Pilot By The Bay

Approaches

2011-06-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

Any time I go on vacation for more than a couple of weeks without renting a car, I wonder if I'll still remember how to drive when I get home. Like I'm going to forget 21 years of driving experience after not driving for 15 days! Well, so far it's never been a problem; I get in the car to a sort of funny novelty of a "hey, this is familiar" feeling, start it up, put it in gear, and by this time I'm so completely running on muscle memory that I'm fully absorbed in whatever I'm listening to on the radio, which is usually the A's losing. Apparently, driving a car is like riding a bike, or, depending on traffic conditions, like falling off a log.

Yesterday I flew a few instrument approaches (VFR, with an instructor and JeppShades) after not having flown a single one in nearly a year (and, after not having flown much at all in the last 4 months). We took off on a right Dumbarton from PAO, and headed for the Land of Practice Approaches: Stockton. SCK is a great practice ground. They have an ILS, a GPS and a VOR with a couple of gotchas, and there are no major airports or mountains nearby, so we planned for the GPS 29R, the VOR 29R and the ILS 29R, in that order. At 3500 above Sunol Golf Course we called Norcal Approach and asked for flight following to SCK. By the time we changed controllers, we'd picked up ATIS and had the first approach request ready for SCK GPS 29R. I'm making this all sound very easy, but I found talking on the radio to be difficult, and I've picked up a bad habit of micromanaging via the trim wheel, so there were a couple of challenges here.

As we got close, things got busy. As we got close (and already on an assigned heading, vectors to final), I started with the checklists. First: 5 A's. ATIS (done), Altimeter (done), Avionics (frequencies set, loaded approach, activated the final approach leg), Approach briefing and Airspeed. I haven't done enough approaches to really have a set approach briefing, but I tend to review the waypoints and associated altitudes, and the missed approach procedure, along with any notes ("Notes That Kill," my CFII had called them). In retrospect, I should specifically review how I will identify the missed approach point - this is an area where the G1000 can make you lazy.

So I reviewed the approach, and decided when I would slow to approach speed (next vector assignment). We still had several minutes before being anywhere near the final approach course, thanks to the slowness of the 172. At this point, my CFI Mark said, "So there's something you could do here."

"Add ECA as a waypoint after the approach?" I asked, as I did it.
"Well, yes, but something else."
"Prelanding checklist!" I declared, and I started going through it.
"Yes, but that's not what I'm thinking of."
"Put my shades on?" I asked, realizing I still could see out the window!
"Uh, yes!" Mark said, laughing, "But something else."

What he had in mind was to zoom in the PFD for situational awareness, but it goes to show that even with all the lists, there are so many layers of preparation for an approach that are dependent on experience, fluidity and efficiency, and good decision making ability. I had checked off the "Avionics" item on my mental checklist, but there was a deeper level that I got to later.

So I flew the GPS 29R and the assigned missed approach. Mark had to prompt me as I passed one of the step-downs, so clearly I wasn't paying attention to the right thing. And when I tried to enter the hold at ECA, I did the calculation of what type of entry I'd need, and what heading to fly, but Mark suggested that if I load the VOR 29R approach into the G1000, it contains the hold as part of the approach, and the G1000 would guide me. Turns out I had the type of entry right, but the heading wrong (I subtracted 30 instead of adding -- need to review how that happened).

The VOR 29R went very well, and the ILS went pretty well though I was overcorrecting a bit, and thus far definitely doing far more needle chasing than is healthy. Then the ILS into Livermore went extremely well; we started it as a coupled approach, and then (since that ILS is not authorized for coupled approaches below 1700'), I took over, and at this point, found that I'd regained my scan and was flying the attitude indicator. Like falling off a log! After a missed approach, I removed the JeppShades and took us back to PAO with a nice crosswind landing.

I plan to go again on Monday and do 2-3 more approaches, to get me up to the 6 I need prior to Tuesday. I'm amazed at how much of these procedures came back, and how well I was able to execute the approaches and be relatively prepared. This is a credit to my CFII John Otte. That said, it's going to take a lot more for me to feel comfortable doing an approach in IMC. I was not nearly as ahead of the airplane as I want to be; I did not do some important "backup" tasks such as starting a timer at the FAF on the VOR (I think adding this to the briefing will help, and you may have noticed that I never mentioned Time, Turn, Twist, Throttle, Talk -- that's because I never used it, which is bad).

Another Year Flies By

2011-06-25T07:21:00.000-07:00

The last year was awesome. I have been flying 182s and the 172RG, in preparation for my commercial checkride, which was actually scheduled sometime in February before we called it off due to a lack of cooperation by the weather, and a good level of underpreparation by me. Then I took a couple of months off, then took another couple of flights to remember how things work, then took another couple of months off.

Now here I am, with four days to go before it becomes a full year since the first of my last six instrument approaches. I have a flight scheduled today, in which we'll do at least three of those approaches -- let's see how I do. In my two flights in April, I couldn't even set up a VFR pattern consistently. I'm just eager to get back in the air!

In other news, there was an airplane crash in Palo Alto a couple of days ago. Thankfully everyone lived, and hopefully the aircraft does as well -- the plane sitting upside down in the marsh is N222MF, in which I completed my instrument checkride.

Orcas Island [ Part 3 ]

2010-07-12T21:10:00.000-07:00

When we went to Friday Harbor on July 6, I had talked to the airport manager at Orcas Island about the weather, how clear it was, and when we were leaving. Bea told me, "You're going to have a clear trip home!" And from that point onward, I remained stressed out about the weather.

On Saturday the 10th, we were thinking about whether we should just head back toward the bay area and forfeit the last night of rent that we'd already paid for the place we were staying, or if we should do all of our flight back on Sunday. As we were considering this, the place we were staying called us, wondering why our stuff was still there -- apparently we had NOT paid for that final night! Well, that made our decision easy. We went back, packed up our stuff, did a couple of last minute errands, and made for the airport. It was pretty much clear, but looked like parts of Oregon might be cloudy.

I took off VFR, and picked up flight following from Whidbey Approach. We set a target of Roseburg, OR, for the day's trip. There was almost no wind -- what happened to the 30 knot winds? Why do we never get 30 knot tailwinds? Well, at least we weren't going into a headwind, so we flew along uneventfully, just curving a bit around a bank of clouds over the mountains west of Portland. We passed over Kelso and located the airport, which was fun. It took about 3 hours to get to Roseburg, and I thought about going farther, but to do so we'd either have to go to Medford (and by this time we'd developed an affinity for the small airports, rather than the big ones) or Grant's Pass (accommodations not as close by as with Roseburg, and more potential for cloudy weather in the morning), or try to get in somewhere at the coast, but it was already cloudy there and looked like it'd be socked in in the morning (I love satellite weather on the G1000).

So, we stuck with Plan A and went into Roseburg. It looked beautiful from above, with a river to the north and another to the south, and a nice wide/long runway. I made the appropriate calls for left traffic and landed (flaring a bit high), and filled up the fuel tanks while Kay went looking for....anyone at all. I pushed the plane into one of the hundreds of empty tie downs, and saw that a taxi had appeared, so I grabbed our stuff and went over there. But even with the rush, it did not escape my attention that absolutely no one was there at the airport. I guess, 6pm on a Saturday...but still, it was eerie.

The hotel (Windmill Inn) was great, and cheap! So we had dinner and went for what turned into kind of an eerie walk (through a neighborhood full of feral cats, past a series of abandoned baseball diamonds and onto a river trail, also mostly abandoned). Eventually we ended up in a VA hospital area that was an absolutely gorgeous campus setting. Crazy. There was a classic car event in town that weekend, so periodically we'd have some AWESOME car drive past us on the road. We went back to the restaurant's bar, had a drink, and went back to the hotel.

I was afraid that when we woke up the next morning, we'd be socked in, based on the forecasts I'd looked at the night before. Not sure why I worry about this so much; it's not that complicated -- either I can take off IFR, or we wait. No big. Anyway, when I woke up and looked out the window, I actually laughed out loud, because it was CAVU. Not a cloud in the sky. It was actually HOT, and by the time the hotel shuttle took us to the airport (for free) and dropped us off AT our airplane (sweet!), it was 28 degrees C on the tarmac. We took off ahead of someone on a 3-mile final, and made a very wide left downwind departure to avoid a hill that sits on left downwind (nice). Climb performance was predictably horrid, and I needed to get to 9000 if I wanted to get up over the mountains in the Shasta area. Well, the climb was going slowly, and it looked like there were clouds atop the mountains that to me suggested that it might be a turbulent ride. So I turned toward the coast, and weaved my way up to 9000 as I aimed for low points in mountains. We went over Grant's Pass and many other airports along the way, comforting sights in case of engine trouble over mountains.

After getting near the coast and finally getting to 9000, we followed the Eel River for quite a while. We got a great view of Clearlake, and then eventually we started getting into familiar territory -- Santa Rosa, Petaluma, and then suddenly into the bay area. I'd descended to 5000 by the time I requested the bayshore transition to Palo Alto, and they gave it to me at 3500 (there was a pretty good cloud layer over the city of SF). The rest was easy; we landed at Palo Alto, tied down, and we were HOME!

Orcas Island [ Part 2 ]

2010-07-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

We awoke on the morning of July 3 to cloudy skies over Kelso, WA, in a quaint hotel that served a free breakfast and had free wi-fi. So Kay went for the breakfast, and I went for the wi-fi, to check the weather. Looked like ceilings were around 5000, and I needed 6000 to go IFR to Orcas, so I filed it.

As our taxi approached the airport, I thought about another first that was about to happen -- getting an IFR clearance from a non-towered airport. When we arrived, Denny was there in the terminal, so I asked him how people usually do it ("they call WXBRIEF?"). No, he informed me, and he gave me a frequency to use.

So after a preflight, I started my taxi and radioed for my clearance. They gave me a clearance with a void time of 8 minutes, which was generous, so I took off well before the void time and made with the departure procedure. This time, I did have to go into the hold...and in retrospect, I think I did it exactly backwards. Luckily I wasn't there very long before being cleared to 8000 and direct someplace. At 8000, we were above the clouds, and were treated to views of Mt. Rainier blasting up through the cloud layer.

The flight was smooth, and as we approached Puget Sound, the clouds broke up below us. We went all the way in to Orcas IFR, but we were VMC from that point forward. The islands were absolutely beautiful!! We flew up through the middle of the horseshoe of Orcas Island, at the center of which was the airport, and we circled to land on the opposite runway. Smooth landing, easy parking! We made it to our island paradise!

I had originally thought that, having an airplane at our disposal on an island, we'd be flying all over the place, using Orcas as a home base. But that was not what happened, at all. We pretty much just wanted to stay on Orcas, and hang out. Many reasons for that, none of which were aviation related (except to say that the thought of going to Boeing Field or Victoria seemed impossibly complex, compared to eating pie on an island). The only trip we took was to Friday Harbor, on Tuesday, July 6 -- that was fun, old school flying, none of the IFR preparation -- it was a bright, sunny day, so a quick preflight and a review of the noise abatement procedures, and off we went! We took an S-shaped path over to Friday, landed, parked and walked to town for lunch; came back, took off, reversed our pattern back to Orcas. 0.8 hours on the Hobbs.

That was it, until it came time for the return flight back to Palo Alto.

TO BE CONTINUED

Orcas Island [ Part 1 ]

2010-07-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

Through school and through work, I've always found that learning comes in bursts, forcing one to drink from the firehose for a short time and absorb as much as possible, while trying to perform one's best, and then (in the best of circumstances) allowing one a little bit of time to try to digest and absorb all that may have been missed in the fury of the moment.

This flight, especially the journey outbound to Orcas Island, was a firehose moment.

We departed at 9:30am on Friday, July 2, with the plan to fly to somewhere in the middle of Oregon, probably Roseburg. Originally we'd thought Salem, but no, the winds were against us. Then Eugene, but no, the winds were pretty strong. So, I planned for Roseburg, filed IFR at 10,000 (the weather was overcast at around 4000' across the state of Oregon, it seemed), and departed once we had our clearance. It was CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited) as we left Palo Alto, and we climbed easily to 3000' and then 5000' as we climbed over Sunol and Livermore and headed toward Sacramento. Eventually we were given a clearance to 10,000', which, in a Cessna 172 (even the SP) is not a quick destination. We did eventually climb to 10,000, dropping down to a 300 foot per minute climb, then 200, then finally arriving at our assigned altitude.

We coasted across the bright, sunny state of California at what seemed like a snail's pace, in what was luckily an extremely comfortable 172. As we cruised north, we approached the Mount Shasta area, and were treated to an extraordinary view of Shasta, both the mountain and the lake.

Then we crossed into Oregon, and immediately, we were skimming just on top of a thick cloud layer. There were several uncomfortable elements of the trip at this point, one being the state of our bladders, another being the clouds, and another being the state of the right fuel tank, which was indicating .. all over the place, really. It actually looked like it was indicating full, most of the time, but the fuel valve was on "both" so theoretically it should've been emptying like the other tank. So the worry was, what if it's not able to draw from the right tank; when the left tank runs out, are we out of luck? So we eventually asked for and received 11,000, which I wasn't sure we could successfully climb to, but we made it without much trouble. And shortly thereafter, we were at about 3:30 flight time, and the left tank was indicating about 5 gallons to go, so I made the call to divert to Medford instead of going to Roseburg.

In retrospect, by the time I got vectored all over the damn place for the ILS at Medford, I probably could've shot an approach into Roseburg, or close. But, knowing what I knew at the time, this was absolutely the right call. We were in and out of the clouds through the approach, but everything went smoothly, and we circled to land and were presented with a choice of FBOs to dock with. I went with MillionAir, since I'd dealt with them before in Burbank and felt there was value in a sure thing, even though I'm pretty sure it was the most expensive option, because I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at that point. They were awesome; they filled up 30 gallons, and lent us a crew car to go get lunch.

After a tasty veggie burger, we came back to our fueled up plane, hopped in, turned the ignition, and ... nothing. Drat. I'd left the standby power switch on and the G1000 had drained the battery. So, the MillionAir folks came out and jumped us, and we were on our way. Destination: Kelso, Washington (KKLS)!

We departed IFR with a departure procedure, so we followed the procedure and luckily got high enough before the assigned holding pattern that we never had to enter it before proceeding direct RBG and onward. I tried asking for 6000, but got bumped up to 8000 (and 6000 was in the clouds anyway, as was 8000). I was feeling uncomfortable about being at 10,000 and above, especially so close to the clouds, because the plane didn't have much power to spare at that altitude, and what if I hit an updraft? But now, at 8000, the outside temperature was approaching freezing, and we had ourselves a quandary. We could potentially ask to go down to warmer air, but then we'd definitely be in the clouds and we'd have ourselves a bumpy 3 hours ahead. Or, we could go up to 10,000 and hope it put us above the clouds.

I opted for the latter. Interestingly, while trying to make this decision, I heard my friend Tim check in on the frequency! Small world. Anyway, so we climbed to 10,000, and only picked up a tiny chunk of ice on the right wing spar on the way up. That did indeed put us above the clouds, so we coasted along for the next two and a half hours, pretty much uneventfully.

As we neared Portland, approach asked whether we wanted to shoot the approach at Kelso, or get under the clouds and go in VFR. I opted for the latter; it sounded fun, and shorter. So shortly after we got handed off to the next controller, we were cleared for 7000. OK, here's a problem...the outside temp indicator read 30 degrees F. We should theoretically gain 2 degrees C per 1000 feet we descend, but it'll also be colder in the clouds (at least, that's what I'd noticed earlier on the trip). So I told Kay to keep an eye out for ice, and I descended at 500fpm. As soon as we entered the clouds, we started picking up ice. It collected in a thin sheet on the wing spars, and presumably the wings. I knew that I wasn't much below freezing, and that a couple of thousand feet would put me above freezing, so I dived for it. No idea what my descent rate was, but it was a decisive descent. As we got below 8500, we saw the ice start to melt off, and by 7000 it was gone, just like that.

The controller gave us 5000, then 4000, and asked if we were visual. Not yet. 3500, how about now? I was technically visual, but surrounded by clouds and there appeared to be hills below my present location, so....no, I'm staying IFR, thanks very much. OK, 3000, she said, but that's all I can give you. Suddenly I was out of the clouds and over a river! Before I could chime in, the controller, eager to get rid of this particular speck on her radar, asked me: How are you seeing? "We're visual, cancel IFR," I told her. We followed the river and found the airport, and made left traffic and landed.

At the Kelso Airport, Denny Wise greeted us, helped me fill the fuel, recommended a hotel and called a cab. It was an awesome stop, and we got a great night of sleep as I thought about all I'd learned on this day. Diverting while IFR, dealing with icing conditions, even self-fueling the aircraft, were all new experiences, aside from having a plane this far from home in the first place. And, tomorrow, we'd go even further.

TO BE CONTINUED

Another Day, Another Flight Into IMC

2010-06-29T18:34:00.001-07:00

I really needed yesterday's flight/fright. For as frightened as I was, I flew pretty well, and if I can fly pretty well when I'm that freaked out, then my training is still effective.

Today, Mark and I took N824LB out and re-flew my flight from yesterday: SNS VOR 13, WVI LOC 02, in pretty much exactly the same weather. This time, I did better. No fear response (OK, perhaps a touch of anxiety dipping down into the clouds, but nothing major), and I was much more ahead of the airplane, even remembering to manually start the time at the FAF on the VOR approach. On the LOC, I misinterpreted the GPS and didn't realize I was past the FAF, so didn't descend until Mark prompted me. Then, for some reason, I had the hardest time getting the plane to stay in a 800fpm descent attitude, and my descent was more like 350 to 400 feet per minute. I got down to the minimums pretty much at the missed approach point, which is right at the beginning of the runway (being 700 feet above the runway at the beginning of the runway is not a great recipe for landing successfully). But, other than that, I handled it well.

I now feel ready for the trip on Friday. I'm so glad I did all that flying in the last week.

First solo IMC approaches to minimums. Scary.

2010-06-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. Flying has been understandably sporadic, and even though I'm theoretically working on my commercial license, the phase of that I'm on right now is to pass the written exam, which doesn't involve doing any actual flying. Besides, neither of the 172RGs with Advantage Aviation are available at the moment -- one's off the flight line entirely, and the other is seemingly constantly in maintenance.

In the mean time, my girlfriend's sister got an internship on Orcas Island, near Seattle (but closer to Victoria, BC, Canada), and we immediately planned a visit. And, my first thought was, why not fly there?

So I did some training in flying a Cessna 182, and we decided to take an older (a.k.a. cheaper) 182, N9870E, up to Washington. The plan was to take our bicycles in the plane and not rent a car, and just ride around Orcas Island. We did a test run of that plan a couple of weeks ago, renting out 9870E and bringing our bikes, and flying to Santa Rosa. It failed. We brought tarps to protect the plane's aging interior from the bikes, but we did not protect the bikes from each other. And besides, getting them in and out of the plane was a complete pain in the ass. Do not attempt this plan.

Also, N9870E had deteriorated a bit since the last time I'd flown it, most notably in that the magnetic compass was duct-taped in place. And, not very well, I might add -- it was actually hanging down. I guess the requirement is just that it's IN the plane, which it was, but no way was I about to fly into a potential IFR situation with a badly duct-taped-on compass. AND, also, the club put the plane in maintenance on the first day of our trip. This plan was not working out at all.

So, I managed to book a nice 172SP G1000, N16894, for the trip. The 172 will be slower, but the journey is part of the fun, right? I've spent the last week getting IFR current and night current, and basically getting my bearings about me when flying IFR. My instructor, Mark, and I went out to Half Moon Bay last Thursday, and flew a couple of approaches to minimums before breaking off for the missed approaches -- this was my first time actually HAVING to fly a missed!

