Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Smokey Flying

So I live in California where there are 343 phenomenal flying days per year. The other 22 are rainy or foggy. But this summer is different. It's nasty flying everyday, due to the 1500+ wildfires. It's really quite frustrating since I can see that the day is perfect with blue sky, and if it weren't for the smoke, unlimited visibility, or as we pilots refer to it as "Severe Clear".

Suffering from a withdrawl of flying, due to the smoke, I grabbed my trusty co-pilot and wife, and pulled 22Q out of the hangar. It was a wonderful day with no clouds and a light wind. But I knew the smoke was thick. But addiction being what it is, and knowing that it was safe to fly, we strapped on the airplane, and started our taxi. As we started to climb, we could see and smell smoke. The visibility was 5-6 miles but everything was in a Stephen King haze. We had no horizon to fly against, so I had to rely on my instruments to keep the wings level. It's odd that our inner ear misleads us while flying. If we relied solely on our sense of balance in a no-horizon situation, we would crash. It's simply not accurate, but on this day, our instruments were reliable and we flew onto Santa Paula, near the coast of Central/Southern California. This disorientation, by the way, is probably what did John Kennedy in at Nantucket, but that is another story.

Flying in smoke is not as much fun as not flying in smoke. You can't see very far, and sometimes you can only see a small area downwards. On this day the visibility was definitely deteriorating due to our proximity to fires and by now it was down to about 4 miles. There are TFRs for fires, which means Temporary Flight Restrictions. These are setup by the FAA for a number of reasons, one of which is fires, in order to give the aerial fire fighters a safe area to combat fires. On this day, we witnessed fires in their early stages, maybe before the authorities even knew about them. We avoided them nonetheless for safety reasons and also because breathing smoke is less fun than flying in smoke.

Usually flying to the destination is as much, or more, fun than actually being at your destination. On this smokey day, it was nice to land safely at Santa Paula and to visit our best friends who also flew to Santa Paula to have lunch with us. The reward of flying today was in flying in crappy weather in a safe manner. It is taxing, but very rewarding. I must be vigilant of everything around me, including other airplanes, but also rely on my instruments if there is no horizon. Without a horizon, I also have to navigate much more closely. I cannot see for miles and identify landmarks to mark my progress, but need to identify landmarks in a much smaller radius. Thank goodness for GPS which guides you to your destination, but like any electronics, they are a tool and cannot always be relied upon.

Anyway, flying in California is always wonderful, except during wildfire season.

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