Name: Field Morey

Profession: Pilot, CFI

Instructor since: 1961

Aircraft: Turbo 182RG

Home base: Medford (MFR)

Use: Instrument Training

       West Coast Adventures takes a 
                      Caribbean Turn

West Coast Adventures offers IFR-mastery training to pilots with IFR certification who would like more practice with weather, traffic, and mountainous terrain. Field Morey, company founder/owner has been a flight instructor for over 45 years: “I give instrument-rated pilots the opportunity to practice and gain confidence with different procedures in varied conditions of flight. We currently offer three trips: Wilderness Adventure, Alaska Adventure and the Rocky Mountain Adventure.

West Coast Adventures uses a Cessna Turbo 182 RG (N31FR) for most of the trips. The plane was retrofitted with a two-screen Chelton Flight Systems EFIS that is interfaced with an
S-Tec autopilot, the WX-500 StormScope as well as BFG Skywatch. Field kept the existing Garmin 530 not only for Nexrad weather displays, but also to illustrate to students the different options for navigation available. They fly about 400 hours a year, 12 trips with an average 35 hours of flight time per trip.

In January 2007, Field decided to take a longer trip – an adventure to a warmer climate, and two former students from the Medford area signed on. “We wanted some warm weather, and some practice on long legs. The trip was in the second week of January, from Medford, Oregon to Tortola, British Virgin Islands. Nautical miles: 8,200 round trip! We had people following our day-to-day adventure on www.flightaware.com. You can follow any plane that way with the tail number.”

“My policy is to always file and follow an IFR flight plan. We left very early one morning – or late one night depending on how you look at it, and planned to fly from Oregon to Oklahoma for our first overnight. Our departure from Medford was through some weather, but with the Chelton EFIS, we were able to depart in mountainous terrain, assuring Seattle Center that we could maintain our own terrain and obstruction clearance. We had a safe night departure through the Rogue Valley, and were very comfortable the whole time thanks to the TAWS-B on the Chelton.

By the time we were 100 miles south of Medford we were cleared direct to Ogden, Utah, our breakfast stop. We set the flight plan in the Chelton FMS, and let the autopilot fly the Highway-In-The-Sky: it’s very simple. We refueled at Ogden, and had a VFR departure, climbing out through a mountain pass just east of Ogden, and then headed direct to Oklahoma. We had favorable winds and decided to go on instead of staying overnight. We altered the flight plan and ended up overnighting in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

The next day was pretty routine: we flew to Eufaula, Alabama for lunch and fuel, then turned south to Ft. Lauderdale to pick up survival gear. Another ‘0 dark-thirty’ launch found us on our way to the islands. Not looking forward to a lengthy customs delay and pricey fuel, we planned direct from Ft. Lauderdale to Puerto Rico. With all four tanks in N31FR we carry seven and a half hours fuel, two hours more than the standard T182RG. Just outside the Turks, we met our first serious weather, a squall line with tops reported to 38,000 feet. We did not have Nexrad radar outside the US, but the StormScope displayed all the thunderstorm information on the Chelton MFD. As a result we had a relatively smooth ride down at 11,000 feet while listening to the airliners complaining about turbulence above us.

We refueled in Puerto Rico and went on to our final destination, Tortola, British Virgin Islands. We landed there and then boated over to Guana Island, a stone’s throw from Tortola for a week’s vacation. The return trip retraced the steps, and we got back to Medford in great time. Every time I look at the pictures I consider adding an Island Adventure to our schedule, especially in January!”

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Name: Field Morey

Profession: Pilot, CFI

Instructor since: 1961

Aircraft: Turbo 182RG

Home base: Medford (MFR)

Use: Instrument Training

               West Coast Adventures -
         Now Equipped with Chelton EFIS
West Coast Adventures offers a series of week-long trips to challenge IFR-rated pilots that can only be called “Adventures.” Field Morey, owner and CFI, takes pilots out of the everyday to focus on the process of learning and dedicate themselves to IFR mastery. This concept became the basis of Morey’s West Coast Adventures more than 30 years ago. In order to differentiate his business from other training companies, Field started looking for something new and different to market. Since his Turbo 182 RG still fit his missions in speed, range, and cost to operate, he researched new avionics packages.

