Protesters stormed the ASEAN summit in Thailand. Thais celebrated the big Songkran holiday, throwing pails of water and squirting Super Soakers at each other. In the Philippines, on Easter Week, we also had a wet, stormy story.
My last trip to Vigan. “Last” is a scary word.
This story will hog the Slow Learners page of this blog for a long time.
The haze was infernal that day.
The wind itself lost its way, shifting fitfully from east to south to west.
I held short at Omni while Clark Tower changed runways on a US Navy King Air doing touch and gos.
After takeoff, traffic in the landing pattern was easy to spot against the gray crud.
My planned route, in magenta below, was Omni to Tarlac to Pangasinan to San Fernando airport in La Union. In a Cessna 152. This is the aviation equivalent of driving to a beach 150 kilometers away in a golf cart.
Concepcion, Tarlac, the birthplace of Ninoy Aquino, is a VFR reporting point for Clark’s control zone. The haze looked especially bad out there.
Over Concepcion, I began to turn left (yellow track) to San Fabian, Pangasinan.
Then Clark Tower told me to avoid their runways’ climb/descent approach corridor until I was 15 miles out.
Balikatan military exercises were ongoing. US Marines were flying Harrier fighter jets and C-130 Hercules tranports nearby. I didn’t want to hurt their fragile airframes with my mighty Cessna 152’s wake turbulence.
So I turned back to the northeast, to avoid their approach path.
The planned route in magenta, the actual track in yellow. The gray feather is the ILS approach path to Clark.
In the 1970s, when Clark was a US Air Force Base, an F-4 Phantom buzzed a Cessna trainer, blowing away the Cessna’s wings. The student and instructor died. They had to dig down 40 feet to get to the bodies in the wingless Cessna.
Eighteen miles out, I turned back to the northwest to intercept my planned track to La Union. Into the worst of the haze. Except it wasn’t just haze.
Rain.
A minute. Two minutes. Harder rain! The airplane started bouncing around.
Bouncing around? Am I in a thundersto… ?
The haze had veiled a cumulonimbus behind it.
Cb, or thunderstorms, are bad news. Dragons prowl around spewing out electrical bolts, roaring, as their huge scaly tails hammer your airplane.
As I flew deeper into the rain, the ground was still visible, but the dark dragons loomed ahead.
[Han Solo: “That’s no moon. That’s a space station!”]
I was at my target altitude, 3,500 feet, for the leg to San Fabian, but the VSI was still reported a 1,000-foot per minute climb.
Updraft! I knew what was coming next.
My whole world had shrunk into the 3-inch the artificial horizon on my instrument panel.
The airplane was rocking. What’s the definition of moderate turbulence? Butt lifting off seat? Oof! Head banging on ceiling? Ow!
I checked my seat belt.
It lasted less than 5 minutes. But even a minute in turbulence in a Cessna 152 is pure religion and eternal penitence. We’re not talking thermals or convective burbles from a sun-baked rice field here.
I was flying below a thunderstorm.
As expected, an increasing tailwind sheared me downward at the far side of the cell. I remembered the flight with Julio five years ago, and pushed the throttle all the way in.
The microburst spat me out, and I had blue skies above, and the same damn haze ahead.
The 5-minute fun ride is highlighted in blue, below. The Garmin 296 GPS records altitude and heading variations every 10-12 seconds. The cell was just east of Tarlac.
Behind me, the storm was hidden behind the haze again. The rear windshield plastic trim had popped loose, but the cargo net tie down straps were secure.
I’d had enough of the haze! I climbed to clear blue skies at 6,500 feet, where I would be able to spot thunderstorms 50 million miles away.
Half an hour later, I was at top of descent. The Garmin told me to head downward for San Fernando.
The sardine-can vents were still dripping.
An hour after takeoff, I was on short final to runway 01 at La Union.
Later, watching fishermen on a calm beach at Puerto de San Juan, La Union, I exchanged text messages with Kevin and Iyoy:
Kevin: Ever notice how lonely it gets inside a charlie bravo? 🙂
Iyoy: I had my share of dat at d old RPVI. Departed San Carlos vmc for 30 min flyt to old RPVB at 1730 and encountered squall line of summer TSes. 3 beers in 2mins at the first sarisari store I cud find.
Posted from Bangkok, April 27, 2009
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Tonet,
glad you made it !
Thank you for sharing, the little Fokker is ready.
Best regards
Helmuth
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Sounds like quite a flight in N. Luzon (Here-There- Be-Dragons). This confirms my belief that flying is not for everyone. I enjoyed “The Reinvention of a Cessna Pilot” along with the other posts. It must be rewarding for you and Carlo to share the love of flying!!
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Hi Roger, welcome to Flying in Crosswinds!
That flight also confirmed my belief that it’s better to be on the ground wishing you were flying, than to be flying wishing you were on the ground!
Yes, it’s very rewarding to share flying with Carlo. It will probably be even more rewarding for me when he can pay for his share of aviation gasoline! I do love his writing about our flights, though. He really is a good writer.
