FAR 91.3

(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.

Over the years I’ve discussed this exception to the rule with many pilots. They say their reluctance to declare an emergency comes from the next paragraph, which states you need to be prepared to explain your decisions:

(c) Each pilot in command who deviates from a rule under paragraph (b) of this section shall, upon the request of the Administrator, send a written report of that deviation to the Administrator.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve declared an emergency, but I can tell you that I have never been asked to send a written report. That’s not to say they couldn’t ask for one but, apparently they don’t like paperwork anymore than I do.

Another reason pilots say they are reluctant to declare an emergency is the idea of all the commotion at the airport upon landing—what with all the fire trucks and emergency response vehicles. I can tell you that the fire and rescue crews are eager to have something to do. They spend a great amount of time training to do their jobs and then sit around the station waiting for an opportunity to use that training, even if it is to respond to an uneventful landing. On the other hand, wouldn’t you really rather have them there waiting for you in case they are needed?

I was the test engineer on a flight in a modified Beech D-18, and we thought we had a fire on the right engine. The pilot shut down the engine, we declared an emergency, and the tower scrambled the fire trucks and rescue crews. Turned out to be a false alarm—there was no fire. But, nobody was upset, everyone went home happy, and no report was requested.

Sometimes it seems that pilots really don’t comprehend the magnitude of their authority once they declare an emergency. At that point, you tell ATC what you need and what you’re going to do, and it’s their job to help you get it done. Any runway you want is yours…including Camp Pendleton or Miramar. The military understands the meaning of an aircraft in distress, and they will sort out the administrative details of landing on a military base after you are safely on the ground.

In February of 2007, an American Airlines flight inbound to Dallas-Ft. Worth declared an emergency for low fuel and told the tower they wanted to land opposite direction of the current traffic. The tower refused and sequenced the flight with the other landing traffic rather than disrupt the traffic flow. Fortunately, this emergency was uneventful, but if it had become the anticipated emergency, it would have interrupted much more than the flow of landing traffic! Two things went wrong here: (1) the tower controllers did not respond properly, and (2) the pilot in command did not take control of the situation and exercise his authority to do what he felt needed to be done. The tower controllers were disciplined and retrained, and I imagine the pilot got some advice as well.

As a young wingman flying F-4s, I had to declare an emergency for some battle damage. The tower personnel were trying to help but got pretty excited and were tying up the radio frequency. Finally, my flight leader simply told tower to maintain radio silence until I was on the ground. Everything went well after that. Another time, I was a flight instructor in the back seat of an F-4, we were doing an emergency fuel diversion because our destination, and the designated alternate went below minimums. I had to declare an emergency because we did not have prior permission to enter French airspace. En-route to the emergency divert base in Germany, I was told the airfield and tower were closed because all the pilots and tower controllers were in a meeting. I told the en-route controller I really didn’t care if I got a clearance to land, I was going to use the runway regardless.

As pilots we are conditioned: ATC controls us, and we follow their directions. It’s just as hard for them as it is for us to reverse roles; but as pilot in command, that’s exactly what we must do. We must know when (and have the confidence) to make that call.

There are several free risk-evaluation applications currently available through the (Apple) App Store, but they seem to be oriented to corporate or commercial operations as they request information about the captain and first officer and ask if you are carrying passengers or repositioning, and the like. However, AOPA has a nice Flight Risk Evaluator program as an interactive course in the Air Safety Institute (ASI) section of their website that tar­gets VFR and IFR general aviation, personal flights (Part 91). You’ll find the evaluator is user friendly. All these flight-risk-assessment tools essentially use quantitative information about the Pilot, the Aircraft, the enViron­ment, and the External pressures—the mission particulars—to help make you aware of any unusual risks for that flight. It’s the FAA’s PAVE checklist in digital format.

Evlauate the Risks before every Flight

To get to the AOPA Flight Risk Evaluator, go to the AOPA home page, put your cursor over the “Training and Safety” tab and click on the ”Air Safety Institute” tab to get a new page. On the new page click on “Interactive Courses” on the left sidebar and that will take you to the course menu page. Finally, you want to select the “Use this Application” link under the Flight Risk Evaluator course. Once you’re into the application you can bookmark the URL so you don’t have to go through this drill every time you want to use the tool. I asked, and found that AOPA is looking to develop this tool as an application on iTunes.

There are actually two ways to use the AOPA tool: a “Quick Check” and a “Detailed Evaluation.” I experimented with both. After I had done my normal flight planning, it took me less than ten minutes to use the detailed evalu­ation tool to assess my flight’s risks. The Quick Check provided a hard copy checklist of the detailed evaluation that saved me from re-entering all the data for a complete analysis. I spent less time on the computer program, but I still evaluated the flight with the checklist generated by the “Quick Check” version, and I strongly recommend you do the same.

In either case you get objective information about the risks associated with a particular flight and some suggested areas for consideration, if there is an elevated risk element. Many pilots are data driven and are more comfortable making a decision based on the detailed, objective facts rather than the general, subjective story you get if you mentally run through the PAVE checklist before a flight. Having something formal also makes it easier to tell a passenger or someone who expects to see you at your destination why you have to cancel a flight.

