Well, this morning I had the scariest flight of my life - due not to any problem with the aircraft nor due to piloting error, but due to a poor judgment of ceiling height before takeoff. Let me preface the story by jumping to the conclusion - a happy ending with a valuable lesson-learned. I thought about keeping this under my hat, but I'm a believer in admitting my mistakes, and pilots should always share stories from which lessons can be learned.
This morning I left Ottawa in my car and the skies were completely clear. As I drove towards Smiths Falls airport a ceiling formed, and there was some very low-level foggy cloud, which could be seen when looking to the distance down the road.
I arrived and spent an hour or so doing various preflight things and chatting with Korrey while I waited for the fog to lift. At about 10:00 am ground visibility was fine and I could see the trees on nearby hills. Above me was a solid layer of gray, but i couldn't discern any of the tell-tale individual cloud details that indicate a very low ceiling. So I decided I should have at least enough height for circuits and could evaluate when airborne.
As I taxiied out I was pleased that my new main gear leg stiffeners seemed to make the plane drive much more solidly (reduced shimmy). The air was the coolest it's been on any of C-FUNC's flights so-far, and she climbed very nicely on takeoff. I was feeling good about all this, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by gray, at about 700 feet AGL. I poked the nose forward but it was too late - my climb rate was high and before I knew it I was totally engulfed. I reduced power and started a medium turn to the right, watching my artificial horizon and airspeed. I hoped I could come out below the clouds and just do a low-level circuit to land. By the time I ducked out under the clouds, though (probably 500-700' AGL) I had lost the runway. I continued to circle, focusing on skimming the bottom of the clouds, keeping airspeed up, while trying to navigate. Now, two problems made the situation more serious. One, I didn't a lot of fuel. I have been doing my test flying on less than half tanks to keep the weight down. So I couldn't just fly around all day waiting for the clouds to clear. So I throttled back, and leaned-out the mixture to reduce fuel consumption (luckily I'm past the really criticial part of the engine break-in). The second problem, I had no GPS.
I didn't know how thick the cloud layer was, so I decided I should continue to skim around at low altitude, not flying in any one direction for too long to avoid getting too far away. I tried calling Ottawa Terminal, but was too low to make radio contact. My preferred general direction would have been West, towards Ottawa, except that the low-level cloud seemed worse to the west, and slightly better to the East. After a few minutes of aviating and thinking, I saw some blue sky peeking through small breaks in the clouds. I could see it wasn't too thick, so I glued my eyes to the instruments, throttled up and climbed through the pea-soup.
Very quickly I emerged on top of the layer and leveled out in cruise at about 2000'AGL. I then contacted Ottawa Terminal. The controller was very helpful and vectored me on a heading direct to Smiths Falls. He also reported there were only few clouds in Ottawa, so that was a backup plan. When he reported I was only 2 miles from Smiths Falls Airport, I saw glimpses of ground beneath the clouds, so I decided to poke down below, evaluate if I had enough visibility, and land at Smiths Falls if possible. If not, I would climb back up and get assistance back to Ottawa (the whole time I was nervous about the fuel, so I had throttled back and leaned out to about 7GPH). When I emerged beneath the clouds at 700'AGL, I was again too low for Terminal radio, but they had some kind of relay operator so I was able to communicate through him. I reported that I was VFR, but did not see the airfield. The relay guy gave me a heading and I looked to the left and saw the runway. The sight of a runway has never been a bigger relief to me. I turned final and landed without incident (except I think I may have a slight shimmy on my nose gear leg, which might require adding a stiffener there too).
In hindsight, I think I did all the right things to bring the flight to a safe conclusion, and I am pleased that C-FUNC proved her worth by getting me home. But I acknowledge that I shouldn't have gotten into this situation to begin with. The main lesson-learned for me is to find a better way of estimating ceiling height before taking off from an airport with no ATIS. My "eyeball" technique clearly isn't reliable. Also, I learned to be *very* careful about the "go up for a circuit to check-out ceilings" approach. I underestimated how easy it is to lose the airport very quickly. A GPS would have probably successfully ended this flight after 10 minutes rather than the 30 minutes of TACH time I logged, but I've been holding off on that purchase until I'm done my 25-hours and am ready for x-country.
