One of the best things about having a pilot’s license is the ability to go pretty much anywhere whenever I choose. My birthday gift to myself this year is to fly back home to Columbus, Ohio from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Unfortunately, this particular flight was going to be a little longer than usual – a presidential TFR (restricted airspace) was posting right along my original route of flight. To non-pilots, a presidential TFR is a prohibition of flight within specified airspace – in this case it was due to the president attending the funeral of the late senator Robert Byrd in Charleston, WV. The result required planning a flight which added about a half hour to my trip and significantly complicating things.
My aircraft for this trip was the oldest airplane I have ever flown – a 1967 Cessna 172K, which had a much smaller engine and had fairly dated avionics. While the airplane had a GPS and VOR system, the GPS was very old and was really only effective in telling me my course rather than my actual position, requiring a heavy reliance on maps to confirm my location.
The flight itself was uneventful, I took off, contacted Charlotte approach and requested flight following (they watch me with radar, and let me know if I’m about to hit something). Check out the videos below for some clips along the flight.
The return flight back to Charlotte was a little scary. The first thing that caused me to worry was when I paid for my fuel, I burned 32.5 gallons on the trip. The problem with this figure was that the airplane only has 36 galons of fuel, however when I landed, the guages for the left tank read full, and the right tank read half full. Aware that the gauges are inaccurate now, I made the choice to schedule a few pit-stops along the way in order to refuel and make sure I don’t run out of gas in a bad location.
I begin my pre-flight, checking the oil, exterior and then trying to extend the flaps. I turn the master switch on, and nothing happens… great. The battery is dead.
I get a jump from the linemen at the airport, and get the engine running to finish my preflight, then I depart to the Ohio University airport about 70 miles away. The flight didn’t take long, and I figured stopping along the way would give me that little extra gas I needed to safely make the trip home. I land, refuel, and try to start the engine again, but again, nothing happens. I get a jump and perform my preflight, and when I check the mags (separate electrical system to power the engine) I notice one of the causes the airplane to run rough. Worried that a combination of no backup power, inaccurate fuel gauges, and a rough running engine may not be the best idea for a flight over the mountains with few available places to land in an emergency. I cut the engine, and call my flight instructor to explain the issues I am having with the aircraft. He was able to explain how to fix the issue with the engine, and was aware that one of the fuel gauges read ‘full’ at all times. He also believed that the issue with the electrical system was due to something getting left on while on the ground at OSU and the battery just needed more time to charge.
I elected to circle above the Ohio University airport while trying to get up to altitude to avoid some clouds that have cropped up in the area. The airplane would only climb at about 200 feet per minute, making the climb to my planned altitude of 9500 feet very difficult. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally reach a few hundred feet below my planned altitude, and I’ve made it about 20 miles south of the airport when the engine starts to sputter. With an electrical system which is unreliable, and no battery power, there would have been no way to restart the engine if it quit. I make a hard turn back to the airport, turn on the carburetor heat just in case, and try to push the mixture lever in, but it is already in. I suspect the problem is that the engine can’t perform at that altitude due to the thin air, so I begin to descend to 7500 feet. The engine gains evens out and I adjust the controls and levers to fly at 7500 feet rather than 9500, which puts me right in a layer of puffy clouds and closer to the mountains than I would otherwise like to be.
The clouds began to thin out over the mountains, but I would still periodically have to swerve around them to maintain VFR (flying by visual references). The process of changing altitude in an airplane which at best, can only climb at ¼ the rate of the other aircraft I’ve flown, and avoiding clouds and mountains creates a very stressful situation. After almost three hours, and nearly reaching my destination, I break through the Appliachan Mountans and spot an airport ahead of me. Stressed out, and frankly scared of the airplane, I decide to take a break. I land at Statesville airport in NC to refuel and take a few minutes to relax before finishing off the trip.
The final trip back to the airport was more or less normal (electrical system was still bad and I needed a jump) however once I get down to the airport, I try to extend flaps for landing and my radios and gps cut out. Clearly the airplane can’t handle the current load necessary to extend flaps – I’m close to the airport, so I execute a maneuver called a forward-slip to land (a coordination of rudder and aileron controls to push the side of the airplane into the wind which reduces speed and altitude very quickly). It has been a long while since I’ve had to do this maneuver in a landing, so it wasn’t pretty, but I brought it down in one piece and I was finally home.