Today was another first: I rented out N16894 and took it to Salinas, where the weather was reported as OVC070 (overcast at 700 feet). The VOR 13 approach has an MDA of 560 circling (which this would be, with 31 active), so it was right on the edge. As I planned my flight, filed IFR, pre-flighted the plane and readied myself for takeoff, I couldn't help but dwell on the fact that I had another first coming up -- I'd never flown an approach solo in actual IMC. In two years of being an instrument rated pilot, I'd never done that (weird, huh?).

So I was cleared KSNS via SNS direct, and eventually was given 7000 direct SNS. I was over the cloud cover, and cleared for the approach. The tower at Salinas had closed, so I was to make unattended airport style calls. I descended along the approach path, and just before I entered the clouds, I felt it: "So this is how, and when, I'm going to die." It was so strong, and I was so scared, I don't know how to describe it; all I knew was that I felt like this was it, like my time was done. Note that though I felt this way, I didn't actually *think* this way. My brain was busy telling me, "You know this, you can do this."

Well, I flew it pretty well. Actually I flew it pretty much perfectly -- in terms of technique, I was relying too much on the G1000 and not enough on my Time/Turn/Twist/Throttle/Talk technique, but I flew it really well. I made it down to my minimum, exactly on course, and couldn't see squat. I was shaking -- my arm was shaking holding the yoke. As I readied for the missed approach, though, I saw it -- Runway 13, right in front of me! I could've landed it! I executed the missed, and made my way to MARNA. As I climbed, my foot was shaking as it pressed the right rudder. I called NorCal Approach, and the act of communicating calmed me a bit; I think part of the stress of the approach was that I wasn't talking to anyone.

So I regrouped in the hold, and debated whether to do SNS GPS 13, or WVI LOC 02, eventually deciding on the latter (I kind of had to pee, so didn't want to go back to SNS, which was farther from home). After three rounds in the hold, I called Approach and made my request. He was friendly, which helped. I got vectors to the localizer course, and flew it perfectly (again, not TTTTTing enough, relying too much on the G1000, but flying it well) -- no shaking, no fear. I had some trouble holding the MDA, it was up and down, but as I crossed over the airport, I saw the runways. I think landing it would've been tough, if I'd wanted to, but it was interesting nonetheless. I executed the missed, a right turn back to SNS, and called Approach with my IFR request back to PAO.

I am SO glad that I did this flight. There is a pretty good chance I'll have to shoot an approach in actual IMC on our trip, and thank goodness I've now done it a couple of times on my own and have the confidence to do it. I'll do another flight tomorrow morning with Mark, but after tonight, I'm ready for the trip!

We're Going Commercial!

2009-12-08T19:55:00.000-08:00

As is obvious from the sparsity of entries in this blog over the past year or so, I have not done much flying in 2009. In November 2008, I parlayed my recently-earned instrument rating into a really fun trip down to Santa Barbara, which yielded some sweet pictures and a great story. Since then, my memorable flights consist of an IFR currency flight in May, a trip to Petaluma somewhere in the middle there, a couple of bay tours in August, and a trip to Burbank in September to audition for the reality TV show "Wipe Out!" That's it.

Why the groundedness? Finances had certainly become an issue. I had other things going on, including an incredibly busy job, a marathon for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and a new (and thankfully very understanding) girlfriend. It's an equation that I imagine most pilots learn pretty early on in their careers: No Time + No Money = No Flying.

Well, while my earthboundedness may have made me a rusty and potentially dangerous pilot, it also allowed my bank account to recover, so I no longer feel so bad about assaulting it once more. I'm going for my commercial license.

A few weeks ago I had a training flight in a 172RG, where we did some slow flight, stalls, steep spirals and chandelles. I still need to learn eights-on-pylons and lazy eights, and then it's just practice, practice, practice. Oh, and I really need to learn how to do a short field landing. At the moment, I kind of suck at it.

Last week, I got a second training flight in the RG, where we combined the long daytime cross country requirement with a mountain checkout, and added the time to my total complex training time (now up to 7 hours!). That was awesome; we flew from PAO to BLU (that's Blue Canyon, a tiny single strip airport without even a bathroom) to TRK to TVL and back to PAO. Just to add to the fun, PAO was IMC when we left!

Now, I just need one more training flight for maneuvers in the RG, and a night cross country (plus the long solo cross country...where should I go that's 250NM from here?) and then it's just practice, and studying! Nothing to it.

After that, it's CFI time. Who wants to be my first student? :-D

Currency: That's what it's all about

2009-03-30T22:49:00.001-07:00

Two goals of most pilots are to keep their currency, and to keep their currency. As pilots, we have to fly enough to stay current -- there's general currency, club currency, type currency, night currency, and IFR currency to worry about on a fairly regular basis. It's not really that many flights, and if a pilot is just barely staying current, as I had been, I'd expect his personal minima to adjust accordingly, as mine have.

Staying current is a piece of cake, though, if you fly frequently, and that, of course is where the other currency comes in. The more you fly, the more you spend! We've covered this before, so there's no point in going on about it again, but over the last few days, I took significant steps toward keeping both types of currency.

Saturday was a beautiful day, and as I'd just turned 35 two days prior, I really wanted to treat myself and go flying, preferably with a beautiful and sweet woman by my side. As it turned out, I found the woman to go with, so I had no choice! I had to take her flying! After a series of frustrating and tragic events (I'd booked the plane on the wrong day, we had to wait for it to come back, while we were waiting we heard that a plane had crashed at San Carlos, the fuel truck didn't show up until we taxied to the fuel island to fill up ourselves...), we took off, had a beautiful and uneventful flight to Petaluma, landed, got a cab downtown, bought some cheese, caught a cab outside the Taco Bell, and flew home in time to host the wine and cheese party we'd planned on. What a day! We took N9849L out of Palo Alto, a 1986 172P that is about 2/3 the cost of the newer 172SPs I've been flying, and with a very nice set of avionics. So, I found a plane I like to fly that costs much less than what I've been flying. Currency saved!

Then, tonight, my friend Tim came along as my safety pilot as I did six approaches in rapid succession: SCK VOR 29R, SCK GPS 29R, SCK ILS 29R, TCY GPS-A, LVK ILS 25R, and HWD LOC DME 28L. 2.7 hours, and almost all of it under the hood. I am tired! But I am also current.

I think I'm going to go eat some currants...

How To Keep Flying?

2009-03-25T07:09:00.001-07:00

I've been struggling with my aviation "career" as it were for some time now. Not counting my excursion with Tim a couple of weeks ago, I've been taking about one flight every two months since my awesome trip to Santa Barbara. Those flights have been (a) a bay tour, (b) a VFR practice ride, and (c) last night, a VFR set of practice approaches, which was awesome and I will write about eventually (I meant to write about it today, but I guess that's not what was on my mind).

The struggle is based on time and money. I've posted about this before (with an environmental angle that basically ends up being implicit in the "money" part of my current struggle), and got some excellent suggestions: Get done with instruction. Find a cheaper way to fly (someone suggested an RV-3, and I've actually looked into it, but (a) don't want to build, (b) don't trust other builders, (c) want a real IFR capable airplane). Well, I've finished with my instrument rating (nearly a year ago!), and while I miss my instructor, it does make things financially easier. I also bought a house, and between the depreciation on the house and the collapse of all my investments (I know, me and the rest of the country), I'm even more worried about money (I know, me and the rest of the country).

So, I've started a budget. Turns out I can afford to fly a little bit. I need to be targeted in how I do it, because with the way I'm doing it now (renting 172SPs to do practice approaches), I feel simultaneously stagnant and rusty -- both bad things for a pilot. I want to get my commercial license, and continue the path toward becoming a CFI. But I need to do it in a way that's cost efficient, and that requires research and planning, and that requires time, which is at a premium right now.

I also think that if I do it right, owning my own airplane might actually hold down costs to some degree. Here's my thought: Get two-three other pilots (that might be the hardest part of this), buy an efficient airplane (current thought is a Mooney M20J). Over the time that I have it, the airplane itself is not likely to depreciate much. The hourly costs (fuel, engine/maint fund...) would be quite low, and while the ongoing (periodic/monthly/annual) costs, like tie-down, inspections, etc would be split between the owners. Insurance is a bigger question, but would be somewhat offset by not having to be a club member (currently costing me $100/mo for two clubs...gotta quit one or the other!).

Anyway, enough mulling for this morning, there's work to be done...at least last night I discovered I'm still not SO rusty, and the "holding pattern" I'm in can continue for a little longer (though I do need to make the practice more frequent), as long as I set my personal minimums appropriately.

Flying? Do we do that?

2009-03-13T21:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. I've been in the air only twice since my awesome trip to Santa Barbara last November, in large part because of financial constraints and worries about my job and the economy. I'm sure you've never heard that before; it may not be original, but it's true.

So I could not resist when my friend Tim asked me to be his safety pilot for a few approaches. I was especially thrilled when he asked me to take care of all the radio work!

Tim picked me up from PAO in N7UB, his Cessna Turbo Centurion. This is a nice airplane; I won't go into details because I'm tired, but it's about 10 steps up from the 172SPs that I generally fly. I hopped in, and we went over the plan: OAK ILS 27R, then a few at CCR, then LVK ILS 25R, then the VOR DME 31 at PAO. We took off on a right Dumbarton, and as we headed for Sunol, called Norcal to request the ILS at Oakland. We got it, and from that point forward, were basically too slow for everyone around us (good thing we weren't in a 172!). We were still full speed ahead, but I guess even a T210 is slow compared to commercial jets.

My radio work was awful. I was so rusty, lots of ums and uhs, not asking for everything at once, and missing some of the controller's instructions. But I hadn't flown in nearly two months, so, there you have it. We went over toward CCR and called up Travis Approach. This went more smoothly, and after the third approach, we headed over to Livermore.

The ILS 25R is a great approach, taking the pilot just over a ridge of hills on the approach. Tim flew it partially coupled, then we did a low pass and took off toward Palo Alto. As we made our way toward PAO, we noticed that a low cloud layer was forming. We called up Norcal and requested a VOR DME into PAO. It's an unusual request, so we weren't sure what to expect, but we got it.

Shortly thereafter, a different controller came on the air and asked us if we wanted to go all the way out to SAPID, or if we could take it just outside DOCAL. I responded that DOCAL was fine, and we got a favorable turn. But then we realized that these were GPS waypoints, which were not helpful in the VOR approach structure, so I informed Norcal that we were actually requesting the VOR DME. He seemed slightly miffed, and sent us out toward San Jose (I could see my house). But a couple of turns later, we were pointed back in, and Tim landed and dropped me off.

It was a great workout for me, and a good flight to get me motivated to get back into things!

AOPA Expo

2008-11-09T18:27:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of volunteering at this year's AOPA Expo in San Jose, CA. The Expo ran from Thursday through Saturday, and as a volunteer, I was granted free admittance to the exhibition hall floor. My post, however, was at the Aircraft Display, which was at San Jose Mineta International Airport (the FAA wouldn't expand the current airport codes to give them KSJMIA, so they stuck with KSJC).

I arrived at 8:30am, and for four hours, handed out flyers to, well, flyers, and directed people to the port-a-potties and shuttle buses (hopefully I didn't mix that up at any point). At the end of my shift, I took off and wandered around the Aircraft Display for a little while.

My first stop was at Lafferty Aircraft Sales, because they had a bowl of candy, and I was starving. I picked up an inventory list, and am actually just looking at it now for the first time. The actual conversation was mostly about candy. Looking at their list, it seems they have quite a few Beechcraft singles and twins. No pictures = no drool.

My next stop was at the Civil Air Patrol table, where a woman sat with an unruly rescue dog. By "unruly" I mean that his guardian could not get him to stop going up to people and leaning his head against them to get petted. Away, foul beast!! I mean..aww, cute!! In any case, I want to learn more about CAP and think this'd be an ideal way for me to stay involved in aviation. Step 1 is apparently to learn how to fly a 182, which I want to do ASAP anyway.

Next was the Cessna tent. Kind of boring, actually, but I was also really hungry by now, so I went and got some fries.

I then came upon TJ Neff's refurbished 1995 Socata TB-20 Trinidad. Whew. His pitch: For $150K, you get 90% of what you get if you pay much, much more for a Cirrus. Hmm. Well, the plane was really nice, I'll grant you; in fact I've been dreaming of sitting in the cockpit again ever since then. I felt like I was sitting in a race car. It's beautiful; everything's amazingly within reach. The plane does about 155 knots at 12.5 GPH, which seems a bit high to me given other options -- heck, the Diamond DA40 does the same speed on 8-10 GPH and it's not even a retractable OR a constant speed prop (the CS model adds about 12 knots to that on the same fuel burn). Still....very nice airplane. West Valley Flying Club has a Trinidad; I'm going to request a training ride in it.

Then, on to the Diamond display. I've been admiring Diamonds from afar for so long that I had to go sit in one. So I had a seat in the DA40, and...well, it was comfortable...the company rep described it best when he said it's like "flying a La-Z-Boy." Yeah, that's kind of what it felt like. I suppose I actually have to fly it to judge, so maybe I'll try to arrange a test flight if I can find a club around here that has one (I know there's a place in San Carlos, so I could just go there).

So I drove downtown from there and hit the Exhibit Floor. I went from one corner to the other; I saw sunglasses (neat, but ugly), all kinds of avionics -- there's one, I forget what it's called, that replaces the attitude indicator and heading indicator with a tall, thin digital display akin to the attitude/heading displays on a Garmin G1000. Pretty nice engineering, if you ask me, since it can be fit onto an existing six-pack and replace just those two instruments pretty easily. [EDIT: Thanks to reader Colin for informing me that this was a unit made by Aspen Avionics] I talked to an AIG guy about insurance for a while; he looked bored. I talked to someone from a flight academy about whether it was possible to get a job with an airline as a 35 year old with my experience level (of course her answer was "of course!"). I got talked into buying a VFR FlightGuide; it's like the Pilot's Guide that I'd been subscribed to, but (a) covers something like 13 states instead of just CA, (b) is less expensive, and (c) most importantly, is small enough that I could actually carry it in my flight bag. They have a nice looking website service I could subscribe to, but didn't yesterday. Then I stopped by the West Valley display and chatted with the chief pilot Lucy for a bit, and then on my way out, I met and talked with John and Martha King of the infamous King Schools! That was actually really cool; they were really nice.

I feel like I got some interesting data on the "what to do next with this" front. Join an airline? A possibility, though letting go of my nice job (in every way) at this juncture is not on my list of favorable decisions. Buy my own aircraft? Maybe; it sure would be nice, and free me up to make more trips without worrying about reserving and all the other hassles of club aircraft. Let's face it -- I'd love to own an airplane. But it's expensive, and it's a big commitment. I'd also like a dog, which is also a big commitment, but at least a little bit less expensive. CAP seems like a great option no matter what; I will look into that as soon as practical.

I looked around the expo for only about three hours after my volunteer session, but I ended up having a great time! I can only take so much of those settings anyway, and I feel like I got everything I want to out of it.

Now, let's see when that West Valley Trinidad is available...

300 Hours!

2008-11-03T21:52:00.000-08:00

I was just updating my logbook, and realized that on my way to Santa Barbara, I crossed the 300 hour mark! I'm also coming up on 100 hours of cross country (I'm at 96.5 right now). Still inside "The Killing Zone" but a nice milestone nonetheless.

First Real IFR Flight: Santa Barbara

2008-11-02T18:10:00.000-08:00

I've written before that some experiences just make you feel "like a pilot." This weekend was one of those experiences, I think in part because of the large number of "firsts" and how well I handled them. This was the first time I:

was pilot in command of a flight in real IMC, and real it was -- an hour in the clouds on the way down!
used my new Lightspeed Mach 1 headset -- the fitted earpieces had just come in on Friday!
spent two nights away
flew somewhere I had a reason to be
was cleared for and flew a "visual approach" (you'd think this was easy, but at an unfamiliar airport...)
dealt with a rapidly changing weather forecast for the return trip, which at times included thunderstorms, and ended up having somewhat lower-than-expected freezing levels

And the heartening thing is that this might have been the best I've ever flown -- of course that involves some luck as well as all the preparation, but without the preparation you don't even give yourself a chance.

I took off on Friday a little after 1:00pm, after a rigorous preflight and obsessing about the weather all morning -- not that there was much to obsess about; it was cloudy, but unthreateningly so. Ceilings were around 5000 in the Bay Area, and supposedly around 7000 further south. I filed a flight plan via Salinas, Paso Robles and Morro Bay at 7000, and got set to go. Preflight was fine, I loaded up the plane with all my luggage (which was considerable, since I had to bring all my stuff not only for a half-marathon, but also for the Halloween party that night), and I got ATIS and contacted ground. Runway 12 was in use -- yesss! Whereas the departure procedure for Runway 30 is a bit intense (see my last entry), the departure procedure for Runway 12 is "fly runway heading." Perfect.

I was cleared for takeoff. I lined up, and took off. After switching to Norcal, I was instructed to make a left turn direct to Woodside (Woodside is on the right at that point, so I had to make a 270 degree turn). He kept me on my filed route, and I ended up in the clouds pretty quickly. And I stayed there for a while. My groundspeed was about 87 knots, and things were bumpy. I was in there for nearly a half hour, when the controller asked if my routing was for training, or if I'd like to go direct Gaviota, and whether I could handle 9000 feet as an altitude. Given that the plane was actually leaking water into the cabin, I eagerly told the controller that direct Gaviota would be great and I could do 9000. He cleared me direct Gaviota, and minutes later cleared me to 9000. I climbed, and broke out of the clouds at 8500.

The rest of the ride was much more pleasant. I was in and out of the clouds a little bit, once even for about 15 minutes, but it wasn't as thick or bumpy. My groundspeed was still achingly slow; I had a headwind of about 40 knots, putting me in the low 80s relative to the ground. I plugged my iPhone into my headset and started playing some music. At some point I missed a handoff to a new frequency, but that was really my only error.

As I got into the Santa Barbara area and began descending, things were decidedly VMC outside. It was a beautiful day! Eventually I got the call: "N35583, Santa Barbara Airport is at your 10 o'clock." I saw it, and told him so. "N35583, cleared visual approach runway 7." Interesting...how do I fly this? Since I couldn't see a visual glideslope aid (there may have been one, but I couldn't see it), I tuned the ILS and simply followed it down, executing a greaser of a landing at the end of a completely stable approach. Good stuff. I taxied to Signature, and parked!

Friday night was awesome, Saturday was fantastic, and today, it was time to fly home. I'd been a little concerned about the weather because at one point yesterday, they were forecasting thunderstorms in the bay area -- and if there was really going to be a lot of thunderstorm activity, I think that'd most likely mean an extra night in Santa Barbara for me. But that forecast went away, and in its place was a forecast that made it very difficult to predict how cloudy the journey would be, and freezing levels around 8000'. I fretted about the situation for a while, then decided I'd just file a route the same way back as I'd come, where the MEAs were such that I could file 6000' as my enroute altitude.

This worked for a little while...I called clearance delivery (first time!) and was given my clearance, called ground for taxi instructions, did my run-up, called the tower, and was given a takeoff clearance. My routing was ... tada! Runway Heading! I was sure that I'd get a departure procedure, but Runway Heading, vectors to Gaviota was all I got. Awesome! Things were fine until near Paso Robles, where the controller boosted me to 8000'. I complied without complaining, and a little while later the controller asked if I wanted my filed routing, or direct AMEBY (a GPS fix on the San Carlos GPS 30 approach). So...I thought I was supposed to file on airways, but am I not supposed to do that? Should I just file direct and see what happens? Of course, earlier in the week when we went to Salinas, I filed SNS direct, and they gave me OSI V25 SNS direct. So...who knows. Anyway, I accepted direct AMEBY, and told the controller I was concerned about ice at 8000 when approaching the bay area, and didn't know what the clouds looked like. He basically said I had no choice, because radar is sketchy at 6000 through the valley. Interesting. So I told him "let's give it a shot" and it ended up being immaterial when I was lowered to 6000 (and eventually 5000) before getting into the bay area anyway.

