February 2012
Late last year, I found myself planning a flight to Fullerton (KFUL), in Southern California. Typical West Coast winter conditions were in full force: morning fog here in the Central Valley, and a marine layer at our destination.
While I met (barely) the legal experience requirements to file and fly IFR, it had been many months since I’d done any flying in actual instrument conditions. The trip wouldn’t involve much actual instrument work—at most, a departure out of the fog and then a simple descent through a thin stratus layer to our destination—but getting a little practice first seemed like a good idea. So, I started checking weather every day.
I quickly noticed that on most mornings, Livermore (KLVK), less than half an hour west of my home base, was covered by a low overcast, which would give me exactly the real-world experience I lacked. The morning that I decided to go started out near ILS minimums, with two miles visibility in mist and a 200-foot ceiling. I headed to the airport, got a tower en-route clearance, and took off.
By the time I departed, visibility was up to five miles at the surface, and after a few minutes in the murk, I popped out on top at 2,500 feet to find it clear above. As I approached Livermore, I could see a cloud deck neatly covering the airport. ATC cleared me for the approach, and I’d intercepted the localizer and was just descending toward the cloud tops when the cell phone in my pocket vibrated. I ignored it and continued.
Up to this point, my plan had been to miss the approach and ask for another, miss it and return home to Modesto (KMOD), but the phone vibrated again while I was in the soup, so I made a full stop, got taxi instructions to an empty space on the ramp, returned the call and learned that one of my partners wanted to use the airplane.
Fortunately, he didn’t need it until 11:00 a.m., which gave me plenty of time (it was about 9:30), so I called KLVK ground, and asked for a tower en-route clearance from Livermore to Livermore for another approach. I was cleared for the Livermore-1 departure via the ALTAM transition, Manteca (ECA) VOR and then direct; but as usual got vectors—which overshot the localizer. It took a little work to get back on it, but I managed, flew to the missed approach point, executed the published missed approach procedure, then cancelled IFR, flew home and had the airplane fueled and back in the hangar by 11:00.
With two actual approaches under my belt, I felt much better prepared for the planned flight to Fullerton, but a cold front moved in just in time to put a nice layer of ice-filled clouds over the Tehachapi Mountains, so we wound up driving… and for once, I didn’t spend the drive muttering “should have flown” under my breath.
As we drove up through the mountains, the outside air temperature got down into the 30s, and we wound up driving home through pouring rain at the surface. Not flying was a good decision—it’s a sure bet we would have found ourselves flying through ice.
The drive was about six hours each way, and on the way home we stopped for dinner in a little town just outside of Visalia, a bit less than halfway home. That’s where Kate left her purse, which she didn’t realize until we were all the way back to Modesto.
The next morning, I called to make sure nobody else was using our airplane, went out to the field, preflighted, then headed to our local flight school office to drink coffee and wait for weather to improve—both Modesto and Visalia started out below ILS minimums, which isn’t all that surprising in the wake of a front that brought in lots of moisture.
After about an hour, Modesto was up to a couple of miles and a 500-foot ceiling, and Visalia was one mile-plus, with a lower ceiling but still good enough to get in with an ILS approach. During the one-hour flight, it improved further, but there was still a broken layer that would have made scud-running dangerous. I landed, parked the plane, picked up a rental car, drove to the restaurant and raided Kate’s purse for enough money to pay for lunch, then flew home.
A couple of weeks later, I found myself preparing to meet with an instructor at Atwater’s Castle Airport (formerly Castle AFB; KMER) to receive orientation as a mission pilot for Angel Flight West, which provides no-cost transport to medical patients. Again, weather was questionable and I took advantage of that for a practice flight that wound up delivering two ILS approaches, pretty much down to decision height, in less than an hour. When the time came for the actual orientation, the weather was actually good enough for me to fly over VFR.
All of this happened over less than a month, and it’s pretty typical for the fall and winter wet season here on the West Coast—when there’s no frontal weather, radiation fog is common most mornings and indeed sometimes builds up to persistent tule fog that can cover fairly large areas. Most of the time, the fog will burn off as the sun comes up, but deep in the winter you get a condition where the fog never completely burns off—it just rises into a low stratus, then settles back on the ground at night.
Under those conditions, VFR pilots (and most students at the flight school) are grounded. You might think IFR pilots wouldn’t be, but that’s not necessarily the case. While there are no legally binding takeoff minimums for private Part 91 flights, I personally won’t depart unless I have minimums sufficient to get back into the airport I’m taking off from… which sometimes leads to sitting around for awhile waiting for the weather to come up.
Even if I didn’t impose that rule, there’s no sense departing until your destination weather shows some sign of rising at least to minimums for whatever approach you’re planning to fly, and when the poor conditions are widespread, finding a usable alternate can be a challenge.
The good news is that the same stable conditions that sock in the Central Valley with fog usually produce good weather at the coast, so coastal airports are good candidates as IFR alternates. Additionally, the fog generally doesn’t get too far up into the foothills of the Sierra Mountain range to our east, so airports like Columbia (O22) at a field elevation of 2,118 MSL are clear even if both the valley and coast are socked in.
Periodically, a weather system moves through and disrupts the stable pattern, but between those systems, morning fog is the rule here, and will be until spring. It’s just something we learn to live with, and one of the reasons that an instrument rating really helps.
The Angel Flight orientation was interesting, and I’m looking forward to my first flight with the group. It hadn’t occurred to me before the orientation that flights for groups like this almost always have three phases. The patient getting transported usually isn’t in a position to come to you, so you have to start with a repositioning flight to where the patient is, pick up the patient (and perhaps a companion), fly them where they need to go, and then reposition your airplane back to home base.
Of course, since I’m based at an airport where fog is an issue, that will have to be taken into account—but I will also have to consider weather at both of the other airports involved. Just to make things more complicated, some Angel Flight missions are relays, with one pilot flying the patient part of the way, and then another pilot picking up the patient and continuing to the final destination. That’s a common approach for people who need transportation over really long distances.
I am looking forward to my first flight with a patient, which hopefully (weather and other factors permitting) will take place by the end of January. Meantime, I’m watching the weather, here on the foggy Left Coast! –JDR
John D. Ruley is an instrument-rated pilot, freelance writer, and recent graduate of the University of North Dakota Space Studies graduate program (www.space.edu). He is a volunteer pilot with www.ligainternational.org, which operates medical missions in northwest Mexico. He is also a member of the board of directors of Mission Doctors Association (www.missiondoctors.org). Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
