Who Needs Weather Briefings on Short Tower En Route Flights

Years ago, I made a flight to see a friend and his plane project. The trip on this day was to be a straight-forward, IFR flight from Mojave to Camarillo California and back to Mojave, a short 83 nautical miles each way. A weather briefing was obtained before the trip and all looked well for an IFR flight with some broken layers en route and around the Camarillo airport. “Great,” I thought. It was a perfect opportunity to sharpen my instrument skills with little risk of not breaking out in time to land. Sure enough, I was able to get that Grumman Tiger down the VOR approach into Camarillo without too much of an adrenaline rush. The weather was just about perfect for building the confidence of a low-time IFR pilot in actual IMC conditions. There wasn’t any icing or thunderstorms in the vicinity.

So the day was going just as planned. I met my friend in his hanger and we stared at his plane project for a half-hour or so, comparing notes on the nuances of building experimental aircraft. We then jumped in his car and made our way to his favorite Mexican restaurant, only a few minutes away. After our usual dreamy discussions of planes, women, and current would affairs, we made our way back to the airplane. It was time for me to leave.

I decided the easiest way back to Mojave would be a Tower En Route, or sometimes called Tower to Tower, IFR departure, since the airport conditions were IMC. “Piece of cake, I’ll just get a Tower En Route to William J. Fox field, cancel, and fly VFR to Mojave,” I thought. Mojave was just north of Fox field and didn’t have any approaches approved for the Tiger. Besides, Mojave rarely has IFR conditions.

I don’t remember the exact ceiling at Camarillo but it was probably somewhere around 500 ft with light rain. I jumped into the trusty old Grumman Tiger that had carried me so many places without skipping a beat, slid the canopy shut, and was ready to blast through a few cloud layers. The IFR trips back to Mojave were always lower stress because there are rarely clouds, much less, low ceilings. About the scariest things in Mojave are rotors shedding off the adjacent Sierra Nevada Mountains when the winds are high. Today just wasn’t one of those days. Besides, I was only on the ground a couple hours, and I checked the weather when I filed the IFR leg to Camarillo that morning. I didn’t notice any icing or thunderstorms reported in the area.

So, just as I always did, throttle to the stop, rolling down the runway, instruments in the green, airspeed alive, rotate, “Oh shit, there are the clouds, I hope I remember how to do this,” one final exhale, transiting to the instruments. Okay, everything is good, just light rain, switching to So Cal Approach frequency. “Hmmm... That rain is sure getting loud,” I thought. Man, I have never heard rain that loud. It sounded to me like I was in a old barn with a tin roof getting hammered in a thunder storm. Well, this is pretty much what an airplane is, I guess. As I climbed through a couple thousand feet, the frequency and amplitude of the rain started to diminish, along with the whitening of my knuckles gripping the yoke. At this point I am intercepting a Victor Airway that parallels a chain of mountains, before I turned north and crossed into the desert.

Just as I started to relax a bit because I could start hearing the sound of the engine over the rain, I notice the large amount of ice forming on the lower windshield. “Hmmm, not good,” I thought. But, after a few minutes of pondering my options, the ice stopped forming and started to sublimate. Okay, I once again left the dangers behind me and I was pointing toward the clear skies of the desert. I thought, “It shouldn’t be too long before I break out.” Just about that time, I heard another pilot on the radio coming the opposite direction on the airway telling approach control, “turning 10 degrees left to avoid a cell.” As I thought for a second on how this might affect me, the lights outside went out. The windows were no longer the standard cloud white. Now they were thunderstorm grey. “Holly shit, this is exactly how a friend of the family did himself in coming back from the Bahamas,” I thought. As my lips started talking to the empty seat beside me, or coaching the other half of my brain, “maintain wings level, pitch level.” That is what I always remembered reading in those flying how-to books. I will have to say that this is one of two times in an airplane that my lips were involuntarily giving me instruction, as if just to remind me of the proper procedures. It was a bumpy ride in the bowels of Mother Nature. I quietly pleaded with her to not scold me too harshly for my carelessness.

After seemingly minutes of attitude control and modulating the power from full to idle and back to full, many times, I popped out the side of this cell into the desert. This was the first time breaking out of the clouds since entering them in Camarillo, and I was glad to see the desert was calling me home with relatively clear skies. I had been taught a lesson without paying the ultimate price. What I took away from this experience is the importance of getting up-to-date weather briefings, even if the trip is short and a Tower En Route filing doesn’t require talking to a briefer. This time I got lucky and nature showed mercy. But tick her off by becoming lackadaisical and you may not be so lucky.

John Avery is a holds a commercial pilot certificate with multi-engine, instrument ratings. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

IFR – Instrument Flight Rules

IMC – Instrument Meteorological Conditions