I got vectored around a little bit on my way back into San Carlos: Fly heading 270! Direct AMEBY! Fly heading 270! Fly heading 310! Direct AMEBY! Okay, okay! I eventually made it into the approach structure (way too high -- they really dropped me in rather suddenly; I was at 5000, and next thing it was "2 miles from AMEBY; cross AMEBY at or above 3200, cleared GPS 30." But I landed without incident, pulled the plane into its spot, and I was done!

I will update this entry with a photoset at some point, but it was an awesome flying experience. A lot of firsts, a lot of learning, not a lot of out-and-out slip-ups. I want to do this more, and I want a faster and more powerful plane!

UPDATE: Here's a photo set from the weekend -- mostly pix from the flight, but a few of my Halloween costume (that's supposed to be Michael Jackson) and of my Team In Training team with whom I ran the Santa Barbara Half Marathon. I have also linked the current flying blog from my pilot friend Russ (who I flew with last weekend) on the left.

Getting Ready For IMC

2008-10-29T22:13:00.001-07:00

California, the San Francisco Bay Area in particular, is an interesting place to be an instrument pilot, in that there really isn't a whole lot of IMC for most of the year. Not that I'm complaining; the sunshine is beautiful, and zillions of people move here every 20 minutes. It's awesome, and all the more reason to be able to fly over the traffic jams and laugh!

So, I'm running a half-marathon this weekend with Team In Training, the fundraising and athletic training arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. That's two great causes: curing cancer, and making yet another futile attempt to increase my muscle mass. The race itself is in Santa Barbara, which is the perfect distance to fly instead of drive -- about a 2 hour flight instead of a 5 hour car ride. And, guess what the forecast is? That's right, rain in the Bay Area, and partly cloudy (whatever that means) in Santa Barbara. But that's OK, I'm an instrument pilot, right?

Well, not so fast. We still have to consider three things: Currency, Logistics and Readiness. My currency was on the edge of running out last weekend, as I'd only done four approaches in the last six months. There's just not a lot of IMC! And recruiting safety pilots who I'm compatible with has been slow going (Roland, you're awesome, but you were out of town!). So a reader of this blog, Russ (who has a blog of his own here though he really should write in it more!!), and I got together for a flight last weekend. It was great; we went down to Salinas and did the VOR and GPS 13 approaches, with a holding pattern (above actual clouds) at MARNA. Now, I've never been in real IMC without an instructor, and we were about a 1/2 mile from this being my first time! In any case, it all went well, except I attempted a circle-to-land off the GPS 13 to runway 26, and the sunfield and haze were so bad that we couldn't see the runway. An actual missed approach!

Currency: Done. Now, for Logistics. I managed to book a nice IFR plane for the weekend, a small miracle in itself. I won't go into that, but the plane is based at San Carlos, not Palo Alto, where I usually fly out of.

This brings us to Readiness -- since I've only flown IFR out of San Carlos once (that with my instructor), and I'd never flown this plane IFR, I decided to take a test flight today, again with my instructor John so I could get under the hood and do some more approaches.

I decided to replay the weekend's flight, but just do the VOR 13 at Salinas, not bother with a published missed approach but just head back to San Carlos. And obviously the start/end point are different, because we're starting in San Carlos instead of Palo Alto. So we talked it over, got in, started up, and it came time to copy my clearance.

"Skyhawk 35583 is cleared to the Salinas Airport via runway heading until past the diamond shaped waterway, right turn heading 120 within 2 miles of the airport, radar vectors Woodside, Victor 25, Salinas, Direct; climb and maintain 1100 until past the 165 radial of the Oakland VOR, climb maintain 2000, expect 5000 in 5 minutes. Frequency 131.25, squawk 4526."

Holy crap. And this came pretty rapid-fire. I struggled, John helped me. The standard clearance for Palo Alto is "right turn heading 060, radar vectors Salinas direct, climb maintain 3000, expect 5000 in 5 minutes, frequency 121.3, squawk 4526." This was much more complicated. So, score one for me going on this flight. Score two for me actually flying the clearance well enough that John complimented me on it.

Overall, the flight went pretty well. There were a few things that I slipped up on, the biggest of them being that after doing a touch and go at Salinas, I was supposed to execute a missed approach, but I forgot about that and started flying right back to San Carlos. Can't do that when you're on an IFR clearance. To my credit, I flew an unexpected circle-to-land perfectly, but it does no good if you fly into a mountain right afterwards. I didn't. Also, I did not correctly interpret an approach plate, which bugs me a little. Need to pay more attention. And, I needed to study the San Carlos approach plate prior to asking for a clearance to San Carlos...they sent me direct to one of the waypoints on the GPS approach, and I had no idea what they were talking about. Hate that.

But, those things aside, it was a good flight. I'm glad I did the bad missed approach on a training flight, and the other mistakes were recoverable. So, I'm now prepared for Friday. My biggest fear is now copying (and flying) the clearance when leaving Santa Barbara on Sunday! Let's hope for something easy!

IFR Currency

2008-09-08T08:32:00.000-07:00

It's been four and a half months since I got my instrument rating, and I've not been flying nearly as much as I would've hoped. That means it's time to start worrying about currency, as the FARs require six instrument approaches within the last six months, with holding procedures. Right now, I easily meet that requirement, but only because of all the approaches I did in March and April. Since my checkride, I'd done only one instrument approach in simulated IMC, the ILS into Merced a couple of months ago. I'd done three practice approaches a bit before that, but by myself in VMC, and therefore no foggles.

So I enlisted my good friend Roland to come with me and act as my safety pilot, to go do three approaches yesterday. "The Milk Run," he calls it, of Stockton, Tracy and Livermore, which gives me a VOR, GPS and ILS approach. Now, there were several confounding variables on this trip; for one thing, it was my first time renting out of Advantage Aviation. I'm still a member of West Valley, but Advantage has just as many of the planes I want to fly, and they're a good $10-$15 cheaper per hour. And they're nicer (sorry, but it matters to me).

We picked up the plane's keys, and went out to preflight. The plane, N784SP, was in very nice condition, and the preflight went well, except that fuel was just a bit below the tabs. I decided that was enough for our 2-hour flight (the tabs would give us 3.5 hours conservatively, and it was just below), so we got in, and ... I realized the plane had no MFD. The MFD is the big moving-map GPS display that I'd used all through my training as quite the crutch for situational awareness. OK, this would be a bit of a challenge, but no worries; through my training I'd worried about becoming too dependent on the MFD anyway, so this would be a good drill.

Off we went, VFR with a right Dumbarton departure, and over Sunol I gave Norcal a call. Now, after some down time, the radio calls are the first thing to suffer, and this was no exception. I got the message across (flight following Stockton, practice VOR 29R) but forgot to tell him I had the ATIS, and neglected to tell him how I wanted to start the approach (pilot nav) or how the approach would terminate (published missed). Not pro, but the controller was really nice and just prompted me for the information. Also, the autopilot veered me hard to the right when I tried to engage it, so apparently it was even more useless than all the other K(r)AP 140s I've experienced. Great..no MFD, no AP. This will be a challenge indeed!

About 10 miles from ECA (the IAF), I was still at 5500' and worried about getting down -- obviously on an instrument flight plan, they tell you when to descend, but VFR, everything's a lot more variable. But for some reason, these days I'm a lot less afraid to sound like an idiot (which is a good thing) so I queried ATC: "4SP...can I begin a descent?" Immediately he said, "4SP, cross ECA at or above 2000, cleared approach." Perfect..so I slowed and immediately began a 1000 FPM descent, and got to 2000 about 45 seconds prior to reaching ECA.

Reaching ECA is a drill, because it means the following: OBS mode, Time, Turn to the outbound leg for a parallel entry into the holding pattern in lieu of procedure turn, twist the inbound course, check in the GPS that the course reads correctly, switch nav source, throttle to descend to 1600'. Whew. Amazingly, I did it -- it wasn't smooth, but luckily Roland was a good sport about it. A minute out, I turned inbound, got established and descended to 1300'. I'd overshot a little, but got back on course quickly. Suddenly I looked down and my CDI was fully deflected..what the...oh, I'm right over the station. I started my time, and used the GPS to verify that I was on course until the CDI kicked in. I descended to 460', the MDA, and flew right over the missed approach point.

In flying the missed approach I had a little confusion about the navigation; I got on VOR navigation pretty quickly, but I wanted GPS guidance for more accuracy. I'm not sure why, but it took me a couple of tries to get it right -- Direct to ORANG, OBS mode, 317 in the OBS. Anyway, I did it and climbed to 3000', called ATC, and entered the hold.

Here's where things got a little messy..I didn't start the time passing ORANG, so I had to take a guess as to when to turn back inbound (turns out it was an amazing guess; my inbound leg was exactly 1:00!). My calls to ATC were sounding more and more amateur as I set up for Tracy, stayed in the holding pattern with no AP, and generally struggled to get everything done. But I got it, and eventually asked for the approach and was directed to ECA. The GPS-A at Tracy went really well, and entering the hold at TRACY also went well -- a lot easier with the GPS than with VORs! I set up for LVK ILS 25R, and asked for it. Here I veered a bit off course on my inbound leg, which made things more confusing than they should've been (if I were on course, I'd just have to pass straight ahead over TRACY to be on the next leg of the ILS, once cleared), but I handled it, it just wasn't particularly pretty.

The ILS went beautifully. I was right on it pretty much the whole time, with only a few corrections. I was on the slow side (I had been on all the approaches; my standard power settings weren't working and I hadn't found ones that did work), but only by about 5 knots now (as opposed to about 10 knots earlier in the flight). I did a touch and go (best one in a while!), and made for Palo Alto. The flight back to Palo Alto was easy, and after a bit of instability as I got over the runway, recovered and made a nice landing.

It was a great refresher flight! I was not nearly as far ahead of the airplane as I'm accustomed to being, but I can attribute that to three factors: 1. Rust, obviously. 2. No autopilot. 3. No MFD. So, in addition to being rusty, my brain also had to handle constantly flying the plane, and constantly being aware of my situation. The latter was remarkably easy, but the former was a challenge at times.

Roland is a great safety pilot, by the way. He's really calm about everything, and he asks questions, almost like an instructor would..it's kind of uncanny, given he doesn't have an instrument rating, but he just has great judgment and is very aware of the situation. He forces me to tell him my plan, which is great -- he wanted to know, for example, when I would de-foggle myself on the ILS, so I told him "Pretty much at the DA." He asks, "What's the DA on this approach?" And I didn't have it at the forefront of my thoughts; I had to think about it for a sec and verify with the plate before answering, "650'." But it was great to have thought about it then, nice and early, before it got late. Plus, he took pictures, so I can see what I'd been missing!

Now, back to plan A: I want to take at least one trip a month with Roland (or another pilot) and do an approach on at least one end. If I do that, currency won't be an issue.

A Hurried Trip Around The Clouds

2008-07-28T08:32:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I took a friend on a trip to Petaluma, from Palo Alto. As with many of my friends, it was her first time in a small plane, so I wanted the introduction to be a kind one. I'd reserved 669TW at PAO, but since it was recently back from maintenance and no one had booked it since (even though it was "free" all day Saturday), I was suspicious, and rightly so -- when we arrived at PAO, the plane was nowhere to be found. Luckily, 222MF had opened up from 10 to 1, so I jumped on it.

The plan had been to get brunch at the 29er Diner in Petaluma, my favorite $100 (well..$300) meal location so far, but with the restricted time options, I figured that this would just be a bay tour. But San Francisco was still covered with low overcast, according to the weather, so my choices were limitied. I figured the clouds might burn off sometime during the flight, so I decided to head over the east bay. We followed Highway 680 up the east bay, past Mt. Diablo and over Danville and Walnut Creek and Concord's airport, and headed out over San Pablo Bay. There I let her steer around a little bit, and after climbing a little and seeing that the coast was totally covered with clouds, decided that it'd be cool to touch down in Petaluma and just step out for a minute, even though we didn't have time for brunch.

Traffic pattern and landing at Petaluma went well; there was one other plane that was entering the pattern at the same time. I was more or less exactly over the airfield, and didn't even see it (it was off my right side)...luckily my passenger did! I was about 1500' over TPA anyway, so nothing too worrisome. We slotted in behind the other plane, and since I was high I came in pretty hot, which led to a nicely greased landing. We parked and went in for a quick cup of tea.

As we sat, I called West Valley to check that the 1:00 reservation on 222MF was still in the books. Unfortunately it was, so I had to rush things and leave immediately. It was 12:25 when we got in the plane; we taxied back and took off pretty quickly. Unfortunately, SF was still covered with clouds, and here I was uncertain of what to do. I could of course ask for IFR to PAO, but as I was in a hurry, I didn't want some crazy routing. I could always cancel, but I didn't want to waste time getting a clearance only to cancel it and have to go back around the east bay anyway. I thought about asking for a high VFR clearance over SF, over the clouds (they were at about 1000' and only a few hundred feet thick at most), but I know they usually rely on ground reference for transitions, and...well, frankly I didn't want to sound like an idiot. So I went back around the east bay route, this time skirting as close to the Class B shelf as I could without busting it (at one point I thought I had busted it..the rings are shown on the GPS, but without the altitudes, so I had to cross reference it with the chart, and I misread it at one point, resulting in a rapid 500' descent).

We cruised back in; I announced myself over Coyote Hills, made right traffic, and was cleared to land before I even made the downwind leg -- things were very not-busy for some reason. I touched down, another greaser in a crosswind, and this time not even going too fast! We tied down and got back to the club about 20 minutes late.

This flight was an interesting one, in terms of decision making. I had oppositely confounding variables in time pressure and a passenger. I think my one poor decision was to get out of the plane in Petaluma; we should've landed, taxied back and left again. I wanted to show my friend around a little, but that resulted in a rush situation coming back. Everything else I think was reasonable, from the standpoint of risk mitigation (in not wanting to try something new with a passenger on board) and comfort. So, overall, a good flight -- it's always great to go up, and my friend will have to go again if she wants to see the Golden Gate!

Castle Air Museum

2008-07-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

I have no idea how long my flying buddy Roland and I have been talking about going to Castle Airport, but it's been a really long time, since well before my instrument checkride. Through my training, I hardly ever flew for pleasure, since I spent all my time flying approaches and stressing myself out. Hey, it was important. Anyway, so I had a plane booked for today with the thought that I'd go somewhere, and as it turned out, Roland was free, so off we went to Castle!

Castle Airport used to be Castle Air Force Base until 1995 when they shut down military operations and it became what might have been the longest runway on a non-towered airport ever, with its 11,800 foot runway. Within the last two years (not sure exactly when) they put in a control tower. Apparently, Boeing is now going to use the airport as a 737 training facility.

Anyway, I took a guess at an IFR routing and filed a flight plan from home, and then drove off to the airport. I got there at 11:00, and by the time we got fuel, preflighted and chatted a bit in catching up, it was 11:30. We taxied to the run-up area, and I got my clearance: SJC V334 SUNOL V195 ECA Direct. That's precisely the same routing I get for my numerous trips to Stockton, which surprised me -- in my filed plan I followed another airway south to get at least near the El Nido VOR (HYP). But oh well. So we took off IFR, did all the familiar stuff, and before we got to ECA we were given a heading and told to go direct HYP when possible. Great!

We were still about 20 miles out when we got a vector for the ILS (which I'd requested earlier). They kept me high for a while, presumably to avoid any conflict with the neighboring Merced airport, but the descent was still pretty easy. I fought the ILS most of the way down, but kept pretty well on it before floating high right around the DA. I went visual, and landed relatively well on the gigantic runway. I taxied off, contacted ground, and with their help, parked at transient.

We tied down, and at the end of the parking area were a number of GIGANTIC military jets. These things were huge. One of them was being loaded with something; we didn't want to get too close or stare too hard (I had my sinister unshaven look going today). We walked into the terminal, where a number of military personnel were sitting around. I guess we looked confused (I think we were just dazed by the heat -- the ATIS had said the temperature was 32C), because a woman from the onsite FBO, Anabel (or Anna Belle or some variant thereof) asked if we were lost. I asked her if there was a good way to get to the air museum other than walking, and she offered to drive us there herself! How sweet!

Anabel (that is now officially the correct spelling, at least as far as this blog is concerned) dropped us off at the entrance to the museum, which (I hadn't realized) was all outdoors. Of course -- when dealing with HUGE planes, it'd have to be. The first thing we saw was an SR71 Blackbird. After we ate (ugh...I don't want to talk about it), we went out and saw so many planes I can't even begin to convey what any of them were or in what way they were significant, though they all were. I'm well aware of the rich history that aviation has within the military, but I'm not a plane geek -- I don't know the production history behind certain models of aircraft, I have no idea about war stories (literally!) associated with certain planes, I can't identify a plane by looking at it, even if it's really obvious. I'm still thoroughly impressed by these planes and those who flew them, it's just...anyway, here's my attempt; if you want accurate info I suggest the museum's website.

There was the SR71, which was very sleek. We saw a B-17, and I was impressed by the number and locations of the gun turrets. The B-52 was overwhelming. The C-123 made me laugh -- it looked vaguely like the plane in Chicken Run. The F-14 still looks like something out of the future.

It was getting hotter, and what breeze was once there had died down. After a brief stop in the "inside" portion of the museum, we went back to the entrance and the gift shop, and had the staff there give Anabel a call for us. She picked us up and took us back to the terminal. As we got there, we watched two of the GIGANTIC jets taking off (though one of them had to hold for a Lear jet to land -- we were feeling quite inadequate in our little Cessna). We walked out to our 172, opened the doors and...sat outside for a little while. It was really hot outside, but it was REALLY hot in that cockpit. Whew. We got in and were eager to get in the air ASAP, so we got the ATIS, got some taxi instructions, got a takeoff clearance and used it. We climbed to 6500 in an effort to find some cooler air (our OAT gauge still said 72 degrees F at that altitude). We were VFR, but it was really hazy -- we got flight following, which at least helped our peace of mind. The flight back was totally uneventful and utterly enjoyable.

I like this idea of taking trips, flying out IFR and coming back VFR. They're totally different skills, and I enjoy the opportunity to work on both.

I Know Kung Fu!

2008-07-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Three months. Three months since I took N222MF up with Sherry Diamond, donned the foggles, flew for far too long around the Salinas area, shot three approaches, did some holds, and came back with a temporary airman's certificate. That was April 25.

In the intervening time, I've flown three times: Two bay tours, and a practice VFR flight. Long story short, I did not feel like an instrument pilot at all. I had no confidence that my IFR skills would come back without a lot of work. I'd never even been on an IFR flight plan by myself. I'd tried to schedule myself for an IFR practice flight, to shoot approaches and try to remember how it all went, but when you think something is going to be unpleasant, you find excuses to not do it.

So on Monday, after canceling another flight, I scheduled one for Thursday (yesterday). And yesterday, I took a lesson from the baseball field: after you make a fielding error, tell yourself "I want the ball" till you believe it. So, that was me all day: I want the controls. I told my friends I was going, so I could not get out of it (obviously barring some good reason to not go).

I got to the airport and picked up the keys and went out to preflight....and forgot my headset in the car AGAIN (this has been a trend). Then I needed to use the restroom, which, thanks to the draconian landlords at PAO, entails a trip to the terminal building. So, by the time I boarded and started setting up, it was 6:00pm. No problem, I'm taking my time. I did my basic checks, started up and contacted ground. IFR to Stockton. Here we go.

I got to the run-up area, and got my clearance and copied it and read it back. One thing done. I set my avionics, and told the tower I was ready for release. Hold for release. Great. Now we sit and....ah, crap, I never did my runup checks! So I sped through my runup, and sure enough, one of the mags was rough, so I leaned and cleared it, and went back through the checklist, completing it just in time for "Cessna 222MF, position and hold, and we have an amendment to your clearance." This is new...."position and hold, ready to copy." It was a right turn 040 instead of the standard 060 after takeoff. No big. Cleared for takeoff.

