Posted Thursday, August 1, 2019
Welcome to Ian's Reflection Corner, where we think about what just happened. Note that this page is my reflections for myself, and may or may not be interesting to anyone who wasn't on the trip with me.
Thinking back, particularly on the return trip, the biggest mistake that I made repeatedly was allowing myself to succumb to get-there-itis. This is a term that's used in aviation, and probably other fields, to describe the condition where the patient just wants to get to the goal, regardless of what stands in their way.
This is dangerous because the patient will take unreasonable risks to accomplish the goal. It's also what I distinctly experienced twice on the trip, once in Montana on Tuesday, and once in Washington on Wednesday, on the second-to-last and last days of my return journey.
On the Tuesday, I made the mistake of continuing into a region where I knew there would be thunderstorms. This is, full stop, a bad idea. Looking back on it from a bit of a distance, I'm having a hard time understanding why I kept going, particularly when the downdraft hit me. I should have, at that point, turned around and landed at Malta again, and gotten myself a lovely hotel room with a shower and a comfortable bed. That would have put me in a good position to leave the next day for a short day to get ready for the Rockies crossing, or I could even have tried getting into the Rockies if the weather had been good. At the time, my reasoning was that the convective warnings were not actually for my route of flight, just near my route of flight. This was not a good justification.
On Wednesday the get-there-itis is even more clear-cut. I had a check-in with myself on the ground at Chelan before launching, to see if I was making a foolish choice. I decided in the moment that I wasn't, but with even a few hours' remove, it's clear that was a poor choice. I'd been awake since 2:45 am local time, been flying for much of that time, and had actually suffered enough of an engine problem that I declared an emergency with air traffic control, and still decided to keep going. If I could bottle that and sell it on the black market, I could probably make bank. I definitely should have stayed in Chelan for the night and tackled the final leg fresh on Thursday. The scent of home was just so strong, though.
One thing I've heard from aviators is that they're afraid if they declare an emergency that they'll have to Answer Tough Questions from the FAA. So, there is a feeling that an emergency is a resource of last resort, when the plane is already on fire and falling from the sky.
I wanted to clarify the extent of my post-emergency response from the FAA.
During the execution of the declared emergency, the air traffic controller I was speaking with gave me a phone number to call. They wanted to hear that I had gotten on the ground safely. I called after I landed, and we had a brief, glowing-with-relief discussion about the event, including my learning that they were training a controller at the time, and I had provided an excellent training scenario. The person I spoke to on the phone was friendly, and was plainly as relieved as I was that my emergency resolved itself with no negative outcome.
About a week after the emergency call, I got a call from someone at the Spokane Flight Standards District Office, or FSDO. He asked me to describe what had happened, and we had a discussion of what I might have been doing wrong from an airplane-operations perspective, with a focus on the dangers of climbing with the engine running too lean. He agreed that I'd done everything right, and when he learned that I was able to continue the flight later that day, I had the impression that he signed his report and closed the file. He said as much: "Sounds like everything went as well as possible, and there's no follow-up. I'll close out this case. Thanks for your time." His goal, he agreed, was educating me if I needed it, and making sure the plane didn't require repair.
The two post-emergency contacts I had from the FAA (the first of which I initiated) were positive, and concerned for my safety and the safety of others in the air. There has been no hint of paperwork, and certainly no suggestion that I did anything wrong.
In short, declaring an emergency is a tool in your toolbox, as a pilot. In my case, it didn't change things a whole lot other than eliciting some help from local pilots who were willing to scout out my landing airport for me, but had I been in Seattle's much more crowded airspace, they would have cleared the path in front of me and made sure I had the best possible chance of getting down safely.
It says explicitly in the rules that when you're experiencing what you as pilot-in-command determine is an emergency, the rules may be broken to the extent necessary to alleviate the emergency. In other words, had I decided that the safest course of action was to climb into restricted Class B airspace then land at McChord Airforce Base (though it's hard to imagine a situation involving a Champ in which this would make sense), I could do so with everyone rooting for me, jumbo jets scattering out of my path. It's not a call to break the rules, but it is an indication that getting your emergency resolved safely is the absolute highest priority.
My load-out for this trip was reasonable, and I'm not sad about anything I brought. The only major piece I didn't use was the tent, but I'm glad I had it along. There was a reasonable chance I would have wanted to use it.
However, the way I packed things leaves a lot to be desired. I ended up with the following discrete bags:
This is all fine and dandy as far as it goes, but things got ridiculous quickly. In all, I would end up carrying at least 6 separate items (the first 6 on the list) to any overnight situation. It broke down like this:
Duffel bag: contained clothing and toiletries
Flight bag: to update my flight log
Backpack: contained charging cables, tablet keyboard
Clothes bag: contained the sheet set and washcloth
Food bag: breakfast, dinner, snacks
Cooler: I'd refrigerate the contents if a fridge were available
Sleeping bag: for the sleeping
Sleeping pad: if no couch/bed were available in the lounge
The problem is that I looked like a packhorse, and had to carry 40-50 pounds of crap with all my hands full, every time I landed anywhere. If I had consolidated and packed differently, I could have had an overnight bag that had toiletries and a change of socks (I never had a shower unless I was paying for the lodgings, and I didn't need to change clothes if I couldn't clean up). I could have put everything I needed for one night in there, and had only that bag, sleeping bag, and food. Much lighter.
In addition to that, most of the loot I bought at Oshkosh went into the duffel bag just because it was a convenient place to stash it. So I was carrying a bunch of extra weight and bulk that I didn't need to every time I would go into a pilots' lounge. Pack differently next time. Particularly egregious was the extra clothes bag, where all I needed were the sheets and washcloth, and not the warm jacket, rain jacket, or spare shoes.