This kind of analysis is particularly useful for personal flying if you are planning a route to an airport you’ve never seen before rather than those you see on a recurring basis. Once you use the tool a few times it will become second nature, and you will be more alert to any increased risks on every flight.

Fellow River Rat Darrell “Condor” Gary, Rachelle Gary and Duke “Maddawg” Molter organized the event and took care of the logistics necessary to make it happen including food and lodging as well as working with Tradition Aviation, the FBO that hosted the pilots and planes at Thermal. Condor also coordinated with Doug Matthews of Ramona to provide red air threats in the form of Doug’s P-51 Mustang and F4U Corsair as well as the CAF’s F4F Wildcat. Doug flew the P-51 while Pete Hunt flew the Corsair and Carter Teeters flew the Wildcat. Mike “Beav” Carter,  a former USAF F-16 Viper Pilot, lead the air-to-air training activities while Mo Allee, a former Marine F-18 Hornet pilot and ground Forward Air Controller (FAC) in Afghanistan organized the air-to-ground training.

Morning ROE Briefing

After a mass briefing on rules of engagement (ROE) Friday morning pilots formed flights of 2 or 3 airplanes and flew a “low level” route with a hard deck of 2000’ AGL to practice visual look out in tactical formation. Beav Carter flew his CJ-6 as red air for the warm up exercises on Friday and attacked the formations as they flew the assigned route to see if they could detect and react to the threat. There was no dog fighting, just an initial move of no more than 180 degrees of turn to defeat the threat if the flight saw the attack. Flights were scored on their ability to detect the threat and if the initial maneuver defeated the attack.

CJ-6 Preflight

Friday afternoon all flights flew a close air support (CAS) mission to an assigned holding point where they contacted the FAC for a target assignment . Mo Allee provided a heading and distance from the holding point to the target, described the target and then assigned a time-on-target (TOT) for bomb impact. The flight leader had to determine the time from the holding point to the target to arrive at the proper time. Mo scored the flights on their ability to get to the target on time as well as how far from the target their flour bomb hit.

Red Air P-51

Late Friday afternoon Doug Matthews arrived with the “real” red air for the graduation sorties to be flown on Saturday.  Pilots celebrated their successful day in traditional fashion that evening.

Red Air Coursair

Saturday started out with another mass briefing on ROE, mission assignments, weather and safety considerations. For the Saturday scenario each flight received a low level route to fly with a TOT at an airfield for a runway cut. During the low level, again flown above 2000’ AGL, the flights were vulnerable to attack by a CJ-6, the P-51, the Corsair and the Wildcat, each of which had an assigned point on the prescribed low level. In order to insure the “opportunity” to be attacked each flight had to announce as they passed each turn point on a common frequency. The red air pilots monitored the common frequency to ensure all participants could communicate if necessary for safety of flight. Seeing P-51s and Corsairs at air shows flying or on static display is great but, you cannot imagine how amazing it is to see one roll in on you for an attack. As before, flights were scored on their ability to detect and react to the air threat but, they were also scored on their ability to meet the TOT at the airfield that was given to them before they took off. No “bombs” were dropped on the airfield but, after that “attack”, each flight went to an assigned holding point and contacted the FAC for a CAS target assignment. Again, flights were given a target description, a heading, a distance and a TOT. It was not the same target everybody saw on Friday.

The organizing committee announced winners of the various competitions at the awards ceremony Saturday evening.

Ranger flight won the air-to-air competition. Skip Slyfield flew his YAK-50 as Viper 1. Mike Lynch flew Viper 2 in his CJ-6 with Rich Martindell as his Weapons Systems Operator (WSO) in the back seat.

Scorpion flight, two CJ-6s, won the air-to-ground competition. Rhino and Dawg flew Scorpion 1 while Gomez and Wxoff were on the wing in Scorpion 2.

In addition the “Bone” award went to the pilot who did the dumbest thing during the flying activities. What happened in Thermal, stays in Thermal but, unless you’re flying an F-15 it is hard to taxi with the chalks still in front of the wheels.

Sunday morning, prior to departure,  the “Night Crawler” award went to the person who distinguished himself based on undisclosed criteria during or after the awards ceremony.

The motto of Red Star and Desert Thunder is “Serious Fun”.

More information on the Red Star Pilots’ Association is available at www.flyredstar.org

Even though the airplane is IFR approved and I’m IFR current in other aircraft I hadn’t been doing any instrument flying in Tex so right away I knew this flight was going to be day, VFR all the way. Only problem was, as you remember, we were having weekly weather fronts move through from the Pacific all the way to the Atlantic during the month of March when I wanted to make the trip. So Iknew I needed to allow extra time for contingencies and be prepared to stop and wait if the weather dictated. I also knew it would be a lot easier to do this with another pilot to help with navigation, flying and logistics so I recruited my son, Chris, who flies with the Armed Forces Aero Club, to come along. I’m used to flying an airplane with a G1000 that has XM weather and I had just taken Tex to Redding, California for a wing spar inspection and modification without the benefit of XM when we needed to know what the weather ahead was doing. So for this trip I had an excuse to get a new Garmin Aera with XM and I’m glad I did. This gave us my son’s Garmin 296 and my Garmin 96C for triple GPS redundancy and XM/NEXRAD.

