Transcription
I knew there was a cold front out there, but I figured I could either avoid the cold front by staying behind it or delay to miss it. We 4375 Lima with you at 7000. 4375 Lima, quiv. Senor, Roger. There's something disturbing about seeing, you know, a wall of clouds that I'm flying towards. Um, and and looking back on it, of course, that that should have set off a whole lot more alarm bells, but I was like, eh, you know, I'm going to be landing well before I get to that that cloud front. I'm going to just continue on through and and just be prepared.
The first T of any kind of problem we had, uh, was, uh, the fact that he was having trouble holding altitude. Uh, there was a lot of updrafts around the mountains, and, uh, he he kept, uh, breaking his altitude because the cloud layer was right below me. I did start to edge up a little bit to stay clear of the clouds, eventually getting scolded by the the controller. 4375 L, D 400 ft high. 75 L, yeah, I'm still trying to see if I I'm actually in clouds here, so trying to I maybe get up to 9,000. I know I'm getting close. Okay, well, you got to ask me before you did that. Traffic out head at sending to nine, so go ahead and maintain ner thousand there. 4375 LMA, 75 L. We do. Thanks.
Well, okay, you know, this is this is still under well under control. I'm clear of clouds, no big deal, and I'm right next to the airport. And that's when I, uh, was looking over at the, um, temperature gauge and went, well, it's a degree below freezing. That means I've got freezing conditions below me in those clouds. And but I figured I'm going down through it. It's only one degree below freezing. I've got to have the freezing level down below me somewhere. At that point, I requested the weather from the air traffic controller. Little did I know that air traffic controllers really don't have weather information in front of them. I get that weather for. I don't have the weather, sir. I can call flight service and get that. This is Cleland Center. Sorry. H, yes, if you would please. No, sir, you need to call flight service, get the weather. I don't have the weather here for Bedford. Oh, sorry. 7. So I told the controller I was going to descend as quickly as I could, looking for the the free level to get down through it. 71, we'd I'd like a Runway 32 GPS if I could into, uh, 4375 Li. Your discretion, maintain 4,500. 75. I'm G to go ahead and move down, see if I can't get into some warmal weather. Ready. Bad idea. Cold front's in front of me. Do I really want to try, you know, crossing over the cold front, losing five or 6 degrees there? I'm already below freezing. I'm going to gain ice on the way down. Do I want to gain more ice as I go through that and still go searching for the, uh, freezing level out at the bottom of that?
Unbeknownst to me, the freezing level at that point went all the way into the ground. I was able to maintain 4,000 ft for a couple of couple of minutes, and that's when I noticed that my air speed was was dropping. See, I was I was in hard IFR at that point. I couldn't even really see the wing struts very well, let alone how much ice was accumulating either on the wings or the wing struts. [Applause] I am unable to maintain 4500. I'm getting here. Okay, well, I can't give you any lower than that in that area, sir. If you want to climb up a bit until you get established, you can go ahead and climb up. I was slowly drifting down, and I'd gotten down to about 3,500 ft at that point, maybe 34, and I, you know, just didn't want to lose any more altitude cuz I knew there was a ridgeline below me somewhere around 3200 ft. You know, I was trying hard to not lose any more altitude when all of a sudden I heard a clattering. Either I ran through a cell of ice or my instructors also later said it could have been that the ice was breaking away, but I heard this massive clattering. The attitude indicator just just spun. Air speed speed indicator, uh, dropped to zero. The, um, heading indicator started rotating. The, um, turn coordinator showed a full deflection. So at that point, I knew I was in an unusual attitude. So I'm having problems. That I just saw the ground way too close. [Music] In he went through the clouds, lost altitude. I found out later that actually had iced up so badly that they point1 inverted on him, and the clouds, he was watching the trees go by in the hillside as he was coming down. That's the mental image that still gives me sweats at times. These trees maybe 1500 ft in front of the airplane, and you know me heading right towards them. Somewhere in there was where he he asked if I wanted to declare an emergency, and I said, well, yeah. 75 Lima, yeah, I have a I am definitely declaring an emergency. They might be afraid to declare an emergency, you know, they don't, you know, if it's paperwork or, you know, they want to be embarrassed because they're doing this or whatever. Uh, even though they haven't declared the emergency, we can declare it for them. Yeah, 75 Lima, I can I have vectors? I need vectors to the actually, sir, I lost in radar contact. 75 Lima, I've got 2 G9 that shows up on my GPS pretty close. Okay, that's right behind the last position I had. That would be about, uh, 6:00 to and 8 miles. If you want to turn back and head that way, actually, uh, uh, we decided to try to get him into Somerset, which is right behind him, because most of the icing reports, the heavier icing reports, and that were east of his position because of the front moving through.
