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Date: July 16, 2008
Aircraft: N26WG - Cessna 177RG
Origin: Palo Alto (PAO)
Destination: Ukiah (O83)
Duration: 2.2 hours

This was supposed to be a flight to Little River airport in Mendocino for a bike ride however for some reason the destination above says Ukiah. Hmmm. This ended up being just one of many things that didn't go quite as planned.

First, I didn't get much sleep the night before. Okay, actually I didn't sleep at all. I was too excited and it's often hard for me to fall asleep knowing that my alarm is going to go off at some ungodly early hour like 5am the next morning.

So instead of sleeping I checked and rechecked my flight plan, the weather, TFRs, instrument approaches at airports I might need to land at. I drew my intended route on my IFR chart as well as the VFR sectional chart. Finally I loaded bike, bike gear, and flying gear into the car and headed out around 5:30am. First stop was Starbucks to get some caffeine.

Preflight

I arrived at the airport around 6:00am and grabbed the airplane tach book, printed a few approach plates, filed my flight plan online, checked the weather one more time. Palo Alto tower doesn't open until 7am and so there was no weather observation there but Moffett's automated weather was reporting an overcast layer at about 1500 feet. There was a PIREP (pilot report) saying the cloud tops were at 2200 feet meaning a 700 foot cloud layer which should only take a minute to climb through.

Everything was good to go and so I headed to the plane and preflighted it. This involves checking the fuel quantity. Now when the fuel truck comes by and fills up the airplanes, they usually draw a line across the front tire with chalk. This morning there was no chalk and so I had to guess the amount of fuel by a combination of visually looking into the tanks and also using the notoriously unreliable fuel gauges. As an aside, the fuel gauges are only mandated to read accurately when the tanks are EMPTY. If there is any fuel available, the gauges can say whatever they please and not be breaking any regulations! I dipped my fingers into each tank and could easily touch fuel so I thought they were mostly full. The Cessna 177 has 60 gallons of usable fuel and my flight plan called for a fuel burn of 12 gallons to Little River. To be legal I need to add a 45 minute reserve or about 6 gallons at a low power economy cruise setting. So I needed at least 18 gallons of fuel and I was estimating 40 gallons in the tanks so no need to top off. More on this later ...

Next I took the seat and both wheels off my bike, wrapped the frame in a blanket, and loaded it in the back seats. The wheels and seat go behind that in the luggage compartment. 6:40am, at last it was time to depart. The engine fired right up and I went to turn on the avionics master. To my chagrin the number 1 radio came on but not the number 2 radio. Now previously when I flew this plane with an instructor, the first radio became slightly loose in the panel and, even though it was powered on, we could receive but not transmit. I assumed something similar was happening this time and began pushing, pulling, wiggling, tugging, and just about everything short of pounding at the dead radio trying to fix the supposed loose connection. Nothing worked. About this time I realized that despite all my preflight planning, I hadn't checked the list of squawks for the airplane that morning. Maybe the radio was completely dead and the last person to fly the plane had already reported it?

There is no way I was going to perform an IFR flight with only one working radio and was seriously thinking I might have to abort the whole flight but I decided to shut the engine down (to conserve fuel and not rack up Hobbs time) and try to troubleshoot it a bit more. At about this time I also realized that the LORAN and DME receivers had been turned off by the last person to fly the plane. It struck me as interesting since I never turn off any of the avionics individually - that's what the avionics master switch is for. After a couple more minutes of scratching my head I finally realized that the number 2 radio had simply been turned off (but not the number 1 - go figure). It seems like a dumb thing to overlook but then again I've never had this happen to me before and so I wasn't looking for it. Also the off switch is integrated into the volume knob (twist all the way left and it clicks off) and so it's not at all obvious just looking at the radio.

IFR Clearance

Finally it was time to get going! Or so I thought. Once again I started the engine and then radioed up Oakland flight service station to pick up my clearance. The guy said that Palo Alto tower would handle that for me and to contact them. I explained that they were closed and could he please help me. But no, he just gave me two frequencies for Norcal approach and said I should talk to them. So I tried the first frequency. Because I was still on the ground, I could hear pilots transmitting but I could not hear the ground controllers since there was no line of sight between me and the ground station. Same thing on the other frequency. I called Oakland FSS back up and explained my dilemma and asked again if he could he please help me. He told me to standby. After a couple minutes he gave me a phone number and told me to call it.