It was a beautiful day -- clear, not too hot, with some clouds up to the north and offshore (in other words, not where I'd be flying). There were TFRs all over the place, thanks to (a) fires and (b) the president of the US getting an aerial tour of the fires. I probably would not have even gone anywhere VFR today, but this is the beauty of IFR: YOU keep me out of the TFRs (I mean, I was aware of where they were, etc, but it's just less thinking to have ATC as a first line of navigation).

As I followed their vectors and altitude assignments, I found myself way ahead of the airplane. I got SCK's ATIS way ahead of time, and when switching to the final controller had my approach request ready to go: VOR 29R, pilot nav, published missed hold at ORANG. There was some confusion later when the controller asked me if I wanted multiple rounds in the hold at ECA (meaning the hold in lieu of procedure turn on the approach) whereas I heard ORANG, so gave a nonsensical answer, but we straightened it out. As I approached ECA, she told me she'd call my inbound turn, so I slowed, did my T's and headed outbound on an extended parallel entry. I did everything right in this approach, including the GPS management, pressing the OBS button at the right time, getting OUT of OBS mode when back inbound, starting my time at the FAF...everything. Even the missed was great, except that I forgot to exit NAV mode on the autopilot on the teardrop entry (I needed HDG mode) so my holding pattern was a bit messed up.

I set up for and requested the ILS 29R, and was vectored over. I flew it very well, completely by hand, dealing pretty well with gusty winds. I stabilized the heading pretty well; I had more trouble with the glide slope but corrected rapidly and the biggest deviation was one dot high (but it was pretty close to the DA). I went missed, flew it even better than last time, and went back to ORANG and requested clearance to PAO. Again, I was ready to copy, I got and read back a clearance, and climbed to 6000 on the assigned heading.

As I neared the approach structure for PAO GPS 31, I was being absolutely blinded by the sun, which was well on its way to setting. As I was vectored gradually onto the final approach course, I couldn't see anything. Technically VMC, and I could see the ground, but I could not look out the front window at all. Good thing I was IFR! There was an unexpected frequency along the way (Moffett Tower, for about 30 seconds before switching to PAO Tower), and I just followed the GPS in. I saw the REIL first, then the threshold lights, then the runway itself. The sun was just starting to drop below the horizon on my final approach, and I followed the VASI down and slowed to landing speed. I touched down with a squeak.

What a flight!! I'm absolutely stunned by how much I enjoyed it, as well as how good I was at it! Not that I think it'd be a good idea to take three months off with any regularity, but it's shocking to me that all that I'd learned was right there, at my fingertips, even after so much time. I knew exactly what to do and when, I acted and sounded like a pro (except for that whole hold at ECA issue, but we worked it out), I maintained my airspeeds very well, my scan was actually good, my preparation was excellent, I used the autopilot and the GPS to maximum effect, and I even flew smoothly -- a passenger could've been with me on that flight.

I'm impressed by, in some sense, how much easier it is to fly IFR than it is to fly VFR. An IFR flight is the same, no matter what. I'm taking a trip to Huntsville, AL, in August, and am planning to fly to the Atlanta area. I will be flying IFR, because there's so much less "creative" thinking to do, so many fewer variables. Many more procedures, yes, but those are just procedures, which I can do anywhere.

After a long and difficult training cycle, and a necessary detox period, I'm excited to be a pilot again and am psyched for my next trip.

Practice Flight

2008-07-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

Wow. June was an incredibly busy month, and between that and still being pretty burned out from the instrument training, AND not giving the club a copy of my new temporary airman's certificate, which indicated that I'd passed a test and therefore didn't need a BFR, thereby causing them to disallow me from renting a plane at all...it's been a while since I've flown. After the bay tour for my mom, I took my friends Alex and Lisa from Alabama on a tour; that was May 29. It was a choppy ride, and while the tour went well, my approach and landing back at PAO coming in from left traffic left something to be desired.

So, having not flown in five weeks, I thought today would be a great day to head out and get some practice. I hadn't really decided whether to just go and fly, or to go out and practice approaches (without view limiting), but as visibility was pretty bad at most nearby practice destinations and I was really not feeling up to such a huge challenge, I decided to fly to Livermore, do a little pattern work, and come back. Should be a nice short flight, and maybe I could work on those landings.

So I got 739TW ready to go, and after I preflighted (and went back to my car to get my headset, which I'd forgotten), I started her up perfectly, got ATIS, taxied out, did my runup, and prepared for takeoff. Everything went very smoothly; I got an early crosswind so I arrested my climb until I had the GPS where I wanted it to make sure I was avoiding SJC's airspace. I came through the Sunol pass, got LVK's ATIS and gave their tower a call and entered left traffic for 25L.

My first approach and landing were quite good. I landed just past the numbers, and made it a touch and go, which is not something I've done a whole lot of on short runways, for good reason. But in this case I'd decided that if my landing was close enough to the numbers, I'd go for it. So I went back up, second time around, and made left traffic for 25L. This time my approach ended up high -- 25L at LVK has no vertical guidance lights, so that made things harder. I floated long, and landed pretty cleanly but about 1/3 of the way down the runway so I made it a full stop and taxied back.

One more lap; this time my landing was good again, and I terminated and took a left crosswind departure to head back to PAO. It was hazy and hard to see, though visibility was supposedly 10SM. I made right traffic at PAO, lined up the approach, came in, was about to set down, and....just lost it. Gust of wind and probably an overreaction on my part, but the plane was in no position to be set down, so I added full power and retracted flaps halfway in one smooth motion to go around. I was quite pleased with myself that in that situation, without actively thinking about going around, the instinct was there, and solid enough that I did it correctly.

Because traffic was heavy, they sent me into left traffic, and I eventually found my place in line and approached and landed.

A nice little refresher flight, basically -- later in the week, if I get a chance, I'll try shooting a few approaches!

Bay Tour for Mom

2008-05-11T11:58:00.001-07:00

This is my 70th post in this blog, surpassing the 69 posts in my original flight training blog, Learning To Fly. And I can think of no better way to commemorate such an event, especially on Mothers' Day, than to write about the flight I took yesterday: A bay tour on a beautiful day, taking my mom up for the first time.

I reserved 739TW at Palo Alto, a nice plane with the avionics suite that I've grown used to through my instrument training (the timer doesn't work and the #2 radio has been flaky in the past; hence my reluctance to use this aircraft on my checkride). My mom got to the airport well before I did and got a coffee at the Abundant Air Cafe while she waited for me. When I got there, we ran into my friend Terry at West Valley, who wished my mom a good flight and gave her a good impression of the club. We also ran into Sergey, my PPL CFI, which was awesome -- I think he impressed my mom with his professionalism and friendliness even in a short conversation.

It was a little hazy out, but still greater than 10SM visibility, so nothing to worry about. So we took off northbound off of 31, and contacted San Carlos tower and requested a bay tour. Bad news: SFO Tower informed SQL tower (just then, apparently) that they weren't authorizing bay tours or B transitions. Perfect. I asked for a higher altitude and SQL told me to circle left and climb to 3000' and contact Norcal up there. So that's what I did, and Norcal cleared me through Class B at 3500 -- a higher view than is customary, but still spectacular.

We ended up being vectored west of San Francisco city on our way up to the Golden Gate, so we didn't get the close up view of downtown like we might've on another day, but again, still not bad. As we crossed Golden Gate Park, Norcal asked if I wanted to stay at 3500' and I asked for "as low as we could go." He gave me "at or above 2500'" so I dropped to 2500 and stayed there. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge from west to east, and circled Angel Island, giving my mom a good view of the City's amazing skyline and the Bay Bridge in the distance. We circled back and crossed back westbound over the Golden Gate, with a couple of traffic alerts along the way. We checked out Stinson Beach, and then back over the Golden Gate once more to head up the north bay toward the Carquinez Bridge.

Norcal asked at this point whether I was going to Napa; I told him negative, we'd head east and follow 680 down. So he discontinued flight following and we were on our way. Once reaching the Carquinez, I climbed back up to 3500 to get more clearance over the hills. On the way down to 680, I quickly showed my mom the GPS and autopilot operations because she was curious. As we followed the freeway down, she was very interested in the distribution of houses around there -- it was a lot less crowded there than in Fremont or San Jose, where she and I live, respectively.

We never did get back on flight following, but we did encounter some traffic to the west of Livermore, at the same altitude. We maneuvered around them and made our way back over Fremont (we think she saw her house) and back to Palo Alto. Interestingly, I got knocked off centerline pretty good as I crossed the numbers, but recovered alright and landed smoothly.

All in all, it was a great flight in that it was totally unremarkable, other than the views, which are always remarkable. It was really nice to just cruise around and be looking out the window.

Glider Ride

2008-05-03T12:55:00.001-07:00

Staring at instruments, having one's vision blocked in one of the most beautiful areas to fly in the country, always thinking of what's next and how best to get to the destination -- that's what instrument flight is in the Bay Area. It's frustrating -- rewarding, for sure, to be able to do it and to have learned all that I've learned, but sometimes you just want to go cruisin'.

So I did.

In Hawaii.

With no engine.

I arrived in Honolulu with a hotel reservation and no plan; I figured I could sit there in the hotel all day and it'd still be a great vacation, but I felt pressure to go out and do stuff so that I wouldn't come back and have to tell people that I sat in my hotel all day when I was in Hawaii. So I booked a glider ride out of Dillingham Airfield on the North Shore of Oahu, and paid the extra $20 for their "mini-lesson" which puts me in the front seat, doing the piloting of the aircraft.

I arrived at Dillingham an hour early!! That was cool, of course, because I had plenty of time to walk around, check out the gliders and airplanes, chat with the staff (we had a protracted debate on who exactly WANTS to see a Jimi Hendrix sex tape...my take was "nobody"), and just stare at a runway backed by a huge mountain, and bordered on the other side by the warm ocean. Hawaii's an incredible place.

At 10:30, my pilot showed up. Very cool guy, young, maybe mid-20s, named Scott, and so we chatted for a bit as we walked out to the glider. I told him I'm an airplane pilot and just got my instrument rating, and he congratulated me and tailored his lesson to me, which was nice. He gave me an orientation of the panel; there was an airspeed indicator ("Keep the nose just below the horizon, and it'll stay at about 60 mph which is what we want."), something akin to a VSI but far more sensitive and calibrated to the elevator input (so you know when you're in an updraft or downdraft), a compass (no DG)...I think that's it. Oh, there was an inclinometer, but Scott told me it was broken. There was also a string taped to the cowling outside the window -- this is apparently normal -- for a glider, it's very important to be coordinated as much as possible, so there's a lot of rudder use, and you step on the opposite direction of the string (makes sense..).

I'd paid for a one-hour flight, but the winds were pretty severely uncooperative, in that the direction they were coming from gave us no updraft off of the mountains (we spent a lot of time trying, but not finding one). So we took off, pulled by a towplane, and we were towed over the adjacent mountain range -- pretty close to it, actually; much closer than I'd be comfortable getting if I'm flying myself someplace in a Cessna, but probably still a good 7-800 feet off. Seemed really close, probably in part due to my unfamiliarity with the region.

So eventually we released, which entailed a pitch up to slow down and tighten the tow rope, followed by a pitch down to slacken the tow rope and then a release of the rope. Cool stuff -- because of the winds, we ended up doing 2 half-hour flights instead of one one-hour flight, and on the second takeoff, Scott was explaining to me how a glider pilot can actually communicate with the tow plane pilot. We had no radios or headsets or anything, since it's so quiet, but by steering to the left, you can tell the tow plane to go right; etc. Neat stuff.

We tooled around the mountains, and Scott gave me the controls. I was very conservative with the controls, and had to force myself to keep looking out the window, especially not fixating on the airspeed indicator. It was hard! But it was so beautiful outside -- the mountain range, the fields, the towns, the beaches, the ocean...wow. Just incredible. I flew around for a while; we'd been towed up to 5000' and we were descending constantly (as gliders do, sans updraft), so at about 1200' we headed back to the field and Scott took the controls for the approach and landing.

This was a trip. He crossed over the runway at 500', went out over the ocean, made a hard left 270 over the water and squared up for the runway, landing on the bicycle-style 2-wheel configuration. Crazy!

The second flight was similar to the first but the tow plane left us in the northwest corner of the island, from where we could get a great view of both the north and west coasts. Amazing. And then we flew right over the mountain range; I tried again for an updraft but was unsuccessful. I got more aggressive on the controls, trying a few steep banks, which gliders can do far more successfully than Cessnas (I assume the much longer wingspan and lighter weight gives much lower wing loading and lower stall speed?), and tried to stay coordinated.

Good stuff. I may want to add a glider rating to my license; it's amazing how in touch with the air you become. I'm looking forward to getting back in an airplane, maybe getting a mountain checkout, maybe learning to fly some other aircraft...should be a fun few months!

Thoughts of a New Instrument Pilot

2008-04-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

...on a calm CAVU day.

I've had some interesting reactions after completing my checkride on Friday, in part because I'm about to go on a vacation for a week, which has put me in a very relaxed zone, but in part just from the experience of the checkride itself, and the feeling of being done.

The first is that I spent quite a bit of time dissecting my checkride. It was instructive, and John has put me in the habit of dissecting every flight to make sure I keep learning, going so far as to mentally re-fly the flight. One thing that came up was that as I approached SNS from PAO (my clearance was SNS direct), I had not yet been cleared for any approach or given any further routing. I realized that I didn't know what to do next, and thus slowed down to give ATC more time, but in retrospect I should've queried ATC. "222MF, Salinas VOR." I couldn't go into an approach structure, and I needed to go somewhere...

Second, I got somewhat chewed out by ATC for descending too soon off of the DME arc onto the final approach course on the ILS 31. Except...I didn't descend too soon. I've been through it many times, and I did the right thing, so ATC was just confused.

Third, I thought it odd at the time that Sherry had me treat her like a passenger and give her my passenger briefing prior to start-up. But, what that did was that it established that I am the pilot in command. It put me in that mindset, which ended up being really helpful the rest of the flight. I've used the briefing before with new passengers of course to impart important information, but also to establish my role, almost as if to say, "up here, I'm in command, and if I ask you to do something, please do it." And that helps them, too, feel like they have a competent pilot in the left seat, not just their buddy who just learned to fly planes. Still it was odd telling a DPE that "in case of an emergency, do not panic, and do not touch the controls unless I ask you to." Also I think she enjoyed my headset mic explanation: "The mic will activate when you speak, and only I can hear you, unless you press this button, in which case the whole world can hear you. Please don't press this button."

Fourth...this is the weirdest one: Very suddenly, I'm really excited about flying again, and instrument flying in particular. I'm finding myself studying approaches, reading my textbooks, just for fun. This is interesting -- I seem to have some differentiation in my head between work and fun, and the idea that when I *have* to get something done, it *can't* be fun. This shouldn't be the case -- I'm interested in it; it IS fun, whether or not there are expectations of my performance. An interesting lesson that I'll take with me to my job and to my commercial training.

And yes, I want to get my commercial license. But, I want to do it differently. I went back and re-read my flight blog from my initial PPL training (at http://www.mayankthanawala.com/fly/), and found that I had a level of excitement and drive that I did not display in my instrument training. When I started PPL training, I was ready, raring to go. I studied frequently, I drove my own process, I made plans for remaining flights, from the very beginning. I was goal oriented, but I was also having fun (until the end, when those expectations crept in). My instrument training, by contrast, started with a lurch. I already had an appointment scheduled with John when my life turned itself upside down. At first I clung to those lessons -- it was the one thing in my life I felt I could be good at; it was an escape from life rather than a part of it, and as such, never really got integrated into it.

As the rest of life got more complicated through the year, I needed the escape less and less, and what I needed more was free time. Thus the training became more of a nuisance than a pleasure, even though I enjoyed the actual training and flying. I know that this frustrated John too; he saw what kind of person I was, and reasoned accurately that I should be excited and passionate about my training, and was concerned when I was not. That I embarked on one of the most difficult journeys of my life at a time when I was not ready for it was not only a disservice to myself, but also to John.

So, what I'm saying is, I'm at the point now where I can get my life in order, get the free time I need, take care of my own needs, and when I'm ready, begin my commercial training. I can drive the process, I can know exactly what's in the PTS before ever going to an instructor, I can probably even teach myself a good portion of what's in there. But step 1 is to wait, until I'm ready, until I am excited and passionate about the process. I have no idea when that will be -- could be next month, could be a year from now, could be never (but I doubt it -- I'm already getting excited about it!).

The other thing is, speaking of being goal-oriented, is re-evaluating what I really want to do with this. Realistically. Right now, the most realistic-sounding option is that I become a part-time CFI, and otherwise pay for my own flying. I don't think the airlines sound all that appealing at the moment. Actually what sounds really appealing are "odd jobs" relating to aviation. Good practice for that might be to join Angel Flight West, which actually does sound very appealing and would allow me to write off some of my flight time, gain interesting experience, and help people all at the same time.

Stepping away from reality somewhat, I'm also really interested in building an IFR-capable RV-7A. I'm sure that sounds ridiculous -- I'm sure once I'd flown one I wouldn't want to fly a lot of hard IFR in one of those, but on the other hand, we don't get that much hard IFR around here anyway; it's mostly marine layers and the like. And the thing is really efficient; it's very possible to net over 30MPG! I'd feel pretty good about that. But again: If I'm going to do something like that, I have to understand the size of the commitment (two years, maybe more, with their quick-build kit), and the repercussions (no way I do that AND go through additional training at the same time), and really commit to the whole thing.

Until then, I am on the verge of getting myself a Lightspeed Mach 1 headset. I use in-ear monitors with my band, and love them. Way back when I bought my first headset, I had pondered the possibility of somehow using my band monitors instead of a headset. Well, now that product essentially exists. I'd told myself a while ago that I'd get myself one when I passed my instrument checkride. That day has come! I'm just still freaked out about money; hence the hesitation. There's a used one on EBay right now, with new ear-foams, which would save me a couple of hundred dollars, but...it seems kind of gross -- this is an in-ear set.

Anyway, so those are my thoughts. No matter what, flying is awesome. Pilots are awesome. Planes are awesome. And the thrill of taking a passenger up in the air for the first time, the joy of taking a friend and showing them their home town from thousands of feet above, the feeling of accomplishment that comes from nailing an approach and greasing the landing at the end of it -- there is no parallel.

Unbelievably, Instrument Checkride Passed!!

2008-04-25T17:52:00.000-07:00

Well, it's finally happened. And before you ask, no, I don't know anything about the frogs falling from the sky, and I did not see those four dudes riding down the street on horseback. I most certainly did not see a four legged piece of other-white-meat traveling through the air, snout upraised, without a clearance. And I may be going straight to hell, but if so, I'd better go out and get a nice thick winter jacket.

Yes, it's finally done. I'm not trying to be melodramatic about it, but it's been a really, really long time. It's APRIL!! Of 2008!! I started my instrument lessons in March of 2007. Now, what I've learned from this is the following:

You have to take control of your own training. No matter how much of it the CFII handles, it won't progress until you take control. You're pilot in command, not just of the airplane, but also of your life.
Don't attempt this rating when there's too much else going on. I started my training in the middle of what was a really rough time personally for me; I wasn't emotionally ready to really focus on anything. In addition, I moved twice and bought a house, I was heavily involved in my sister's wedding festivities, I trained for and ran a race, I went to Europe for three weeks....don't do it this way. Focus on it, get it done in 6-8 months.
I'm a much better pilot than I used to be. I fly so much more precisely, I'm so much better on the radio, I know so much more about aircraft systems and ATC. I still feel like I have a lot to learn, but still.

I feel like there's so much more I want to do. I want to fly something other than Cessna 172s. I like 172s, don't get me wrong, but man, I'm bored with it. Something bigger, something smaller, something with a tailwheel..whatever!!