On the flight out, from the time I left Harvey Field until I landed at Miles City, MT, I did not have a meal. I'd eaten a massive slice of Costco pizza before leaving Harvey, and had dinner in Miles City, something like 36 hours later. I simply didn't have the right kind of food with me, so I had to make do with snacks. Kept me going, but having not something more substantial available was a definite mistake.
After that, I did pretty well with food. It was nice to have snacks right to hand in the plane, and the biggest thing I found myself missing was "proper meals" rather than "enough food to keep going." I wished that I'd had more protein-based food available.
The general lack of meals continued through most of the trip, where I would frequently only get one "proper meal" in a day. I suspect this was mostly a psychological deficiency, although certainly I wasn't getting many vegetables outside of proper meals.
People keep asking me what I thought of Oshkosh, since this was my first time going. The simple one-word answer I've come up with is "overwhelming." It's true, but doesn't cover some of the subtleties.
I attended one of the fly-ins at Arlington 10 or 15 years ago, when they were still well-attended and had lots of activites. I went to a fabric-covering forum, and attended a few talks, and generally had a good time. I learned some stuff. I was only there for a day, and it was good.
For Oshkosh, I was there for 6 of the 7 days it ran. I learned many new things every day. I met new people, saw new airplanes (to the point that I was skipping right past a plane that would arrest my attention for minutes at a time in any less overwhelming situation), attended events, saw vendors, bought stuff, etc. It was so much, and I felt like my brain was packed full every day, usually well before I left.
Traveling around Oshkosh (both inside the EAA event, and in the region) was slow and occasionally frustrating, since I didn't have anything but a bus or my feet for transport. If I'd even had my little kick scooter, that would have made a tremendous difference. I didn't understand the layout very well, or the scale of things, which resulted in me not doing things that would have been reasonable to do, or attempting to do things that were not reasonable thanks to that lack of understanding.
My pre-determined sense of alienation didn't help me out at all. Most of the people I encountered were friendly and welcoming, but I was so prepared for bigotry and hatred that it was hard to see those responses as genuine. When I did find people who generally shared my values, I felt a greater bond to them than was probably reasonable. We all shared more or less of a love of aviation, or we wouldn't be there, and I really should have gone in focusing on that.
One of the things I wish I had done before going was to study the layout of the airport and the event grounds. Really find out where the various buildings and areas were, work out how long it would take to walk between them, etc. I had only vague ideas, but the maps are available, and the distances can be easily determined. It would have saved me a lot of being late to the start of forums and events. However, I didn't have enough context to really understand what I was looking at, which is why I didn't make the effort.
I would have appreciated direction-arrow type signposts around the grounds: forums this way, homebuilt parking that way, vintage over there, etc. The map was printed with east toward the top of the page, which screwed me up for at least a day, and I still had to think about it more than I should have. I suspect the app makes finding these things easier, but at this point the only thing I expect from smartphone apps is that they're going to do shady things without telling me. I tried to use the website as an alternative, but that only sort of worked, and only when I had data access. Fortunately, the grounds were liberally covered with free wifi, so I had data available most of the time.
Despite my initial confusion, the AirVenture setup was pretty good. Things were generally well organized and easy to get to once I had a sense of where I needed to go. The one baffling thing was trying to find the "Workshop Classrooms," which I couldn't locate until I got to the forum central kiosk, where they had a hand-drawn map on a big white board that showed them. Although the forum and workshop area is detailed on the back of the paper map I had, with my constant rush to get to the next thing I was late for, I never saw it until I looked just now. Having more signs up in the areas would have helped me out a lot, but that's more my fault than EAA's.
I think that I don't need to return to Oshkosh immediately. It was interesting, but not so interesting that I feel a need to fly out there every year, whether commercial or under my own control. If I have a more specific need that can only be met at Oshkosh, I'll go again. This trip was a general-interest trip, and that general interest has been satisfied.
Most of my reflections sound negative, but I'm not trying to say that I had a bad time. Far from it, I am instead trying to ferret out the things that went wrong with an eye toward improving them in the future. Lessons learned, if you will.
On the positive side, I got to fly Norbert a great deal, something which brings me enough pleasure, even in turbulence and heat and heavily loaded, that I was pleased to be able to do it for 3 hours at a stretch for multiple flights each day. The plane gathers positive comments anywhere we go, which I can't really take credit for, but it's nice to repeatedly hear that I'm flying "the nicest Champ they've ever seen."
I met a bunch of new people, who I'm glad to know: Bob in North Dakota, Fidot from the Biplane Forum, Sydney from the UWO dorms. I don't expect I'll ever hear from Jane again, so although I enjoyed talking to her and would welcome any further contact, I'll call that one a wash.
I learned so much. Oshkosh is packed with new data, new information, new techniques, new airplanes, new everything. It will take me a while to sort it all out. When I have more free time (ha!) I want to get a 3D printer and try printing out little fairings and suchlike for Norbert.
I got some cool stuff. When I got my new house, one of the first little decoration ideas I had was to put a miniature wind sock up on the garage/shop. I now have such a miniature windsock in my possession, and I can point to it and say, "I got that at Oshkosh; Norbert and I flew there." I have a copy of a book I've been seeking for a while.
In the end, I'm very glad I took this trip. It was generally a positive experience, despite some lows along the way. I wish I hadn't made some of the mistakes I did, though with a lucky combination of skill and chance, I made it through the other end to tell people about my errors, and hopefully learn from them myself.
Copyright © 2019 by Ian Johnston.