Stern Lines

Stern Lines

Stay In Line

Staying In Line

 

Blast it all, the weather was perfect....clear, calm and no clouds.

 

I had just received an Instrument Rating (which qualified me to fly in clouds) for my private pilot's license and wanted desperately to put it to use by flying in "the soup". After all, being newly rated meant that I was really current and up to date on everything. But it was not to be, I guess. There were a notice of potential low clouds in North central Texas, but it didn't look like much of a development on the weather map.

 

So, the short flight to Dallas's Love field ...about 200 miles from Shreveport, Louisiana....would be relatively quick. Just an "up and down" trip to get some electronic work done on the radios for our twin engined Beechcraft Baron airplane.

 

Our double stacked radio package was composed of some very good King radios and It was very useful. However, radio number 2 had become somewhat unreliable due to "cut-outs" at low altitude....just when we needed it as we approached an airport. The electronic maintenance folks in Dallas were very good and not terribly expensive so I was taking the plane to their shop on a scheduled appointment for radio repairs.

 

Staying low so I could watch the traffic along I-20 brought some interesting landmarks along the way. Lakes that I knew and cities that I knew came sliding past at 205 mph as the little ants down there hustled about their work-a-day chores. Lots of trucks that day...I counted 14 in a row that were Eastbound in one stretch. Then I saw an accident with an overturned car which made a stack of dozens of interstate travelers all backed up and fuming.

 

Picking up Dallas approach control on my radio gave some excitement.... Love Field had just gone IFR (instrument flight rules) due to a fast arriving group of low clouds. GREAT!, I would get to use my newly acquired in-cloud flying skills. And it would not be too tough because the ceiling was being called at 500 feet above ground with 5 mile horizontal visibility beneath the clouds. I filed an instrument flight plan and was given directions (vectors) to get me in line for landing. The new Dallas-FortWorth airport was not open yet, so all commercial air traffic was still going into Love field. This put me in the landing "mix" of mostly jets with my relatively slow, little six passenger Baron aircraft.

 

The abrupt arrival of the clouds had caused the creation of a pretty good "stack"(or holding pattern) of planes wanting to land at Love Field. And, since there were no clouds above the one low layer of clouds, I could see all the planes waiting in line.

 

The "stack" was made up of planes making "race track" patterns as they waited for their turn to land. Each plane was assigned an altitude along with compass headings. The "race track" was 2 minutes long on each side and the 180 degree turns were 1 minute in length. This meant a plane would go in one direction for 2 minutes, then make a 180 degree turn lasting one minute and then head in the opposite direction for 2 minutes followed by another 180 turn and so on. By using these times and the compass headings given, each plane would stay on it's track until cleared to a lower altitude.

 

As a plane was cleared to land, it dropped out of the stack, creating a space for the plane immediately above to move down. And so all the planes moved down one space at each landing. It was slow and boring. Round and round and round and round. All the while I could see the other planes in the stack.

 

Slowly, I moved down the stack until there were only two jets ahead of me before entering the clouds for landing. The closest jet was so far ahead of me, that I thought it would be a good idea to just "cut the corner" on the next move and get in closer behind him.

 

The move authorization was radioed to me and I started down and angled over to cut down the distance between me and the next jet.

 

Suddenly the radio crackled with a stern question "44XF what is your heading and altitude?" I responded with the numbers and the nasty reply came back..."Do you want to land at Love Field this week?" Shocked at the question's time frame.."this week", I said, "yes I do". The controller said "Then take up a heading of 310 degrees at an altitude of 3000 feet and report arriving at Live Oak intersection. You were not authorized to change pattern headings." Live Oak intersection was an imaginary electronic crossroad in the sky.

 

Now I was in for a mess. I was no longer in the stack and Approach Control had sent me out to a student practice area where I was put in a holding pattern. I was a bad boy who had been sent to the corner of the room to sit on a stool with a dunce cap on his head. Now what?

 

After a punishment cycle of about 15 minutes, I was put back into the stack...at the very top... and instructed that any further movements without proper authorization would cancel my landing at Love Field and I would be assigned another airport at which to land. "Do you understand?" came the controller voice. I said "yes". "Do you intend to comply?" I said "yes". "Then proceed and report your heading and altitude on entering each new stack layer." More punishment because other planes were not required to report these numbers. I said I would comply.

 

And I did comply.

 

Finally I landed after about a 45 minute delay...glad I had plenty of fuel.

 

The moral is ….STAY IN LINE....OR ELSE!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author

Why do you think David Stern fix games?

like the one tonight, Heat vs Hawks, we got called for 10 more fouls and the Hawks shot 20 more FTs. Wade is one of the best slasher in the history of basketball, and he only got to the line 6 times? Are you kidding me Stern? Too obvious!

Dude, get over it, Hawks won fair and square.
David Stern does not favor the Hawks!

Besides the game was in Miami if any cheating had gone on (it didn't) then the refs would help the Heat