Astronomy: Northern Lights

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

A major bucket list item for my wife and I that got checked off from my list (unfortunately, not my wife’s) was viewing the northern lights. We’ ve always wanted to go to iceland and view the northern lights, hopefully through those glass dome camping sites. However, with work, kids and other things going on in life, we never made plans. It was something we would do eventually. Since we moved to PNW, there were several ocassions when the suns activity resulted in aurora down to our latitudes, however, given the PNW weather all but once, it was clouded out. The one time it wasn’t clouded out, I ventured to a nearby park which was fully packed with people hoping to get a glimpse of the aurora but alas, we didn’t see anything. I took a few pictures that night and did capture some activity but it wasn’t visible to naked eye.

This past month though was a different story. It was a cloudless clear night. I ventured to the same park and took me 10 minutes to find a parking spot at 10pm at night. I found a spot far away from the road to avoid light from cars ruining the image and my night vision and immediately could see a faint wisp of what looked like clouds. I figured it was the aurora and took some pictures. It looked great in the camera. However, as my night vision adjusted and time passed on the activity only increased and i could clearly see the green and pink hues (although not as vivid as the camera captured them).

Everyone, including me, were awed by the brilliant display which at around 11pm at night peaked and exploded to cover almost the entire sky. It seemed to originate at the zenith and spread across the sky (mostly concentrated in East, North and West). The display was very dynamic chaning every few seconds and you could hear the oohs and aaahs from the crowd. It was Amazing! I spent another half hour looking at the sky, taking more pictures and headed back home.

I asked my wife to head out to the park right in front of our home to view the lights as it was clearly visible even with the light pollution around our house. However, she was too tired for the day and decided to try going the following day as the news reported that we should be seeing the activity all through the weekend. The following day she kept tabs on local social media groups to see if the activity was visbile for her to get out and check it out but, unfortunately, it wasnt. Well, all that means is the trip to Iceland is still on our bucket list of things to do. Hopefully, we will have the means and opportunity to go at some point in the future. We hope our kids have an interest as well and can appreciate this amazing celestial event!

Private Pilot: Flying in Phoenix, AZ

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

I’m in the process of catching up on posts and this one is from early November when we had gone to Arizona for a family wedding. It was a 4-5 day affair where we had a huge gathering to celebrate my nephew’s wedding. Since we hadn’t taken real time off in a while, we thought this would be an ideal time to take a vacation either before or after the wedding. My brother was flying in from California and we coordinated plans to stay a few more days after the wedding to do some local sight seeing – and may be drive up to Sedona.

With that in mind, I searched for and found a school that rented aircraft to non students. The school, like any other, had a checkout requirement which I scheduled for in the early days of my trip down there. That way, once I got my checkout, I could rent out the aircraft a couple of times in the 10 day period that we were planning to be there to do local sight seeing. I was even entertaining the idea of going up to Sedona one of the days knowing fully well that it had to be a day that wasn’t too hot as I did not want to deal with density altitude issues especially knowing that Sedona airport is at an elevation. However, given that this was early November, that problem was unlikely.

The day of checkout was in between two events during the day. Right after the first event, I took an Uber went to the flight school and had two hours of ground followed by a flight. The aircraft available at the flight school had 6 pack with vaccum guages while the ones in my local flight school have G3X and no vaccum guages. While not an issue, I like and have gotten used to the electronic display. The only challenge is the familiarity with the airspace. We covered that in our ground school but it obviously takes a bit of practise and reading up to make sure you are not encroaching into unauthorized airspace and understand the local visual landmarks that ATC, local pilots and students use. The other nuanced part of this area is that there are Class D airspaces just next to each other with a common boundary and there is a airforce base that sometimes may be active and not at other times. In addition the class D airspaces are under the Class B shelf so you have to keep track of that as well.