Thanks for dropping by here, come back soon!
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My reply got removed, wonder why….
Anyway great site Tonet.
Cheers
Helmuth
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Hey, Helmuth. Haven’t touched any comments and replies here. I believe I have set it such that if the comment contains more than one url, it gets rejected. Because most spam messages contain several urls… .
Now I’m wondering what you said…? Probably PG-rated 🙂
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HAHAHA, I said thank you for sharing your experience with the dragons and the Red Fokker is ready for our flight.
Very glad you made it !!!
PS.: It must be the word Fokker
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Wow sir!One thing I noticed,your pic at 6500,and at TOD,is the sky really that violet?Oh and thanks for sharing that experience!
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Hi Kit, welcome to Flying in Crosswinds!
Your question is a common one I get about photography in Flying in Crosswinds.
So I’ll reply to you via a separate post. I’m traveling right now, will get post it in a couple of days.
I actually use a point-and-shoot camera, since it’s not easy to use an SLR while flying! You’ll be surprised at how simple my camera is. But it has one GREAT feature especially good for pilots!
Later… 😀
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Hey guys!
I’m one of your fans!
I’ve met Carlo, at the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta.
I’m with Philsca’s Rocket Research Team.
BTW,
I just made my new blog, to spread my love for aviation. 🙂
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Hi there, and welcome to Flying in Crosswinds!
Carlo is in Thailand and I am in France right now, so the blog is a little slow these days. We are both on holiday!
I’ll make sure to peek into your blog tonight.
http://aerofullthrottle.blogspot.com/
Done’t hesitate to post your url here. One url is allowed per comment, I think!
Keep visiting here!
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Carlo, gave me the Calling card, with the blog address, during the latest Hot Air Celeb.
But i was actually visiting this site, before then.
Anyway, thank you!
Also,
I posted before, but it was immediately deleted. I think it has only one url on the comment page.
The system probably detects the Website (the third row on Leave a Reply, after Name & Mail) as one, and the URL on the Comment page as two. So it’s rejected.
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Ed, sorry for late reply. Been a busy month. Nice to know you are a constant visitor here. I’ve seen your site — it’s gorgeous, you should keep it up!! You’re probably right about the url’s being counted twice. I’ll see if I can adjust it.
Come back often!
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great shots of the coast. we were the ones fishing with the long fishing rods in front of puerto de san juan, la union. i believe that was my cousin planting the pole or that was me. saw some nice surf spots from your pictures. thanks
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Man — what a small world! How did you happen onto Flying in Crosswinds? Are you surfers and fishing enthusiasts? We looked in on a couple of surfing resorts at La Union — Little Surfer Maid, or something that sounds like that.
Cool!
Visit again soon.
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Tonet- I just googled ilocos sur and ilocos norte coast something like that and found your pictures. We are not that great surfers we are still trying to be good and we were just fishing for fun. I believe you took the picture mid April. The surf spots are in Urbiztondo just in between San Fernando and San Juan La Union. Little Surf Maid is one of the hotels I think- we don’t surf there and Billabong surf school, we surf just beside puerto where the German resorts are.
Are you guys flying over the coast of Cagayan and the southern provinces?
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Man, yes, those pictures of you were taken at sunset on April 15. A flock of birds went’ right past you on one of those shots, really cool.
I’m not sure what a good surf spot looks like from the air. I wish I could help you more. I do see a lot of breaking waves far out from shore along several spots in the Ilocos coastline.
And we fly to Baler a lot, which is also a popular surfing place. In fact I have never flown to Baler without seeing at least a few surfers out on the bay off Angara’s resort or Bay’s Inn. I think they even rent our surfboards at a shack there, but I’m not sure.
I’ve wanted to do a post on Baler for a year now. Very, very interesting place to fly to. When the movie Baler! came out I was ready to go with pictures and an article. But it was just after the Christmas holidays, I had to go back to work in Bangkok, and it got drowned out in work. Baler has a nice museum which has some of the props and period costumes used in the film. But now I’m beginning to write the post here… !
We don’t have the range to fly to the Visayas and beyond. I’ve flown to Calatagan, Calapan, Lipa, and over my old dive spots at Maricaban and Bonito islands. Some pretty rugged coastlines along the Batangas coast, in the Nasugbu and Punta Fuego areas.
I’m a bit apprehensive of flying around Cagayan, because that area is a bad weather factory (this is where the Chemtrad twin-engine islander went down). Even Baler, also on the Pacific Ocean coast, has a lot of weather. I abort my flights there 50% of the time, returning to Clark without landing at Baler, due to weather.
Tell me what a good surfing spot looks like, and I’ll try to help spot new places for you.
Kevin, who is a pilot and a very good friend (he took a lot of the pictures in the next article, “Photography in Flying in Crosswinds”), actually owns a surf resort in Samar. It’s very popular and has been featured in several magazines!
Thanks for visiting Crosswinds and do come back often. Small world, huh.
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