I Broke a Plane!

So, I had one of my 3 day weekends approaching, and it was time to get airborne again, so I'd rented N82HT for the weekend. After a slow start whilst waiting for low clouds to clear Houston, I set off bound for Alpine, in far west Texas, about 5 or 6 hours flying time away, depending on headwinds.

The ride out of Houston was smooth, but I was battling a 20 knot or so headwind, so progress was only about 100 mph groundspeed, which is still not too bad. I passed over Austin, and into the 'hill country', where some turbulence meant that I had to continually adjust my direction and altitude, rather than just letting the plane fly itself.

I was planning on refuelling at Junction, but as I got into radio range, winds were reported at 25knots across the runway, which is less than comfortable. So I decided to divert to Kerrville which has 2 runways at 90 degrees to each other, meaning that you can always land reasonably into the wind.

Just as I was approaching Kerrville, my Ammeter swung to the left, and the voltage low light came on. This basically indicates a discharge on the battery, which means that I was losing electrical power. Now, planes are clever - they use magnetos to provide the spark for the engine, so I wasn't going to lose engine power, but all your ancillary equipment (lights, flaps, some gyros, radios etc etc) were all potentially at risk.

I tried resetting the breakers, but it was no good, so I continued my approach into Kerrville, landed, taxied and let the mechanics on the ground hit it with spanners.

unfortunately, despite finding the probable cause of the issue, a shorting cable, the plan was still sick. It looked like the alternator or voltage regulator had been fried too, and that was a problem, as it was a weekend, no parts were available, and wouldn't get there until the following week.

So, in conjuction with the place I rent from back in Houston, we figured that I would leave the plane in Kerrville, and hitch a ride back with one of the flight instructors who coincidentally was visiting with family in Fredericksburg that evening.

In the meantime, I borrowed the crew car from Kerrville Aviation, and headed off-airport to explore the local state park.

In this picture you can see the view over the typical Texas Hill Country vegetation, with the airport in the distance.

At 9:30 pm, I headed back to the Airport (they'd given me the gate code to get in!), dropped off the car keys (under a bush for the staff to find in the morning) and waited on the tarmac for my ride home.

Finally, an aircraft approached, landed, and taxied up to me. I threw in my bags, climbed in, and off we went.

It was a great trip home - the plane was a twin engined Seneca, and we were on an instrument flight plan as the weather in Houston was low clouds. It was cool to fly above the clouds at night with a full moon, and magically descend through them to find the runway dead ahead. I must get my instrument rating!

Anyway - all in all it was a fun weekend. Annoying I didn't get to West Texas, but one with a lot of new experiences! One of the Apollo astronauts who walked on the moon landed his plane at Kerrville and came in while I was there, I got to have a good look around a LearJet (first time I'd seen a plane filled up with ice (for the bar!)), and the flight home on instruments in a twin...

What fun!

posted by Sam @ 17:52