Wings of Gold

Tuesday morning we were up early, pretty much stayed on Eastern time.  Our objective was the National Naval Aviation Museum.  It is located on NAS Pensacola and closed for a while during COVID.  I had been there last in 1999.  I did not remember much of it so it was like the first time mixed with some De Ja Vu.

As a side note, the Blue Angels are based out of NAS Pensacola and they flew their first demonstration flight on June 15, 1946 at Jacksonville’s Craig Field.

Since it is on the base you can’t just drive there directly.  They make you use the West Gate which is on the other side of the base and adds about 10 minutes to the commute.  At the gate we had our IDs ready and after a quick check, were on our way.  The museum opens at 9 AM and we arrived just after.  

It was pretty empty when we started but got progressively busier.  The museum has several parts.  The main floor has a section of propeller aircraft circa 1935-1955, early jets, and then the early propeller aircraft.   Of special interst was the AF.  My dad flew this aircraft and I have a video (converted from film) of him coming aboard the Princeton sometime around 1954.  It was not the prettiest landing but he survived and I am here.

The next area is an event space hosting 4 blue angels in formation.  Along the sides of the main floor are exhibits such as a movie and display of aircraft recovered from the great lakes.  The main building has a second floor with more exhibits and planes at eye level.  There is an additional large display hall that holds the more recent aircraft.  Think Vietnam and newer.  

They also have a gift shop where we picked up a gift for my dad and scored 2 free t-shirts.  Why was it t-shirt day?  Well apparently an order of shirts had a spelling error.  It’s hard to spot and the staff was told to hand them out as bonuses so we have some slightly defective shirts now.  Can’t wait to wear it and see if anyone spots the issue.

The Museum took us about 2.5 hours to complete.  We headed back to the airport, again the long way as we felt it was best to not challenge federal authorities and crash a gate to save 5 minutes.  We topped our rental car and then handed the FBO the keys.  So far I have never flown off with the keys and I hope to keep it that way.

The FBO, Pensacola aviation, was pretty nice.  We had the Yoo-Hoo on arrival, they had a bowl of Hershey's Kisses and a basket of snacks for us to partake of on departure.  Our plane was a bit far out on the line and they even shuttled us over in a golf cart.  

Pensacola International is large but not that busy.  Ground had my clearance right away and with a strong South wind we had a long taxi.  We had to wait to cross the active for a departure and an arrival which gave me time to complete my runup.  

Reaching the end we were ready and released almost immediately.  It had been clear by the beach but we had a layer on departure from 2800 to 4000 feet.  After that it was smooth and we even enjoyed a tail wind. Yeah really!

Total engine run time was 1:48 with 1:36 in the air.  Not bad for what is a 6+ hour car trip.  Overall Pensacola is a nice little city.  Out at the Beach the food is very touristy and it’s a bit Honkey Tonk but a nice get away.

Pensacola Bound

Sunday we headed off on our first trip of the year.  I have been flying and training but we did not travel.  CC had some in town commitments so we stuck around but we finally had a few free days.  

About 24 years ago I visited the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola but it was a rushed visit. I had always wanted to get back but never had.  We had a tight window, wanting to be back in town on Tuesday evening but it’s a short trip so it all looked good.  My plan, head out Sunday later in the day, sightsee Monday and Tuesday.  

The flight to Pensacola was smooth but we bucked a headwind that was mostly 20 knots but dropped off a bit as we neared the destination.  The FBO had higher prices than most but the service was very good.  Our car was brought around and they had a fridge of drinks.  They offered us beer or wine coolers but CC and I went for the Yoo-hoo. I’m not sure when I last had one but it was at least 2 decades.

We were staying out at Pensacola Beach, so we headed South from the airport but took a slight detour.  We stopped by the Graffiti bridge.  This is an old railroad bridge that has been continuously tagged since around 1935. They say it can change daily and we saw some people at work on a new creation.  

When we drove by Tuesday it had already been painted over with a new creation.  There is also a boat ramp, bridge and fishing dock.  It was a nice way to stretch the legs after the 2 hour flight over.

We stayed out on Pensacola beach.  I booked a Fairfield Inn.  In general the chain is a so-so hotel though the rooms are typically large.  This is a new one and was a bit swanky with a fancy lobby and nice rooms.  My years of travel were rewarded with a free upgrade to ocean view with a balcony.  We ended the night with some local pizza and a grinder, after that it was time to rest for some gulf shore sightseeing Monday.

Our first stop was the Fort Pickens National Historic Site.  We used the visit to renew our annual park pass. The $80/year is a super bargain.  If you are 62 or older you can get a lifetime pass for the cost of a year.  We are not quite there so we need to renew yearly.  

Fort Pickens is a pre civil war era structure that was in use through WW2.  We have been to many forts and this one was just OK.  The signage was a bit lacking and it has been rebuilt and added to over time so that it’s a mishmash of old and new.  The old brickwork is falling apart in many places.  It may be that the Florida climate is not conducive to preservation.  On top of this is WW2 cement structure that in many places looks like it was done in haste, which it likely was.  