Redundant GPS and XM Weather

Next came the flight planning. Tex has been modified with tip tanks on the wings, not standard issue for Air Force T-34A aircraft. That gave me 25 gallons in each wing tank and 15 gallons in each tip tank for a total of 80 gallons. Burn rate is 13 gallons per hour which works out to 3.5 hours on the main tanks including fuel burn in the climb to cruise altitude plus 2 hours on the tip tanks. I’ve got a 2 hour rear end so I figured no leg longer than three hours to have plenty of reserve at each stop. With those parameters the longest leg I planned was right at 3 hours. At 140 knots I was looking at 400 mile legs. Plotting that out over the 1900 mile course that worked out to six hops of about 2.5 hours each. Some a little more and some a little less. With the short spring days and fighting the time zones, I conservatively planned two flights a day for a 3 day trip and hoped I might be able to do better. The original plan was San Diego to Tucson; Tucson to El Paso; RON, El Paso to San Angelo, TX; San Angelo to Beaumont, TX; RON, Beaumont to Mobile, AL; Mobile to Dothan AL for a top off, and then a quick 30 mile hop to Blakely, GA. There is no fuel at Blakely and I didn’t want to give the new owner a plane with no gas in it. Once we got to Blakely the new owner would drive us back to Dothan to catch a flight to Atlanta and then back to San Diego. The plan was to leave early on Friday morning and get into Blakely in time to catch the 5:30 flight out of Dothan Sunday afternoon. That would put us back into San Diego at midnight Sunday if everything went well.

Waiting for Daylight

Friday morning we were at Gillespie and had the pre-flight complete before sunrise. As soon as it was light enough to be comfortable, we were on our way to Tucson and the weather all the way to El Paso was forecast to be good with the exception of AIRMETS for turbulence all day and blowing dust in El Paso in the afternoon. We had a great tail wind and the 3 hour flight to Tucson only took 2.5 hours. A quick re-fuel and we were on our way to El Paso. Along about the New Mexico border we found the turbulence that had been forecast and slowed to below maneuvering airspeed. Along the way we could see dust storms across the border to the south in Mexico. The trip to El Paso only took 2 hours and when we got there the winds were down the runway but at 20 knots gusting to 35. We were ready for lunch and shared a crew van with two Air Force pilots flying a T-1 Jayhawk, the military version of a Beech/Hawker 400. They were headed west for Sacramento. The winds were still blowing strongly out of the west after lunch and we would have plenty of time to get to San Angelo before dark so off we went. At 140 knots true we had been looking at ground speeds between 170 and 180 all day. As usual, I was using flight following and we listened to the airliners at altitude complaining to Albuquerque Center about the turbulence at altitude but it wasn’t bad for us where we were at 7,500. Two hours later, well before sunset, we were in San Angelo. When I checked the weather I saw that El Paso had gone IFR for blowing dust after we left. We were ahead of the plan and it was time for a Texas BBQ dinner.

Gas and Go at Marana outside Tucson

Saturday morning we were looking at another dawn launch. The winds were still blowing but the turbulence was gone however, Beaumont was reporting 1500 overcast and was forecast to stay that way. It was clear and a million in San Angelo so we decided to see how far east we could get before we found any weather. About an hour later as we approached Austin we got our answer. At 7,500 we could see the solid undercast up ahead and Austin Bergstrom off to our right was in the clear. The XM confirmed that Beaumont was still IFR so we decided to land at Austin. Half an hour later they were IFR with a 1200 foot overcast. So we enjoyed the Atlantic FBO facilities and kept checking weather. An hour and a half later the clouds went scattered at Austin and we had a VFR forecast for Baton Rouge so off we went. Instead of a solid under cast the clouds were broken to scattered and by the time we got to Baton Rouge 2 hours later the weather was scattered at 4000. Now we had hopes of getting to Georgia before dark on Saturday so we borrowed the FBO’s crew van, headed to Subway, got in-flight lunches and we were on our way to Dothan, Alabama. It was 4 pm when we landed in Dothan which meant it was already 5 pm in Blakely 30 miles away. We pulled into the first FBO for a quick gas and go. The receptionist said the line crew was busy but would be back shortly. Chris had the alertness to ask what she meant by “shortly” and when she said half an hour we said we’d taxi on down to the other FBO to get gas which is when she told us the other FBO was out of gas so there we were. But, southern hospitality is real and she called the line guys on the radio who stopped what they were doing and came back to top us off. Half an hour later we were on our way to Blakely which only took 30 minutes and we were on the ground well before sunset. Things had gone way better than planned even with the weather stop in Austin. It took a total of 12.5 flight hours to cover the 1900 miles for an average ground speed of 152 knots and we never had to use any of the fuel in the tip tanks.

