My Flying Career

Yesterday I flew to Eugene with a friend I promised I would take flying sometime.  Little did he know this would be more of an adventure than he signed up for.  The flight there was fantastic.  We flew IFR, because it had been a little while since I had been “in the system” and even the the weather was pretty good VFR weather, I like to keep current on at least IFR operations, even if it’s not necessarily in IMC.

Well, we arrived in Eugene, stretched at FlightCraft for a bit, watched the Seahawks kill the Rams, then went out to begin our trek home.  Before takeoff, I do what’s called a runup.  This is where you do your last minute checks to make sure all the radios and avionics are set, and you also runup the engine to about 3/4 power(1700 rpm in my case) and check the magnetoes.  The Cessna 172 engine has a dual magneto system for reliability and efficiency.  Each magneto supplies the spark for a spark plug on each of the cylinders.  So each cylinder has two spark plugs.  Well during the runup procedure you check the left magneto and the right magneto, to make sure that each side is working properly.  Because of the redundancy, you would probably never know if one went bad unless you manually shut one side off.  Well in switching to the right side, the engine lost between 200 – 250 RPMs and began shaking vibrantly.  The POH (Pilots Operating Handbook) for this aircraft states, “RPM drop should not exceed 125 RPM on either magneto or show greater than 50 RPM differential between magnetos”. This can sometimes be “normal” when you have a carbon fouled spark plug.  To clear the carbon fouled plug you would increase power and lean the mixture.  This, in effect, would burn off the carbon or oil that has contaminated the plug.  Well I did that a few times, and the right side magneto never got better.  The left side however was running like a champ.  I was very bummed, but I opted to taxi back and call the owner to see if he had any other ideas.  After talking to him and some other pilots in the area, we all agreed that there was something wrong with the airplane, most likely a bad magneto.  So we had to find ourselves a ride home.  I was waiting for the Lear 31 pilots that I was talking to, to offer a ride on their way back to Spokane, but that didn’t happen. lol.

My friends wife came down and picked us up and took us back to SLE.  We left Salem for a quick flight to Eugene and back at 3pm.  I got back to SLE at 9pm.  What a day.

Right now the plane is getting looked at and I will keep you all posted on the cause of the problem.

I consider all my flights an adventure.  And I could probably find something interesting to write about for each one.  But this flight, I don’t have to “find” something interesting.  It found me!

I started out on an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan to North Bend, OR.  Cruising along at 7000 feet, I encountered a bit of icing for the first time!  Now in a 1974 Cessna 172, a plane that is 35 years old, and an engine that is past TBO (Time Between Overhaul), you/I don’t want to push your luck with ice!  There just isn’t a whole lot of power there to keep you airborne when you weight more and the camber of your wing has changed.  I opted to divert to my alternate of Eugene.  Shot the ILS perfectly and re-thought my afternoons flying.

My new plan is to fly to Hillsboro (KHIO) see if my new Instructor is there and say hello.  Well when I left, it was moderate rain at Eugene, but I knew the rain would stop before reaching Corvallis.  I took off in the moderate rain and began a climb to 6000 feet.  At about 4500 feet, the moderate rain became moderate snow.  Once reaching 6000 feet, I began to pick up some more ice.  I asked to descend to 4000, they granted my request, and the ice slowly began to slide off.  Once I arrive in Hillsboro, unfortunately my instructor wasn’t there to surprise, so I took off and started heading home.

I was kind of tired of all the hard IFR flying and the icing.  And Salem’s METAR showed VFR, and it was only about 30 minutes away, so I decided to fly back VFR (Visual Flight Rules).  Well about 20 miles north of Salem, I hear Salem Tower say they have 3 miles visibility and hear reports of 3/4 mile visibility coming to their area.  So again, I decided to divert to McMinnville (KMMV) and wait it out, or file IFR out of there.  After waiting about 30 minutes, there was a wall of moderate rain between McMinnville and Salem.  Salem’s METAR reports VFR and 4500 broken.  So I decide to file IFR out of McMinnville and after taking off, I found out it was a good choice. Salem was IFR again and I had to shoot the backcourse (which was fun because I hadn’t done that since my checkride!)

All in all I got to experience light icing for the first time, diversion and crazy weather.  A very fun and educational trip, but man am I mentally drained.  Flying single-pilot IFR with no autopilot or GPS is just one of the hardest mental workouts ever.

On another note, I have a meeting with my instructor on Monday to “officially” enroll me in the school and to go over my more detailed syllabus!  I’ll let you know how it goes probably on Tuesday.  And don’t forget to check out my pictures.  I left my digital camera at the FBO in Salem, so I had to take these with my iPhone.  So they aren’t the most detailed.  But they are better than nothing.

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