Mini Adventures

This morning, bright and early, Steve and I met with our friendly FAA inspector. The first thing he said is that he's been doing this since the 90s and he thought that every incident was reportable, but we basically taught him otherwise, and that he now concurs, this was not a reportable incident. We walked him down to the Viking hangar, he walked in and said "Which gear collapsed?" I told him "Right", and he walked around the right wing, looked around, and didn't see a bit of damage. We had to point it out to him. He said "Well, I brought my camera to take photos of the damage, but there's nothing here even worth taking photos of!" Exactly. He took pictures of the N# of the airplane, looked around, and came back and asked to see the plane's logbooks. Logbooks were in order, naturally, so then he asked to see my medical and pilot certificates. That didn't thrill me a lot, but I provided them. He asked for the name of the left seat pilot, and I gave that to him. Honestly, what I wanted to ask him but did not was this: We both agree that this is a non-reportable incident. Stipulating that, 1) why are you here, and 2) why are you writing a report on a non-reportable incident? But that seemed antagonistic for someone who was just writing down facts and leaving, and honking off the FAA is not on my list of things to do anytime soon, considering I would like to keep flying. He had brought an accident filing form, just in case we were "wrong" about the damage to the airplane, which of course we were not, and later said we could toss the form. He was polite, he was "doing his job", he left on good terms, he's not doing anything. Except filing some sort of report with the FAA with my info on, did I mention, a non-reportable incident. I'm just not very fond of that, I can't help it. He said he'd like know when we find out the cause, to close his file, and I understand that, and I get that he may even want to put that info out there for other Viking owners, to hopefully prevent a gear failure down the line... We have a good relationship with our Indy FSDO people, who know that we play by the rules, and that comes in handy. He was nice and friendly enough, seemed a decent fellow, I just would rather have not met him, you know?

After lunch, we needed to run to Illinois to pick up the 340. Dustin and I flew up front in the RG, with a fellow in the back to fly the RG home while we took the 340 home. We're IFR on the way over, and Grissom gives me the darned weirdest clearance I've ever gotten. They cleared me to a specific radial and specific DME distance, from two different VORs, and neither one was on an airway or an intersection. "210 degree radial from xxx VOR, 24.5 DME, 240 degree radial from xxx VOR, 12.2 DME", etc. I have NO idea where that came from, and it took me a good 60 seconds to get the radios set up to do it. We were on our way, and I got on the radio and said "Grissom, is there any chance for direct?" They gave it to me, and within 20 minutes Chicago Center had rerouted me again anyway, but at least it was a normal routing, to VORs.

When we arrived, the plane was supposed to be ready to go. It wasn't, so they said to give them another 30 minutes. So while they were putting it all back together, I did a preflight. Any time an airplane comes out of maintenance, you always do a good walk around, particularly when they start hurrying because you're standing there waiting for them. So I walked around, tested screws and fasteners and just took my time. I spotted an issue, frowned, pointed it out, the main mechanic hadn't seen it as it wasn't the area on which they were working, took off some plates, and basically found something that meant we weren't bringing the plane home with us today. However, the RG had already departed an hour ago to head home, because we'd said "go ahead and go, no need to wait". I probably wouldn't have done it differently-no need to make the guy sit there an hour while they button up the plane, only for us to leave him in our dust on the way home. This was an unusual circumstance.

This is where the rest of the story got funny. The shop offered to take us home, which was very kind of them. They were going to send us home with a pilot and a C-172, but a young mechanic/pilot said the C-310 hadn't been flown in about 6 weeks and needed exercised, so he'd take us home in that. When we got out to the plane, they had a power unit hooked up to it in order to get it started, due to run down batteries. There was no intercom in there, so he just had a hand held mic to talk on, and no headsets of course. There was an RNAV in there too. Very retro, but it works and it's much faster than a 172, and Dustin was late, so we were glad for the flight home. The pilot starts the plane up, and I'm sitting right seat, and I look at the fuel gauges, and they're on 10 gallons a side. I figure...surely the aux tanks are full, and he's just going to do the start up /taxi/takeoff on the mains, then switch right to aux. He called up ground and got his IFR clearance. I keep staring at the fuel gauges, and finally I can't stand it any more and I flip the switch myself to see what's in the aux tanks. Nothing. Empty. We have ten gallons of gas a side total. He looks over and says "Don't tell me we don't have gas." I just shook my head. Nope. No gas. He shut it down, told tower to hold his clearance, and called for the fuel truck. That was not an auspicious start to the flight. If I hadn't just had a C-340 checkout, I wouldn't have known that fuel gauge, wouldn't have know how to check the aux tanks. If Dustin had been up front, I doubt he'd have known to look or say anything. And we could have launched in IFR conditions on minimal fuel that would not have lasted long. Yikes.

Anyway, we get gas, and we're on our way. Paper maps, hand held mic, no headphones, an RNAV in the plane, just like the good old days, man. ;) We're IFR at about 3000' on. I learn the old GPS in the plane had quit working a few months back, and same with the weather radar and the prop sync. No biggies. He was using the RNAV, and knew how to use it, too. He's got to be the youngest person I know who knows how to use an RNAV! Anyway, about halfway home, suddenly the VOR quits working. I said "How about the HSI over there?" He said "Nope". It was inop too. We now had no nav aids working in the plane as we cruised along in the clouds. The only thing that did work was the digital display on the RNAV, so he could cross reference which radials he was on and how far away from them, even if the VOR head/OBS wasn't working. I actually started laughing, which was probably impolite, but man, c'mon! This is when I pulled out the iPad, which for today, pretty much saved the day. The last problem was that we were going to have to shoot an instrument approach into Kokomo and neither of the two nav sources were working. I pulled up the approach on the ipad, but it was the ipad that doesn't have georeferenced plates. We were sent off on our first vector for this approach, and...suddenly the 2nd VOR started working again. We were able to shoot the ILS23 into Kokomo, breaking out high enough, pattern altitude or so, and finally we were home. Dustin was late, it was dark, and I was tired. I didn't even stop for dinner on the way home--I just came home and got comfy and relaxed. And I checked to make sure that airplane got back to where it came from in one piece, too. ;)

Nice guy, and he was good on radios and calm, quickly figured out a way to keep track of his position even without a working VOR, etc. He was obviously familiar with the plane, with flying IFR, etc. I was glad for a ride home, and hey, it made for a little adventure for the day, right? ;)