Flying IFR after a month

Today I flew my first IFR sorties since March 15th. Thats almost a month after I had flown my last one.

It wasn't for lack of trying - I had tried on at least 3 different occasions to get in a flight. But cold days with ceilings at 2000-3000 ft had put paid to my flight ambitions.

Why couldn't you fly in the clouds you ask? What do you need for icing I reply!

Visible moisture and temperatures below freezing. Clouds fit the bill for visible moisture. And as for the temperature - it was 4 degrees Centigrade at the surface which is about 40F. But the temperature drops 2 degrees C for every 1000 ft. Do the math and at 2000 ft you'd hit the freezing level.

Why not below the clouds? After all 2000 ft is a decently high ceiling. Well the MEAs around this area are 4000 ft - which means the IFR system will put you at or above 4000 ft in the Puget Sound area. Some areas like Olympia and Tacoma Narrows may have lower IFR routes but the weather usually comes in from the South, and the ceilings there were around 1500 ft.

So I had to wait it out.

But today was a great day - clear no fog skies, only scattered patches of clouds and 60 F temperatures.

I was flying a Cessna 182Q Skylane N735LH from BEFA. I didn't have my camera with me so I took a photo of the airplane with my phone. My instructor is Howard Wolvington, one of the senior instructors (and a retired Boeing employee) who also owns a Comanche 250. A year or two back he got the award for making the furthest flight to the AOPA convention down somewhere in Florida and was featured in AOPA magazine. I really do need the best instructors I can get!

735 Lima Hotel is pretty well equipped. It has two NAV/COMs both with glideslope. It has a KLN94 approach certified GPS and a MFD that gives ground proximity alerts and is also a TIS (Traffic Information System). The autopilot is old and only the heading hold is working.

My usual airplane is N7568T - a Cessna 182RG. I did a lot of my IFR training on it with some notion of doing it in a more complex airplane. I have since decided that I want to have a simpler time on my checkride! It is amazing how much complexity just that one gear knob can add to your flight - otherwise the RG and Q are remarkably similar.

There's two of everything to remember - gear down climb speed, gear up climb speed, gear up approach configuration, gear down approach configuration. Having just one approach speed to worry about (we don't use flaps in the Cessna 182s in the approach configuration) is so much simpler! Not having to cope with trim changes when the gear is down versus when it is up simplifies life a little.

In my next blog, I'll write about the trip itself.