Pitot-Static Problems

A little fun this morning. As it always seems to, the weather couldn't resist turning ugly our last night. We took off from Indy into some mild thunderstorms. Since the leg to Columbus is so short, we only climbed to 15,000', which will not normally get an airplane on top of any weather. Approaching level off, my pitot-static instruments all went wacko. They're called pitot-static b/c they rely on dynamic pressure info from the pitot tubes (those pointy looking probes near the nose) and/or static pressure info from the static ports, to determine, among other things, airspeed, altitude and rate of climb/descent. When any of these sensors get clogged up, it's garbage in, garbage out time for the airplane's instruments. In most cases, the likely cause is icing; and since we were in the clouds, this was my assumption (although dirt dauber nests run a close second in causality). The ports are heated, and the heaters have idiot lights to let the pilots know if they're offline, but we had no such indications. I handed off control of the airplane to my FO, as his instruments, which have a different source, were fine. I switched my air data computer (ADC) to join the FO on the right side and things returned to normal. A little excitement at 5:00 in the morning never hurt anyone, right? Of course, you have to ask, what if the FO's side iced up as well? Well, it's emergency time and let's get out of the clouds and see if we can thaw out the ice. I had this happen in the E-2 one time, and it's quite a challenge b/c you have no idea how fast you're going or what your altitude is. Fortunately, we have a table of ballpark figures for airspeed based on weight and power settings, and the inertial reference units (IRU's) will still provide altitude info. The maintenance sign-off indicated a bad ADC, so case closed.

Columbus

Scioto River

Columbus Commons

This month, my flying will be divided between Columbus-Indy and Milwaukee-Indy trips. I got in to Columbus late last night and woke up this morning to a beautiful spring day. It is my first time here, so I enjoyed walking around Columbus Commons, beside the Scioto River, and all through the Capitol district. It was nice to be deadheading on American again after the nightmare last month of United (every flight was late, and one was outright cancelled).

Famous Flyers

I recently found this book at our cabin, which had been rescued from my family's North Carolina cabin after it was sold years ago. I never realized it was actually my father's; a gift to him when he was quite young, as the inscription inside says. It's a collection of stories about the pioneering pilots of that era (copyright 1932). I enjoyed very much reading it during spring break leisure time, and again felt a connection to dreams he might have had as a boy growing up at the dawn of aviation.

Fun in Portlandia East

Runway 29 on the Harbor Visual approach

See the lighthouse?

parked for the weekend

This has been a very challenging week flying between Portland, Maine and Memphis. It started with a deadhead on United Sunday night complete with two old Chinese ladies playing Asian disco music on a portable stereo so loud the passengers had to ask the flight attendant to have them shut it off. We flew a relatively uneventful leg from Portland to Memphis Monday night, actually getting there in time for a sleep room. After a quick nap, I woke up to learn we had an FAA flight inspector on our jumpseat back to Portland, my first as a Captain. He was somewhat grumpy, so the flight was less than enjoyable. Stuff always goes wrong when a check airman or FAA inspector is onboard, and this flight was no exception. Our APU refused to provide air pressure for engine starts, and the two mechanics at that gate were brand new (read: clueless). Their clumsy attempts at troubleshooting did not impress the Inspector, and the paperwork to defer the problem was less than satisfactory. We finally left over an hour late, and lost our status as a "time critical" flight. We were typically short on gas from the start, and all these delays caused me to be about two minutes from having to taxi back to the ramp for more gas when we took the runway for takeoff. The Inspector spent the next day bringing joy to the ramp at Portland with an audit. Meanwhile, we were diverted into Fort Wayne the next evening on the way to Memphis, cutting very short our turn time, so no nap. We were late again leaving Memphis thanks to a window heat problem with the same mechanics trying to figure out what to do. By the time we got back to Portland, I was drooling on myself. The only cool thing to happen was getting to do the Harbor Visual approach to runway 29 b/c the sun was up. Fun! Last night, the Inspector rode back to Memphis with us, but was somewhat more jocular. My FO did a nice job with nasty crosswinds on the Memphis landing. When we came back to Portland this morning, our airplane's autothrottles were not working, making the approach a handful. Who knows what fun awaits us tonight to close out the week!