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- Feb 15, 2012
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So, had some spare time yesterday afternoon, and a few things to look after up north in our ski condo, so a great excuse to hop in the plane and get it done. The flight is very short (40 min) and I have flown it many dozens of times.
Grabbed the pre-arranged courtesy vehicle at CNY3, drove to our place, and got down to the cabling and setting up of a stereo and TV. Hit some snags, but eventually got it all figured out. Filed for the return leg, and closed up the place. As expected (on the shortest daylight day of the year), it would be a night hop back home. It was, a lovely clear VFR day so was looking forward to the views.
I wasn't disappointed. Just a bit of haze layer well below, maybe 1000ft AGL.
Love my panel at night too. And, there is something in this pic, that is rather germane to the ending!
In this wide shot, you can see my amber overhead area illumination. Comes from a $20 LED light run off a watch battery, with a fully articulating mount on it. I have it clipped onto the overhead for utility use and can point it wherever I need. Handy also for when the master is OFF, and would work in an emergency. My brow lighting will also illuminate on a 9v standby battery. But I digress.
If you are still reading along, you might be wondering at the click-bait thread title, read on.
At night I always fly an approach, even to a familiar airport like my home-drome. CYFD is uncontrolled, and there was no traffic that night, airport was deserted. I was cleared out of controlled airspace for the approach, and all proceeded routinely until ....
I had given it seven clicks when commencing the approach using Com2, I use Com2 for "ground" frequencies, but did not see the lights passing the FAF. Odd. Thought it might be that ground haze I saw earlier developing into a layer. Gave it another set of clicks just to be sure. Nothing.
Now passing 500ft above minimums, still no runway lights. Did they forget to turn ON the pilot controlled lighting relay? There was no NOTAM for INOP lighting. Local power outage? Was I going to be stuck circling, while trying to get hold of the airport manager?
I was then going to switch to Com1 to try it from there, looked down again at Com2 and noticed that the frequency was wrong!
The traffic frequency I needed was 122.82. From the earlier panel photo at cruise ....
... you can see 123.82 in the standby slot on my Com2 (SL-30), one digit off. 122.85 is the CNY3 traffic frequency, and is what I had leaving Collingwood.
This is such a routine flight, I expected Com2 to have its standby as 122.82, flipped from when I left CYFD, and I am used to just flipping it back on the return leg. I think what happened that night is when reaching for the panel dimmer knob, which is a round double knob right below the SL-30 right-side knob (here is a daylight shot from a different time) ....
.... I inadvertently flipped the standby frequency one digit. It was not wildly different, so I didn't notice that it had changed to 123.82, from 122.82, when doing the routine flip back.
We so often hear or see, what we expect to hear or see, rather than what is actually there or spoken. Happily nothing untoward happened here, other than some serious puzzling during final approach. If it had been day time, I would likely have been alerted much sooner, when I couldn't get a traffic advisory from UNICOM, and not hearing any airport traffic.
Interesting!
* Orest
Grabbed the pre-arranged courtesy vehicle at CNY3, drove to our place, and got down to the cabling and setting up of a stereo and TV. Hit some snags, but eventually got it all figured out. Filed for the return leg, and closed up the place. As expected (on the shortest daylight day of the year), it would be a night hop back home. It was, a lovely clear VFR day so was looking forward to the views.
I wasn't disappointed. Just a bit of haze layer well below, maybe 1000ft AGL.
Love my panel at night too. And, there is something in this pic, that is rather germane to the ending!
In this wide shot, you can see my amber overhead area illumination. Comes from a $20 LED light run off a watch battery, with a fully articulating mount on it. I have it clipped onto the overhead for utility use and can point it wherever I need. Handy also for when the master is OFF, and would work in an emergency. My brow lighting will also illuminate on a 9v standby battery. But I digress.
If you are still reading along, you might be wondering at the click-bait thread title, read on.
At night I always fly an approach, even to a familiar airport like my home-drome. CYFD is uncontrolled, and there was no traffic that night, airport was deserted. I was cleared out of controlled airspace for the approach, and all proceeded routinely until ....
I had given it seven clicks when commencing the approach using Com2, I use Com2 for "ground" frequencies, but did not see the lights passing the FAF. Odd. Thought it might be that ground haze I saw earlier developing into a layer. Gave it another set of clicks just to be sure. Nothing.
Now passing 500ft above minimums, still no runway lights. Did they forget to turn ON the pilot controlled lighting relay? There was no NOTAM for INOP lighting. Local power outage? Was I going to be stuck circling, while trying to get hold of the airport manager?
I was then going to switch to Com1 to try it from there, looked down again at Com2 and noticed that the frequency was wrong!
The traffic frequency I needed was 122.82. From the earlier panel photo at cruise ....
... you can see 123.82 in the standby slot on my Com2 (SL-30), one digit off. 122.85 is the CNY3 traffic frequency, and is what I had leaving Collingwood.
This is such a routine flight, I expected Com2 to have its standby as 122.82, flipped from when I left CYFD, and I am used to just flipping it back on the return leg. I think what happened that night is when reaching for the panel dimmer knob, which is a round double knob right below the SL-30 right-side knob (here is a daylight shot from a different time) ....
.... I inadvertently flipped the standby frequency one digit. It was not wildly different, so I didn't notice that it had changed to 123.82, from 122.82, when doing the routine flip back.
We so often hear or see, what we expect to hear or see, rather than what is actually there or spoken. Happily nothing untoward happened here, other than some serious puzzling during final approach. If it had been day time, I would likely have been alerted much sooner, when I couldn't get a traffic advisory from UNICOM, and not hearing any airport traffic.
Interesting!
* Orest
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