He first heard about the Chelton EFIS at a dealer in Santa Maria, CA while inquiring about the Garmin 1000, which he soon found was not available for retrofit. The dealer said to consider a Chelton instead. He also visited a Chelton dealer in Hillsboro, and saw their simulator. “I found it was at least one generation beyond the Garmin 1000, and it offered totally new features. There’s no comparison.” The plane was delivered in June, and Field took two students to Alaska on a week-long IFR training trip.

“I teach an IFR-immersion program, and because the weather is so VFR in the summer months we have to go to Alaska to find IFR weather. Of all the Chelton features, HITS is my favorite hands down, I can take a beginning student on his or her first instrument approach, and have them shoot an expert approach. All the students comment that this takes the guess work out of approaches. Everything is put together on one screen. There’s no more scanning and interpreting the gauges for a successful approach. One of the approaches we recently shot was Valdez. It has very high minimums due to the surrounding mountains. Due to FAA policy LDA approaches with circle-to-land minimums only -- cannot be displayed in databases. Because of Chelton’s flexibility, we were able to create a VFR approach to the runway. That capability and the TAWS give you tremendous confidence going to standard minimums. The terrain awareness is life saving if you have to ‘Go-Miss’. On my first trip with the Chelton I learned along side the students. I found it much easier to learn than the Garmin. Loading Approaches and Departures is very intuitive. By the time I’d completed the first trip, I had it down. It is very user friendly.”

“My students also grasped it very quickly. One of my recent students had just taken delivery of a new 182 with a Gamin 1000 and commented how much easier the Chelton EFIS was to learn. When I am working with a student who may be intimidated by new avionics, I found it a real bonus that I could just add the Chelton to my existing navigation systems. My panel has tremendous redundancy. If a student knows nothing about GPS, they can start out with the standard steam gauges, then move to the Garmin 530 and finally to the Chelton. We run both Nav systems in parallel. One of my students programs the Garmin 530 and I program the Chelton. I’m done in half the time, and in no time they can see the steps are faster and easier with the Chelton. Soon they want to trade jobs.”

“Also while training, I simulate failures by pulling various circuit breakers. I find it very easy for my students to adapt to the loss of certain systems, because the Chelton EFIS still continues to provide all the information it can, while flagging what is failing.”

Field interfaced the Chelton EFIS with his existing BF Goodrich Skywatch. “I don’t know if Skywatch is available with the G-1000”, he said. “I’m not settling for TIS. That’s not acceptable in Alaska.” The Chelton EFIS is also interfaced with the S-Tec autopilot. “In addition I have a WX500 Stormscope displaying on the Chelton. Being able to keep the Garmin 530 and the other equipment I had was key to the training I offer. I’ll take features and flexibility any day over big screens.”

Field considers the price of the system a very worthwhile investment: “When you compare the cost of buying a new 182 equipped with the Garmin 1000, to equipping your own airplane, you’ve saved a lot of money by choosing Chelton. If your airplane is doing what you want and you just want to upgrade the avionics, the Chelton system is the answer. A new Cessna Turbo 182 with the Garmin 1000 could be three times the price of the Chelton retrofit. Two different avionics shops recommended this system, and when I saw the display units in action, I saw the future – Chelton is the cutting edge.”

For more information on West Coast Adventures please see the website: www.ifrwest.com

Field Morey was literally born into aviation. His father, Howard Morey, an aviation pioneer gave his first name to him the day that he was awarded a contract to be the first airport manager for the city of Madison, Wisconsin. Field has been dedicated to quality flight instruction for the past 42 years. More than half of his 30,000 hours have been in the role of instrument flight training. The FAA named him Flight Instructor of the year in 1976 and repeated the award in 2002. In addition to operating the Middleton-Morey airport, Field has been a FAA designated pilot examiner for the past 34 years. In November of 2004 Field was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame at the EAA headquarters in Oshkosh.

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