Spooky but legal weather

So, ever since I receive my license, I of course have wanted to take my family flying. They have had to listen to me rave about how great it was to fly and how much fun I was having, so I was really eager to share it with them. Unfortunately, work vacation and the need for learning to fly a 4-person airplane has gotten in the way, but those obstacles are now out of the way. Judith and I thought that it would be good first to test how she would feel about it. She get’s airsick so easily. She didn’t need to have the extra task of keeping the backseat terrorist in check while fighting down nausea.

Unfortunately, the weather is slowly degrading (it is a regular fall unlike last year), so while I have learned to fly in mostly under near perfect conditions, I now have to plan for the weather changes. Sunday we had to cancel due to low clouds at Roskilde, and the weather report for Monday threatened with bad visibility and a chance of misty fog. Well – for once we had an airplane, and the kids were “parked” with the grandma, so we thought we’d at least go to the airport and try.

As promised it was misty, but not below the minimum values (actually a bit above), so we thought we’d give it a try. In a sense that wasn’t the best decision I made that entire day. The best decision I made was to remember to turn on the GPS, because shortly after take-off (at 500) we hit a very thing layer of low clouds (Few 005) . No problem to pass through them, but looking back over my should I saw that combined wit the mist they COMPLETELY obscured the airport – I couldn’t see it.. Amazing! So I turn right to a northbound direction (They we’re using right hand traffic that day). I have to since I was supposed to leave the airspace via Store Valby, but If I were to descend back down again, I could just do a normal traffic circle and request immediate descend. But even though I was practically passing the threshold of Runway 11 where there should be tons of lights, I only managed to spot it when I passed right over the threshold. Actually it was Judith who spotted the runway – good job dear!

Well – we were airborne and we were above those damn annoying clouds anyway, so the damage was done, and we could see that the low clouds were only present right over the airport (it figures!), so we tried to go sight seeing. Of course we realized that we weren’t really going to be able to see anything, but the trip was mostly also to figure out if Judith could even stand flying in a small airplane. She get’s airsick in the car just by passing a speedbump, so we wanted to see how she would do in the airplane. So we changed our plans just to fly counterclock wise around the airspace, so that I could re-enter from the west. I had heard on the radio that the IR students were practicing their instrument approaches on runway 11, because the wind were favorably and it has the ILS system. And I have had rudimentary training in instrument flying, so I thought this would be a GREAT (and necessary) tool for getting back down. So by using all available means (localizers, ILS and GPS) it wasn’t really hard to –reenter the airspace. But it was Really spooky, since While I have done ILS training, this time I couldn’t rip off my training goggles or rely on an instructor to save my ass – his was the real deal. But I think I passed with flying colors. I flew the ILS approach as I should and at around 2 miles out, I spotted the run way lights and landed softly and nicely. I felt pretty good for doing this. I mean, it is nice to know that you have the skills to deal with these kinds of situations, should they come up unexpected.

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