Erie trip...with a little surprise

Ok. So here's my first post on my new blog. And what an interesting one too. Before I start, I just wanted to say that there are a lot of pictures that I wasn't able to post because my camera decided to stop working. The pictures included in this post are those taken by my friend and passenger Dan. I hope to get the pictures I took put on here or my flickr page soon. By the way, right now I'm sitting in the Admirals Club at Miami International waiting for my flight to Santiago de Chile for my next adventure, a three-week trip to Cordoba, Argentina. So here it goes.

My friend, Dan, and I were planning for a few weeks to visit a friend in Erie, PA who is attending the Pennsylvania Governor's School of Excellence. Apparently, she was going crazy because she was barely able to leave the compound. So, since I'm a Private Pilot with an Instrument Rating, we decided that it would be best to fly out there for the day instead of going through the tortuous 5-6 hour drive across the entire state. Allentown is located in eastern PA near NJ while Erie is on the western side next to Lake Erie (duh, right?).

We finally got the opportunity to do so on Saturday, July 26, 2008. I arrived at Queen City Municipal Airport (1N9), my "base", at about 9:15am for a 10:30am departure. At the time, the aircraft, a Cessna 172 designated N3435E was undergoing maintenance to fix the nose gear strut, which periodically dips down too far and thus needs to be fixed before someone strikes the prop on the tarmac. At about 10am, the A&P cerified mechanic informed me that the aircraft was good to go. To the left is a picture of the uncovered engine of our plane during the maintenance procedure.

I filed an IFR flight plan to Erie (KERI) simply because it's a longer-than-normal flight and I had a higher chance of running into much different weather in Erie than in Allentown and enroute as well. As expected, I encountered some clouds at our cruise altitude of 6000ft about half-way through our flight. Our route of flight was filed as: ETX V30 SEG V170 BFD, which looks like this on a map: (from fltplan.com)

Our westbound leg was typical, and unfortunately we did not pass anything remarkable besides I-80 (pictured below). This area of Pennsylvania is fairly rural, and once one gets to the far western side of PA, it becomes much flatter too. Allentown and the Lehigh Valley are surrounded by ridges and some small mountains, apparently part of the Appalachian Mountain chain. The next time I fly to New York City or over Philadelphia, I'll be sure to take pictures of those sprawling metros and post them. Anyway, here is a picture with Interstate 80, which runs east-west, near the town of Lake Harvey (I think).

Anyway, so the rest of the flight was uneventful (not even any turbulence!). I was actually dreading the flight to be over because it was the longest single flight I've done on my own. I had hoped to take the aircraft equipped with an autopilot, but unfortunately someone had already scheduled it that day. But, hand-flying the entire 2 hours and 30 minutes wasn't terrible since I already knew how to configure the aircraft so that I didn't need to keep my feet on the rudder pedals or apply pressure to the yoke constantly (done by using "trim"). After that, the aircraft only needed minor course corrections. Anyway, my friend has a video of my landing from the shotgun seat, and he is working on uploading it. I won't wait for him, so I'll just post it as a youtube link as soon as I get it.

The return flight, however, was without a doubt the most interesting flight I've ever been on, let alone piloted! It turned out that thunderstorms had begun to form in the local area more quickly than I had anticipated, so my friend and I decided to leave early before we would get stuck overnight in Erie. So, we returned to the airport and I prepared the flight for departure. I once again filed an IFR flight plan with a cruising altitude at 5000ft, with the following route: BFD V116 SFK V164 ETX.

To continue, we departed from Erie and immediately received vectors (directions essentially from the controller in layman's terms) around a small thunderstorm. A few minutes after reaching 5000ft, we were clear of the cell and we proceeded on course. Throughout the cruise phase, I was in contact with two in-flight weather briefers who advised me of yet another thunderstorm along our route of flight. It was moving slowly (about 13mph east), so I decided to continue with the expectation to work our way around it again.

At this point, I noticed that my fuel gauges both were indicating at or below the "E" mark. We all know what that means. However, I didn't find it to be a cause for alarm since I knew that these fuel level indicators weren't exactly of the most reliable design. I also knew that I had loaded 3 hours' worth of fuel into the plane before I departed Erie, and the flight was to be about 2 hours. So, I continued the flight but nevertheless monitored the fuel gauges more closely.

We successfully worked our way around the second storm, and shortly after we experienced a series of events which led to the climax of this day trip.

I don't mean to be blunt, but we had an electrical failure. To elaborate, we were cruising along, with everything indicating normal, and then all of a sudden my GPS turns off on its own and my entire radio stack begins to go haywire. Actually, it was more of an electrical malfunction than a failure because everything was still technically "on", but everything with a circuit was flickering on and off.

I flew the aircraft straight and level for a few more miles, and thn I determined that I may have been running dangerously low on fuel and that's why I may have been losing electrical power. I thought back to when I saw the fuel gauge indicating near empty and I simply put two and two together.

I proceeded to wake up my friend and told him to sit straight up and prepare for an emergency landing. I pulled the throttle all the way back to conserve fuel, and I found an uncut piece of farmland to set the Cessna 172 down. We landed without a problem. No damage to the plane. No injuries. The picture to the right shows the aircraft after it was secured.

Through common sense, I called 9-1-1 and informed them of what just happened. They arrived about 15 minutes later (again, this is rural PA) and took down our information and statements.

It turns out we landed in Unityville, PA, which is probably the middle of nowhere compared to where I'm used to living. Apparently, the town wasn't very exciting either. One State Trooper said to me, "Boy, before you came we were just watching the alfalfa grow!" A Volunteer Firefighter also said to me, "Oh my god! We have to document this! No one is going to believe this happened in Unityville, Pennsylvania!" To the left are two of the ten vehicles that showed up to the scene (more were behind the photographer).

By the way, here is a photo from flightaware.com, which tracked our flight to its ultimate destination that day. As a side note, the weather depicted in this picture is not the weather from that day. I copied this photo from the flightaware website a few days later.

So, after all of the hubbub was over with, we left the scene for a gas station where my friend and I would wait until my Dad and his Dad would come to pick us up. However, when leaving the scene, my friend managed to capture this spectacular shot of the aircraft and a timely sunset. A beautiful ending to a very interesting day.

The very next day, I had to make the two hour drive back to the scene to meet an FAA Safety Inspector to run over what happened and look over the scene. I told him basically what I just told you plus some more detailed observations of mine.

That night, I began to second guess myself on whether I had made the right decision. The Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) do state that in the event of a communications failure in good weather conditions (aka Visual Meterological Conditions or VMC) while on an IFR flight plan, you must proceed to the nearest suitable airport to investigate the problem. Technically, I slightly deviated from that since I did not land at an airport. However, I also had to consider whether I had enough fuel on board to complete the flight. When the failure occurred, fuel was my main concern and I was afraid that I did not have a sufficient amount to continue. Thankfully, the inspector said to me that he does not expect any disciplinary action since I made a judgment based on what I saw in the cockpit. I was relieved that someone agreed with me, and I felt better about my reasoning after I wrote my report. I guess that anxiety happens to many pilots after an emergency.

I guess that's the end of this first post. If anyone has any questions about this event or aviation in general, please feel free to e-mail me at mike_stangy@msn.com. If you e-mail me with a question, please state whether you permit me to post it on this blog with the answer. I'll be away for about three weeks, but I may or may not post during that time. Cya later everyone!