Anyway, I'm going to give a short account of my checkride experience. I'm not going to go into great detail, but I would like to thank Sherry Diamond for, first off, being sympathetic to my situation and accommodating my schedule on very short notice, and secondly for being very much a professional and a pleasant person to fly with, as well as a thorough examiner.

To review: Last Thursday, April 17, I had a checkride scheduled with Mike Shiflett, but he had to cancel due to a personal situation. Unfortunately that cancellation happened very close to the time of the checkride, a little over an hour beforehand, so I was pretty disappointed by that. We rescheduled for Tuesday. On Tuesday, Mike and I completed the ground portion of the exam, and it was a good experience -- however, I can't help but think that if we'd started earlier, we probably would've been able to complete the flight. Furthermore, I've since learned that not all examiners insist on conducting their checkrides in VFR conditions, and Tuesday would've been perfectly good IFR weather to fly in. Anyway, what's done is done.

Mike is a very good examiner, and as such, his schedule for the rest of this week was full. I am going to Hawaii next week, so the prospect of just not completing the checkride until afterwards, however unpleasant, was seeming more and more likely. Mike did offer a time on Sunday morning (at 5:00am!), but that wasn't going to work for me (5:00am!!). There was a possibility of Saturday, but...Sherry had talked to John on Thursday and offered that she could complete my checkride today (Friday). So I went that route.

I met Sherry at 1:00, exactly on time (yes!!), and she proceeded to give me a full rundown of the plan and her expectations. I really appreciated this. She'd given me a list of three approaches to prepare the previous night, which was also very helpful. Sherry, unlike Mike, conducts her checkride almost entirely within the IFR system: I file, I get a clearance, we fly three approaches IFR, I talk on the radio. It's almost like....REALITY!! What a concept.

We flew SNS ILS 31, SNS VOR 13 and WVI GPS-A. The plan was to do the ILS 31 pilot nav with procedure turn, but ATC told us they were unable. We ended up on the DME arc, which I flew pretty well, and intercepted the localizer. There was some weirdness with ATC, in that they gave me an altitude alert and chided me for going below 5500 before being established..except, I WAS established. Whatever. I told them so and they didn't argue, so I'm fairly confident it wasn't my mistake (besides, if it were, that would've been a failure!). I flew the LOOONG ILS quite well, and executed the missed. I never did hold at MARNA, though; we were worried about ATC delaying us again so we went straight into vectors for the VOR 13, partial panel. I set up for this quickly. Oh, and I remembered to start my time on both of those approaches. I flew the missed, and once again went straight into vectors for the WVI GPS-A. Here I fell behind; I didn't get the minute weather beforehand, and at some point along the final approach course she prompted me: What's your plan? So I got the weather, and got in a radio call asking if any runway was active. She asked what my circling plan was, I told her, and that was that.

Since we never did hold at MARNA, she basically had me set up for the hold at OSI (Woodside VOR) on the way back to PAO. And we did unusual attitude recovery, which I did very well.

So that was it! It, I say: 2.3 hours on the Hobbs meter. That's a long ride by anyone's standards. But, it's pass, and it's a pass with compliments from the examiner. So I'm done!!!

I'm getting increasingly incoherent (or, perhaps decreasingly coherent) so I'll stop here, have some fun in Hawaii and go from there!

Oral: Done.

2008-04-22T22:19:00.001-07:00

And for you gutter-minded folk out there, I'm just talking about the ground portion of my instrument checkride. I met with the examiner today at 2:30, as the weather deteriorated, and after we got done with the paperwork, and checking through my log book to make sure I qualified, and then BSing about alternative energy and various other unrelated topics, we got down to questions.

The first was about maintaining currency, and I immediately stumbled. I eventually had to find a copy of the FAR and figure it out; the examiner complimented me on my ability to interpret the FARs, but also made a point of noting that "most people already know the rule." I knew the basics, just not the intricacies.

We moved on to aircraft systems, what a vacuum failure would look like, what to expect from the airspeed indicator in a pitot ice situation, and what the gyro instruments are. He also asked me about RAIM and what to do in the event of a RAIM failure. I stumbled here, too, but he helped me think about it and I came up with the right answer.

He asked me to explain the difference between a localizer and a VOR, and I was doing alright until at one point I was looking for words, and he said, "A localizer's a totally different technology; it's not a radial" but I heard "not a radio" and was very confused for a while. Eventually we figured out the misunderstanding, and what he wanted to know was how a localizer indicates that one is left or right of the course line, which I knew.

We talked about my planned flight, from Truckee to Palo Alto, and I explained about the obstacle departure and the climb rate. We used this to discuss alternate airports and rules for selecting them, and also weather concerns.

Then we went and checked the now-fully-deteriorated weather -- it was borderline, but ceilings were showing between 2900 and 4000, which would've made it very difficult, if not impossible, to conduct the checkride in VMC. So the flight portion of the ride has to be rescheduled. I'm not sure when that's going to happen, but in any case, at least I'm through the oral.

...or, not.

2008-04-17T18:26:00.000-07:00

Checkride was canceled by the examiner. Still working off the excess adrenaline. I went ahead and took the plane (since I had it reserved) down to Salinas and did a practice AP-coupled VOR 13 approach, held at MARNA, and back to PAO for a practice GPS 31. It was easy. Makes me wonder what my problem has been all this time.

(caution: venting ahead)

In fact, I think that's the biggest problem with all these delays. People get this rating done in 10 days. People with day jobs get this done in 2-3 months. People go only twice a week and get it done in 9 months. It's. Been. Thirteen. Months. I've spent at least twice what most websites put up as their estimated cost for the rating. I'm not rich -- I'm not poor, obviously, but I'm not nearly loaded enough that this doesn't really hurt. So, basically, the question is WTF is my problem?

And how exactly am I supposed to take it, karmically speaking, when I finally do schedule a checkride, and first the plane disappears entirely and somewhat mysteriously, and then the examiner has to bail right before the checkride?

A very large part of me just wants to drop it. I'm a pretty bad investor, but I do know when to cut my losses. Fuck it. What exactly has to happen for me to get the hint and just fucking quit? Right now I'm rescheduled for Tuesday -- between now and then, what's going to happen? Someone accidentally puts battery acid in the plane instead of oil? My log book gains consciousness and goes to the federal government for amnesty, and files a restraining order against me? The FAA decides to instate a maximum name length? Tell me. Maybe during The Relay this weekend I'll develop gangrene in my leg, and have to cancel. Maybe I'll get arrested for being too ugly on a public road.

And why do I seem to get stuck with a high level of unprofessionalism when it comes to anyone I fly with other than my actual instructors? Phase check instructors are hours late, rude, vocally racist, or just plain wrong. Examiners don't show up and drop off the face of the earth, or are really late multiple times in a row, or, as in this case, have something entirely legit come up but that they don't know about till 1.5 hours before my checkride, and can't get out of?

Anyway. I digress, but I think my point was that aviation can go fuck itself. I'm really good at a lot of things, and though aviation is one of them, my passion for it is not so intense that I'll allow myself to be walked all over by the fuckers who have been in it for so long that they forget how to have respect for the time and space of other people.

Well..this post is all over the damn place; I'm obviously just venting and will probably just delete the damn thing at some point.

Pre-Checkride thoughts

2008-04-17T11:18:00.001-07:00

My instrument checkride is in three hours, so I thought I'd spend some time writing in my blog. Logical, right? I'm just waiting for my stomach to settle down before I hit the road toward the airport and begin prepping. Yeah, I'm nervous, but only in a way. I know I not only can do this, but have done it consistently for the last month. I am only nervous because I get that way about experiences I don't believe will be pleasant. I have never had a pleasant phase check or checkride, but at least some of that is because of my own attitude about them. Hopefully this one breaks the trend.

I have completed my flight plan from Truckee to Palo Alto, but I still need to get the POH and check my climb rate up to 11,500 to decide whether to use the TRUCK2.TRUCK departure procedure, or the published obstacle DP. I'm undermotivated to do this since I'm not actually going to be flying this plan.

I do need to grab the POH and do a quick review of vacuum, electrical, fuel and pitot-static systems on the 172SP. From there, it's all checklists. If I just remember all my checklists and remember to talk out loud from the start, things will be fine.

Alright....it's time for my inner badass to head for the airport. More later!

Another great flight

2008-04-10T22:38:00.000-07:00

Today's flight had all the initial indications of a complete failure. I didn't sleep well last night thanks to my messed up rotator cuff and a head heavy with the possible symptoms of the cold that I've been surrounded by for weeks. By the time I got to the lesson, I felt fine, but just a little light headed, and my stomach had been upset all day. When I arrived, John asks me, "What's the plan?" Now, it turns out I'd anticipated this and actually had something of a plan, but I was not quite in the mindset to completely take charge of the flight. I was not channeling my inner badass.

It was apparent as we started the engine, and I vacillated between wanting to take off IFR or VFR. I'd filed IFR, but it's always such a waste of time, so eventually I decided on VFR (there was an amusing moment when John didn't pick up on that fact and asked ground for our clearance).

We took off, I foggled myself and then the fun started. John had me enter an intersection hold -- I got it all figured out, and with 25 seconds before entering the hold...I realized I had it wrong!! So I quickly figured out the proper entry, turned left instead of right, and then should really have had it...but then turned right instead of left to intercept the course. Duh. OK, more practice on intersection holds.

Then came unusual attitude recovery. I'm generally very good at this, and today I was OK but not great. It's really very simple. Airspeed high/accelerating = power idle, wings level, pull up firmly but gently (aaahh). Airspeed low/decelerating = power full, nose down, wings level. That's it -- nothing to it. I was just being very slow, and came out of the experience feeling very disoriented, discombobulated, and like I was just going to fall apart, as used to happen so often. So John upped the difficulty level and rushed me: He called Stockton and asked for the VOR 29R approach, pilot nav from Manteca, which was only a few minutes away.

Paging Mr. Badass, Mr. Badass to line one! I quickly set up for the approach, including the briefing, and got everything all set to go about a minute before reaching Manteca VOR (ECA). I turned outbound, and was told by the controller that he'd call my turn inbound, and that the published missed approach/hold at ORANG was not an option, so we asked for a left turnout toward Livermore.

We were outbound for about 10 minutes. Thankfully I'd slowed to 90 knots and wasn't going the full 120 -- I feel silly even saying that; thankfully I was in a Skyhawk and not a Cirrus or an Eclipse jet or something. Anyway, eventually we turned back inbound, and I had to ask a question about altitude limits, despite the fact that the answer was right there on the approach plate. OK, stupid, but I got the next stepdown right, tracked the VOR inbound, passed over it, reported and tracked it back out...but forgot to start the time!! Again!! I was so upset. But no matter, the GPS was still working, I had my DME distances, so I got to the MAP and made the left turnout as planned. I told tower "missed approach" and they told me to contact approach control. So I did, and as I did so, I realized that I had to tell them what I wanted. What I really wanted was a holding pattern somewhere, but I decided just to go for the gusto and request the Livermore ILS 25R right then.

So again I had very little time to set up for the approach, but I did it, just went through the lists and got it done. I had the localizer tuned, identified and twisted long before it needed to be; I'd delayed getting the ATIS because of poor reception but even managed to get that done before I really needed it.

This approach was the best I've ever flown. There were gusty winds, so I had to do a lot of pitch/power compensation along the ILS to keep the glide slope centered. It was not hard. At the FAF, the marker beacon sounded, and John said, "What's that noise?" which usually means I've forgotten something, but I'd already started the time and checked my glide slope altitude, and we were flying VFR so I didn't have to report. I thought maybe John had again forgotten that we were not IFR, so I said, "If we were IFR, I'd have to report." He said, "Why?" I responded, "Final approach fix inbound in a non-radar environment." I think my ability to sound like a textbook while successfully flying an ILS shocked both of us.

Several great things from today: 1. I got to that falling apart point, recovered and had one pretty good and one fantastic approach. 2. Setting up for approaches is getting much easier. Lists, lists, lists. 3. I was able to focus on a day when I didn't feel great. Now I absolutely know I can do it when I feel any less crappy! An exciting day, and I'm psyched for the next flight (Saturday, solo!).

The importance of self-confidence

2008-04-04T07:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a roller coaster of a couple of weeks, and a real lesson in how important it is to have confidence in one's skills. Frequently, flight (and especially instrument flight) is a microcosm of life, and the lessons learned in one apply equally to the other, and this is no exception.

Last week I had a couple of cancellations, the first because John had an emergency and had to cancel, the second because I was so tired that I was having dizzy spells after climbing a flight of stairs. Nothing a couple of good nights of sleep didn't solve, but definitely good I didn't attempt to go flying that day -- hooded flight is disorienting enough without random dizziness!

So this Monday, I dragged myself to the airport. I say "dragged" because that's exactly how I felt about it. In my last entry, I noted that instrument flight is a whole lot of work, and I've been too tired to work. I work all day, trying to squeeze 10 hours into six, leave early to go to flying, and then it's more work. It's exhausting!!

So I was sitting on a sofa organizing my charts when John showed up (he was on time, I was early). I'm sure I've mentioned this, but I do not have the ability to hide much from John -- he can read me like a book, and did so in this case. We proceeded to have a long talk about my motivation level, which he knew was approaching zero. We talked about my financial and environmental worries, which lead me to wonder exactly why I'm doing this; we talked about the fact that I'm simply too busy right now, with my job at a startup quickly ramping up into frantic mode, plus having to do my taxes and also training for a race (running), both the same week as my scheduled check ride; and we talked about how I was just sick of the whole process and viewed it as work, not fun.

He asked me why I'd started doing this to begin with, and we reflected on my initial goals. Goal #1 was to become a better pilot. Mission accomplished -- the difference between now and a year ago is night and day. Goal #2 was to not be stopped by minor layers of clouds that come over the bay area. Mission accomplished; I can certainly fly well enough to get through those on an IFR flight plan. Goal #3 was to maximize my capabilities based on how good I think I am. I think I'm really good at flying -- this is the key, and I'll talk more about that in a bit. Goal #4 was to set myself up for potentially pursuing aviation-related career options, either as an instructor or with an airline. I just turned 34, so while I'm still young, it's not like I'm 22 and have a lot of time to sit and consider my options.

So after this long conversation, we decided to go out and fly LVK ILS 25R and OAK ILS 27R. I filed a flight plan and we went to Livermore, and I set up for the ILS. Many things went right -- I'd set up properly, I intercepted the glide slope well, I followed it alright...but I missed starting the time at the FAF, and John had to remind me. He also had to remind me of something else...I can't remember what that was, but something important. The approach terminated with a circle to land runway 7R, which is what I messed up on my phase check last month, so I got a chance to redeem myself.

All in all it went alright, but I was really mad at myself for missing those two things and needing any reminders from John at all. For once I successfully hid this from him, thanked him for the reminders, and he had me fly a box pattern over the hills as I set up for the Oakland ILS. I took my time on this -- this is one thing I'd found on the last solo flight I took, is that I can help myself by actually committing to being slow. Too bad, I'm slow. If I'm too slow, someone will tell me, but until then, I'm just going to be slow. So I took plenty of time, made sure I had the radios all set up, ran through my checklists at least twice, fully briefed the approach (I'm getting the hang of this), and then finally we called up and requested the approach (we were VFR at this point; we had canceled IFR toward the end of the LVK approach).

We got a vector and I twisted the localizer. I intercepted the localizer, and then the switch flipped. I am doing this approach perfectly, I told myself. I found my focus, and stayed on it. I've intercepted the localizer. What's next? I was way ahead of the airplane on the step down fixes, and down to 1500 where I intercepted the glide slope. I started the time at the FAF, and stayed on the glide slope. My scan finally showed up; I was now flying the attitude indicator and using everything else as performance instruments. I made all the small corrections. John tried to joke with me; I ignored him. He asked me if he should shut up, I said "yes, please." We did a touch and go, and a right 270 back toward Palo Alto, and he noted that I'd anticipated this and put Oakland's South Tower in my reserve frequency in COM2. Basically I was a complete badass. What I call badass, John calls "Pilot In Command."

And there's the lesson. The FAA focuses on the following hazardous attitudes:

1. Antiauthority ("Don't tell me!") - Don't like anyone telling him/her what to do. Resentful of rules & regulations.

2. Impulsivity ("Do something - do it now!") - Need to do something, anything, quickly. Don't stop to think about better alternatives.

3. Invulnerability ("It won't happen to me.") - Accidents happen to other people, not to me. Therefore, I can take chances.

4. Macho ("I can do it.") - Always trying to prove themselves better than others. Take risks and try to impress others. Yes, women, too!

5. Resignation ("What's the use?") - I really can't make a difference. It's going to happen anyway, why bother? Leave actions to others.

But, they forgot one: A lack of confidence. I'm the type of person that's simply not going to suffer from these attitudes as listed. I know, some of you are reading this and saying "That's exactly the type of attitude that'll get you killed!" but seriously, if you knew me, you'd agree that I'm just not that kind of person -- it makes me a very antistereotypical guy, but that's very much who I am. However, I occasionally suffer from a lack of confidence, especially when overwhelmed, and that is just as hazardous an attitude as any of the above when it comes to instrument flight. If I'm in a situation where I have to figure out what to do, and I can't trust myself -- I'm a goner. This is where the belief in one's own abilities, the casting of oneself as a badass, comes into play. It may be exactly the wrong thing for some people to do, but it's exactly the right thing for me.

John and the new badass me went up again yesterday, and flew the Tracy GPS-A and the Hayward VOR DME 28L. Right from the start, my radio calls were fluent and easy, which is a good indicator of my confidence level going into a flight. I listened as many other pilots were struggling with their calls and testing the patience of ATC; there were a lot of people out there who were having trouble with their radio calls for some reason. It made me feel even better about mine when I said, "Approach, Skyhawk 21705, level 5000, request Tracy GPS-A, pilot nav, published missed, we have weather" all in one breath. We were cleared direct Manteca VOR, and I slowed and made the 340 degree right turn back on course. The approach was great EXCEPT I forgot to start my time at the FAF!! Argh! But John didn't even catch that; everything else was perfect. The missed approach was perfect, the hold at Tracy was very good.

As we entered the hold, Approach asked us our intentions. I wasn't ready for the question, and what would usually happen is that I'd let John take the call and then I'd lose confidence in myself because I felt like I didn't handle something I should have. But not badass Mayank. I took the call, fumbled it a little but got my point across that we'd want the Hayward LOC DME 28L but would hold for a few rounds to get set up. John's response: "Who are you and what have you done with my student?" which is very much a compliment. After a couple of minutes of holding (I'm slow at setting up!), Approach pinged us: "Let me know when you're ready for Hayward." "Will do." and I said to John: "Don't hold your breath!" Not only have I committed to being slow, I'm proud of it! What a great defense against feeling rushed and making errors.

After I was set up and briefed, and re-briefing myself, John said, OK, you only get one more turn. But I was done anyway, so I called up Approach and asked for Hayward LOC DME 28L. Here there was a bit of a fumble; I'd forgotten that I was still on an IFR flight plan, so really I needed a clearance to Hayward, which is what the controller gave me, and to read it back, which I did badly. But whatever. I got a vector, and twisted the localizer. I nearly overflew it, but did alright getting back on it and began my descents. I made my descents at 800-1000 feet per minute, I had all of my checkpoints lined up, I had my GPS set up for DME distances to the localizer to identify stepdowns...it was great. Slight fumble -- the last stepdown is inside the FAF, and I did not add 50 feet to the altitude, so I ran the danger of busting it (but didn't). We terminated early and turned left toward Palo Alto, where I made a nice landing.

I've gone on long enough, but I've definitely noticed the results in various aspects of my life of believing in oneself. Instrument flight is no exception. I'm so ready for my check ride; I wish it were today. In the mean time, I'm no longer dragging myself to the airport; I'm excited to take every approach and completely kick ass on each one.

