Pilot's logbook

2/18 C-152 N89933 LOU-BWG-LOU Flight plan. Standiford. Mystic. BWG. EWO. Hill with towers. Shelby. Crestwood. Landing 28kt. 3.1 hr.

This is a detailed list of "shoulda, woulda, coulda's."

I chose my route according to the weather, going to Bowling Green. Ceilings were expected to be 4200 - 5000 and winds 12kt. Just as I left, the wind at Bowman picked up to 14G22, and Dane said something to me, but I didn't think much about it. I'd driven up from the south, and what I'd seen matched the weather report: the last hurrah of the windy/precip was passing thru. There were more low clouds than the weather people had said, but I decided to go anyway.

As it turned out, the weather wasn't a factor except for staying below the clouds. (Not until I got back to the Louisville area, anyway.)

I got a lot of experience out of this flight. Some of it I'm still puzzling out.

I filed a flight plan, which I've never done before. The flight plan specified LOU-EWO-BWG. BUT I asked for Radar service to BWG and the controller routed me 220º @2500 maintain VFR. He then sent me across Standiford and then 240º thereafter. (now I'm wondering whether the wind blew me off course. I followed the heading they gave me.) Some miles west of there he asked me if I had a course to BWG. That surprised me since I thought he had my flight plan and would put me on it. I told him I'd have it in a minute, and decided I could turn South and go from there. The most obvious landmark was an airport to my left (SSE). Guess what? Fort Knox. ATC suggested I hang a right. I did. I said I'd go Mystic VOR to BWG, which I did uneventfully.

I am NOT getting in a plane again until I have a chart that shows north AND south of Louisville on the same side of the chart and I can see the whole picture. Oh, and the second stupid thing I did was start off with the second page of my flight plan on top and not realize it. And the other annoying thing was the sun visor that wouldn't stay up and the digits on the radios that you can't see worth squat.

I tracked my times and positions from Mystic to Bowling Green on the map. The only surprise there was seeing Bowling Green sooner than I expected. I also noticed that the hour hand on my big watch is not accurate. (This problem came up later, but I didn't catch it.)

At BWG I couldn't tune in the weather or get an airport advisory, so I flew over midfield and got a windsock view and watched to see what the other traffic was doing. Landing was uneventful, but I looked at the time and decided not to take the time to go inside. (I should have refueled.)

I took BWG VOR FROM and then New Hope VOR TO. Somewhere at the point of passing over New Hope I started doing something wrong that I still don't understand. I DID see Elizabethtown on my left and decided to go ahead and turn north even though I hadn't seen the flag flip over. I remember thinking I'd wait until I knew where I was (on that northward section, perhaps Shepherdsville, before contacting Louisville Approach.). I remember NOT being sure where I-65 was, and wanting to make sure I was on the right of it. I remember looking at something (probably the Gene Snyder) and not being able to tell which expressway it was. I remember wanting to go higher to get a better view, but not wanting to bust C airspace. I remember trying to contact Louisville Approach and not getting a reply. I remember checking my frequency, switching radios, trying read those stupid invisible digits. I remember trying to get the Louisville VOR and not being able to read it. (I might have been too close. Or not.)I remember reading my watch and thinking that I wasn't as late as I had thought. I remember seeing that Bowman VOR was becoming to the west, but thought I was reading something wrong. Then there was a big patch of clouds and snow. I had to just beat an immediate retreat. After that I saw the funky hill with the antennas all over it that lies somewhere between Shelbyville and Frankfort, but who could believe I was there? Shortly after, there was a Shelby water tower. I was still wondering if I could have been idiot enough to cross the river and be up in Indiana somewhere. A Crestwood water tower convinced me to just go back to believing the VOR to Bowman. Maybe the wind was enough to be blowing me way east all the time. (Todd noticed afterwards that if I hadn't seen the flag switch over on the VOR, I'd have been about where I ended up. I don't know).

At some point I called tower and told them I was a few miles from the airport. (I had Kaden Tower in sight, finally) and they asked me if I was 6 miles NE. I guessed that was right, so I had a straight-in clearance to land runway 24 and they said they'd cancel my flight plan, which they'd gotten phone calls about.

THEN the really weird wind and turbulence hit. I was fighting a big headwind to the runway--250@28 kt. Everything felt strange and mushy and unpredictable. Even though the VASI said I was above glide slope, I felt like we might fall on the trees. It wasn't so much a flare as a powered effort to keep flying the plane as long as possible. The wind was so crazy that I realized there was NO WAY I was going to go around. It had to be down.

Tower said, "Good landing."

I think I left the beacon switch on.

When I got out of the plane, there were 2 gallons of usable fuel in the gauge.

So why didn't I just tell Bowman Tower that I needed help?

Todd sat down with me afterwards. He reminded me how one thing snowballs into another. Now I think I should have been scared. I wasn't. I was concerned. I wasn't as aware of my fuel situation as I should have been. Definitely. Talk about hazardous attitudes.

$359

(I forgot I had my phone. I could have tried it, or the faux-GPS on it. My original plan had been to see whether that worked in the air.)

Well, I know what my next trip will be. I need a lot more practice on this route.


PS

*132.075 not 132.75
Maybe I was trying to put 132.75 into the dial.


*My mental picture as I was coming up to New Hope VOR was seeing Etown as if I were approaching from the southeast and needing to make a right turn to intersect the 360 radial north. Actually I was SW and needed to turn left.

*Tony and Dane got Zach and me in the boardroom to talk about cross country planning, weather briefing, fuel, ATC, etc. Tony wants me to go with him to do crosswind landing practice.

PPS The watch is going back to Sporty's. The hour hand is off by 1/2-hour, so on the first part of the hour it reads an hour slow.