My FAA BFR (Biannual Flight Review) was due in January 2010 anyway, so I decided to combine the checkride that the school would want anyway with a BFR. Martin is technically retired (from the USAF) but now works full time as a flight instructor at another school, so my original Monday date for a BFR was brought forward to Sunday, the day after I arrived in Texas from the UK. I knew I would be a bit ‘jet-lagged’ but I find it easier to cope with flying west than east, so thought I would be fine after a nights sleep.
Well, I was fine, but the weather wasn’t! I found it hard to believe that there could be anywhere on Earth that had lower cloudbases or crappier weather than the UK, but here it was! It was warm and humid, with very little wind and a cold front stalled right over Texas running west to east. There wasn’t so much a cloudbase, as there was visibility getting worse from about 2 miles on the ground to 1 mile at 200’ then into the soup at probably 600’ AGL. Martin asked how current I was on instruments. Well, I was IMC rated, but I let that lapse last year as I only fly a VFR capable aircraft, so I hadn’t flown on instruments for three years or so. I was happy that I still knew how but thought I would be a bit ‘rusty’. So my BFR was to be an IMC flight from San Antonio International to Fredericksburg to land and back again.
I had already done MY FAR revision on the flight over, so this was the flying bit.
Martin showed me around his plane. It is a ‘round dials’ Cessna 172S dating from about 2002 – so pretty recent and in good condition, despite it’s heavy use by a flying school. It was pretty straightforward.
Martin filed a flight plan for IFR via a website and we saddled up. As San Antonio is a full international airport, it has more frequencies than you can shake a stick at. We started with ‘Clearance’ from whom we got taxi clearance, then onto ‘Ground’ who controlled ground movements. We did the run up checks and noticed that the Attitude Indicator was looking a bit wonky and lazy – not good as this is the ‘master instrument’ for IMC flying and only an idiot would fly into real IMC without it (yes, you CAN use ‘partial panel’ and we all train for it, but you really don’t want to have to do it for real unless you have to). After a few turns on the ground and revving the engine, the AI seemed fine, so we decided to proceed.
Martin handled the take off with me flying in the right seat on the way out and we would swap on the way back. Once at the top of climb at 5000’, Martin handed over to me for the relatively simple task of straight and level in IMC. I have to say that it all came back to me very quickly. Trim, trim and trim again to get it perfect, then hold the yoke lightly and get the scan going. I was managing to hold heading and height pretty well though I say it myself, mind you I did notice that I didn’t have much mental capacity for anything else, I guess that is what really being current in IMC will give you – the spare capacity to be able to chew gum at the same time (not to mention reading approach plates etc.!).
We were going to shoot the GPS approach into Fredericksburg – another first as I haven’t flown a GPS approach yet. They are widespread in the USA, but rare in the UK. Well, I managed that being talked through by Martin and we descended to minimums – I could see out of the corner of my eye the cloud breaking with dark patches below, we held at minimum for probably another 15 seconds then just broke clear to be rewarded by the runway in front of us with probably 700’ of height left to lose before the threshold! I love it when this stuff works! Martin took this landing as he had reservations about me doing my first landing from the right-hand seat in a strange aircraft after having flown in IMC – probably pretty wise!
We landed and taxied in to a near deserted apron and shut down. We were only there for a ‘hundred dollar hamburger’, so the delights of Frederickburg (which is I am told a nice town with a museum devoted to Admiral Nimitz) would have to wait. But what a great airfield! There is a 1940’s style American Diner, complete with chrome stools and booths and the food was pretty good too – the vanilla shake was to die for! Then we walked next door to look at the ‘Hangar Hotel’.
For $99 a night you can stay in this hotel designed to look like a 1940’s USAF officers club, again, what a great place, definitely one to take the wife to to redeem her low opinion of private aviation! I strongly recommend Gillespie County / Fredericksburg airfield (T82) as an overnight destination.
After lunch, we saddled up again as Martin filed for IFR back to another airfield near San Antonio for a few low level circuits, but there was a major SNAFU. As we taxied out, another plane arrived, landed, shut down and the pilots wandered off, but they didn’t close their flight plan. So we couldn’t get clearance to take-off as the system was showing someone on the instrument approach (the guy that had landed). This was compounded by the fact that there was another plane stuck in the hold awaiting clearance to shoot the instrument approach. Well, cut a long story short, we sat at the hold for take off with the engine running for literally 40 minutes while Martin tried again and again over the phone to get someone to clear us for departure.
We eventually got away, but time was wearing on so we changed the plan once airborne for a direct back to San Antonio International via the ILS. I flew again on instruments while we were vectored in, then past while approach landed ‘heavy metal’ instead of us. As the cloudbase was so low, we couldn’t use the shorter GA runway (12L) so had to use the main runway, 12R. Eventually we were vectored back and Martin shot the approach itself. Again we popped out at about 600’ AGL as I took control from the left-hand seat for the landing. The landing was OK, if a bit fast, so I had to flare off the excess speed, but in doing so, allowed the crosswind to push me slightly off centreline, not a drama, but a bit amateur of me.
Still, Martin was happy enough to sign me off for my BFR and for renting the aircraft. Now all I had to do was hope that this stalled front would clear for our planned departure date of Tuesday, two days away.