Studying less, flying more

2008-03-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

After a week in which we studied ILS components, runway markings and ATC clearances, and flew together twice with mixed results, I took it upon myself to go out and practice approaches by myself today. I think there's nothing more educational than this; there's no safety net other than the fact that I'm visual the whole way so it's a considerably less disorienting. But still, it's up to me to make it through the system, to say the right words to the right people, which I think is part of what is so difficult about all this. I have another lesson tomorrow; let's see if my effort today helps tomorrow.

Earlier in the week, we flew to Tracy and Byron again, and this time with better results (still not great, but better). And the last flight, on Friday, was to Salinas and Watsonville. It also went OK, and got better as the flight progressed, but going into Salinas I found myself very much behind. I was in a mindset that day of not really wanting to work...but of course IFR flying is a LOT of work, so that wasn't such a happy combination. It bugs me when my friends tell me to have fun when I tell them I'm going out for a flying lesson. It's not fun, it's work and I'm going to be exhausted at the end of it.

Anyway, today I went and did the GPS and ILS at Stockton, which I haven't done much of -- usually we do the more challenging VOR 29R approach there. Luckily I had a very friendly controller who put up with my foibles. All of my foibles were communication related, and none were all that bad, so I'd say it was a pretty good day.

I'm still learning how to brief approaches, but I think taking the approach of simply walking through the approach in order seems to be working the best.

Alright..I'm barely coherent so I better stop now. More soon...

Studying a lot, flying a little

2008-03-14T07:08:00.001-07:00

Since my difficult phase check, we've mostly been concentrating on catching me up on ground knowledge. This has been the most difficult area to keep up with in my training; certainly it would have been preferable to learn all this stuff alongside my flight training, but life is busy! And I can't go back in time, so I'm learning it now.

After learning in great detail about how the main flight instruments work (pendulous vanes! calibrated leak! aneroid wafers!) I actually discovered that some of the chart knowledge that my phase check instructor had dinged me for being wrong on..I was actually right. There are differences between Jeppesen and FAA charts, and some of the criticism I received would have been relevant if I were using FAA charts, which I was not. But I wasn't confident on it, where I could say "No, you're full of it" and drag out the book to prove my point. Now I am.

I'm currently studying the structure and components of ILS approaches. Localizer antenna at the far end of the runway, glide slope alongside the approach end, 1000 +/- 250 feet from the threshold, outer marker, middle marker (3500 feet from the threshold at DH), inner marker (not used for Cat I ILS approaches, which are the only ones I'm acquainted with), approach lighting, threshold lighting, runway lighting. Service volumes and course widths as well -- reception is available at 10NM at a width of 35 degrees either side of center line, but 18NM within 10 degrees. Course width is 3 to 6 degrees, depending on the distance from the localizer antenna to the threshold -- the course should be 700' wide at the threshold. This is all from memory and probably helps me more than it helps you, but so be it, right?

Anyway...I actually did go flying with John yesterday. It went OK, but it turns out there's a few things I didn't know about reading approach plates, which showed up on an LPV approach at Byron. So I busted an intermediate altitude, which I think perplexed and upset John, and definitely upset me. Turns out when I'm upset and tired, I don't communicate well, and John reacts to this by assuming I've gotten stupid (which isn't that far from the truth, I guess, I'm certainly acting stupid in those moments).

Let me first say that John and I are friends, which I think makes it somewhat difficult for him to be the instructor when he has to be. I try not to take advantage of that, but it's hard because when I'm doing well, it's fun for both of us, and when I'm not, it's frustrating for both of us. Anyway, John felt so bad for my frustration on today's lesson that he comped it. A very nice gesture, and one that has the side effect of adding guilt to the list of motivating factors to make sure I'm prepared for our next flight!

So anyway, on the way back, John was expecting me to set up for the GPS 31 to Palo Alto (clouds had rolled in; we couldn't go in VFR), but I for some reason was unclear on the plan, but didn't say so...and John didn't understand why I was not setting up and responded by getting impatient with me, and I got impatient with him...anyway, we conducted the rest of the flight in silence, I did a good job refocusing and flying the GPS approach well.

Some things to come out of this lesson:
1. Instrument flying skills go away quickly. I hadn't flown since my phase check two weeks ago. My scan was crap. My ability to hold altitudes...crap. I could still think about and set up approaches, but I was nowhere near as far ahead as I have been in the past.
2. Pay attention to the numbers in bubbles on an approach plate. They matter. If I were flying that Byron approach by myself in low IMC I would've crashed into a power plant.
3. When I don't understand what's going on, even if I feel I should understand, I need to ask.
4. Keep it slow. I think I flustered myself by exceeding the pace at which I can do things without making mistakes.
5. Landings -- though John disagrees on 2 of the 3, I say I found myself high and slow on all three landings. Maybe I need to go out and do pattern work or something.

Hopefully next time will yield better results.

One more step

2008-03-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

I finally completed my Instrument Phase Check about 10 days ago, but it was not without its difficulties. I'm not at all happy with how the phase check went, and as a result, there will be considerable gap in time between then and my check ride as I get myself ready for it.

I was assigned an instructor, Ali, to conduct the phase check, who had been highly recommended to me by my PPL CFI Sergey as a potential instrument instructor, so I was excited to get his take on my flying. I did have to wait, though, as Ali showed up over an hour late to our appointment. He did call ahead to say he'd be late, but I did not anticipate an hour.

We started with the ground exam, where I knew I had many weak areas. Ali quickly found many of them and just started going over what topics I should concentrate on reviewing. This did nothing for my confidence, but on the other hand I knew it was going to go this way, so I didn't worry too much about it.

We then went for the practical section. He did not have me file anything; he told me that we'd take a VFR departure and then see what we could figure out. I had to press him pretty hard to give me some kind of a plan so I could at least have the appropriate plates out. We took off, and as it was not an actual IFR departure (meaning, copying the clearance and all that, though we did simulate it), I fell out of my rhythm a little bit and forgot to start the clock as I started rolling. He dinged me for that later.

We went out and he had me set up a hold at the TRACY intersection, which I did well. We requested the ILS 25R to Livermore, but things were really busy so we changed plans and did the GPS-A at Tracy instead. This went very well, and I got back into the hold at TRACY on the missed approach. Here he tried to rush me into setting up for Livermore, but I insisted on taking my time. We flew the ILS 25R and were told to circle to land 7R. Here's where I made my big error, which I'm really embarrassed by: I lined up for 7L. By the time I realized it, the tower was already on me (they were very nice about it considering what I'd done).

We got out of there and he had me set up for and fly the Hayward VOR-A, which I did OK except I didn't descend as quickly as I should have.

So the write-up basically says that I have to study ground material, and that I'm not as attentive as I should be. I think that's pretty accurate for the performance I gave that afternoon; I don't think it's true in general, but I also think that if I ace the ground section I'll have more energy to be more attentive during the flight portion.

Since then I've been studying ground information and having John ask me about it. So far we've studied the flight instruments; I know now things about turn coordinators that would make a nun blush. Next is weather and chart reading.

Great Flight!!

2008-02-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, my CFII John and I had a little talk. He told me, "This rating isn't going to just happen. You have to make it happen." We then talked a little bit about things I could do to keep my head in the game while I'm not actually flying..basically, thinking about flying, thinking about approaches, visualizing and acting out Time, Turn, Throttle, Twist, Talk; working through radio jargon, etc. So I went home and started doing all of these things. Luckily I live alone.

So, the point is, all this actually worked! My last couple of lessons have been quite good, though I've had trouble tracking VOR courses especially when getting close to the source. Today, I flew probably the best I've ever flown -- my attention was in the right place at the right time, I was using the attitude indicator, I wasn't chasing needles, the plane was trimmed at every step, I was ahead of the airplane almost the whole time.

We flew to Salinas and did the VOR 13 with a published missed -- except that the tower insisted that I start the missed early. I handled that situation with aplomb, starting the missed two miles before the MAP, and immediately dialing SNS R275 and setting up a 45 degree intercept as I climbed. On the way to the hold, I set up for Watsonville LOC 2, went twice around the hold, and requested and got vectors to the localizer and flew it well. On the missed, I tuned SNS, got a radial, and switched over to GPS navigation before requesting IFR back to Palo Alto.

It was a really smooth flight! My lesson for this year is that preparation pays off. Keeping one's head in the game pays off. Not wasting time (or, wasting less time, anyway) pays off. Let's hope the phase check tomorrow goes even half as well!

Contingency Plans

2008-01-13T18:16:00.001-08:00

The rain is gone, and with it went the sorrow of instrument training. OK, not entirely true; the rain will be back at some point and the instrument training will one day be less sorrowful.

The bird strike from last week left a few repercussions in its wake. N222MF is still off the line since then as they give it a thorough examination (my apologies to the owner, again), and a few days ago I received an email from my instructor that indicated that I would be liable for any damages incurred, up to the club's deductible.

West Valley Flying Club has a "deductible waiver" program that they introduced last year. It's a good idea, because these deductibles are fairly high -- as I just found out, the deductible in a no-pilot-error scenario such as mine is $3500. The deductible when there is found to be pilot error is $5000. However, I was turned off from the deductible waiver program because of how hard they kept pushing it. When an organization pushes something that hard, I'm always suspicious, so I opted instead to keep my AOPA renter's insurance, which covers me up to $5000 on aircraft damage, and has an additional liability component. The AOPA policy also has the added advantage of being useful on non-WVFC aircraft.

Well, after the recent course of events, I strongly encourage any pilot to have SOME kind of deductible insurance. $3500 is a lot of money, even in aviation, and spending $100-$150 to protect oneself from that is totally worth it.

Today, my pilot-friend Roland and I went up to Napa for breakfast. We got to Palo Alto around 9:00 (actually, I got there at 9; Roland was there I think at 8:30!!), and faced our now-standard dilemma of deciding where to go. We really wanted to go to Petaluma, but it's impossible to get weather reports from anywhere near there, so we decided to try Petaluma but keep Napa as a contingency plan.

We took off straight out from Palo Alto, switched to San Carlos tower, requested a Bravo transition and were denied.

Denied? Turns out San Carlos had had a power failure and had no ability to grant a squawk code for a transition or handle the handoff. Nice. "Climb above our airspace and talk to Norcal," they said. Um...the airspace immediately above yours is Class B, we implored, but we were ignored. Fine. So we made a hard left and weaved a path in between San Carlos' airspace and the Palo Alto Class D we'd just departed. This would've been much less likely to succeed without GPS. We went out west, and gave Norcal Approach a call to request the transition. Once they figured out who we were, where we were and what we wanted (I don't know why it took so long; I told them all that on the first call), we were vectored for a coastal route at 3500' until we got to the Golden Gate Bridge, at which point we were allowed to navigate on our own.

The route to Petaluma was looking unpassable due to a solid cloud layer at about 1500'. So, we turned toward Napa. Norcal turned us back toward Petaluma for traffic, and then handed us off, which gave us a perfect opportunity to get ATIS at Napa, and tell the next controller at Oakland Center that our destination was Napa. As was the case all day, about 30 seconds after we got really impatient waiting for the controller, they gave us what we needed, which in this case was the handoff to Napa Tower. The landing was smooth, and we taxied in and had a nice brunch at Jonesy's Restaurant.

On the way back out, Roland took the left seat, and we took a right downwind departure off Runway 6 at APC. Once we left APC's class D, we tried to raise Norcal -- we agreed that I'd handle the Norcal communications for this, because it's a busy frequency and that way Roland could concentrate on flying. So I called Norcal. No response. Three minutes pass, I try again. No response. And again, several minutes later...same result. Ordinarily I wouldn't care, but we needed a Bravo transition, so I tried once more, and got a terse response that contained our callsign and a squawk code. Perfect, it's all we needed. Clearly the controllers at Oakland Center were busy today because traffic alerts were not a high priority -- evidenced most notably by one pretty close call where I was checking a chart and Roland I think had looked down briefly to check something (power setting or whatever), and he looked up and said, "Look at this guy!" So I looked, and there was another Cessna 172 headed right for us, opposite direction, same altitude, about a half mile off. Roland turned us to the right, and immediately afterwards we got handed off to Norcal Approach.

Norcal Approach was much better (despite seemingly being more busy...), gave us several traffic alerts, and cleared us through Class B. We were handed off to SFO Tower, and as they prepared to hand us off to San Carlos Tower, they said, "Descend to pattern altitude at your discretion." What? Whose pattern? You want me to fly from SFO to PAO at 1000'? Uh..OK....but of course our response was just "9TW, descending, own discretion." So we came down to 1200' which was the usual thing and switched to SQL Tower in time to hear him chew someone out pretty good for apparently not being able to follow an instruction. First it was "Make immediate right turn to avoid crossing into Bravo." Then it was a pretty good (but calm) tirade along the lines of "I'm not sure how I can say it any more clear than 'at or above 1200.' You need to follow these instructions." Nice; I thought the controller handled it very well, though the pilot merely acknowledged the transmission with his callsign, which left us looking for him so we could avoid him.

At the appropriate time we gave Palo Alto Tower a call, and .... nothing. I felt like a doctor with a dying heart patient and a defibrillator: AGAIN!! We called; nothing. Roland turned right to attempt to skirt around PAO's airspace until we were acknowledged. A few seconds later, we got a traffic alert: "9TW, traffic 9 o' clock 1700." OK..that counts as acknowledgement, right? So, onward. Still no landing clearance, no pattern instructions, instructions for other planes to look out for the "Cessna over 101 at 1200" meaning us. Finally one more call: "Palo Alto Tower, Skyhawk 739TW over Stanford 1200, we'd like to land, we have Golf." The response: "739TW, number one, cleared to land." Uh....OK, left turn for base! Roland maneuvered through the abbreviated pattern and set it down.

A fun flight, I thought, with lots of randomness on the radios to keep life interesting. And a new destination for me!

Yes, I'm STILL working on it...

2008-01-10T23:36:00.000-08:00

Tonight's flight was really fun. Ceilings in the area were between 1600' and 3200', which meant that we got to go into, and stay in, some actual IMC for quite a while. There's something about being in actual IMC that is very different from just having the JeppShades on -- for one thing, it's a lot less constricting to be able to look around and not feel like I'm cheating. But it's much more than that.

When flying IFR in VMC, I basically feel like it's me against the world. The instructor is there, but essentially testing me. The controllers know I'm training, and at best I'm more work for them and at worst (if I'm actually sucking) I'm a pain in their collective ass.

When flying IFR in IMC, it's a different story -- it's all of us against the weather. The instructor is picking up what I drop, because it's more important for us to be safe than for me to learn a lesson right then. The controllers are friendly and accommodating, even though they still know it's a lesson. In that weather, we HAVE to be flying IFR; we're not doing it to annoy them, so they're on our side.

I know, these views probably have very little bearing on reality, but I'm not trying to describe fact; rather, I'm trying to describe why it's so much easier, emotionally and mentally, to fly in IMC than in VMC with the shades on. It's a very interesting effect, I think.

We left PAO while it was still light out -- the first thing we realized while sitting in the runup was that the plane's timer was dead. Luckily there is a secondary timer built into the NAV2 radio that worked fine, and kept us legal. After takeoff, we headed for SCK, being vectored almost immediately for SUNOL intersection (usually we get sent south for quite a ways toward SJC, since the pass in the hills near SUNOL is busy with VFR traffic). The autopilot was basically a complete scam -- I probably wasn't helping it by overpressing the right rudder, but it did not seem to be anywhere close to holding its heading, and when ATC asked me to turn 10 degrees to the right, the AP made no turn at all as I changed the heading bug. So I hand flew the ascent until reaching cruise, and then let the AP do the easy part.

I flew the SCK VOR 29R approach quite well; we went once around the holding pattern (in lieu of procedure turn), and then were cleared and crossed the VOR inbound. I had a moment of panic -- since the autopilot was again misbehaving here, I'd forgotten to start the timer at the VOR (which was the FAF), and also forgotten to press the "OBS" button on the GPS...thus, my two methods of identifying the missed approach point were not working. Upon realizing this about 30 seconds after passing the VOR inbound, I pressed the OBS button and the GPS did the right thing and gave me time and distance to the MAP. Shoulda started that timer...

The approach took me right over the runway, and I executed the missed approach and entered the hold at ORANG probably better than I ever have before. Holding at ORANG, we decided first to go to LVK. I asked for and received clearance, but then John thought about it and realized that we'd either end up having to do a lengthy missed approach back to Tracy afterwards (if they'd even clear us to do a low approach at LVK which was doubtful), or we'd have to do a full-stop landing and wait for a long time to be cleared back to PAO. And I'd had too much tea earlier in the evening..so I was not so much interested in the sitting and waiting! So we instead asked for IFR to PAO for the GPS 31 approach.

The way back to PAO was pretty uneventful; lots of hand flying, lots of twiddling with the autopilot when trying to use it, and eventually as we got into the approach structure I hand flew much of it because the autopilot was just so slow to respond to turns. The ceiling at PAO was about 1600' which gave us plenty of time to align with the runway and get ourselves down. My landing was a greaser!

As we walked back to the club, I ran into my old CFI for my PPL, Sergey. "Still haven't got your Instrument? What you been doing?!?" he chided. I know, I know..it has been a really, really long time. I may have chosen the wrong year to do this -- it's not easy to do it without a lot of focus, with a lot of distractions and without consistent practice. I've been very inconsistent; I've had a lot of life changes, I've moved twice, my sister got married (twice!..same guy...long story...), I traveled...so it's not been a terribly efficient training process. And, that is OK. This is not a footrace, this is training for a lifelong pursuit.

Bloody Flight

2008-01-07T22:52:00.000-08:00

I was a little nervous about going on my lesson today, since I gave blood for my company's experiments in the morning -- that's right, my employer not only takes my sweat and my tears, but also my blood. But by some miracle of scheduling, I had an instrument lesson scheduled on the very day that the weather let up for a moment, by which I mean it was not raining cats and dogs, and the sun was evident if not abundant, so I had to go for it! I was actually feeling fine by the afternoon, just a bit tired, which may or may not have had anything to do with the bloodletting.

As we prepped for the flight, John asked me how I felt. We sometimes joke around; one of us will say "Let's go flying" and the other will say something like "Sounds dangerous." This time, I told him I was scared of flying with anything else in the air with me, including other planes, birds and clouds.

So John completely disregarded my deep-seated fears, and we went up in 222MF with the intent of flying the Stockton VOR 29R, Tracy GPS-A and Livermore ILS 25R -- standard trifecta of practice approaches, which I should theoretically be able to do in my sleep, but somehow still can't.

Stockton first. The flight over was fine; I found myself WAY ahead of the airplane, totally in control of everything....until, during the holding pattern in-lieu-of procedure turn, the GPS (which I was using only for situational awareness at that point, of course) sequenced me funny -- it claimed I was between the VOR and the MAP, when I hadn't returned to the VOR yet. I was later informed that it was because I'd twisted the inbound course after switching the nav source to NAV1, so the GPS didn't pick it up. Anyway, no matter, I don't need no stinkin' GPS for a VOR approach, so onward. I had a large deflection on the CDI, but since I was right over the VOR I didn't worry about it much. Actually I didn't worry about it enough. Alright. So it was a shaky approach, the missed went OK, and I held for three turns before being set up for Tracy.

We were sent direct ECA to begin the approach at Tracy, this time with John essentially prompting my brain. I guess this is what happens after some time off. What's next? What are you going to do when you get there? It's not hard, but the prompting did help. First fix, down to 2000. Next fix, 1600. Alright, here comes the....

THUD.

What the hell was that?? We'd clearly hit something; I'd felt the plane jerk to the left. I pulled my JeppShades off, and saw John checking systems -- everything looked OK; we were still flying, which was a good sign. John told Norcal we'd be landing in Tracy, and took the controls. As we overflew Tracy and realized how dark and unpopulated it was, John suggested that we just go back to Palo Alto, since we seemed to be flying fine, and if we had a problem, we may only get one landing. So I took the controls back, and John grabbed his flashlight and started shining it out my window. The wing strut was covered with blood: We'd hit a bird, and not a small one. John said he'd seen something large and white off to the left as it happened, so it all computed.