T-34 Co-Pilot

Tex’s new owner took us out to dinner Saturday night and we had breakfast with the Mayor of Blakely Sunday morning at Micky D’s. Chris and I were able to catch a 2:00 pm flight out of Dothan and with the connection in Atlanta we got back to San Diego by 6 pm instead of midnight. A really super 3 day weekend.

Col.Ben Hancock, the current station commander atYuma, is no stranger to the air show business after a two year tour on the Blue Angles in the right wing position. He emphasized the need for his Marines to let the surrounding community visit the base and see what the Marine aviators are doing there with the F-5Es of the VMFT-401 Marine adversary squadron and the four squadrons of AV-8B, Harriers (VMA-211, VMA-214, VMA-311 and VMA-513).  The people inYuma appreciated the opportunity with an estimated 31,000 spending the day at the air station.

Arguably, a deficiency of winter air shows is the lack of the Blue Angles or the Thunderbirds who are busy doing their off season work ups to break in new team members. However, John “Country” Mills, this year’s air show coordinator, did a good job of lining up the “usual suspects” for both civilian and military flight demos. John Collver flew his T-6 “War Dog”. Pitts demos included Jacquie Warda, Sonny Weller, and John Melby. Tim Weber flew his German built Extra 30 and Rob Harrison flew his Czch built Zlin 50. Greg Medford put on a solo demo in a Nanchang CJ-6A in concert with other pilots flying a 4-ship formation of CJ-6As. Chuck Hall brought his P-51D, “Six Shooter”, from Ramona to fly an Air Force Heritage flight formation with the Capt Dax Cornelius, the F-16 demo pilot from Hill AFB, UT who flew an F-16 demonstration prior to the heritage flight. The Air Force also sent the A-10 demo team from Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ with Capt Brian Willits as the pilot.

The Marines showed off their stuff with the always popular AV-8B Harrier vertical takeoff and landing show.

There’s an Army presence inSouthwest Arizona at the Yuma Proving Grounds so the Golden Knight Parachute team opened the day by delivering the ceremonial U.S. Flag to Maj. Gen Michael Lehnert, Commanding General for Marine Corps Installations, West Coast, who presided over the activities and welcomed Arizona Senator Jon Kyl. There was a good display of Army hardware as well.Yumais where the Golden Knights do their annual winter training before the full blown air show season kicks off. The Yuma Air Show is their first public performance of the season.

A unique performance team every year at the Yuma Airshow has nothing to do with aviation but is just as impressive. The U.S. Marine Drum and Bugle Corps also callsYumatheir winter home where they get ready for a busy summer schedule inWashington,DC. They perform the weekly Tuesday evening Sunset Parade at the Iwo Jima memorial and the traditional Friday evening Tattoo at the Marine Barracks.

F-15 Pilot with MiG-29

When the San Diego Air & Space Museum put together a trip to Moscow for the 2009 MAKS Air Show I thought the price looked a little steep until I studied the itinerary and determined it was an offer I couldn’t refuse. For an Air Force pilot that stared across the Iron Curtain for a good part of my career I couldn’t miss seeing the displays at the air show and the former Soviet arsenal that we would have access to thanks to the museum’s contacts. In addition to the air show there would be stops at the Russian Air Force Museum at Monino Air Base, the Museum of the Soviet Forces, the Museum of the Great Patriotic War (World War II), the cosmonaut training center at Star City and the Russian Academy of Civil Aviation in St. Petersburg. Each stop would have a designated host to explain the exhibits and we would have an interpreter to translate what the host said.

For those who know as little Russian as I do, MAKS is the acronym you get from the first letters of the Russian words for International Air and Space Salon. I don’t know why they don’t call it the Moscow Air Show. Just filling out the application for the Russian visit visa told me it was going to be fun and that the four former military pilots in our group of nine would have a “shadow” for the entire trip. The two most interesting questions on the visa application were, “Have you ever participated in an armed conflict,” and “Have you ever been trained in the use of nuclear weapons.” With 323 combat missions in North and South Vietnam and 2½ years of sitting nuke alert in Germany I was a winner!