For judging ceilings, I wonder if they make some kind of affordable hand-held radar device for this purpose...
This morning I left Ottawa in my car and the skies were completely clear. As I drove towards Smiths Falls airport a ceiling formed, and there was some very low-level foggy cloud, which could be seen when looking to the distance down the road.
I arrived and spent an hour or so doing various preflight things and chatting with Korrey while I waited for the fog to lift. At about 10:00 am ground visibility was fine and I could see the trees on nearby hills. Above me was a solid layer of gray, but i couldn't discern any of the tell-tale individual cloud details that indicate a very low ceiling. So I decided I should have at least enough height for circuits and could evaluate when airborne.
As I taxiied out I was pleased that my new main gear leg stiffeners seemed to make the plane drive much more solidly (reduced shimmy). The air was the coolest it's been on any of C-FUNC's flights so-far, and she climbed very nicely on takeoff. I was feeling good about all this, when suddenly I found myself surrounded by gray, at about 700 feet AGL. I poked the nose forward but it was too late - my climb rate was high and before I knew it I was totally engulfed. I reduced power and started a medium turn to the right, watching my artificial horizon and airspeed. I hoped I could come out below the clouds and just do a low-level circuit to land. By the time I ducked out under the clouds, though (probably 500-700' AGL) I had lost the runway. I continued to circle, focusing on skimming the bottom of the clouds, keeping airspeed up, while trying to navigate. Now, two problems made the situation more serious. One, I didn't a lot of fuel. I have been doing my test flying on less than half tanks to keep the weight down. So I couldn't just fly around all day waiting for the clouds to clear. So I throttled back, and leaned-out the mixture to reduce fuel consumption (luckily I'm past the really criticial part of the engine break-in). The second problem, I had no GPS.
I didn't know how thick the cloud layer was, so I decided I should continue to skim around at low altitude, not flying in any one direction for too long to avoid getting too far away. I tried calling Ottawa Terminal, but was too low to make radio contact. My preferred general direction would have been West, towards Ottawa, except that the low-level cloud seemed worse to the west, and slightly better to the East. After a few minutes of aviating and thinking, I saw some blue sky peeking through small breaks in the clouds. I could see it wasn't too thick, so I glued my eyes to the instruments, throttled up and climbed through the pea-soup.
Very quickly I emerged on top of the layer and leveled out in cruise at about 2000'AGL. I then contacted Ottawa Terminal. The controller was very helpful and vectored me on a heading direct to Smiths Falls. He also reported there were only few clouds in Ottawa, so that was a backup plan. When he reported I was only 2 miles from Smiths Falls Airport, I saw glimpses of ground beneath the clouds, so I decided to poke down below, evaluate if I had enough visibility, and land at Smiths Falls if possible. If not, I would climb back up and get assistance back to Ottawa (the whole time I was nervous about the fuel, so I had throttled back and leaned out to about 7GPH). When I emerged beneath the clouds at 700'AGL, I was again too low for Terminal radio, but they had some kind of relay operator so I was able to communicate through him. I reported that I was VFR, but did not see the airfield. The relay guy gave me a heading and I looked to the left and saw the runway. The sight of a runway has never been a bigger relief to me. I turned final and landed without incident (except I think I may have a slight shimmy on my nose gear leg, which might require adding a stiffener there too).
In hindsight, I think I did all the right things to bring the flight to a safe conclusion, and I am pleased that C-FUNC proved her worth by getting me home. But I acknowledge that I shouldn't have gotten into this situation to begin with. The main lesson-learned for me is to find a better way of estimating ceiling height before taking off from an airport with no ATIS. My "eyeball" technique clearly isn't reliable. Also, I learned to be *very* careful about the "go up for a circuit to check-out ceilings" approach. I underestimated how easy it is to lose the airport very quickly. A GPS would have probably successfully ended this flight after 10 minutes rather than the 30 minutes of TACH time I logged, but I've been holding off on that purchase until I'm done my 25-hours and am ready for x-country.
For judging ceilings, I wonder if they make some kind of affordable hand-held radar device for this purpose...
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