The fort does have the distinction of being one of the few Southern forts remaining in union hands during the entire civil war.  After that it basically did nothing but guard a bay that was never attacked.

After the fort and surrounding park, we headed back to the hotel to walk the beach.  The Gulf coast sand is white but it’s hard to walk on.  The water was cold too, at 60 degrees, I wasn’t getting in to check it out.

After some lunch we decided to check out the barrier islands.  We drove back over the bridge to Gulf Breeze, then East towards Destin.  About 20 miles later we just happened to find a Baskin Robins and were forced to get ice cream.  With that out of the way we drove back over to Pensacola beach.  We wanted to drive through the Gulf Island National Seashore. 

They have a really nice pavilion area where we took another quick beach walk. We also met  a group from Michigan and had a nice chat.  They stopped us to take their picture and it snowballed from there. Oh the people you may meet when out and about.  I guess I never learned not to talk to strangers, what would mother say?

The drive through the seashore is pretty cool.  The dunes and grasses are pretty unique.  Our final stop was the Pensacola Beach Boardwalk.  As this is the off season it was pretty empty.  It’s mostly junk shops, restaurants and bars.   We spent the rest of our time enjoying our view and the beach, and feasting on some Nachos and tacos.

Cloudy Night

I had planned a night flight Saturday.  Just looking outside in the early afternoon, it was perfect, not a cloud in the sky, just blue.  As I did my preparation, I saw that the weather was supposed to deteriorate around 4PM.  I thought this was a bit conservative but just to be safe, I would have a clear and a cloudy plan.

I was off to the airport around 4.  Yes sunset was 6:05 PM so night started at 6:35 but I had work to do before I could have fun.  My plan was to clean the plane, well some of it.  I have been cleaning the plane in phases.  The process of washing and waxing is a lot more labor intensive on the Baron so I have been lazy and just doing small parts over many days.  So far the fuselage including the belly, the horizontal tail and the left wing top have been completed.  I have noticed that CC always shows up for rides but seems to be busy during the waxing times. 

Getting to the hangar I decided to clean the bottom behind the engines.  This is where the oil and exhaust stains form so not my favorite part.  I did manage to put off the grimy work by bringing my label maker and finally labelling my screw collection.  So after procrastinating a bit, it was onto the creeper to degrease and then destain the bottom.  I use a cleaner wax which seems to do a nice job rubbing off the exhaust stains but its a lot of dirty work.

I took a break to look at the weather and it had gotten worse than forecast.  This was sort of cool as I was happy to get some night IFR practice.  I filed a flightplan TAY KLCQ EPXOM.  EPXOM is one of the dog leg fixes for the GPS32 approach so that would set me up for a return home.

After lots of scrubbing, the sun set and I had the guys come out and add some gas.  Since we would be IFR, I wanted more reserves.  We ended up landing with just over four hours in the tanks but extra gas is only a problem in the rarest of circumstances.  We had a really cool departure to the West.  It wasn't very low over the field but to the West the bases were around 1300.  

We departed runway 5 with a turn to the West, we were initially held to 2000 but were soon cleared to 4000.  We had left a dark and grey world and coming out of the clouds we broke into the fading light with the beautiful colors of sunset.  As we cruised along above the layer our light faded and we were truly in the dark.  Over Lake City it was mostly clear but we could see layers back to the East.

Heading home we pondered our options.  The field was calling 2300 so that should mean an easy visual but the clouds to the West were all much lower, around 1300.   The other factor was the winds.  They were gusty, 040 at 12-20.  My preference was runway 5 but the 32 approach does not allow circling at night.  This is because of some really tall towers South of the airport.  There is now 5 approach also because of those towers

Thinking through all this our plan was to shoot the 32 approach and if the weather was good, we could cancel IFR and make anormal VFR approach to 5 and if not, take the challenging cross wind to 32.  While I thought the VFR option would work, a King Air had recently departed and reported the bases as 1300 but he had gone West.  My local knowledge said that the clouds are often better East of the Airport than the West.

We were cleared for the approach outside EXPOM and crossing descended to 1900.  The beach was clear and on the dogleg I could see the end of runway 32.  The tower was still reporting 2300 right over the field, it was looking good.  The only issue I had were some small low clouds I could see between me and the airport.

We were transferred to tower and started tracking inbound from JEVAG.  The low clouds slid past us and as we reached the FAF, I could see we had good visibility and cloud clearance all the way into the field.  I had the runways and those pesky towers in sight so I canceled IFR, squawked 1200 and was given a landing clearance for 5.  As you can see from the last blurry picture, it was a weird hazy type of night.  Using 5 made the landing easy and we soon had the plane in the hangar.