The checkout flight itself was uneventful and the CFI thought I did a good job and gave me a check out. I too enjoyed flying out in the phoenix area. The terrain and the view is very different from what I am used to in the pacific north west. The plan was for me to go back a couple of times to do some local sight seeing and like I mentioned before even go back to Sedona. However, my brother decided to cut back his vacation and head back early. My wife had a lot of office work pending on her plate so we also decided to head back early cutting our 8 day long vacation down to 4 days. I do intend to go back down there and get current with the school to rent an aircraft and fly out to Sedona. Hopefully sometime soon!

Here is the track of my flight. The practice area is a vast open flat land just south of the mountains!

Private Pilot: Long Cross Country

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

It’s been a loong time since I last posted. Things have been slow at work, home and hobby front so not much to report. The PNW weather, as usual, has been not ideal for my hobbies. While things have been slow on hobby front, we did have a little bit of travel that has kept us going through the gray winter. First, there was a family wedding at the beggning of November in Arizona. It was wonderful not only because we were able to meet with family after such a long time and partake in a week long wedding celebration but also because the weather was wonderful. Second, we made a short trip down to San Diego for the christmas break. While the gray skies followed us there, it was neverthless a nice break. While in Arizona, I also got checked out to fly C172 from a local flight school. The details of which, I will cover in another post. This post, however, focuses on long cross country requirement for my Instrument rating which I was able to sneak in during the thanksgiving weekend where we had unusually good weather for a day!

My long cross country was from Paine Field airport down to Hilsboro Oregon with a missed approach on the way back at Olympia airport. The day was interesting with a lot of learnings. First, we delayed the start of our flight by an hour because the TAF for Olympia had clouds at 1000 ft. The rest of the route had clear skies or very high clouds. We were unsure if it was low level fog with relatively low tops or a cloud layer that extended up to the altitude we were supposed to fly. During summer, that wouldn’t be a problem but the freezing level during this time of the year is very low. In fact, it was about 1000 ft on that day so going into the clouds was out of question. The forecast was getting better with each TAF so we thought it’s probably fog that should burn off soon. We figured that we will start the flight and in the worst case scenario, go around or turn back. Luckily we did not have to do either. I filed the IFR plan, preflighted the plane and started the run up and requested clearance. However, tower said that they do not have my flight plan. Apparently, my plan was not approved by flight service. I’m not sure what happened but one lesson learnt is to wait for a confirmation email that the flight plan was accepted before getting on the plane.

My CFII filed a new plan and they accepted it but when I got my clearance, they had given a different route than what we had filed. There was an interesting waypoint that ATC assigned us – If I recall it correctly, it was 20NM on the 178 radial from the SEA VOR. While I noted it accurately, and read-it back to the controller, I had to clarify with my CFII on how to identify it on the charts. He showed it to me on GTN650 by creating a user waypoint. I also learnt that, in Garmin pilot, when you go to add a new user way point in the settings menu, there is an option is to define it by Radial/Distance from a specific VOR. After adding the way point, I updated my flight plan and loaded and from then on it was a pretty smooth ride for the entire 4 and half hour 430 mile journey. The CFII I flew with was not my regular CFI who I had grown comfortable with and let’s just say this CFII has some quirks that make for an interesting ride 🙂 . Don’t get me wrong he is a pretty good CFII, I think its just that his style of training is much different from my regular one who I really love to train with.

Anyway, overall it was a pretty good cross country flight. The one key thing that I learnt I need to improve on is my ability to switch between flying with the instruments and working with my EFB (electronic flight bag) by reducing my time with my iPad/Garmin pilot app so that I don’t deviate beyond the allowable limits for altitute and heading. By the end of the flight, I was pretty exhausted more so from wearing the hood than the actual flying and needed a nice restful afternoon to recover. I’m glad that I was able to get the long cross country out of the way and complete my flight requirements for instrument rating. Now the only hurdles (although, pretty big ones) keeping me from my rating are written and checkride. Although, I think I will need a whole lot of flying practice before I take my check ride but to do that I need to get my written out of the way…. just need to find time to study. Hopefully soon… May be I should be focusing on studying rather than blogging? Well, I have not been giving attention to the blog as well, so … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

