Message-ID: <3706F8DD.213C826A@his.com>
Date: Sun, 04 Apr 1999 00:30:05 -0500
From: Jeff Cook <jcook@his.com>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win98; U)
X-Accept-Language: en,gd,zh
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: rec.aviation.student
Subject: Re: Contacing FSS
References: <710A79158B98CBFD.A813535FC3D874AE.9FC731556CE5F243@library-proxy.airnews.net> <7e6o3a$pe0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
NNTP-Posting-Host: pm15-183.his.com
Organization: Heller Information Services
Lines: 50
Path: news.jprc.com!dca1-feed2.news.digex.net!dca1-hub1.news.digex.net!digex!netnews.com!news-xfer.newsread.com!netaxs.com!newsread.com!news4.his.com!pm15-183.his.com
Xref: news.jprc.com rec.aviation.student:51567

snowbird101@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> appreciation of flight plans and the importance of modifying your ETA
> if necessary, and of closing them.  But they will do it.  Over the
> phone.


My (limited) experience is you can't rely on phones. I flew Leesburg, VA
to Luray for the first time several weeks ago. I planned to cancel my
flight plan from the air, as seemed prudent from the A/FD. Well, it's a
tiny airport in a valley and a tricky one, tight against a tall ridge
requiring right turns. The FBO office was 'closed' for the season. There
was another plane landing ahead of me, which was a bit of a surprise as
well. 

So I land, get out, chat with the other pilot, joke about my lousy right
traffic performance. I walk around. Gorgeous little homey field. I
realize I hadn't closed my flight plan. No big deal, I'll just use the
phone. Nope. No phone anywhere! But I even brought change! I go back to
the plane and fire up the radios. No reception/transmission. I'M IN A
VALLEY! Oh hell. (I've forgotten to close a plan twice in the past 18
months, though they just called my home field and found the plane after
I tied down. I really don't want to earn this reputation.) 

Ah HAH! I had my cell phone in my bag. Great! Nope. No cellphone
reception in the middle of Nowheresville, Virginia in the middle of a
distant valley on a weekend with no one on the field and the only other
plane left 10 minutes ago. Damn!

That's when I did a very quick 'hot' preflight. (I refer to this now as
"Get Up Itis"! Scary when I think about it.) Okay, call FSS. NO RESPONSE
for the next 10 minutes until I either far enough out of the valley, get
high enough to clear the ridges, or FSS gets done doing whatever they're
doing and answers back. Yes! "I need to make a LATE closing on my VFR
flight plan, and then file another."

All is well, and they didn't even mention it. Thing is, even if I did
remember to close my plan from the air before I landed, it seems they
wouldn't have heard my transmission anyway because of the ridges. My
only remedy might have been to climb a couple thousand feet right before
landing (!), or deliver myself to one of the friendly townfolk of Luray,
VA. 

I'm still trying to figure out how best to prepare for this situation.
What could I have done differently?

-- 
Jeff Cook
jcook@his.com
Washington DC area
http://www.cookstudios.com