The first day at the air show saw half a million people show up at the same time so getting through the ticket and security lines even with advanced tickets took an hour and a half. The weather was doggy both Saturday and Sunday and the only opportunity to fly high shows occurred on Saturday afternoon but, they were impressive. Although the USAFE A-10, F-15 and F-16 demo teams had been preparing to attend, President Obama abruptly cancelled any U.S. military participation just two weeks prior to the show. The Russians did not disappoint however, showing off the MiG-29 Fulcrum, the Su-27 Flanker and the Su-34 Fullback. While the Russian Knights suffered a mid-air collision the week prior during practice for the air show, killing the leader and cancelling their participation, the Russian Falcons and Swifts flew formation demonstrations in the MiG-29 and Su-27. Also present were the Italian Frecce Tricolori in their 10 Aermacchi MB-339s and the Patrouille de France in their nine Alpha Jets. The other seven people in our group didn’t want to fight the crowds on Sunday but, my son, who is also a pilot, and I wanted to return presenting a dilemma for our guide. Miraculously, she was able to find a friend who wanted to attend the air show and would be happy to keep us company while our guide showed the rest of our group an art gallery in Moscow. Sunday was low shows all day but it was very amazing watching the Italians fly a 10-ship tight formation show under a 2,000 foot overcast. We spent a lot of Sunday looking at the static displays and the exhibit halls which were every bit as impressive as anything you will see at Oshkosh or the NBAA convention.  This was definitely an “I love Russia” air show and display but it was 100% enjoyable. It was very interesting to note that they are now all “Russian” and the word “Soviet” has dropped from the vocabulary even though much of the old mentality persists.

The trip to the Russian Air Force Museum at Monino was every bit as spectacular as all the web posts make it out to be.  A vast array of 185 different aircraft, from pre-World War I up to currently operational aircraft, is on display. It is the equivalent of our museum at Wright-Patterson but it is operated on a shoe-string
budget and it’s very disappointing to see all these aircraft in open storage exposed to the environment that Moscow has to offer in the winter.

Gary Power's U-2

The visit to Star City gave us the opportunity to see the world’s largest centrifuge and experience their International Space Station mockup and trainer. Our cosmonaut host, Colonel Sergei Viktorovich Zalyotin, had been on two space flights and is preparing for his third.

A nice surprise was the visit to the museum at the Russian Academy of Civil Aviation in St. Petersburg. This is a state run school for people who want to be mechanics, airline pilots or air traffic controllers. The courses offered are similar to Embry-Riddle University in Florida or Prescott but it is a more certain pipeline to employment in the Russian civil aeronautics system. The museum is a small six room facility in the academy and the museum’s director was delighted to host us. She treated us like royalty and invited each of us back to make a presentation at their annual aviation symposium in May.

Safety experts use words like familiarity or complacency. It might be because many general aviation pilots have never been told about the difference between a do-list and a checklist. They are actually the same document; it’s just a matter of how you use it.

When we first learn to fly or we check out in a new airplane, we tend to use the checklist as a do-list. Think about the preflight or the before-takeoff checks you performed when you first started flying. You looked at the first item on the checklist and you did it. Then you looked at the second item and did it, and so on, until you got through your checklist. That makes thechecklist a do-list.  But, as you got proficient, you developed habit patterns for each task and you became comfortable to the point that you may have thought you didn’t need the checklist anymore. Professional pilots call this habit pattern a flow pattern; but the difference is that after they do the flow pattern, they then review the checklist and make sure they didn’t miss any items on the checklist for that task.

Looking at the pre-flight checklist for example, you should do your normal interior cockpit checks and then review the checklist. Next, do the exterior inspection using the habit pattern you have developed, and when you are done, back yourself up with another review of the checklist. With my military background, I actually do two exterior inspections. The first time around the airplane, I do everything the crew chief used to do before I got to the airplane: take off the tie downs, check and drain the fuel sumps, check the oil and clean the canopy if necessary. Then I do the pilot’s preflight: check the brakes and tires, look at the control surfaces, check the pitot tube and static port, and generally check the physical condition of the exterior in a sequential walk around of the airplane. Now it’s time to review the checklist and make sure I didn’t miss anything the operating handbook says I need to look at.

Review the Checklist after the Pre-Flight

Once in the airplane, I use a flow pattern from left to right across and down the center console to make sure all the switches are in the right place, the circuit breakers are in, and the fuel system is properly configured. Now it’s time to review the Before Engine Start Checklist. Some manufacturers are better than others about organizing their checklists in a good flow pattern.  If your checklist is not well organized for a flow pattern, that’s all the more reason to develop a logical flow pattern and then follow up with the checklist.

With the engine started, it’s time to set things up before requesting taxi to runway. My before-taxi flow pattern is actually more detailed than the manufacturer’s checklist: I get the ATIS, set the altimeters, program my fuel management system, get my clearance (if  IFR), load the flight plan (IFR or VFR), set up the departure instructions with the heading bug and altitude alerter, and set the transponder.

With a G1000 aircraft, you can simply take a tour around the bezel of the PFD and then do the same thing around the MFD. Your PFD tour should prompt you to check you commfrequencies, verify the baro and course settings (you can check the baro setting on the standby altimeter too), your flight plan, any annunciations, your transponder setting, CDI nav source, your PFD display settings and the inset map. On the MFD you can check the nav frequencies and heading bug selection for your departure leg, do your auto pilot checks, verify the altitude alert setting for your first level off (or clearance) altitude, check your engine details including resetting your fuel counter to the current fuel on board, and set your map view to include a sanity check of the route you have programmed in the FMS, and then scale down to be able to monitor your taxi route. Now use the checklist to verify your flow pattern covered all the required items.

