{"id":3748,"date":"2016-03-11T15:27:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T23:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3748"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","slug":"the-mystery-of-sisters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/the-mystery-of-sisters\/","title":{"rendered":"#150 The Mystery of Sisters"},"content":{"rendered":"

I find myself on the horns of a dilemma.\u00a0 But maybe it\u2019s a good one, one that will challenge both me and my students, whether they are primaries or experienced flyers. \u00a0 It has to do with my home airport. \u00a0It’s a great airport and I don’t want my comments to discourage anyone from coming here. \u00a0To the contrary, I want them to get excited about coming here.<\/span><\/h3>\n

You see, I teach out of Sisters, Oregon<\/a>.\u00a0 Sisters has an interesting reputation.\u00a0 For years, flyers stayed away from it.\u00a0 A combination of seemingly inhospitable airport<\/span><\/h3>\n
\"Image1\"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The new, freshly striped runway at Sisters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ownership and rotten wind conditions had created a reputation.\u00a0 As a result, Sisters was a pretty lonely airport.\u00a0 When I moved here, I heard all sorts of talk about how you couldn\u2019t fly in or out in a summer afternoon because of the weird turbulence.\u00a0 At first I poo-pooed all that talk.\u00a0 My ego insisted that it was simply due to the inadequacies of those doing the talking.\u00a0 But eventually I found out that there was some truth to what all those people were saying.\u00a0 Conditions can be extremely challenging at this recently revitalized little airport.\u00a0 Nestled in the foothills of the Cascades, the air rolls in off of those mountains and performs sneaky turns and tumbles along the runway.\u00a0 The wind socks, so long depended on by pilots, are largely useless\u2026If it\u2019s a turbulent day, it\u2019ll be a turbulent crosswind, peppered with lift and sink, no matter which way you land.\u00a0 And that brings up my dilemma:\u00a0 Badly trained or inadequately practiced aviators really SHOULDN\u2019T land here when conditions are tricky!\u00a0 But all rated pilots SHOULD be able to safely takeoff and land here, even if the conditions challenge their abilities.<\/h3>\n

Before the new owners of the Sisters airport announced their plans to re-surface and widen the runway, I was happy as a hog in slop.\u00a0 I found the rough, somewhat narrow runway to be refreshingly challenging.\u00a0 But I realized that this airport needed to be more welcoming to a wider range of pilots.\u00a0 Now it is.\u00a0 The goofy air may remain, but this airport is now far more welcoming to a wide range of pilots.<\/h3>\n
\"DSCN3421\"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0A young pilot who learned at Sisters prepares to swoop into her home airport.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Because I just can\u2019t stand not to understand these things, I\u2019ve spent a lot of time and energy noodling over how pilots can tweak up their skills sufficiently to operate out of this airport when conditions are challenging.\u00a0 I think I\u2019ve got it figgered out.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What\u2019s the secret?\u00a0 I think it\u2019s twofold.\u00a0 First, coming in, we need to carry a bit more airspeed.\u00a0 There are a couple of reasons for this.\u00a0 One, the additional air across the control surfaces makes them more effective.\u00a0 That\u2019s important if we\u2019re going to out-roll the rolling air and out-climb the sudden sink. \u00a0The same holds true for departures.\u00a0 Given the choice of airspeed or altitude, I\u2019ll take airspeed every day if I need maneuverability.\u00a0 Altitude won\u2019t do you any good if you don\u2019t have the speed to out-roll the turbulence or out-climb the sink. Two, we\u2019ve gotta get with the program and have the necessary reflexive skill to quickly provide the inputs which will allow those control surfaces to do their thing.\u00a0 Now, every tyro pilot knows about increasing speed, even if they don\u2019t know why.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the practice of reflexive control inputs that is the undoing of under-practiced pilots.\u00a0 How do you get the practice?\u00a0 One way is by flying in and out of tricky places.\u00a0 And there\u2019s the rub:\u00a0 Modern low-time instructors often lack the confidence and ability to protect the student or equally low time pilot while he gets used to these conditions.\u00a0 What\u2019s the answer?\u00a0 I think maybe there is one thing a flyer can do to tweak up their skills without operating in those conditions.\u00a0 Practice those somewhat unusual maneuvers which we routinely teach.\u00a0 Even some more conventional CFI\u2019s at Acme are watching our videos and reading our articles.\u00a0 Then they are borrowing some of these techniques.\u00a0 I find this extremely encouraging. Alternating forward slips, alternating side slips, sky-doodles, multiple landings and slaloms will all increase piloting skills and reflexive control inputs (at the risk of self-serving advice, those maneuvers are described in \u201cBrian\u2019s Flying Book\u201d, available at \u201cThe Tailwheeler\u2019s Mercantile<\/a>\u201d).\u00a0 And it\u2019s always interesting to note that strangers to Sisters always seem to depart toward town on runway 20, even though the departure on 02 with an early left turn is significantly safer.\u00a0 Just another case of appearance being more convincing than actuality.<\/h3>\n
\"DSCN5005\"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0New lights guide aviators into Sisters when the sun goes down.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My parting advice is to use the added width and smoothness of this sometimes-challenging runway.\u00a0 Practice landing at Sisters.\u00a0 Keep that newly-learned reflexive ability to compensate for the roiling air in your piloting bag o\u2019 tricks.\u00a0 Keep it on the centerline.\u00a0 Know when you can execute a go-around and make that decision to execute the go around nice and early.\u00a0 Give it a few tries and if it doesn\u2019t work, go to Redmond.\u00a0 There\u2019s no shame in that.<\/h3>\n

But when you do fly into Sisters, you\u2019ll reap the reward:\u00a0 A welcoming airport where you\u2019re greeted warmly. A place to get fuel.\u00a0 A nice little campground for pilots. New runway lights to aid evening departures or arrivals.\u00a0 An airport nestled close to a picturesque town with lots of dining and shopping.\u00a0 And pilots aren\u2019t isolated.\u00a0 There are free loaner bicycles and an airport car in order to give you mobility.\u00a0 But you\u2019re so close that many\u2019s the time I\u2019ve simply walked to downtown.<\/h3>\n

And I\u2019m sure that when you come here you will hear a very popular greeting:\u00a0 \u201cWelcome to Sisters!\u201d<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Badly trained or inadequately practiced aviators really SHOULDN\u2019T land here when conditions are tricky! But all rated pilots SHOULD be able to safely takeoff and land here, even if the conditions challenge their abilities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,67,121,150,151,173,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}