Ill-fated trip to Teterboro

Ian_J

Ian_J

Hubschrauber Flieger
Staff member
Here are some pics from my trip this weekend from Rochester to NYC. Unfortunately, the plane only made it to Binghampton. It was in and out IMC along the way, everything was going great. Then about an hour into the trip approach says he lost radar contact and gave me a climb. I keyed the mike to respond and my radio stack went dead. I looked at the ammeter and it was a pretty good ways left of the zero. I recycled to no avail, but was able to leave one radio on to tell approach the situation and that I was diverting. Luckily I had just punched through the clouds into VMC conditions when it occured. On approach the flaps only made it to about 10 degrees before they ran out of juice, but other than that I landed without incident. Rented a car from there and drove the 4 hours to NYC while the plane was fixed over the weekend. Turns out the biggest problem was a loose wiring harness from the voltage regulator to the alternator. Some other things wrong too, (replaced battery, fixed something on the alternator itself) but I am amazed the ONE mechanic at the airport got all the parts and got it all fixed by the time I returned on Sunday. Unfortunately, the weather was awful... winds were at 35-ish with storms in the area and icing forcast right above the MEA. So my wife and I waited at the airport for a few hours till the majority of the junk blew off and departed. Bumpy as hell and LIFR all the way, but not too bad. Picked up some trace/light icing towards the end, but got a decent out of it. Ground speed on landing was 35 knots. What a trip.

#1: Finger Lakes
#2: Clouds (duh)
#3: Conditions for most of the trip.
#4: More clouds.
#5: Yay! Binghampton in sight before ALL the power died.
 
But alas, we did make it to destination via a trusy rented Impala. Here's a pic from Central Park.
 
it was a pretty wild week with weather in the new york metro area. glad you finally made it to the city though without anymore problems.
 
Yeah the weather sucked here in BINGHAMTON all week. No worries everyone spells it wrong :). Glad to see you made it in okay!
 
Man I miss that area! My first flight lessons were out of Cortland/Ithaca airports and man! The scenery in those hills and valleys, not too mention the finger lake valleys, was spectacular.

By contrast, i took my first flight here in Killeen TX yesterday...FLAT FLAT FLAT! It was hard to find my way home from the training area by landmarks, because there really arent any! haha.
 
amd87 said:
Yeah the weather sucked here in BINGHAMTON all week. No worries everyone spells it wrong :). Glad to see you made it in okay!
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Well you should have heard me try and talk to approach... I kept wanting to say BING-Hampton approach instead of bingumting approach. My wife kept laughing at me everytime I screwed it up.
 
Some guys carry around a handheld transciever. Me? I think it's a waste of time. I carry a handheld GPS everywhere I go because I'm much more worried about what happened to you; losing all electrical in IMC.

You can go without talking with anybody while in IMC, but if you don't know where you're at you are fux0r. Sweet job not freaking out.
 
John Herreshoff said:
Some guys carry around a handheld transciever. Me? I think it's a waste of time. I carry a handheld GPS everywhere I go because I'm much more worried about what happened to you; losing all electrical in IMC.

You can go without talking with anybody while in IMC, but if you don't know where you're at you are fux0r. Sweet job not freaking out.
Click to expand...

I agree, although many handheld radios have built in CDI's, so they would be at least decently helpful, but not like a GPS. I only wish I could afford a handheld anything right now. Funny thing is, I had my third alternator failure yesterday as well! Luckily none have been in IMC although one was at night while on an IFR flight plan over the Cascade mountains in a retractable gear plane. The tower at YKM (Yakima, WA) where we diverted to stayed open an extra 20 minutes to make sure we made it alright and to keep the lights on for us. That was fun.

The other two were really simple, one was just in the pattern, no biggy at all, and yesterday was the first time I had to use lightgun signals (well, only to taxi cuz we made enough static to get cleared to land before the radio died). It was fun though because I had a student pilot riding onboard with me, and he was like "Wow!" the whole time. Taught us both a lot since he's learning and I'm working on my CFI. He said he learned a lot by watching me and doing the things I did which made me feel really good that I unofficially "taught" someone stuff without even really teaching it.
 
Yeah, I had a yoke mounted Garmin 96 with me. I was commenting to my wife that we could have made it all the way to Teterboro if we remained IMC thanks to the lost commo rules. Stupid "if VFR, remain VFR and land" part. :)

And no, not 714WS (though I instruct in that one nearly every day), it's 5270H.
 
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