Two things to check as you taxi are the brakes and the flight instruments. Other than that, you should be head out of the cockpit paying attention to your taxi route to avoid wrong turns, a surface deviation, or an inadvertent runway incursion.

In the run up area, it’s time for another flow pattern before you back yourself up with the before takeoff checklist. I also use the CHORRD before takeoff checklist for myself in addition to the aircraft checklist to make sure I’m ready. I review the Conditions, Hazards associated with the conditions, Operational considerations because of the conditions, Runway available/required,Return immediately after takeoff, and the Departure procedure VFR or IFR.

Once you’re in the air, do the same sequence of flow pattern and checklist for the takeoff and climb checks, your level-off and cruise checks, descent checks, before landing checks, after landing checks, and shutdown checks. You’ll quickly find that the checklist is a friend and not a burden because it’s no longer a do-list and you might surprise yourself with a V-8 moment every now and then.

Rich Martindell

rich@wild-blue-yonder.com
619-253-7649

University of Southern California trained aircraft accident investigator and safety program manager.

Experienced in risk analysis, management and mitigation and establishing compliance programs for the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trained disaster planner recognized by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

With our mild climate we can be lured into a false idea that we don’t have to check and plan for cold weather like someone in Fargo, North Dakota. Truth is, airplanes are meant to go places so if you want to go to Big Bear or Mammoth to go skiing this winter you need to pay attention to the rigors of flying in cold weather, particularly if you have an instrument rating.

It’s not uncommon for the freezing level to drop below 6,000 feet MSL here in San Diego County and that’s one of the preferred altitudes for many of the tower en-route IFR clearances in SoCal. Add a winter stratus layer of clouds at or above the freezing level and you have the instant potential for airframe icing.

Even with clear and a million VFR weather at any of the airports serving your favorite ski area you will still have to be familiar with your airplane’s cold weather starting and operating procedures. You may want to pre-heat the engine or oil before starting. However, the major ingredient for a successful ski weekend is snow so, you have to be hoping for fresh powder which will alter your pre-flight preparations for the trip home if you don’t hangar the airplane which actually isn’t a bad option if you expect snow or freezing rain while you are there. De-icing an airplane in clear weather can present challenges and it can be expensive. You must use an FAA approved de-icing fluid and no automotive anti-freeze products qualify. If you can wait for the sun to get rid of ice, snow or frost you’ll save some money but, make sure there’s no residual moisture in any of the flight control mechanisms that can re-freeze when you climb into colder air. The accompanying photo is a San Diego based plane on a Christmas trip to Sunriver, Oregon. This pilot got the airplane into a heated hangar to get rid of the ice and snow.

Snow bound in Sun River, OR

Another problem for those of us who fly airplanes that are not approved for flight in known icing is planning a route to avoid areas of known icing or make the decision to delay the flight until conditions improve. A really useful planning tool is the Java Flight Path Tool on the NOAA Aviation Weather Center website at www.aviationweather.gov. You get to it by clicking on “Icing” under “Forecasts” on the left side rail of the home page and then clicking on the “Flight Path Tool” link in the middle of the icing page. This program lets you plot your route of flight and then gives you a plan view and a profile view of the flight path with forecast icing conditions both laterally and vertically so you can plan to avoid them by going around, under or over the forecast areas depending on your aircraft’s performance and the terrain. The most important thing to remember about is tool is that it is a FORECAST which is really nothing more than an educated guess that may or may not be right so give yourself a big (conservative) margin of error and closely monitor your actual in-flight conditions for visible moisture above the freezing level.

A nice thing about winter weather in San Diego is that you get the opportunity to fly real instrument approaches with well defined ceilings. All you have to do is pick an overcast day with a ceiling you feel comfortable with when the freezing level is sufficiently high as to not be a problem.

Enjoy the winter weather and fly wisely.

F-15 Demonstration Flight

Flying the F-15 is easy. Learning to employ it effectively is another story. At the time I started flying the F-15 there were only F-15As, a single seat fighter, and F-15Bs, a two seat training version that was fully combat capable. An operational F-15 squadron would have 20 or 22 F-15As and two F-15Bs. The goal for pilots in an operational squadron was to keep the two seaters grounded as much as possible because no one wanted to fly with a kibitzer. The fourtraining squadrons at Luke had 16 single seaters and six family models for transition training. F-15Cs and F-15Ds were on the drawing table and McDonnell Douglas was still promising “Not a pound for air-to-ground” but in their deep dark secret rooms in St. Louis the F-15E was already a corporate strategy even if the Air Force wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

The Air Force has two transition courses for new F-15 pilots – the long course for those who have never flown fighters, usually straight out of pilot training, which lasts six months and the short course for pilots with experience in other fighters which runs four months. After 10 years of flying the F-4, including one combat tour in Vietnam, I loved Double Ugly dearly. While it was a bit of a beast to fly it was a rugged and capable airplane and it brought many crews home after sustaining some serious battle damage. I was selected to be an F-15 instructor pilot after 3 years on the Red Flag Staff at Nellis so I went through the short, four month transition course and then right into the two month instructor pilot course. After my first flight in the F-15 I had a new love and I never looked back at the F-4 with any regret. Six months later (with 60 hours of flight time in the jet) I was an F-15 instructor pilot. At the time the Air Force had a rule that you couldn’t go cross country (away from your home base) single ship if you had less than 100 hours in type. So there I was, an instructor but I couldn’t go cross country by myself. Having seen the quantum leap in performance and capability between the F-4 and the F-15 I can only imagine the advances from the F-15 to the F-22 but from what I can tell they are every bit as dramatic.

