Almost Friday Harbor

The plan today was for my friend Tony and I to fly up to Friday Harbor for dinner. The weather forecast all week had been for partly cloudy skies with a chance of showers, so there was a chance the weather would prevent us from going. I kept an eye on things all day, and the ceilings were holding at about 2500 - 3000' along our route, so we headed for the airport at around 2:30 PM.

We got to the airport and I checked the forecast again, and things were still holding up and forecast to be VFR into the evening, so we started getting the plane ready. We taxied out to runway 34 and headed North.

Once in the air, visibility was greater than 10 miles, and the ceiling was generally between 2000' and 3500'. There were a few spots of lower hanging virga, but otherwise things looked good for the trip. In case the ceilings did start to come down, the skies looked fairly clear on the west side of Puget Sound. As this was Tony's first flight in a small airplane, I let him take the controls for a bit and make a few turns. He did pretty good for a first-timer!

We proceeded North to Arlington, and as we approached the field Tony spotted a camouflaged jet taking off below. I called up Whidbey approach to get clearance to transition their Class C airspace, and they asked me if I could identify the "fast-mover." I told them it appeared to be a SEPECAT Jaguar. We heard nothing on the Arlington CTAF from him.

Whidbey cleared us to transition, and so we headed West direct to Friday Harbor. As we neared Whidbey NAS, approach warned us not to fly directly over the airfield, so we slid a little North to avoid an overflight. A T-34 Mentor was up orbiting over the airfield. Heading out over the water toward FHR, the weather started improving greatly. We climbed up to 3500' and could see Friday Harbor just ahead.

The FHR ASOS was reporting 10 kt. winds gusting to 16 kts. directly across the runway. I set up for runway 16 and as I cleared the trees off the end of the runway on final things started getting squirrelly. There was a lot of turbulence bouncing us around, and as I approached the runway the gusty crosswind was making it hard to stay lined up on the centerline. The left wheel kissed the runway, but then a big gust picked us up and tossed us to the left, so I pushed in the throttle and went around for another try. I added a few knots on the approach and only put in 10 deg. of flaps, but the second approach was no better than the first. As discretion is the better part of valor, I opted to give it up and head back to Auburn. They have restaurants there, too. :)

We followed a reciprocal route home, and as we approached Arlington again, we say the same Jaguar we saw on the way up taxiing for takeoff. We didn't hear anything on the CTAF, and so I radioed asking for the Jaguar taking off to say his intentions and let him know we were above him. No repsonse. I don't know if he was NORDO (no radio), was on the wrong frequency, or just wasn't paying attention. In any event, he took off below, and I rocked the wings back and forth to make us a more visible target. He eventually turned off to the West.

We hit some more virga as we headed south, but then the ceilings went back up to about 3000'. It was a smooth flight the rest of the way, with an uneventful landing in Auburn, where the winds were calm. I filled up the tanks and we put the plane away. We drove to my house and stopped off for Chinese along the way.

Time: 2.7 hrs.

Thanks to Tony for all the pictures!