While I procrastinate on everything, why don’t I leave you with some pictures from my flight and the flight path as recorded by Garmin

Private Pilot: Few and far between

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

As you might have noticed, my online activity has practically gone down to zero. There are several things going on in life right now which has caused this slump. The biggest factor is that my folks are here. They have been meaning to visit us every since our son was born but because of the pandemic their plans got delayed. They got here a couple of months ago and life has been – chaotic. In addition, PNW weather this winter has been extra gloomy with rain and clouds predicted even next week. Usually by now the weather is nice and sunny but unfortunately, not this year. These two factors mean that I have to wait for a weekend that is nice and clear and we don’t have anyting planned for me to go flying. Anyway, the bottom line is that my online activity is a reflection of the time I am spending on my hobbies.

Anyway, in the past few weeks I was able to get one more cross country flight done. This was a flight to Bellingham airport flying over the skagit valley. It is notworthy because its the tulip season. There was mild turbulence along the way but overall it was an uneventful flight. On the way back I did a quick touch and go at Arlington airport before heading back to Paine field. Here is a picture I took on my way up north.

View of tulip fields from the air

This is not my first time viewing the tulips from the air. Although its the first time that I got to take a picture. I think this is the third time that I’ve flown over the tulip fields while the flowers were in full bloom. I remember the first year after I got my private pilot certificate, I was taking my wife to view the flowers but the flight was bumpy. We decided to turn back midway because the conditions weren’t improving and my wife wasn’t comfortable. Anyway, I’m hopeful that I will get to do this soon with my family and slowly expand my mission to go beyond the 100 miles around Everett that I’ve been flying. I think that will happen once I get my instrument rating done. That reminds me… time for more cross countries and time to start prepping for the written exam. Adieu! More later!

Private Pilot: Maintaining Currency

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

As I might have mentioned more than once, my IFR journey is going very very very very slow! I haven’t finished my required cross country time and haven’t been out flying. Life got in the way! With a recent job change and weekends becoming busier with a hyper active toddler, its hard to find 3-4 hours required for me to drive to the airport, get cross country time in and drive back. My thought process has been, if I cant get a clear day and enough time for me to do cross country, I’d rather spend that time at home. However, I can’t get rusty by not flying so I have been doing bare minimum for now. My last cross country was about 2 months ago where I got a $100 burger with the high school buddy of mine.

This past saturday, I broke the almost 2 month long streak of no flying! I needed to get this done because my flight school – Regal Air has a 60 day currency requriement. Meaning you are required to fly with Regal atleast once every 60 days. If not, you need to fly with an instructor before being able to rent. While strict, I think its a good policy to ensure pilot profeciency and safety. So, to add to my cross country time and maintain currency, I decided to go for a flight. Unfortunately, I had booked the plane only for a couple of hours which meant I could do the shortest of cross country flights (to Port Angeles) and that too would be cutting it close if things get delayed. I decided to play it by ear so had not filed a cross country flight plan. Prior to leaving my home, I checked the enroute and destination weather and everything was green. I got to the airport right on time, checked out the plane, did my pre-flight. It was a pretty busy day at the airport given the clear weather. I knew that if I get stuck at the runway for take off clearance, it would add to the time and it would be challenging to come back in time. Given all this, I decided I won’t do a cross country flight but instead head over to Jefferson county airport, do a couple of touch and gos and be back.

It was a nice, calm and clear but hazy day in pacific northwest. The flight to Jefferson county airport is a pretty short one. Aftter getting there, I decided to do a couple of touch and goes. However, on my first approach I thought I was a bit too high and decided to do a go around. In reviewing the video (you can watch it below), I think I could have made the landing but I think my decision to go around was a good one. I don’t want to be in a situation when I am planning for a touch and go and don’t have enough runway ahead of me to take off. My second approach was pretty good, after which I headed back to Paine field. All in all it was a good short flight for me to maintain my currency. Here is a video for anyone interested (43 minute video sped up to 3 minutes 40 seconds):