But back to learning to fly the F-15. It is an easy and forgiving airplane to fly. Kind of like a Cessna but the approach speeds are different and the power response is better. The handling characteristics are almost docile as long as you don’t ask it to do anything dumb (outside its performance envelope). One of the confidence maneuvers every pilot learns is the nose high, low airspeed recovery. Simply put you point the nose straight up, wait for it to run out of airspeed (it will run out of airspeed if you’re not in afterburner) and see what happens. What happens is pretty dramatic and very reassuring. All you have to do is keep the controls neutral (if you’re the type who can’t leave well enough alone the instructor will tell you to let go of the stick and grab the canopy handle bars during the recovery because the airplane is smart enough to save you).With the nose pointed straight up when you run out of airspeed the airplane starts a tail slide, fuel vents out the trailing edge wing vents and floats forward over the wing. Impressive! Then aerodynamics take over and the Eagle Jet realizes that the pointy end isn’t in front any more. The correction will get your attention. There is always some inertia and the nose will either continue back and fall through the horizon – the more comfortable, positive G solution - or it will flop forward through the horizon – the lunch in your mask, negative G solution. In either case you are now looking at a wind screen full of dirt as the jet points itself straight down to get some flying speed. All you have to do then is a simple dive recovery. Not a great tactical maneuver but it does demonstrate the excellent handling qualities of the airplane. You can also do a full aft stick stall from level flight and fall like a leaf until you put the stick forward and fly out of it to recover.

Before your first flight you get three weeks of academics and simulators and the program is geared for success. The academic instructors and course materials are excellent (I can say that without reservation because I was never an academic instructor). There’s a lot of information but it’s well presented and easy to learn. This is not where pilots wash out of the program contrary to some shows that may have suggested otherwise. Needless to say your first two orthree flights are in a two seat version and the instructor is in the jet with you. The Air Force approach is to learn the theory in academics, get a demonstration, practice in the simulator and then do it in the jet. So on the first flight the instructor demonstrates the preflight walk around but you’ve already done all the start, taxi and take off procedures in the simulator so the instructor monitors all this from the back seat. He or she will probably talk you through the nose high, low airspeed recovery and other maneuvers in the training area like loops, rolls,and other acrobatics. Back in the traffic pattern the instructor will demonstrate the first landing and after that it’s your turn. After two or three flights in a two seater with some formation work and more attempts to dent the runway your instructor is tired of riding in your back seat and it’s time to fly single seat with your instructor either leading you or chasing you in another airplane.

Regardless of the weather every departure and arrival is an IFR procedure to get your instrument qualification and the F-15 is a fantastic airplane to fly in weather. The standard flight instruments are easy to interpret and then there is the heads up display or HUD with all the same information presented on the windscreen. The airplane is rock solid on ILS final. Not a big deal at Luke AFB, Arizona where it’s ceiling and visibility unlimited every day but it feels really good when you’re cracking minimums in Germany or England.

Once you’ve learned the basics of flying the F-15 it’s time to start learning how to employ all the systems and executing tactics. The Air Force approach is stillwalk before run so you get plenty of academics and simulator time to learn the radar and other systems. Along the way you have been using the anti-jam, secure radio system so that has become second nature but in the beginninggetting the radios into secure mode so you can talk to other members in your flight on tactical frequencies is worse than trying to run your computer with DOS commands instead of using Windows. After you know how to run the radar you learn intercept geometry and how to maneuver to transition from a beyond visual range (BVR) environment to an eyes on the target visual engagement.

Now it’s time to learn to dog fight. Of course we can’t say it that any more so it’s called Basic Fighter Maneuvers (BFM) which sounds a lot more professional but it’s still just as fun. This is just two airplanes/pilots against each other. It’s called 1 v 1. The instructor’s job in one airplane is to be the learning tool while the student in the other airplane learns offensive, defensive and neutral basic fightermaneuvers. Things like low and high speed yo-yos, lag rolls, cut off, Immelmans, pirouettes, scissors, energy management and the use of radial G while maneuvering in the vertical. This is where pilots can start having trouble if they haven’t flown fighters before or if their previous fighter didn’t have an air-to-air combat role. We humans are very used to a two dimensional world and when you start maneuvering in the vertical it’s harder to keep track of things and predict where the adversary is going to be after 90, 180 or 360 degrees of turn.  You also have to learn minimum and maximum engagement ranges and employment envelopes for the weapons you can shoot: long range AIM-120 AAMRAM radar guided missiles, medium range AIM-9 heat seeking Sidewinders, or short range 20MM cannon – which button to push and when. The beauty and the bane of the F-15 in this area is the HOTAS capability. It stands for Hands On Throttle and Stick. Once you have things properly set up you can now work the radar, select and fire any weapon and never take your hand off the stick or throttle. Each control button on the stick or throttle is multi functional and it can go up, down, in, out, left and right. Depending on what you have selected on the weapons master mode each button can change functions. We called it playing the piccolo and like playing any musical instrument you have to sublimate the activity because you don’t have time to think about it in the middle of a fight. When you want to talk on the radio or select a different radar range to lock on or designate a target, initiate a transponder interrogation or select a weapon, the speed break, chaff or flares your fingers just need to do it.

