Washington D.C. 2015
7/2/2015 -
One of the trickiest
things about flying your own airplane for vacations is that weather and
mechanical issues can make it very unpredictable, and thus difficult to schedule
exactly where you're going and when. That unpredictability is also a
source of adventure though.
With the July 4th holiday
falling on a Saturday this year, it made for a nice long weekend with Friday
off, and I was looking to take the plane somewhere fun. On a bike ride
with Ella on Wednesday, we discussed maybe a camping trip out west.
Perhaps Colorado or Utah. Later that evening, I was chatting with good
friend and fellow Cozy driver, Bob Bittner about my possible plans for the
holiday. Bob suggested we should take our planes to Put-In Bay, OH, a
little island in Lake Erie. This seemed like an even better idea, and Ella
really liked it as well. As the evening wore on Bob and I worked different
angles of planning the trip, but unfortunately could not find lodging or even an
campsite open on the island. He suggested we could go to D.C. as a backup
plan if we couldn't figure out lodging by morning. Somehow, D.C. seemed
like a really appropriate place to spend the 4th. The next morning when I
told Ella it didn't look like we would be going to the little island, she was
bummed. When I told her we were planning D.C. instead she was instantly
happy again.
As soon as the work day
was over we headed straight for the airport, loaded up and wasted no time
heading to Watertown, WI to meet up with Bob. Watertown is a short 1.5
hour flight, so we arrived with plenty of daylight to spare. I had done my
night currency landings just earlier in the week, but I still prefer to fly
daytime over nighttime.
The next morning we
filled the tanks and departed Watertown as a flight of 2 with Bob flying lead.
I gave Bob a bit too much space before taking off and soon lost sight of him in
the climb. It didn't help that the visibility was only 4-5 miles at best,
not the 10 the ATIS was claiming on the ground. I let Bob know I lost him
and that I was going to step a mile or so left of our course line to ensure we
had descent separation when we leveled out. As it turned out I should of
shallowed up my climb a bit as I ended up reaching our cruise altitude before
Bob and then ended up ahead of him being I leveled out first. We had
gotten flight following as soon as we departed Watertown, so with a little
guidance from ATC we were finally able to form up and become a real 2 ship
flight about 45min into the flight.
The rest of the flight
was mostly uneventful and unfortunately not very scenic, as the haze was keeping
visibility to less than 5 miles. As we got to about the 2.5 hour mark Bob
suggest we contact Flight Service and update his SFRA flight plan with a more
accurate ETA. It looked like the ETA I had put on my SFRA flight plan
would be a better guess. Being Bob was on frequency with ATC, I was free
to contact Flight Service. It was a good thing Bob had me do this, as it
turned out they had no record of EITHER of us having filed SFRA flight plans (We
would discover the reason later). Flight Service was helpful in getting
both our SFRA flight plans entered so we wouldn't encounter any issues (or
fighter jets) upon our arrival to the D.C. area.
ATC had us break
formation about 35 miles out and we both made uneventful landings in
Gaithersburg. We met up with fellow Cozy Builder Ron Springer, who
graciously took us and all our gear to the hotel. Bob had found an
incredible deal at a brand new hotel in Rockville for just $80 a night!
That's crazy cheap for D.C.!
After a great lunch with
Ron, we hopped on the Metro and went downtown to show Ella the Washington
Monument, Lincoln Memorial, The Reflection Pool, WWII Memorial, Vietnam
Memorial, the White House. The rest of us had all seen them before, but
still enjoyed them again. It was a long, but incredibly rewarding day.
The next morning we first
went to the National Archives, where we spent the first hour and a half standing
in line outside in the rain. Fortunately Bob had the good sense to bring
an umbrella that was big enough for all of us to fit under (mostly). To me
there was something incredibly special about standing in front of the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the 4th of July. It
was just the right place to be at that moment.
Next up was the Air and
Space Museum, followed by the Natural History Museum. Ella loved them
both, but it was particularly awesome to see her get so excited when she
realized she was standing next to THE Space Ship One. Just warmed my
heart. After the museums we head towards the Capital Building to find a
place to watch the fireworks. We weren't able to get inside the gated lawn
area (they had closed the gates early for some reason), but Bob found a perfect
spot only a block away.
Bob's nephew mentioned
that the fireworks were to start at 9:09pm, and I laughed as I said "Yeah, these
things never start on time. I give it even less of a chance in D.C".
At 9:09pm precisely I was eating my words as the first of the fireworks
exploded. They continued for exactly 20min, and while they were definitely
a good show, the part that left me in awe was that they started exactly on time
and were efficiently done in 20min flat. Why can't the rest of D.C.
function with that level of precision and efficiency???
By the time we got back
to the hotel, Ella was thoroughly exhausted. She makes for the cutest
pictures when she sleeping (she's kinda cute when she's awake too I guess).
I proceeded to plan the next morning's flight home, and though it was looking
like we'd have to wait for some fog to burn off in the morning, as long as we
got going by noon we would be able to get back to St. Cloud before storms would
roll in at home.
Luck was not on our side
in the morning, as the fog turned to low clouds that were relentless in breaking
up. Eventually I gave up on trying to get out under VFR rules, and
proceeded to file an instrument flight plan (should have done so right form the
start. We loaded the plane, did the preflight and taxi'd down to the end
of the runway. I contacted clearance delivery and was told "4TF, we have
no flight plan on file for you." WHAT?? I just filed it an hour ago,
what the heck? Soooo...I taxi back to the ramp and call Flight Service.
After back and forth they finally identify the problem. Filing my flight
plan online through DUats, I was listing my departure time as UTC (which is what
ATC wants). The problem is that Duats assumes you are entering the time as
local time at your home airport, so it was converting it to UTC (which I had
already done) thus adding 5 hours to the time. Flight plans filed via
DUATS don't actually transmit to ATC until an hour before the departure time.
This also explained why there were no SFRA flight plans for Bob or I when we
checked before our arrival.
So after all the messing
around with Flight Service and ATC we were finally able to get going about
11:30am (EDT). We had planned a lunch stop in Racine WI, which by the time
we got there was just a "fuel/quick snack so we could get back in the air" stop.
I checked weather while we were in Racine as well, and luckily the storms were
moving in a bit slower and weren't expected until about 8pm now. All the
same we quickly got back in the air and finished the last hour and a half to
home, put the plane away, and smiled at how cool it was to have places like D.C.
reachable with just an afternoon of flying.