So we made our way into Palo Alto, not bothering to tell them about our issues. John was slightly concerned that whatever it was had hit the nose gear, so after we entered right base for 31 at PAO, we made a nice soft field landing (meaning, I did, with John's help). We dropped the nose, and it landed normally. Everything was fine, which was a big relief.

We taxied back and pulled into the parking taxiway, and killed the engine. I jumped out and saw the strut and the leading edge with blood and feathers all over the place. Then, just next to the front intake behind the prop on the cowling, was a large clump of blood and feathers. Ugh. As I was taking this in, John said, "Oh god." He'd gotten out, and he said, "It's still there." I went over to his side, and at the bottom of the strut was most of the bird, stuck to the plane. Ugh.

Too much blood on my hands (only figuratively, thankfully) for one day. I'm very happy that we landed safely and got home OK, but it's pretty much impossible to feel good about a flight like that. Not that I flew particularly well anyway. John should've listened to me! But then..as he points out, I had a clearance; the bird did not....

December Flights

2008-01-02T07:43:00.001-08:00

One of the things that I've found a little bit disappointing about aviation is how solitary an activity it has been for me. I've taken cross country voyages by myself, I've gone and practiced by myself, and I haven't really met other pilots except for my instructors, who are great and I consider each of them to be a friend, but there have only been three. So in reflecting on the four flights I took in December, I'm psyched to discover that each one had a really nice social component to it.

Earlier in the month, I took my friend Barbara and her cousin Alice, who was visiting from Boston, on a Bay Tour. We got possibly the nicest day ever for it -- not a shred of turbulence, great visibility, not a huge amount of traffic, and a nice plane (610SP at San Carlos). As we went north through SFO's Class B, they routed us directly over midfield of SFO International, as a couple of the big guys took off in sequence on parallel runways beneath us. It was a beautiful sight, so much so that my passengers later told me that that was their favorite part of the trip! I guess it doesn't take a pilot to appreciate that view.

We continued north, checked out Alcatraz and the Golden Gate, and went all the way up the coast to Point Reyes. Turning back toward the Bay, we came over the mountains, back down over the Bay, over the Golden Gate again and down the coast toward Half Moon Bay, before cutting back in toward SQL. My landing was a greaser!

On the way out, we fell into conversation with a couple of guys from the club. One of them, Roland, was complaining about the lack of social interaction with other pilots, so we traded numbers, and a couple of weeks later (on Christmas Eve), after canceling one flight due to borderline weather, we took N35583 on a trip down to Watsonville (WVI), where I had never been. I really enjoyed flying with Roland -- he's got the same level of conservative decision making that I do, which was really nice, and I think possibly the most important thing about flying with another pilot. I took the outbound leg; we had to do some creative navigation to avoid clouds, but we ended up on the coast and made our way in. WVI's runways are huge! And as a result, I did the standard thing and flared high, but recovered for a decent landing. Zuniga's, the Mexican restaurant on the field, was closed, but we walked a bit and found the Happy Garden Chinese restaurant, which was actually quite good. Roland took the inbound leg, and we hit a fair bit of pretty heavy turbulence, which shook us up pretty good, but no permanent damage!

On New Year's Eve, I took N35583 again to Tracy to visit my friends Ian and Jessica and their awesome family. I've known Ian since High School, and the fact that he lives in Tracy gave me a nice excuse to hop in an airplane, practice an approach and turn it into a social visit. I flew the GPS-A into Tracy...kind of; I never actually contacted Norcal, so I didn't go all the way to Manteca VOR (the IAF), which lies inside Stockton's class D airspace (I could've scooted above it, but why be in the way?). Instead I got outside MANCO intersection (the first fix after the IAF) and pretended I got a vector. There was traffic in the pattern at Tracy, so I never descended below 2000 before entering a normal pattern for left traffic runway 30.

The way home was a bit more adventurous. When we arrived at Tracy Municipal, at around 6pm, all the entrance gates were closed and locked. Perfect. This had happened once before, but one of the gates had a gap big enough to sneak through. Not this time. So I ended up having to scale the fence, the whole time expecting air-raid sirens to go off and officers with machine guns to apprehend me, take one look at me and ship me off to Gitmo. Thankfully, none of that happened, but my friend kept his headlights on me as I walked toward the tarmac. I was thinking, "shut those off!!" but it was actually probably a good thing, to make it highly obvious to anyone watching/apprehending me that I was not trying to commit a crime (because how stupid would that be?).

The adventure didn't end there; I had a hard time finding runway 26 (which the winds were heavily favoring) because the lights weren't working. Perfect. They flashed on occasionally, but would not stay on for more than a 1/2 second. It was enough for me to ascertain that I was on a runway, which was enough for me to take off, but it wasn't the most comfortable experience, and in the stress of that I forgot to switch my transponder to ALT. I realized just after liftoff, so no biggie, but I made a note to myself: You're getting sloppy. I resolved to pay extra attention for the duration of the flight, and thanks to that, the rest of the flight was uneventful and I greased a nice nighttime landing at SQL.

The next day, New Year's Day, I asked Roland to be my safety pilot as I did a few practice approaches. We went up in N35583 again (nice plane!), and started by going out to Stockton for the VOR 29R approach. I put the hood on as soon as we entered level flight at 5500 -- my first time under the hood with no instructor present. But things went pretty well; I had a little trouble visualizing the holding pattern in lieu of procedure turn, but got it eventually and in plenty of time. On the inbound leg, things started going south a little; basically upon crossing the FAF I forgot to descend, for some reason (something distracted me). But at the MAP (more or less) I called the missed and flew it reasonably well, and entered the hold at ORANG. Roland informed me that I wasn't really near the runway at all, which didn't surprise me much -- I veered pretty heavily when trying to make a steep descent. Lesson: if something goes awry, just execute the missed, don't get clever. I went once around the hold to set up for the GPS-A at Tracy, which we did next.

This one was smoother, and again we only descended to 1600 before flying the missed. My hold at TRACY was a little weaker, and I was behind the airplane really for the first time. But I caught up, with the help of the autopilot, and set up for Livermore ILS 25R. Turns out the winds at LVK were favoring runways 7L/R, which I've never landed on, and I'd not done the ILS 25R circle to land either. Also, I knew that the minimums for LVK were NOTAMed to be higher than on my plates, but I didn't have the higher minimums due to a series of unfortunate events. I flew the ILS as an autopilot coupled approach down to 1400, and at 1100 at the instruction of the tower, began my circle to the south. At that point, I broke off the approach and went visual, and we headed back to SQL. Let me just say, it was really nice to be in a plane with TCAS -- there was a lot of traffic, including one that was same altitude/opposite direction that we didn't see for a while due to the hazy conditions.

It was an incredibly instructive flight! It's very different without an instructor sitting next to you, and being unable to see. There is a safety net, obviously, in the safety pilot, but it's in a much different place than when there's a CFII in the right seat, and therefore there is much more responsibility on me. I enjoyed it, and I want to do it again at least once prior to my check ride.

Practicing Approaches

2007-11-23T20:42:00.001-08:00

After several weeks of thinking about it, I finally decided to go out on my own and practice approaches by myself. I wanted to make it a cross country, especially after just missing the minimum cross country distance on my last flight, so in addition to the Stockton and Livermore approaches I wanted to practice, I decided to start with an approach at Modesto and conclude that approach with a touch and go.

So I called up Norcal near Sunol and picked up flight following to Modesto. I got ATIS at Modesto, and configured my radios for the approach. My first thought was to go via the MOD VOR, and then up to WOWAR and do the hold/procedure turn to get back inbound. But then I thought I'd save the time, and about 20 miles out, turned direct WOWAR and began my descent. ATC then began giving me vectors; I carefully stayed above KMOD's Class D and descended below 2400' only after I was clear. ATC then cleared me for the approach, at which point I clarified with him that I'm VFR and this is practice. He apparently knew that; I guess they say "cleared for the approach" even for VFR practice approaches.

Problem #1: I never actually switched my nav source to NAV instead of GPS. So luckily I was VFR, otherwise the approach would've been illegal. At WOWAR, I reported as requested, descended and started my stopwatch. About halfway to the MAP, for some reason I was showing a full scale deflection on the CDI, which made no sense because I was exactly on course. Oh well, at that point I could see the runway so I went ahead and landed (nice one), powered back up and raised my flaps, and took off again. As had been instructed, I turned to heading 360 and climbed to 2000'. I called back to Norcal, and they gave me heading 290 toward Stockton.

At this point I realized I was still using GPS as a nav source, so I tuned ECA VOR and the inbound course, and changed my nav source to NAV1. At some point I found myself depending more than I wanted to on the moving map display, so I dimmed it to black. I intercepted the inbound course, and had my clearance, so made my way inbound. This approach went totally smoothly, and since I had a better idea of what to expect on the radio, I was much more efficient with my calls. I did just a low pass at MDA and made the left turn that had been requested by Norcal before I switched the radio back to them.

And when I did, I went ahead and requested Livermore ILS 25R. Again, the whole thing went pretty smoothly, except there was one point where I lost my situational awareness and had to undim the moving map display. In fairness I'd gotten some odd vectors, and had been given a "maintain until intercept" clearance (request, really, since I was VFR) while being vectored through my course. Still, I should've been more aware of my situation. The ILS was interesting; I decided to try to keep my airspeed at full for as long as possible. Right around REIGA, the FAF, the tower requested that I slow to "slowest possible" approach speed, so I slowed to 90 knots, and then just to try it I put in 20 degrees of flaps and dropped to 75 knots. However, in all that chaos, I neglected to start my timer at REIGA. Considering all that, I kept on the ILS very well. I got to the DA and again did a low pass, with a left turnout, and flew back to Palo Alto. Upon reaching PAO, I did a short approach just for practice, and nailed it, easily leaving the runway on the first taxiway off.

All in all, it was a good flight to do. I did fall behind a few times, and lost situational awareness at least once. But I think if I do this a couple of times, I'll be way ahead of where I was, in terms of ability and confidence. It was also nice to be fully responsible for ATC communication through the whole flight. I did very well, I thought, nobody got annoyed with me and I was pretty efficient. I am planning to visit a friend in Tracy on Sunday, so I figure I can do something similar to today -- Modesto, Stockton, and then just do an approach to full stop to Tracy.

Happiness Is Being Committed

2007-11-21T18:51:00.000-08:00

Commitment, rooted in belief both in oneself and in some intangible entity such as love or God, is a very odd phenomenon. Commitment to another person requires an undying belief in that person, as well as a deep belief in oneself. Commitment to a hobby, pastime or career path also requires a strong belief in oneself, combined with a guiding belief: If I achieve X, I will get/feel Y. Commitment to a psych ward requires such an extreme belief in oneself that even in the face of logic, sanity and all that is good in the world, that belief is unshaken. But I digress. Thank you all for your comments on last week's post. I'm still flying, I still have questions, but I feel like I have options. That's a great step.

I took my cousin's sons up to Petaluma for lunch today, and it was the kind of magical flight that causes one's perhaps shaky beliefs to be propped up, stabilized, held aloft proudly like Excalibur, allowing one to be the ruler of the fickle kingdom of his emotions for a fleeting moment. Pardon me while I wax poetic -- basically, I had a great time, and found that upon landing, I was in a completely different state of mind than I was when I'd started. What had happened?

I'd done something relatively difficult really well. I'd been able to relay a totally different view of the world to two people I love very much. I also flew very well, and handled the radio much better than I would've expected after a 10-day layoff. We took off from San Carlos in 610SP, a plane that I'd remembered as being very solid but hadn't flown in a long while. Luckily, my memory served correctly. We got our code for SFO's Bravo transition, took off on 12 for a left downwind, and went north. Talking to SFO, I was smooth and professional, and got my clearance. I maintained 1500' pretty much exactly through the transition, then flew out over the city and gave my passengers a nice view of the Golden Gate. We continued up to Petaluma, entered the busy pattern perfectly, and glided to a nice landing on runway 29.

Lunch was good; the weekday staff at the 29er Diner seemed a bit overwhelmed by the pre-Thanksgiving crowd, but the food was good. We took off on a right downwind, and as we neared Sausalito, I'd still been unable to get a word in edgewise to Norcal. Finally there was a gap and I fired my request through. I got my clearance, and followed the freeway back to San Carlos. I crossed overhead at 1200', made right traffic for 30 and landed smoothly. Totally uneventful flight EXCEPT when departing Petaluma I had my comm on the wrong radio. Luckily I discovered this before ending up in a disruptive situation.

And now I'm happy. I flew, I flew well with passengers, I handled my responsibilities with aplomb. I think much of my consternation from before is that I've spent WAY more time than usual lately looking at balance sheets, and if that won't get one committed, I don't know what will.

Crisis of Faith

2007-11-13T23:16:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been having a crisis of faith regarding my fanatical devotion to aviation. I'm a smart guy -- I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm quite smart, certainly smart enough to be able to justify just about anything. This gets me into a lot of trouble, and frequently, by allowing me to get into situations that end up making me miserable. But I'd gotten into these situations through a series of rationalizations that even now make so much sense that I fear I'd make the same bad decisions again. I've spent a lot of time rationalizing my love of aviation -- straight lines are more efficient paths, you don't burn fuel in traffic, it's worth the money for the same reason that college is, etc, etc.

But really, here's the straight scoop about flying, aviation, piloting, whatever you want to call it: I love doing it, and I'm reasonably good at it. Actually, there are aspects of it that I'm very good at. GPS operations are not among those aspects. But I digress. I love to fly, I love being in the air and I love being the pilot in command. I love the communication with ATC and towers, I love taking passengers up in the air, and I love being able to land on a runway I've never seen before. I love when something unexpected happens and I have the right reaction. I love it when a flight plan comes together. I love nailing an instrument approach and sticking a landing. I love all takeoffs and landings, I love busting through a cloud, I love tooling around when there are no clouds. I love emerging from a plane all sweaty and exhausted, and thinking how much cooler it was than driving. I love showing up at work and telling my friends that just an hour ago I was in Stockton, or Tracy, or Sacramento or Ukiah or Salinas or someplace. And I love the thought that there's SO much more to learn that this will never get old. Bored? Faster plane, mountain checkout, new airport, some new piece of avionics, multi-engine training, tailwheel....the list goes on, long enough to be a challenging pursuit for a lifetime.

So what's the crisis? This is a crisis in two parts, both practical, one much more immediate than the other. The first, most immediate part of this crisis is that flying is really expensive. It's REALLY expensive. I make a very good salary as a software engineer in the bay area, and I really can't afford all this flying I've been doing. My last flight, including instructor costs, cost me over $1000. One thousand dollars!! To go to Ukiah, screw up a missed approach, land briefly in Sacramento, and go home. $1000, over six hours!! If I'd spent six hours in Vegas and lost $1000 in the slots, I'd be really upset! In two weeks, I will be responsible for a mortgage payment, and my savings will have been decimated by a down payment. I absolutely cannot go dropping $1000 on a random Sunday to fly to Ukiah and Sacramento, touch down in one of the two cities, and come home.

I estimate that my 220 hours of airplane time have cost about $30,000, taking into account that much of my initial time was in older 172Ns, which are cheaper than the newer 172SPs. That does not include instructor time, which totals about another $10K. So, I've spent $40,000 on flying over the last two and a half years. That is mind boggling. I spent less on grad school!

Now, say I want to get my commercial license and my CFI rating so that I can start getting paid for some of my hours. How long will THAT take? Won't I need to use a more advanced aircraft for my commercial rating (I don't actually know the answer to this; it's just what I've heard)? This is such a financial sink hole, with no promise of ever returning on the investment, especially because fuel costs are only going up, which will put the aviation industry in a bind, potentially taking away the only monetary motivation, however far-fetched it may have been, for me to continue this route.

And speaking of fuel, that brings me to Crisis Part 2: Flying is TERRIBLE for the environment. Yeah, I know, I've tried to justify this six ways to Sunday, but there is no way around it. If I take a Cessna 172 up to Petaluma, aside from it costing about $250 round trip (see Crisis Part 1), it burns about 15 gallons of fuel. LEADED fuel. The exhaust from this LEADED fuel falls on the happy people below me who are none the wiser but become infinitesimally less healthy as I glide overhead on my joy ride. Say I did the same trip in my car. Well..MY car might be tough to beat; it gets 45 MPG on the highway running biodiesel. Round trip from Palo Alto to Petaluma is about 150 miles, so I could do it on about 3.3 gallons (of veggie oil). Say I drove a Honda Civic that got 30 MPG: That's 5 gallons. How about an SUV, say a Hummer H3 with a V8 and an automatic transmission? Beast still gets 16 MPG, using a little over 9 gallons for this round trip.

So the little Cessna's about a time and a half worse than the most egregiously consumptive SUV I could come up with off the top of my head. We are using up the Earth's decidedly finite oil supply, and here I am doing the equivalent of driving not one but TWO Hummers (or, maybe a Hummer and a Honda) just to go have brunch. This is not good, and there's really no justifying it. Planes are terrible for the environment.

On this front, though, there is a little bit of hope. While a 747 burns about a gallon of fuel every second (yes, you may gag), the world's first all-biodiesel jet flight was recently completed. Also, a small plane recently achieved an efficiency of 48MPG at 170MPH! That's five times more efficient PER PERSON than a 747. More immediately, a whole slew of planes are coming out that go about as fast as a 172, that burn about half the fuel. But until I can rent those from a club or somehow afford to buy and maintain one, that remains a crisis.

So what to do? I don't know. I do know that I have to just finish my Instrument Rating at this point; I'm about five or six flights away from being done with it, and it'd be ludicrous to stop now. After that....I don't know. I'd love to find a more efficient and cost effective way to continue flying and training.

Long IFR XC: Done.

2007-11-11T17:34:00.001-08:00

After a cold, ugly, rainy day yesterday that would've been perfect IFR weather, I awoke this morning to the most unwelcome sight of sunshine streaming in my bedroom window. What a terrible time to have a beautiful day! I hate the bay area. Just kidding. I woke up at about 8:00 and had a nice relaxing morning, getting ready to be at the club by 10:00. At 9:45, John called and said, "Are we going flying today?" I said, "Well, the weather looks good..." He said, "Yeah, I was wondering more about the student.." Turns out, we were scheduled at 9:00.

OK, so things didn't get off to a great start, but I finally got to the airport, and we reviewed my plan briefly and talked about how we expected to get routed. We were going to fly to Ukiah for the LOC 15 approach, followed by Sacramento Executive for the ILS 2 and then back to Palo Alto. Ukiah is north, which presents the problem of trying to get around San Francisco -- to John's knowledge, it's quite rare to get routed via the SFO VOR, so in filing, I chose a route that took me via Oakland and then cut back over to Santa Rosa on the way to Mendocino. I also filed for Ukiah to Sacramento, and for Sacramento to Palo Alto.

So we got to the plane, which John had already preflighted ("and did a 50-hour inspection while I waited," John joked), and taxied out. Runup was smooth, and the clearance we got was in fact SFO - V443 (I think; I'm going from memory) - ENI (Mendocino) - Direct. The first part of the flight went well, though we were a bit at odds with the controller in that there seemed to be much more wind than any of us were expecting, and she was confused that our heading of 310 seemed to result in a course of 270. I also had some trouble trying to intercept V443 (or whatever) because I'm less familiar with GPS units than I ought to be.

