Cold Front

Two weeks ago I scheduled some time with the CFII to practice some IFR procedures (primarily ATC communications). Some of the GPS approaches at KACY looked interesting and I wanted to see how the avionics would handle the missed approach and holding with multiple way points. I planned a cross country that would take me around and through the Philadelphia Class B into a towered airport.

The weather was IFR. A real cold front was moving in from the west and the rain showers and low ceilings arrived by mid morning. Just perfect for the exercise I had planned. A preflight briefing with the CFII cleared a lot of misconceptions (what does pressing the OBS button do?) and refreshed a number of concepts about GPS navigation. I got a weather brief from Flight Service and filed a plan down and another back from KACY. Preflight was soggy but normal.

An idiosyncrasy at Wings is the need to use a cell phone to call Clearance Delivery from the run-up area. My headset allows a cell phone to be attached, but I was unable to get a call out until I disconnected it and called directly. I made a mistake. Cleared as filed, I thought my Void time was in 5 minutes, instead he said call back in 5 minutes. So, I took off without a clearance. Never a good thing to do as it tends to annoy the Air Traffic Controllers.

As I started to enter the overcast at about 3K, the CFII told me to look out at the wing. Ice. A call to (my now friendly) ATC got an immediate clearance to descend and assistance to execute the GPS RWY24 (Mazie). My transitions were sloppy but I made a nice landing back home.

So in addition to getting a release form ATC before T.O, I should have been aware of the OAT on the ground and not relied so heavily on the wx briefing (frz lvl 9k), especially since I knew the weather was related to a winter cold front. Situational Awareness.

An excellent training flight.

Sr20
Time = 1.0 hours
Actual = 0.2 hours