I kind of flew along in VFR condition, staying clear of the clouds towards where the GPS said the airport would be. We were on the phone with the, uh, Airport Manager. He reported that they had the heavy crosswind down there, I think 40 plus mph crosswind downer. As I tried to line up for final on the runway, I noticed that I had the Rudder in all the way to the left, and I was still drifting off centerline. So obviously the wind was blowing faster than the airplane was able to adjust for. And about that time, the controller came back and said, I've got the weather for you. 75 Li, I can tell you the condition of the runway, it sucks. It's covered in ice. I was trying to figure out some better option than landing on this, you know, this short strip with drifting snow in the middle of nowhere. And that's when the controller was talking about some other airport to the north. All right, 4375 L, if you want, we can get try to get you up to Johnstown. That's just the north Easter position there. If you want to give that a try. They got a tower up there. And as luck would have it, that airport was located north of where my sectional map cut off. Um, so I wasn't so sure about it. And then he gave me Johnstown right now, and their observation is showing winds 280 at 21 with gust to 26. We got a half a mile visibility up there with light snow and freezing fog, uh, showing 300 overcast. So we're not doing real good on the ceiling up there. 7, we got anything better? And about the same time, uh, my rer associate was on the phone with Aluna getting their latest weather report. Uh, we had a colan pilot come off of Aluna, and he advised that he had good visibility on the climb out, and the winds rather the north, right right down the centerline of the runway, uh, Runway 3 Z up there. You know, it was just the, you know, the voice from God going, you could survive this. There is a way to get out of this and be alive. I think that was a big help, you know, to hear another pilot tell him, okay, I just took off, the weather's good here, you can get in here. So I, um, told the controller at that point that I would I would make it to there, but there was a ridgeline between me and Altuna to solo going over the ridgeline that I actually had to start reading them off. I'd get a position on them, look at the charts, it was arounder. We had to start giving him Tower Heights and Tower positions relative to his last position. We have our our transmitting Tower at blob, which is just west of Aluna, and when he went by that area, I think we figured he was 60 to 80 feet below the top of the radio tower when he went by.
That was when I started noticing ahead of me that the ground was rising and the cloud layer was not. So I was going to have to go back up into the soup. Went into the hard IFR conditions, got up to about 4,000 feet, you know, was just estimating the speed of the air airplane at that point by the sound of the propeller, you know, one of those things I remember them making us do, but never thinking that I would actually have to. We were talking about it afterwards, and Stacy told me that was the first time she ever thought that the people were going to die. At that point, the radar Associates watching for him, the supervisor standing behind me watching for him, uh, the guy at the next sector over, Tyrone sector, he's watching that same area, he's watching to see if he pops up. All right, 4375, I'm starting to get to hit on your transplant again. Go and hit the ENT button. We'll make sure that's you. And so I started descent, you know, it was sort of a controlled descent, keeping my air speed up, and eventually I broke free of the clouds. Um, and I said, okay, good. Well, at least I'm I'm clear of the clouds, so I'm not going to accumulate any more ice. I'm able to maintain altitude. Eventually, I I spotted the airport, and it was just, you know, life was very good. One of those things about with the landing was that, you know, I had an air speed indicator that didn't work. I wasn't sure exactly how much ice ice was still on the airplane. I could see out, and I could see I had, you know, about an inch of ice RH snow on the, um, on the wings and the struts. What I did, and and especially because I had plenty of runway there, as I just said, you know, I'm not going to change a thing because I'm flying. So I'm going to get down to like like a 100 or 2 200 ft. I'm going to make sure I'm over the edge of the runway before I change anything. That way, if anything goes wrong, at least I've got a run way underneath of me. Once I got over the edge of the runway, I, um, just pulled off power, didn't apply any flaps, didn't didn't do much of anything else except, uh, reduce power, and then just let the airplane kind of drift down and land. As I later found out, that's that's one of the big things to do is, you know, if you're flying the airplane and you've got problems, don't change much unless you absolutely have to. Uh, because apparently people apply flaps, and that changes the aerodynamics and makes you nose over into the around. Uh, at that point, I just, you know, I landed, slowed the airplane down, taxied off, thanked the air, um, controller, and went over to a parking place and shut down the airplane.
The big decision points where I could have made this flight a whole lot less stressful were first off, I should have taken some more time to, um, look up the weather and and check out some of the the the py reps. And there weren't a lot of icing reports going at that time, but I could have at least seen them and maybe pre-planned some some alternates. At that point, the second decision point would have been when I noticed that the clouds were above the level of the airplane and knowing that I'm in an airplane without no icing, I should have probably diverted at that point. After that, the next decision point would have been when I was sitting on top of a cloud layer that I knew was 6 or 7,000 ft thick and going, I can find a a freezing layer down below me. It's not it's not that far below freezing. Um, yeah, that's that's generally a bad idea. Um, you know, it's one thing if you're already stuck in the soup and you notice some freezing, and you think, okay, you know, there's no weather fronts, there's no weather fronts around me, maybe I can descend and find a freezing layer below me, or maybe I can go up and get clear of clouds, but by then you're you're already in trouble. So that's there, and it's much simpler if you're clear of clouds and you notice you're below freezing, stay clear of clouds.