From: bryan@intellistor.com (John Bryan)
Subject: Denver->Chicago->Denver
Organization: Intellistor, Inc.
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 16:53:49 GMT

Well, as usual, I'm here to post a few things about my most recent trip,
Denver (BJC) to Chicago (UGN) and back.  Thankfully, as I've gotten back
into this, I've written less (and less often).  I hope you all appreciate
it!  :)

This time, I FINALLY got to take the club's (actually, my instructor's
plane on leaseback to the club) Cessna Turbo 210 on a real trip.  My
last planned trip in it got sidetracked because the left main gear
down lock got busted right before I was supposed to take it, and so I
got the non-turbo 210 instead.

The best thing about that plane isn't the turbo-charged engine, at
least not in my opinion -- it's the avionics. The non-turbo 210
(N722PD) has archaic old radios, an RNAV the likes of which I've never
seen and hope never to see again, and a DME that takes a few minutes
to decide how far it really is. The turbo 210 (N5342A) has all King
radios, a Northstar M1 LORAN, a Stormscope, a slaved HSI, a Graphic
Engine Monitor, and probably a few other things I've forgotten.  I
spent some time on this trip learning when to look at these things
and, more important, when not to.  I think I got used to them all
(again) pretty quickly.

Flying along in the aftermath of Andrew and Lester last Wednesday was
interesting -- layer after layer of clouds between here and there, but
no rain, no turbulence, and the ceilings along the route were pretty
reasonable, so we went.  I got the ILS 35R (I think it was) at Des
Moines, IA, and was clear of the clouds at about 800 AGL.

At Waukegan (UGN), IL, the current weather while on the ground in Des
Moines was 600' overcast, forecast to improve.  We had originally
planned on going to Campbell airport, very close to my parents' home,
but when the weather turned out cloudy I decided on Waukegan instead.
They have an ILS, and I've been there before, and the runway is a
little wider than Campbell's 40 feet (like 3 times wider or more).

When we got to Waukegan, though, it was still 600' overcast.  Chicago
Center sent us down into the clouds, we got vectored all over the
place, switched over to Chicago (O'Hare) Approach, and I (despite
LORAN and all the rest) lost track of precisely where I was.

When the controller gave me, "Turn to heading 210, 2 miles from WAUKE
[the locator outer marker, but out of service at that time], maintain
2000 till established on the localizer, cleared for the ILS runway 23
approach, 2 miles from WAUKE [the locator outer marker, but out of
service at that time], contact the tower at WAUKE," I thought
everything was under control.  However, I wasn't 2 miles from WAUKE;
when he told me to intercept I had thought he was going to vector me
through the localizer as it was already live; making the intercept was
quite a trick. As the needle passed through center, the outer marker
light began to blink and the tone to sound. I was at that point well
above the glideslope.  I centered the localizer and began to descend
(gear down, flaps down); recentered the localizer, and watched the
glideslope.  Just as the middle marker began to blink and sound, I
passed right through the glideslope.  I ended up above it again, but
now off center with the localizer; when we finally popped out (below
600' AGL), we were well off center to the runway and above the
glideslope.  Fortunately they wanted me to circle around to runway 5,
and so that worked out fine.

So, never having had to cope with being turned onto the localizer way
high and late for glideslope intercept, what should I have done?

On the return trip, we got 60 knot headwinds between Chicago and
Lincoln, NE.  The FBO we used to use at Lincoln had gone under and we
got to try the other one (pretty good, actually).  The Stormscope
finally showed us something on the way into the Denver area; little
storm cells moving in on JeffCo.  We got in ahead of them anyway (20
miles to spare).  The turn coordinator quit sometime between approach
to Lincoln and engine-start the next morning; it eventually filled up
with condensation, but how water could have gotten into it I don't
know. It never even sounded like it was trying to spin up. The left
tank kept taking in water to be drained at every stop (perhaps an
ounce each time).  We had one classic C210 fuel-flow fluctuation with
partial engine power loss; the procedure (electric fuel pump on,
switch tanks, stabilize) worked fine and cleared it right up.  Never
seen it happen before, though.  The slaving of the HSI (whatever it's
called) insisted on setting the heading 20-40 degrees off the first
day's flight, and 10 degrees off the first day of the return trip. The
final day, it set it correctly.  Coincidence?  Nope, I think the plane
wanted to make me look like an idiot when someone went to check it and
found it working fine.  Similarly on the COM1; it wouldn't allow me to
set the frequency past the decimal point much of the time, and
sometimes wouldn't let me swap the active and standby frequencies.
This turned out to be related to the frequency set, of all things (at
least, I think so)!  I wrote that one up, too, but someone is going to
figure I'm an idiot when it works for them.  The plane got a new
alternator the day before I took it; we had no trouble with the
electrical system, but I was glad I'd recharged my handheld and had a
spare battery pack, too, just in case.

Just a typical trip in an airplane, I guess!

-- 
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John T. Bryan       | e-mail: bryan@intellistor.com
Intellistor, Inc.   | UUCP:   ...!csn!arrayb!bryan
Longmont, CO        | USPS:   2402 Clover Basin Drive, 80503
(303) 682-6527      | PP-ASEL/IA
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Newsgroups: rec.aviation