needed to go to Georgia, I said I could pick her up along the way.  Not excatly along the way but close enough.  The weather was supposed to be good but of course I awoke to 1/4 mile fog at my first stop.  I was not too concerned, the sun had just come up and by the time I departed I was pretty sure it would be fine.  If not I could go to Mount Pleasant first but as I was getting ready, I could see it improving.

By the time I was at the plane, the weather was VFR at my destination.  I had filed IFR just in case and decided to fly IFR the first leg because of all the restricted areas around Savannah.  This meant it would be ATCs responsibility to keep me clear if needed.

Departing the weather was great, the standard departure puts you on a 010 heading and up to 3000.  Checking in, I was cleared to 7000 and told to stay on heading for traffic until reaching 7000.  Not much later I was given direct destination.  So even though I was IFR, I still got an unrestricted climb and basically direct.  My first stop was Plantation Airpark in Georgia.  ATC gave me my descent and I picked up the airport about 15 miles out.  

Winds were about calm, maybe 2 or 3 knots directly across the smooth runway.  With no other traffic, I joined downwind and landed on 5.  I pulled onto the ramp, turned around and pulled off the taxilane.  I shut down, grabbed the stuff, handed it over the airport fence.  It's a short fence so no big deal.  Then I was back in the plane and running the checklist.

I love the Continental 550 because on short stops and cool days it fires right back up.  Mixtures rich, no need to prime, catches on the 2nd or 3rd blade.  The big wait can be letting the AHRS (Attitude and Heading Reference System) re-align.  On a restart this can take 1-5 minutes and I have not found a pattern in when it takes longer.  Today it was quick.  I taxied out, and did a quick run up.  The GPS's aquired signal while I did this and with everything in the green I headed off to Mount Pleasant.

Before starting I texted my daughter so it was now a race to see who would get to the airport first.  Climbing out the weather was good so when I checked in with Center I asked for flight following instead of my IFR.  It's a quick 30 minutes to Mount Pleasant and Charlseton approach had no vectors for me.  The visibility was saying 5 miles but I picked up the airport at about 10 miles.  I told the controller and he said to switch over to Unicom and squawk VFR.  I was still in the class C airspace so I double checked if he wanted me to keep the code until clear and he said no.

The Baron is not a short field airplane in any sense.  That said I wanted to make the middle turn off, about 1,900' so I nailed the approach speed, set the plane down and used a bit of brakes and easily made my turn.  The book has a shorter number but it assumes more brakes.  Samantha had texted me on final.  I felt the buzz but could not look.  Luckily there was some good princess parking up front so I pulled in and met up with her and Tyler.  Tyler was invited to join us but he still had family obligations in Charlseton area so we left him on the ramp.

Samantha loaded up and again I had easy starts.  We ended up behind a trainer which spent way too long deciding which runway to use while blocking the taxiway and then taxied super slow and then took a long time to run up.  I had run my checklist and I have twice the engines.  The irony was they said they would do a quick run up and we were ready long before they were.  Soon enough they departed and I let them know I would depart behind, and they said they were in in right traffic.  I was turning left and I alerted them I would slide by them on their left.  As they departed they did not correct for wind and drifted a good bit to the left.  We departed behind them and as is the case with Baron behind C-172, we caught them quickly.  Even with their sloppy pattern we had plenty of clearance and were soon on our way.

I again elected to go VFR and checking in with Charlseton approach.  I let them know we would be doing a fly by of Fort Sumter.  After doing the Nickel tour for Samantha we headed up to 8,500 for a smooth ride but with headwinds.  An hour later we were back home and the plane away.  In the end a nice day to fly.

Foggy Mornings

The forecast was for good VFR the last two mornings.  The reality was different.  Both days I awoke to Low IFR.  I did not despair, I did take my time getting ready.  Yesterday I planned to leave between 9:30-10:00, I ended up firing up just after 10.  It really looked VFR when we started the engines but the beacon is broken so we could not tell for sure.

Taxiing out to where ground could see us, the ATIS said it was still IFR and speaking to them, they agreed.  What do my lying eyes know?  To be fair the official report is based on an average over time so when it goes VFR, the box is still behind.  I took a chance and taxied out.  I figured it would change soon.  I also had to wait for the engines to warm, it was cold for this Florida boy and the engines.

I had left the ATIS playing on the number 2 radio and on the way to the runway, we got our VFR weather.  The weather was good over the field and to the South but the further North you went the lower it got.  Our flight was nice and uneventful.  We got our stuff done and I headed home with the thought that at least Wednesday was supposed to start clear.

Today I woke up to a bunch of pink all over the map.  The clear skies were a lie.  Today I was heading to Montgomery, Alabama.  Not only was it foggy, but it was also cold.  Today I would be IFR so I could take some clouds but widespread 200 feet or less was out.  I knew all we needed was for Mr. Sun to come out.  Sunrise in Montgomery is about 26 minutes later than home so I expected things to improve.

Again, I did not rush.  I was sort of surprised that our local weather did not improve as fast as I expected.  It did go to 900' and 10 miles which met departure needs.  Heading out, I departed 32 and popped thru a thin layer.  After that there were some occasional clouds but it was mostly clear.

Arriving in Montgomery it was clear and after finishing our business, we were headed home.  On the way up I fought 30 knot headwinds down low.  On the way back I climbed into a nice 40 knot tailwind.  Other than having to avoid some military airspace both ways it was a smooth run.

Returning home the weather was saying 1000 overcast still.  As we got close it went to 1600 Broken and approach wanted to send me onto the ILS which was out of the way.  Crossing JAX it was clear and I had the field in sight so I requested the visual.  Approach obliged and we headed down below the broken clouds which were higher than 1,600 by then.  We sequenced into the pattern and were soon shutting down.  By the time we got out it was clear above the airport.  

The lesson, the forecast may be way off, patience is your friend, and don't let an old weather report make you fly a bunch of extra miles when you have good VFR.

Cloudy With a Chance of Hot Dogs

 

Weather planning is essential to most of my flights but today we didn't plan to fly.  Weather was still key as it was our annual Holiday party.  The last few years I have been leading some airport social events and educational events but this year I had many distractions so I had really slipped.

A few weeks ago, my partners and I from our hangar construction project decided to throw a holiday party.  The problem is you just don't get to pick your weather.  You set the day and get what you get.  I had been watching the forecasts and initially it looked like we would have a rainy day but in the end it was just cloudy with some occasional mist.

We had a nice turn out.  Oddly you would think free food would make pilots appear spontaneously.  The reality is that some people don't seem interested in airport BBQs.  We had about 40 people which makes a nice size event,  You get a chance to visit with most of the people and we had a good variety of sides and desserts provided by the attendees.

It started as a Hot Dog BBQ,  I like fully dressed dogs so I made some grilled onions, Hot Kraut and Chili.  There were also raw onions for the purists.  As with most endeavors there was scope creep and we added grilled chicken teriyaki and pulled pork to the menu.  My partner has a smoker and he started yesterday so that we could enjoy true BBQ today.

We also had a special presentation.  One of our local pilots received the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for 50 years of being a good pilot.  Congratulations Jim!!!!!

When it was all done, we had eaten most of the pork, 36 hot Dogs and 6 pounds of chicken.  We had a lot of leftover desserts, I called the tower and we dropped off a good bit of the extra.  Tower should have a good sugar rush for the next few days.