A New Controller

I had not flown all year until today.  Luckily it was a nice cool and sunny day so I headed out breaking my 36 hours of non flight.   On the way out, I did not recognize the tower controller's voice.  I surmised it must be a new one.  I had to wait for the oil to warm and was not in a hurry so I was watching him work as I sat letting everything come to operating temperature.  

I could tell he was in trouble and not making any progress correcting things.  Nothing was dangerous but our airport is busy and it usually runs very efficiently.  He seemed to be making the rookie mistake of building extra space.  The rookie thinks this buys him some time but what it really does is kick the can down the road and he will have to reckon with his problems sooner than later.

At a place that's not very busy, this can work as you often have gaps with no traffic and things then reset themselves but when it is continuously busy, the delay you introduced 10 minutes ago is still haunting you 10 minutes later.  I did have a bit of a delay departiing but once I was on my way, it was no longer my problem.

I say that but I had to come back home eventually.  Eventually was about an hour later.  I had hoped things would have cleaned up but they had not.  I called in at 12 miles and was told to call in at 8.  At 8 I called in and he asked me to do a 360 degree turn.  This again is a delaying tactic, he still had to sequence me but this made me go away for 2 minutes.  I called back inbound and he requested a 3 mile call.   Typically controllers will request the 2-3 mile reminder.  These 3 reminders were using frequency time and indicating that he hadn't built the mental picture of how he would sequence me.

As I approached 3 miles,  I was watching the other traffic in the pattern.  I had slowed down to 125 which is around my minimum safe speed that far out.  I was on a right base and he had pushed a trainer farther downwind and then dropped him in front of me.  When I called 3 miles, he told me to follow the trainer.  I asked if I could do S turns as I was 65 knots faster.  We were under a mile apart but I let him figure that part out.

The controller doing the training stepped in and said I could go through final for spacing and then the new controller gave the plane ahead of me a 360.  While all this is happening their is another plane on downwind that was soon gonna be a big problem.   This is why all this kicking the can down the street is a bad idea.  The interesting thing was that I had seen this coming 8 miles out but they have to learn.

The training controller then stepped in again to fix it all.  He cleared me direct to the numbers, put the plane ahead of me, behind me and then got the guy on downwind sorted.  While passing on final is not normal, it made sense in this case.  I would be at the runway in <1.5 minutes and the guy I was passing would take over 3 minutes.  This solution allowed me to land, and created a gap to launch a departing aircraft.  I made an acceptable arrival and cleared the runway as the departure squeezed out behind me.  

Back in the nest

I picked the plane up from annual on Tuesday.  It was a good day for a post annual test flight with some wind but clear weather.  Annual had gone smoothly but the first flight after any maintenance is always an event.  No matter how good the shop is, the mechanics are human and maintenance induced failures are a thing.

This means extra careful preflights and checking all systems to make sure everything works as it should.  I am happy to report everything went well and it was a nice, uneventful trip home.  Three weeks of not flying did not seem to have impacted my basic flying skill much.  I did find my power setting was not as precise and my first landing was a bit flat but acceptable.

Friday I got out again to go over things one more time.  There was some weather down by Saint Augustine which I used to check the radar and refresh those skills.  The showers were pretty widely scattered so I could see them easily.  They were also short so the radar had to catch the moisture in a very thin slice of the atmosphere.  This creates problems imaging over urban areas.

The image above is zero degrees tilt and you can see how the coast refelects plenty of energy.  Zero tilt is fine over the ocean but over land you need to tilt the dish up at least 5 degrees when down low.  This next picture is with the radar 5.25 degrees up.

And this is what the XM radar is showing. Pretty close to the real time.  These showers were not moving too fast.  I can tell you that the big green blob in front of the plane on the XM was clear air though so a little bit pessamistic in this case.

The XM did miss that the shower off to my left was more intense than I would have liked.  It was showing just yellow but the the Radar below from a few minutes earlier as I was approaching shows clear areas of red and it looked mean visually.

A good reminder that XM and ADSB are not for penetrating storms.  Here is the case where the ground may be an issue.  Still tilted up to 5.25 degrees and the XM says a light shower. South East of SGJ.

Radar is saying it has moved more West and it's stronger.

That is around downtown Saint Augustine so is the red rain or building?  Simple answer, avoid it but, I think it's more rain.  The coast was painting strongly but at 5.25 degrees up, it is mostly gone, so at such a short range, my beam is not gonna reflect much down low and the coast farther out is not giving any ground returns.  My eyes also saw the heavy rain shower in that location and not where the XM placed it.  

The irony was that these showers were very local to the area.  The picture above is how it looked back home and once I passed the shower it looked like this.

Saturday night I decided I should reset the dates on my night currency so did a nice flight with some full stop landings to reset everything. 

The lights in Saint Augustine were quite nice from the air and Deck the Chairs even represented pretty well.  Overall happy to have the plane back and gearing up for some more adventures in 2024.