Daddy, My Ears Hurt!

On August 16th the weather was beautiful and so I planned a flight East across the cascades and then North to Omak (KOMK), a small airfield just North of Okanagan. My daughter, Lauren, was excited to go too, so she and I headed to the airport around 3:30 that afternoon. I had originally planned to take a 172 (N9534H), however when I got to the airport I noticed that the 182 (N42043) was available. I canceled the reservation for '34H and booked '043 until 9:00 PM. I did the preflight and we took off into a blue sky dotted with puffy white clouds. As we climbed, Lauren complained that she was getting a headache, probably because the adult-sized headset she was wearing was squeezing a little too hard. As we passed Cle Elum on the East side of the Cascades she said she wanted to go back home, so we turned around and headed back. I started a 500 foot-per-minute descent, and within a few minutes Lauren started complaining that her ears were hurting. I tried to help her equalize the pressure, but she wasn't having any luck. Unfortunately we had to continue on down in order to make the landing back at Auburn, and she was in tears during the rest of the flight. Since I had to keep flying the plane, there wasn't anything I could do for her. It's hard knowing your little girl is in pain but there's nothing you can do to comfort her. Fortunately after we landed she started feeling a lot better. I need to start looking for a kid-sized headset, and try to teach Lauren how to relieve the pressure in her ears. Total time: 1.2 hrs.

Olympic Airport Tour

After the outrageous heat wave we had here (the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Seattle, 103 deg.!), the weather turned wet and cloudy. But on Tuesday the ceiling was forcast to lift up to 3600', so after work I decided to fly out to the coast and land at some airports I hadn't visited before. The planned route was Auburn (S50) -> Elma (4W8) -> Willapa Harbor (2S9) -> Westport (14S) -> Bowerman (KHQM) -> Sanderson (KSHN) -> Auburn (S50).

Overall the flight was great. The air was very smooth, and I only had to dodge one low cloud on the way to Elma. After Elma, as I approached Willapa Harbor, I noticed some panels layed out in an "X" on the runway, which is an indication that the airport is closed. As I flew over the field I saw several trucks crossing back and forth over the runway. Evidently they are making some improvements to the field. So I had to skip a landing there and continued on to Westport where I made a nice touch-and-go. From there it was on to Bowerman in Hoquiam. Bowerman has a long, wide runway, so landing there was no problem.

Next up was Sanderson. On the way there I heard on the radio a Piper Super Cub doing touch-and-go's, but he had landed for good by the time I got there. Another easy touch-and-go. After that it was back across Tacoma Narrows Class D and a final landing at Auburn.

Overall the flight was a great training exercise in cockpit resource management. Since most of the waypoints were within 30 miles of each other or less, I had to keep busy navigating, setting up the radios, decide which runway to land on, communicating, and keeping an eye out for traffic. Total flight time was 2.4 hours with landings at four new airports.

Below is the SPOT track of my route and some pictures I took along the way.

Western Washington Airport Tour at SpotAdventures

Map created by SpotAdventures:GPS Geotagging