88 Hangar Queen - Part I

N88HQ is the tail number on a Cessna 182 at our flight club... properly, phonetically, pronounced this plane is "8 8 Hotel Quebec".. but she's fondly known as "8 8 Hangar Queen" because she is always in the hangar being fixed. Not her fault, we don't have many 182s at the club and so people are more used to flying 172s and 152s and don't know how to fly her well. So people make mistakes flying her, break something, and off she goes to be fixed.

Friday evening we are going to fly good old 88HQ to WLW via GOO. I arrive at the flight club and the mechanics have just finished putting the cowling back on the plane and fueling her up after the latest repair. Jeff pre-flights the plane and I get the luggage together. Katie and our friend, Paul, fly with us. The stop at GOO (Nevada County Airport) was to spend some time with friends that moved to Grass Valley, have dinner with them and deposit our child for the weekend so she could spend the weekend with her BFF from Kindergarten. I (and I think we - Jeff was PIC of the flight) knew that we would be landing at WLW (Willows Airport - our final destination) after dark... one doesn't leave San Jose around 5:45 PM, eat dinner for a couple hours and land another hop away before dark - this becomes significant later.

We fly from RHV (Reid Hillview - our "home" airport) to GOO without incident. (We did note the cylinder head temp and oil temp gauges were inoperative or inaccurate on the way out, but we had enough other information on the state of the engine Jeff figured we could continue.) We meet up with our friends and have a wonderful dinner. They drop us off at the airport and leave with Katie. Its well past dark. We (Jeff, Paul and I) hop in the plane, start up the engine and go through the initial and taxi checklists for the next leg to WLW. We turn on the taxi lights "as required"... hmmm... no lights. Turn off the switch, check the fuses, turn them on. No lights. Park the plane, turn off engine, get out, and see if we can find a way to reach into the cowling of the plan and feel or see an obvious plug that is unplugged. We knew what the issue was right away, the mechanics didn't plug in the landing/taxi lights after doing their work and Jeff didn't catch that fact on his pre-flight inspection.

So, what do you do? You know you need to get somewhere and it is a dark, but moonlit night, and you don't have the lights that are normally used to illuminate the runway directly in front of the plane when landing. You are 140 miles from home and 60 miles from your destination. Well, I knew with my current level of knowledge I certainly wouldn't fly and attempt a landing without landing lights. Jeff wasn't so unsure about his capabilities. He tells me he could land w/o the lights. Well, he's PIC and I'm just a 13 hour trainee. So, I have to trust his judgment. We get back into the plane and he sits for a second. Then he says, its best we don't go. At that moment we both say at exactly the same time "That is the right decision."

It was the right decision for two reasons:
1) while Jeff may have been able to land without landing lights, that puts our flight with an extra risk that we really didn't need to accept... who knew what else may go wrong on the flight. Flying is all about managing risk.
2) it turns out the FAA specifically disallows attempted landings at night w/o landing lights. So attempting such in a non-emergency situation is illegal.

We called our friends, they came back to the airport and picked us up.. we spent the night at their place, borrowed their car and drove back to the airport at 5:00 AM. Timed our flight to take off just after sunrise and landed safe and sound at WLW. There we were... able to fly to our ultimate destination (WLW) safely with plenty of time for breakfast and getting to the track on time.

I think one of the things I like about flying is the significance of the decisions made by the pilot. Yes, we could have taken off and maybe landed w/o those pesky lights. However, we didn't because of the additional risk (or likelihood of failure) created by the attempt... especially if something ELSE went wrong. If you make an incorrect decision (or risky decision) the wrong day at the wrong time with the wrong future circumstance, you, your passengers and innocent people on the ground can die as a result. There are not too many roles that have THAT level of impact... aside from the health care field.

More to come later... The race weekend and The Intrepid HQ and her further adventures ....