So I shut down the engine *again* and dialed the number. By this time it was about 6:55am. The guy on the phone told me to standby. Standby was quickly becoming the word of the day. I could faintly hear him talking to someone else and it they seemed confused like they had never delivered a clearance to anyone before. Finally he came back and said he had a clearance for me. I copied it down and then read it back, misreading one nav fix. He got all frustrated and started to correct me but then he must have realized it was finally 7:00am by then and that Palo Alto tower was open. An excuse to get rid of me! Which is exactly what he did - told me to contact them and then he hung up before I could say anything. Nice guy. Maybe it was the end of his shift or something.

Anyway I got the clearance from Palo Alto, read it back without any issues, and finally was rolling down the runway at 7:07am.

En route

Then I flew through the clouds! I had logged a small amount of actual IMC during my instrument training in Kingman due to a freak rainstorm that came through but this was my first time solo in the clouds. As expected, I broke out a minute later to find the sun in my eyes and nothing but a flat sheet of whiteness beneath me. The next part of the flight wasn't very eventful other than my directional gyro precessing like mad and making it hard to fly hold a constant heading. ATC was giving me vectors all the way to Scaggs Island VOR and I honestly lost track of where I was. Radar didn't lose track of me though:

Divert

Little River airport is right on the coast right where my path hooks a 90 degree right turn. Obviously I didn't make it to Little River because there was a solid layer of clouds between me and the airport and there are no instrument approaches available to get me down through the clouds and into a position to land. I did see one hole in the clouds that I could have tried to dive through but it didn't seem like a wise idea and so I diverted to Ukiah, my alternate airport. The controller was helpful at giving me vectors around that firefighting TFR that was smack between the two airports and I cancelled IFR a few miles north of Ukiah and did a visual approach to land on runway 15.

I bought fuel in Ukiah. 55 gallons of it. That means I had 5 gallons left which is less my required 45 minute reserve for IFR flight. There were a couple contributing factors to why this happened. First, I estimated the amount of fuel incorrectly to begin with. Instead of 40 gallons I probably took off with 20-25 gallons. The "fingers wet" method of checking fuel works okay on a Cessna 172 but doesn't seem to work on the Cessna 177. The two planes must have differently shaped tanks. Second, all my ground delays cost me about .3 extra hours that wasn't in my flight planning but realistically this is pretty minor compared to my first mistake.

Bike Ride

The bike ride was exhausting but good. Very hilly - 58 miles and 8700 feet of climbing. I may do a separate write-up for it later

VFR flight home

It should go without saying that after a night of no sleep and a big bike ride, I was tired and just wanted to get home. These are not ideal conditions to be flying in.

Date: July 16, 2008
Aircraft: N26WG - Cessna 177RG
Origin: Ukiah
Destination: Palo Alto
Duration: 1.2 hours

I didn't want the overhead of flying IFR. I didn't want to file a flight plan or get a clearance or have to be routed out of my way and so my flight home was good old VFR. After taking off from Ukiah I dialed the LORAN to Half Moon Bay airport and flew direct. Obviously that wasn't my destination but it was the easiest way to get into the air and established on a heading that would allow me to skirt around the SFO class bravo airspace. As I approached Half Moon Bay I descended to 2500' and was sure to stay at least 10 miles away from SFO to keep out of their airspace. Once I crossed the SFO 230° radial I was able to turn towards Palo Alto. During this whole process I relied heavily on the LORAN. I was pretty far out over the water although I couldn't see it because there were clouds between me and it. Once I turned eastward and crossed the ridgeline it was all clear though and my approach and landing went without incident.

Lessons Learned

Don't pick up IFR clearances from Oakland FSS over the air. Next time I will call a briefer via phone and only use the FSS as a last resort such as if I was departing from an airport without a payphone and no cell phone reception.

When the fuel tanks on the Cessna 177 are full to within a couple inches of the top it means you only have 20-25 gallons of fuel!

Judgment and aeronautical decision making are really affected by fatigue. I already "knew" this but now I have experienced it with my flight home. I really didn't do any flight planning and I took a sketchy route back into the bay where I had controlled airspace above me and clouds (and then ocean) below me. And I wasn't talking to Norcal Approach because I was tired and just wanted to get home and not deal with them.

The preflight was good even with the radio snafu. It was an unexpected problem and those will be inevitable. I dealt with it fine and didn't get overly frustrated.

Finally, I wish I had at least done a practice IFR approach into Ukiah instead of cancelling IFR and going visual. I need those instrument approaches to stay current and the more practice the better! For all the overhead of flying within the IFR system I should make the most out of it for myself.