This has been the winter of my discontent, as it has been for most lightplane pilots north of the thirty-eighth parallel. At last count, a dozen storm systems, each one icier than the last, have whitened the landscape and blackened our moods this winter.
Ironically, the problem here in the Mid-Atlantic region has been warm air, not cold. Low pressure systems that typically move east or north have taken up a more westerly residence. Warmer, moist air drawn from down south overrides sub-freezing air near the surface. As the clouds wring themselves out, the rain falls through the colder air and turns to sleet or freezing rain. People were relieved when the last big storm dumped 6 inches of snow. Snow can be shoveled from a sidewalk and brushed off an airplane, not so ice.
It has been extremely difficult to fly this winter, either because of record low temperatures or ice. A few weeks ago on a rare above- freezing afternoon, I knocked an inch-thick topcoat of ice off my airplane (I half-expected to find that the considerable weight of the ice had wiped out any trace of dihedral in the wing) and resolved to go flying. After clearing three narrow paths from the wheels through the snowbank surrounding my tiedown spot, I started the engine. When it had warmed up, I applied throttle to get under way. The airplane didn't budge. More throttle. More. Full throttle. Still no forward progress. The wheels weren't stuck in the thick ice covering the ramp; the airplane just didn't have the fortitude to climb the little rise up onto the ice floe.
It was more than I could deal with physically or emotionally. I shut down, tied it down, and went home to sulk. Later I realized that although this winter's weather has been a great annoyance and inconvenience to me, consider what it's done to people whose livelihood depends on general aviation flying. When airplanes are not flying either because of icing conditions aloft or on the ramp, runways, and airplanes parked outside, the ones who suffer most are professional pilots, charter operators, and FBOs. I feel for them. It has been a tough, tough winter.
A trip to California provided a welcome break from the monotony of the Eastern winter, even though I had to fly the airlines to get there. Californians aren't in such a hot mood either what with natural, economic, and social upheavals. I got a driving tour of the earthquake-devastated area in northern Los Angeles, beginning with the Van Nuys Airport. The Million Air FBO office there was totally destroyed — looked like a bomb had exploded in the lounge. Hangar doors were sprung, and a couple airplanes were damaged. A metal hangar truss fell through the windshield of a Bellanca Super Viking, bending one of the fuselage tubes.
It could have been worse — and was a little farther north of Van Nuys. The devastation portrayed on television was not widespread, but where it did occur, it was horrific. Worse than the physical damage is the emotional toll the earthquake had on those who experienced it. A friend who is a supremely confident and cool pilot was violently thrown from bed during the quake. Like the glass in the picture frames that fell off his wall, something inside him seemed to shatter. For a long time afterward, he was nervous and, I think, deeply sad. His self-analysis is that pilots are happy only when they are in control of a situation — that's the principal behind all pilot training. Suddenly he was tossed into a life- threatening disaster in which he had absolutely no warning, no control, and it had a profound affect on his psyche.
He can take solace in flight, where he is back in control and can't really see the earthquake damage. I flew over the area, and unless you know exactly what you're looking for and where, everything appears normal. There are no fissures venting subterranean steam, no brand-new mountains where none existed before, no toppled skyscrapers. Just the usual super-urban expanse of the Los Angeles basin.
The West Coast has been soggy this winter, but I got lucky and had the better part of a week of good flying weather. The first sign of trouble came when Marc Cook, Pilot's West Coast editor, and I departed Long Beach for Seattle, with a stop in northern California. We were in the Mooney 231 Cook flies regularly and hoped to make the trip VFR to avoid freezing temperatures in the higher clouds.
That plan began to fade as we approached the mountains northwest of the San Fernando Valley. The bases of what had been a high overcast dropped, and the squeeze play was on: Could we squirt through the area below the clouds but above the peaks and numerous protected condor sanctuaries and wilderness areas? The answer was no. We asked for, and in a few minutes got, a clearance to climb into the overcast, although ATC had us heading south for a spell.
Eventually we got turned around in the right direction and were happily on our way until the outside air temperature dropped. It was time to vacate those icing regions for a lower, warmer altitude. That's the trouble with California flying; the mountains, which are just about everywhere except along the coast and in the San Joaquin Valley, are spectacularly beautiful when you can see them but treacherous when you can't. The winds, weather, and ice they spawn are anathema to lightplane flying.
Things returned to normal south of Bakersfield, and we motored on up over the foothills of the Sierras to Paradise, California, where "Welcome to Paradise" is the standard greeting, with justification. The next morning's weather told of low clouds and visibility in the Seattle area (so what else is new?), which rendered our mission there untenable. Plan B was to spend a day or two exploring the coastal region.
Normally this would be a risky plan because of the fickle weather along the northern California coast. The fog is of such high quality — frequent, persistent, and dense — that the military used it for research purposes. During World War II, Arcada/Eureka Airport was the site of fog dispersal studies. One method found effective was to burn fuel oil in pits or trenches alongside the runway. For obvious reasons, the technique has not found wide favor.
Our fair-weather window closed with a bang the final day of my California stay. We flew in the clouds from Little River, near the quintessential California town of Mendocino (where a day without hot tub, massage, and therapy is a day without personal development), to San Francisco International. It was the first day of what turned out to be a huge storm, and it was raining steadily.
We broke out below the bases just over the Golden Gate Bridge — a fantastic sight. Cook expertly negotiated the system in the 231 and delivered me to Signature's door. Back safely at home that night, I turned on the news to hear of torrential rains on the West Coast, with mud slides in Malibu, west of L.A. Mother Nature is having it her way this winter.