The next step is Air Combat Maneuvers (ACM) where you learn to fly as a wingman with your leader while you beat up on one other airplane (2 v 1) using coordinated, sequential or counter rotating attacks. Now not only do you have to keep up with and project the movements of the bandit you also have to know where your leader is and what he or she is doing and going to do next. It’s like a bunch of spaghetti in the sky and you have to be able to make sense of it. Flight discipline is supremely important. Lapses in disciple are not tolerated. While I was flying F-4s as a lieutenant in North Vietnam one of the senior guys in my squadron left his leader without making a call and getting clearance from his leader to engage a MiG he saw. He got the MiG but left his leader naked in the process. He was grounded when we landed and transferred out of the squadronthe next day to a staff job in Siagon. Discipline in the real world is not like the movie “Top Gun”.

But wait, there’s more! Now it’s time for multiple friendlies to go against multiple adversaries and we call it Air Combat Tactics (ACT) and just to make it more interesting we try to have each side flying a different kind of airplane. In that case we call it Dissimilar Air Combat Tactics (DACT). (2 v 2, 4 v 4, or 4 v X) Now it’s no longer just a matter of flying your airplane and using your systems to the max. Situational awareness and the ability to capitalize on your strong points while exploiting your opponent’s weak points are what we call force multipliers. The F-15 radar is fantastic. In fact it’s the reason the F-15 is a big as it is. When the Air Force specified the performance capabilities of what was to become the F-15 much of it was defined by the radar capabilities they wanted. Hughes designed a radar that could do what the Air Force wanted and McDonnell Douglas designed an airplane that could carry the radar, 4 radar missiles, 4 heat missiles and a gun and it had to have more thrust than it weighed so Pratt and Whitney had to come up with two engines that could push it through the sky at Mach 2. You can select up to a 160 mile range scale on the radar scope. I flew a training mission against a friend of mine doing an advanced tactics air-to-ground mission with a four ship of F-4s. I had a two ship of F-15s to defend an airfield he was to attack. He had a cosmic low level plan and could use any formation he wanted. All I knew was they were coming from the north. For safety of flight reasons we all had to be on the same radio frequency so while they were running basically radio silent he could hear my calls to my wingman. We took up a medium altitude defensive orbit just north of the airfield they were to attack and ran a race track pattern to keep one of us looking north all the time. In the debrief after the flight my friend said his heart dropped through the floor of his cockpit when I called my initial radar contact and describe their exact formation, spacing and altitude to my wingman while they were over 60 milesaway from the target. They were “dead” before they entered the restricted area where the airfield was located.

Finally, let’s add an element of command and control from outside your cockpit. AWACS or ground radars can see farther than your radar and tell you over the radio where people are, what they are doing and help you get your radar looking in the right direction. But today’s technology can do better than that with a neat system called Fighter Data Link or FDL. FDL is a super sophisticated wide area network in today’s computer language. Anybody who is in the net shares their radar information with everyone else in the net. So right next to the radar display is a situation or SIT display. It shows everything everybody in my flight is seeing on their radar and shares that with AWACS and the ground radars and they share everything they are seeing with me on my display with no radio calls to garbage up the frequency. But the techno geeks didn’t stop there. What if we know who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? Let’s give the aircraft symbols on the SIT display color codes. What if we don’t know if they are good or bad? OK we’ll use a third color. Let’s tell you what altitude they are at, how fast and what direction they are going. If they are friendly we can even tell you what type they are and their mission. It’s data overload! As I manage my flight and my battle space I actually have to filter the information on the SIT so it only tells me about things in my area of responsibility (AOR). All this neat stuff in the cockpit is mesmerizing and a hard thing to learn is to get your head out of the cockpit and visually clear for that one SOB that snuck through or worse yet you keep your head looking at the radar and SIT while you blow through the formation you were supposed to attack. Remember, the important stuff like your designated, primary target is displayed on the HUD so at 10 miles you better be eyeballs out of the cockpit and ready to shoot if you haven’t already identified your target as hostile and taken a long range BVR shot.

Strike Eagle F-15E

The F-15 flys like a dream and the systems capabilities are staggering. Think what the F-22 can do with its stealth, mil power supersonic cruise, increased maneuverability and even more systems capabilities. Jealous? Yes, but I’m still very happy I had the opportunity to fly the F-15.