Date: Thursday, September 19, 2002, 1:02:00 PM Subject: Night IFR flight to Hawthorne from SBA and back Wednesday night, September 18, 2002 It turned out that I didn't need to fly, for reasons incidental to my work, up to SQL. So, of course, having programmed myself into a state of high expectation for flying, my subconscious somehow caused the Muse of Aviation to influence another person, previously unknown to me, to call me looking for help with an IFR flight. That's right: Out of the blue, someone from my wife's flying club called me looking for help with a mission to ferry some friends from the LAX area up to SBA, late at night, when the SBA conditions were sure to be IMC. Since he wasn't IFR certified, he was desperately looking for help from an IFR-rated pilot. Instead of riding as an IFR co-pilot in the club's SkyHawk (it's nice and all, but compared to my plane -- no thanks!), I volunteered to plan the IFR flight and fly my plane as long as Russ was willing to share expenses. So, I got to go flying after all. On departure, SBA conditions at 10:30pm were visibility 1 mile, mist and fog, RVR of 1800 ft. variable to 4600 ft., 200 ft. overcast. Our destination, HHR (Hawthorne), was calm and CAVU below 12,000 ft., so it looked to be an easy flight down, once we got out of the SBA fog. The SBA forecast for our return 2 hours later was the same as upon departure, so I planned to use Santa Ynez as our alternate after probably failing a couple of missed approaches. On climb out, the fog/mist wasn't actually very thick, and we could sort of see the Goleta "big box" stores to the right, past the UCSB campus -- mostly because their parking lots are so well lit. This was reassuring since it meant that we would probably be able to achieve visibility minimums on our ILS 7 approach. After passing through 1100 ft., the sky became clear, with a bright moon lighting up the clouds covering the California coastline. The easterly heading was directly in opposition to a 24 kt. headwind, so our groundspeed was not very impressive, despite a fairly decent TAS (of 141 kts). ATC helpfully drove us right over LAX, instead of our planned SoCal tower-enroute route, which involved flying over to SMO (Santa Monica) then down past LAX to SLI (Seal Beach), then back up to the IAF (Initial Approach Fix) for the HHR LOC 25 (localizer approach for Hawthorne runway 25). The HHR approach controller got busy with some LAX traffic and I had to politely remind him that we could turn to HASHY (the IAF), about 5 miles past it on a downwind leg. I flew the localizer approach into HHR Rwy 25, and rolled on smoothly with only a very slight "chirp" of the wheels. We met Russ'es friends who were already standing by, one of whom is a rotary wing pilot. After some brief polite comments on the plane, we stowed their suitcases in the back, started up and I acquired a tower-enroute IFR clearance back to SBA. This one was much simpler: fly 210 out of HHR, then direct LAX VTU KWANG direct. At 6000 ft., flying north-westerly, we had a 24 kt. tailwind, so our groundspeed was excellent -- 154 kts at one point. We flew the ILS 7 approach, with the plane configured for "slow flight" at 105 kts, on the base leg. After becoming established on the ILS, we descended from 1900 ft. at NAPPS, and entered clouds (fog) at about 1200 ft. The fog was pretty thick until about 300 ft: could not see lights, could not see anything. Just as I was about to execute a missed approach at 210 ft., we clearly saw the approach lights and the runway threshold lights, as well as a good distance up the runway. With visibility minimums achieved for a landing, I continued the approach and then executed one of the worst landings I've ever done in over 14 years of flying. Perhaps I'm exaggerating a bit, but I really don't like even a slight bounce, and we bounced three times!! You could say that I was able to make three landings in one! :^\ The passengers were gracious about it, but laughed along with me as I described it as a "Captain Kangaroo landing". The helo pilot suggested that perhaps the plane's weight distribution had contributed (two heavy guys in the back seats with two suitcases in the aft baggage). I agreed, but suggested that the pilot's contribution was the most significant factor, especially since I had failed to maintain a higher-than-normal final approach speed, which, combined with the tail-heavy aspect, contributed to a near-stall bounced landing instead of a smooth, flared landing. So, my next opportunity (tonight or tomorrow night), I'm going to put some heavy stuff in my back seats and go practise some night touch & gos -- just so I don't ever recreate last night's awful landing again. Other than the bouncy landing, it was a great, night IFR flight, containing both actual IMC and beautiful, moonlit scenic views inland.