Logged: 2.8 hours
Fuel: 91 litres
After landing back at Westchester from the New York low level route, I had the plane topped off with fuel and settled the fuel and handling bill with Million Air. I was hoping that they wouldn’t live up to their name and sure enough, the charges were perfectly reasonable – barely more that I would pay for the landing fee alone at Shobdon! A mere $US22.00!
I called the wonderful 1-800-WX BRIEF and got the weather (hardly needed it as it was bright, warm and wonderful sunshine all the way), NOTAM’s (there weren’t any affecting me) and lodged a flight plan.
That settled, we mounted up, got the ATIS and called for taxi on the ground frequency. We were again on runway 16 and after power checks, I switched to tower and was cleared for departure with a right turnout and yes, they would activate my flight plan.
We lined up, powered up and were off again, barely an hour after touching down from the previous flight.
I climbed to the cleared 1500’, levelled out and tried to contact New York Centre. They were very busy indeed. I tried two or three calls asking for flight following but with no reply. Either they didn’t hear me or didn’t bother to reply as it was obvious they didn’t have the capacity.
It was at this point that I noticed that my headset was noisier than usual and a quick check of the battery box for the ANR showed no red light, so my battery had died. I tried to talk to Dan on the intercom, but he couldn’t hear me. Oh great! We carried on at 1500’ until clear of the NY zone now headed North West. I climbed to 2500’ for now and tried to sort out what was happening. Thinking I had radio failure, I tried Flightwatch on 122.0 and asked for a frequency for flight following. They heard me OK and replied, but did not come back with a frequency and didn’t reply to later calls, again either because they didn’t hear me or were ignoring me.
This set me worrying, did I have radio failure and should I turn around? Well, it was clear that people could hear me on the radio and Dan could hear radio transmissions, but my ANR was out as was the intercom – coincidence? I started to think that the failure in ANR was linked and setting up some sort of incompatibility with Dan’s headset and the ancient intercom. I had had an ANR battery die on me before, and all it did was carry on as normal but without ANR. Dan’s headsets were exactly the same as mine (DC 13.4’s) but without the ANR mod.
OK, work the problem. We swapped headsets and that didn’t do anything. I had Dan change the battery for a spare I had in the flight bag, but that too was dead. I know I had had it a fair while, but why would an unused battery be dead? I checked the circuit breakers and even recycled the alternator – no change.
I climbed to my cruise of 4500’ following the US quadrantal rule. Having spent a joyful 20 minutes or so trying to resolve the problem, I came to the conclusion that the intercom had failed but that I had radio contact, so no need for a divert. I still didn’t have flight following, so I checked the map for the nearest large airport.
I discovered Wilkes-Barre / Scranton and called them on 120.10 asking for flight following. They responded immediately and allocated a squawk and flight following – well at least something is now going right!
Despite my 4500’, the ground seemed mighty close on occasions, a fact confirmed by the contour colouring on the map, this was high by gently rolling countryside, alternately thickly forested with large clearer famed areas with scattered settlements.
We continued on, learning the lost art of mime to converse with each other. Well, at least the flight following was working well as I was handed on from Wilkes-Barre to Binghampton to Elmira.
As I was approaching the GEE VOR, I was given a traffic advisory of an aircraft at the same altitude orbiting over the VOR and I was advised to turn south immediately. Well the work ‘immediate’ grabbed my attention as I cranked it around before I even acknowledged the transmission. I continued south until I was advised I was well clear of the traffic and resumed course for Niagara.
It was at this point that I dropped my pen. In leaning over to pick it up, I noticed a very small panel on the lower centre console with two buttons on it that had previously been hidden from my view by the yoke. Hmmmm I thought – its got one of those very old hand held mikes attached to it……..YOU IDIOT! This was the elusive intercom control panel. Why I hadn’t noticed it before I will never know. Looking at it carefully I saw a small flick switch marked ‘Isol / All’. It was set to ‘Isol’. I wonder what will happen if I flick it to ‘All’. You guessed it, the intercom came to life! I even managed to adjust the squelch and volume setting so that the intercom was louder than the radio so we could hear each other without being blasted out by radio transmissions.
Well I had to confess my idiocy to Dan. Where the intercom controls were placed was right next to the trim wheel and I had obviously knocked the switch onto ‘Isolate’ when trimming the plane in the climbout from Westchester! In my defence, I would point out that the plane had a lot of instruments fitted, but many were noted as unserviceable, so it was a case of ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’.
So as it turned out, the failure of my ANR battery was pure coincidence. I suppose that on the plus side, I didn’t let it distract me too much while we were relatively low and in busy airspace. Well, that was my mistake for this particular leg and a very good one at that!
We continued on as I got over my stupidity and were transferred to Rochester and then onto Buffalo Centre on 126.15. Buffalo were great and clearly had time on their hands as they vectored me (not that I needed it) onto the right downwind approach for 10 Right at Niagara International. At 5 miles I changed to Niagara Tower on 118.50.
Niagara International is one of those American airports that is part USAF (Air National Guard) and part civilian. So one runway was HUGE (10,000') and the other was a more normal civilian size (4,000') with both parallel to each other, hence the necessary L and R designations.
I descended to circuit height and came in on the downwind leg. I was cleared to land and put her down nicely on the threshold. I was given a ‘next right’ exit and pointed towards the local FBO called Tech Aviation.
We taxied in and shut down. I wandered over to the handling agent and was met by a friendly and casual lady behind the desk. I asked for the plane to be gassed up and that we were looking for a quick turnaround. She pointed me at the flight planning room down the corridor and directed Dan to a diner across the road as he hadn’t eaten any lunch and he does not fit in with my pattern of a big breakfast and no lunch. She also indicated that the tower will already have closed the flight plan for me.
I grabbed a few sweets on display on the counter and headed for the flight planning room as Dan headed for the diner.
An easy trip in excellent weather that went off very much as planned except again for some initial difficulty in picking up flight forwarding and of course my debacle with the headset and intercom. Flying in the US is remarkably simple, cheap and easy compared to the crowded airspace, expensive handling and onerous radio work associated with the UK.
