20 January 2021
The Continental O-470U in my C182 hadn’t turned a blade for a couple of months. It found itself stuck on the ground thanks to the usual combinations of no spare time when the weather’s good, no good weather when there’s time available, or the winter weather combination of a runway that’s way too soft to use without causing serious damage, even though there’s a bright blue sky and multiple free hours in the diary.
At the start of the year we had a run of cold bright dry days and I wondered how well the ground might be drying out, or even perhaps freezing, so I pulled on my boots and set off on a runway inspection. The strip where I’m based is about 800m long by maybe 10 or so metres wide, and much to my delight it was pretty solid underfoot. There were a couple of softer patches, but even they weren’t too bad. High pressure was dominating the weather, and although there was no rain to soften things up, mornings and sometimes entire days were filled with fog. The promise of a bit of a breeze in a few days’ time brought the chance of better conditions, and I tentatively planned a local flight of about an hour to give the aeroplane a bit of an outing.
“The chance of a divert to somewhere with an instrument approach was looking necessary…”
Then along came lockdown. I’m not anti-mask or anti-vax, but with genuine engine health flights permitted I figured that I could travel to the strip, get the aeroplane out, fly, put it away and get home again all in accordance with the guidance, and all without encountering anyone else.
On the best looking weather day I woke up to more thick fog. The forecast was for things to clear up later, and Nigel, the super friendly, super helpful strip owner said that he would walk the strip in the morning and email me if it was unsuitable. Gradually as the morning went on the weather got better. Nigel sent me a text just before he left the strip saying that the local hills were now visible, and things were clearing up.
Checking the weather and Notams on SkyDemon, I roughly planned an hour of local flying that I hoped would stay within the government guidance, not see me dwelling for too long over the houses of those who may not enjoy the purr of the six-cylinder Continental as much as I do, all the while giving the aircraft and its avionics a workout, with time to heat everything up and chase out any unwanted moisture along the way.
A thorough pre-flight suggested nothing major had changed since putting her away last year. Over Christmas I’d had a good look when I took all three spats off in anticipation of some softer ground flying, but that’s no reason to become complacent. With a sparkly clear windscreen and a glug of fresh oil I pushed the aeroplane out, primed the engine and turned the key. Just one blade passed by before she fired up, settling into a lovely rumble as everything came to life and the GTN’s GPS found itself. My autopilot detected a fault and declared itself unavailable for service, but having spent 18 of the last 20 years hand flying, it wasn’t the end of the world, or more specifically the end of this flight.
With everything in the green I backtracked the runway, sensing the softer patches and keeping as much weight off the nosewheel as I could. With all checks complete and one final blind call we headed down the runway, lifting off early thanks to the cold air and relatively light weight (fuel, not me sadly). As I turned north to avoid overflying the local town on full climb-out power I was surprised to see some low lying cloud a few miles away. Behind me the conditions were good and the sky looked bright to the south.
Keen to get the oil up to temperature I ran a higher than normal power setting, the Continental was enjoying the cold dense air, but so it seems was the moisture as it took the opportunity to begin condensing on some of the local hills. This wasn’t what I expected, and despite literally thousands of hours flying from this very seat I had an uneasy feeling that all was not great with my aviating world. This was not the fun relaxed flight I’d been planning…
I headed south towards what looked like a brighter sky, noticing that patchy low level mist seemed to be forming and clearing randomly. I’d been in the air for about a third of my planned hour, but looking out of the window the chance of a divert to somewhere with an instrument approach was looking like it might be necessary, so I pointed the nose back towards the strip and landed back after only 30 minutes airborne.
It was a good lesson. It doesn’t matter if you have lots of time in the aeroplane, it doesn’t matter if you have an instrument rating, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve flown in much worse conditions, currency and recency count for a lot. If you haven’t flown for a while, maybe stack everything in your favour when you get to return to the sky.