The rest of the flight up to Ukiah was quite smooth, if a bit slow due to what became a strong headwind. A true airspeed of 128 knots had our ground speed at 93 knots, at only 6000 feet! Good thing I wasn't flying a Piper Cub or something. Anyway, the flight was smooth; I'm sure it was beautiful too except I wouldn't know since I was wearing my foggles. Once I got into the approach, things started going south a bit. I made the mistake of flying outbound on the localizer course for only one minute, instead of the recommended two minutes (and totally screwed up the "reverse sensing" -- when flying outbound on a localizer, the indicator needle shows the inverse indication from what you'd expect), which meant that I wasn't prepared to be inbound by the time I was inbound. Plus, the GPS was being a complete mystery to me, and I needed it to get the required DME distances from the localizer. Basically I fell pretty far behind, and got flustered. All that considered, I flew the approach OK, until I was on the missed approach, and for some reason decided it was more important to contact ATC than to put in my course guidance. Stupid.

So, with John's help I made it onto the missed approach and back toward ENI VOR, and requested (John requested) an IFR clearance to SAC. We got the clearance, and as I tried to find the appropriate radial out of ENI, I stayed at 90 knots (85, actually) because I didn't want to go too far without course guidance. John of course questioned this, but at least I had a reason for it when he asked. He did suggest that I use the autopilot as I was clearly overloaded, and my response was that I thought the autopilot would add more work -- a clear indication that I need to be more familiar with autopilot ops as well.

The flight to Sacramento was not bad, except for a moment where all indications were that we were entering an extreme climb, and yet our altitude was constant -- John figured and later told me that it must have been an extreme downdraft off the nearby mountains, combined with the autopilot trying to hold altitude, so my action of adding power and disengaging the autopilot was pretty much correct. The approach at SAC went very well (John even complimented me on it later), except that in the circle-to-land, I circled-to and nearly landed-on the wrong runway. Not good. Just a lapse in attention, the kind of thing that I can't allow to happen.

So we landed on 30 in Sacramento, and taxied back and awaited our clearance back to PAO. When it came, I had some fun trying to copy it. SAC-R157 MOVDD ECA-R215 CEDES SJC Direct. Radials? That's new for me. But I copied it, found it on the charts, and flew it without incident. I was tired, and Palo Alto was a very welcome sight. By the time we taxied back and shut down, it was 4.2 hours of engine-on time. Definitely my longest single flight ever, and most of it under the hood!

So I'll do a couple of flights with John to get more comfortable with the GPS, then do my phase check with Ali, and then on to the FAA check ride. I need to study!

IFR Long XC: Scratched

2007-10-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

What a disappointment. I was all set to go this morning, from Palo Alto to Ukiah to Sacramento and back. I'd planned the flight, gotten the approaches in my head, and was all ready to go.

When I checked out the airplane, 222MF, there was a note in the "observations" section: VOR #1 INOP. Really? So we went out to the airplane to check it. We tuned, identified and twisted Woodside VOR just fine; there was no problem. John guessed that the previous pilot did not know about the switch that changes the CDI from NAV to GPS mode -- we found it in GPS mode.

The fuel was low, so we called the truck, and decided to preflight while waiting for the truck. Control lock out, master on, flaps down, CRUNCH CRUNCH.....FLAPS BACK UP!! What the heck? So we tried it a couple of more times; the flaps did come down but with a LOT of noise and shake. Not good. Certainly not something we wanted to entrust our lives to. So, we scratched the flight.

The bummer is that this is the second consecutive scratched flight. On Friday, we were going to go up in 669TW, but there was no RPM drop when switched to the right magneto, which I learned means that the grounding is not working correctly. Also, we noticed that the compass deviation card was only halfway there. Two problems, no flight.

So now we're going to try to schedule this for November 11. This process is dragging out so much longer than I'd ever imagined. I'm totally shocked that anyone can do this in 10 days in those accelerated programs; it seems ridiculous to think that anyone could get any real proficiency out of that. And for me, especially, since I am not the type to ever have false confidence in myself, I'd probably need to go through the program three or four times before feeling like I could really fly IFR.

The thing is, I feel like I could go now. I feel totally confident in every aspect of IFR flying, except for perhaps the missed approach, except I think I'm getting there with that as well. At this point it's just a matter of scheduling, and always a bit more practice especially when view limited. Perhaps I'll see if I can get a safety pilot and go do some approaches.

Instrument Training Continues

2007-10-07T00:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's still going. They say this is the hardest rating to get, and I hope they're right because it's extremely difficult. I've been flying twice a week, pretty consistently except for the three-week hiatus when I was in Europe, for most of September. Since then I've gotten back into it, though we've mostly concentrated for the last couple of lessons on autopilot and GPS operations, with the foggles off. It's interesting; I'm so much more relaxed without the foggles on, that I've suggested to John that we slowly phase in the foggle-wearing -- put them on for 0.2 hours next time, 0.4 the following time, etc, so I can acclimate to them slowly.

The last lesson was on Friday; we flew to Stockton, did the VOR 29R approach, and did most of the LOC DME 28R at Hayward on the way back toward Palo Alto. It was a very interesting day in that it seemed to approximate a real-life want-to-fly-IFR-but-should-I experience. The freezing level was below 6000, there were clouds seemingly interspersed along our route, it was windy and bumpy, but with all that, we chose to go because it seemed that it would always be easy to get back to VFR conditions below us, with no mountains to hit. It was a beautiful flight -- there is no feeling like emerging from the clouds and finding yourself in a sunny cloud landscape, zooming just over the tops, so close it feels like you're doing something very unsafe and illegal, which it would be if it were Earth and not clouds.

So, hopefully I'll do my long IFR cross country flight in 2 weeks. In the meantime, I have paperwork to fill out, and books to review....

XC to Paso Robles

2007-08-20T13:15:00.001-07:00

For the first time in what seems like forever, I took a flight for fun this weekend. I'd intended to fly down to Oceano and hang out at the beach for a couple of hours, but turns out there was a big fire down in Santa Barbara. I wasn't sure how smoky it would get at Oceano, but by the time I was half way from Paso Robles to Oceano, visibility was very limited and the whole cabin smelled like smoke. Of course what goes through my mind? In the unlikely event of an engine fire right now, I may never know...also it couldn't have been good for the air filters and systems. Plus, honestly the plane I was flying, 54JA, was acting a bit sketchily -- any mixture setting other than "full rich" resulted in an alarming RPM drop.

So, I turned around and headed back to Paso Robles. After I managed to get oriented, I got into the pattern and landed, and taxied to transient parking, having to wait at a cross-runway for a firefighting plane to take off.

I had lunch at the airport restaurant, which was alright -- the flavors were good but the fish was overcooked. Then I took off and flew home. It was actually almost boring -- my IFR training has made it so easy to maintain an altitude that I didn't even have to think about it; I just sat back and coasted along. On the way back down, I made a very smooth 500fpm descent all the way back down into the straight in approach for 30 at San Carlos. That was fun; it was one of those "I'm SO in control" moments.

Consistency

2007-08-08T06:56:00.001-07:00

I've taken two more flights since my last entry, and I'm starting to gain some consistency. Last Friday, we went back to Concord and did the VOR 19R and the LDA 19R, and again, it came easily, except for the fact that I was laughing so hard. For some reason, I had the giggles -- it all started on the ground in PAO when John's cell phone started ringing. His ring tones are all forest animals, and I didn't realize that it was his phone. Hey, this was over engine noise and wearing a headset -- I thought someone had left a screaming baby in the back of the plane and somehow I'd missed it on preflight!

Anyway, the hilarity continued when we made contact with Travis Approach. Travis' controllers are frequently students, so we know to cut them some slack, and I feel like it's a nice thing for me since I, being a student, am always being paid favors by real and very busy controllers. With student controllers I get to return the favor. Anyway, the first interaction with this controller was fine; I reported my altitude, that I had the weather, and my approach request. He got it, and told me to maintain 5000 until crossing the Concord VOR, and report established on the approach. Fine -- at this point we don't have to talk for 10-15 minutes, until I get to Concord.

Then he started asking me various questions about what we'd just talked about. What was my approach request? Did I have the weather? That was all fine, but a few minutes later, out of the blue, he says, "Skyhawk 739TW....maintain 5000' until instructed." I panicked for a second, thinking I'd lapsed and busted my altitude, but there was the altimeter, sitting exactly at 5000. I just barely got out a "5000, 9TW" on the radio before busting into hysterical laughter.

It continued on the ground at Concord, when an inbound Cirrus pilot sounded very much like an android. Speaking of being on the ground, we did something new on this lesson -- a departure procedure! The hardest part of this was the terminology. X departure, Y transition is written X.Y on the departure plate. Flying it was quite easy, compared to an approach.

Yesterday we went back to Salinas and Watsonville to review DME arcs. I flew the GPS into Salinas..pretty much perfectly. On the way down, we had the very cool experience of our initial cruise altitude of 3000 being right at the cloud tops. Being fully within the clouds, or fully out of the clouds, is not that hard, because there's nothing distracting out the window, but this was crazy. We were flying in and out of the clouds as their height varied, with bits of cloud flying past the window. It really felt like we were going 500 mph, and it was VERY distracting.

I had one kind of error, which was I hadn't thought through how to get to the DME arc before saying I was ready for it, so John had to jump in and bail me out. I think we'll have to go do that again at some point. But other than that, I'm feeling so comfortable. We're talking about doing a checkride in October, which I guess is contingent upon my getting my phase check and other requirements done. I feel very much like I can do this, reliably, and smoothly.

Next lesson is a week from today; I'm already excited about it!

Hey....I CAN Do This!

2007-07-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I detailed how I took the easy way out, choosing to go back to Stockton instead of challenging myself with the Concord (CCR) VOR 19R approach. Well, last Friday, we went ahead and did Concord, and, all in all, it went okay -- I certainly reached my overload points, especially when arriving over the Concord VOR, where I must turn to the final approach course, start the time, twist the outbound course from the VOR, descend to the stepdown altitude, and report to the tower. That's all 5 T's: Turn, Time, Throttle, Twist, Talk. It got overwhelming, but John was able to snap me out of it by just prompting me: Turn. Time. Then I was on it. Again, on the missed approach, similar problem -- turning climb, twist the VOR, throttle full, and report -- twice (once to the tower, once to the approach controller).

We then set up and did the LDA 19R approach -- LDA is a localizer that is offset from the runway, or "Localizer Darn Angle" as the King DVD puts it, and as John reminded me. Localizers are easier than VOR or even GPS approaches -- you know there can never be a turn once you're tracking the localizer. That went OK as well; we did a touch and go at Concord and flew home VFR.

I felt alright about that flight; I got overloaded, I fell behind the airplane, John picked up the slack and did almost all the radio work. But it was a new experience, so it didn't bother me -- it was fun, actually.

Today was a different story. We did exactly the same two approaches, but I flew the procedure turn for the VOR 19R beautifully, all by myself, and didn't need a prompt until I was past the VOR as the final approach fix, and needed to turn more aggressively toward the final approach course. Other than that, I flew it pretty much perfectly; John picked up the radio on the missed approach, but I flew it, and did not get overloaded.

We then got vectors to the LDA 19R. I could feel myself getting kind of tired, but I just made myself concentrate. I almost missed the fact that I was supposed to intercept the localizer all on my own, but I picked it up. I chose the wrong altitude to descend to from the approach chart, but I figured out why -- the altitude I chose was for the procedure turn, that we didn't do since we were vectored. Here, John made a suggestion: There are certain things you can do a little before you get to a fix, and certain things that can wait till a little bit after. Reporting when crossing the approach fix does not have to be done directly over the fix, when you're starting your time and turning and twisting a new course; it can be done early. Turning to the new course can and should also be done a little early, since otherwise you'll overfly the new course and increase your workload trying to reintercept it. So, for the VOR 19R, I could have reported and started my turn 0.3 miles or so from the VOR, start time when crossing, twist the new course just afterwards, and throttle back once established. There's a flow to it that I'm starting to get.

On the way back to Palo Alto, John covered up my heading indicator and my attitude indicator, and I flew it partial panel. It was actually not very hard! I'm sure it'd be a lot more stressful in actual clouds, all by myself, but for what it was, it was not bad.

It just felt good to feel like if I'd been by myself in actual instrument conditions, I would not have killed myself; I would have in fact done quite well.

Another great flight

2007-07-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

I will freely admit, I chose to take the easy way out today, and because of a weird miscommunication between us and air traffic control, it got even easier. My goal was to get some practice doing procedure turns, which for some reason stress me out. Procedure turns are part of an instrument approach to an airport, and generally provide a route to get yourself pointed in the direction of the airport and runway, assuming that you've come at it from a random side. They're not hard, I just need some practice.

So I had the option of going to Concord, but John had warned me that the approach there was a little challenging. So I chose instead to go to Stockton and Hayward, and to do the procedure turn into the ILS 29R at Stockton. As it turned out, there was some sort of NOTAM for some craziness (shooting? stunt flying? who knows) to the southwest, and since we didn't have the NOTAM information, we ended up requesting vectors to final. It was fine, though; I flew the ILS like a champ, executed the missed and the hold at ORANG intersection very skillfully, set up for HWD, and got it all done pretty quickly.

One interesting thing was that we took off from PAO on 13, but it wasn't terribly different -- just a left turn to 060 instead of a right.

At the end of the lesson, John handed me the phase check packet -- I'm getting close!

Progress!

2007-07-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

I think something finally clicked, where I've realized that it's just not that complicated to fly approaches. There's a lot of process, yes, and getting the process right requires a lot of attention, but it's not difficult really. My last two lessons have been really good. I've been very far ahead of the airplane, experienced very little self-doubt (maybe even not enough!) and have I think found the right level of analness, basically.

Last Tuesday, John and I went out to Stockton and flew the GPS 29R approach, followed by the ILS 25R at Livermore. The GPS approach went very well, but about 500 feet above decision altitude we were instructed to discontinue the approach and fly the missed approach. John was annoyed enough with this that he asked for a reason. The answer? One word: "Traffic." Seemed pretty suspect from my POV, but whatever; in any case I flew to the missed approach point. Here there was a bit of a misunderstanding on my part; as I approached ORANG intersection to hold, NorCal asked me what I'd like to do next (Livermore ILS 25R) and told me to expect a clearance at a certain time. So I dutifully went into the holding pattern, set up my approach, and waited for a clearance. And waited. And continued waiting, before John eventually asked me what I was waiting for -- this is when we discovered my error. I had not, in fact, asked for a clearance, so I wasn't going to get one. The earlier communication was so that the controllers would know what to expect in the event of a radio failure.

So I asked for a clearance, got it (actually, IIRC I got only part of it but John got the rest) and flew to Livermore. The ILS approach went pretty well, and I did a nice touch and go before flying back to Palo Alto, skirting a diminishing cloud deck at 2500'.

Today was even better. While my ILS performance on Tuesday was OK, it was not great, and John figured we should do some serious ILS work, so today we flew the Stockton ILS 29R, published missed, hold at ORANG and then back to Livermore for the ILS 25R. Things went very smoothly intercepting the localizer at Stockton, and I flew the ILS very nicely. We got to our DA of 232' and flew the missed approach, which went well (John had to prompt me to not overfly the course I was heading for); in fact, I was set up for Livermore before even completing one full holding pattern. This was in large part because I am now so familiar with that hold that I don't even have to look down at it any more, but also because I'd stopped over thinking the avionics setup. It's an ILS approach; I may very well not need my second navigation radio tuned to anything, especially since the outer marker was an NDB (which I can use my GPS to identify).

So I flew the ILS at Livermore very well, much better than Tuesday, and we executed a missed approach. My initial thought was that John was testing me, knowing that I'd spent less time studying the missed approach procedure, but in fact he was just expediting (I know how to land) and getting us out of there, so we got the left turnout and flew back to Palo Alto.

John was very complimentary, and the one thing I need to do is that when I finally get down time, to double check my avionics setup. Twice it happened that something was not quite right (I really think that the #1 navigation radio has a glitch, because twice, the same frequency ended up in both the primary and backup frequency boxes, and I know I didn't do that), and double checking would've caught the error.

So, I'm encouraged. There isn't anything I feel like I can't do, even now getting clearances in the air is a little easier. Next Tuesday..onward and upward!

A track of the flight is here:

On Track, I Guess

2007-07-14T14:57:00.001-07:00

I had another lesson yesterday, back with John but this time we went out to Stockton (VOR 29R) and Livermore (ILS 25R). It went..OK. I'm getting the distinct impression that I'm just expecting too much of myself. John's style is to sit back and watch, and jump in if necessary; however, that sometimes makes it hard for me to ask questions because I feel like if he's not saying anything, then I should know the answer. So...

I flew to Stockton and did the approach pretty much fine, except that I'm still not sure what was happening between the VOR and the GPS and which one I ended up using on the approach. On the missed approach, I was not particularly timely with my twisting of the course to the holding point, and John had to remind me. In the hold, I got confused with how to identify which side of the holding intersection I was on. I had trouble setting up for the Livermore approach, and did it very slowly. Once I finally asked for a clearance, I had trouble copying it and understanding what the heck it meant.

Taking it to Livermore, I flew the ILS poorly, which really pissed me off because that's something I KNOW I can do well. I was having all kinds of trouble setting a constant descent rate. I'd blame the plane, but it's the same plane I used last week to fly the ILS at Oakland pretty much perfectly. So, that's not it.

I was very discouraged after the flight..not discouraged in a "I want to quit" sort of way, more in a "Why can't I do this when I know I can do this?" sort of way. Afterwards, John informed me that I'm pretty much where I should be with this, average to slightly above average performance, which I was delighted to hear, since it's my expectation that I do everything perfectly.

I'll keep trying, keep plugging away. On the positive side, I have much more book knowledge than I possessed last week thanks to a lot of reading and studying. Maybe one day that'll help me.

Another Week, Another Lesson

2007-07-07T10:49:00.000-07:00

I'd been unable to schedule John's time for this week, so I decided to take the opportunity to have a lesson with Sergey, my original CFI with whom I got my PPL. I'm realizing even more now how my lessons with John could be better: For one thing, Sergey has a way of keeping the lessons from getting boring -- he realizes that by flying the same profile over and over, I'm just going to get bored and inattentive, and not really learn anything. We went to Oakland and Hayward, the Hayward approach being a pretty bizarre one involving a circle to land even on the runway that looks like it should be a straight in: This is because the approach is so high. The minimum altitude at the FAF is 2600', and the MDA is 800'. The MAP, which is part way down the runway, is only 3 minutes away, so while getting to 800' is perfectly reasonable (600fpm descent) getting to 0' to land, along with the time to make a decision and all that, is not. So you have to circle.

Landing at Oakland was fun; we did a touch and go and took off to the right, where I got a great view of the Oakland Coliseum. I still want to fly to a ballgame one of these days, and just skip the traffic altogether, but I don't think the AirBART shuttles go to the general aviation area.

Anyway, the point is, it was fun because we went and did something new, and yet I was practicing all the same skills. It's a lot better than just going to Salinas and Watsonville over and over again. In addition, Sergey was very clear about what steps remain for the checkride: Partial panel flying, unusual attitude recovery, long cross country, and an autopilot coupled approach. It's amazing how efficient Sergey is. He also spent an hour grilling me on my book knowledge -- or, more accurately, chastising me on my lack thereof. I need to study; I knew that, but now I know WHAT to study. It's what an instructor should do. It's scary how good he is at it.

Now, I'm not trying to take anything away from John. Part of it is a tradeoff -- what John may lack in focus, Sergey might lack in completeness. John wants me to know everything, and I agree, I should know everything, but it's a matter of prioritization, which Sergey provides very clearly. Part of it is that Sergey discourages me from overthinking, whereas John's approach kind of leads me into overthinking -- perhaps we're too similar. So these are things I'll need to look out for: I need to (a) study, (b) drive my own training forward, and (c) stop thinking so much.

After a lesson with Sergey, I feel not only like I can do it, but like I'm good at it, or at least, I will be good at it. I'd like to feel that way much more often.

Getting Better

2007-06-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

Today's lesson was kind of a landmark. I admit it freely: I was apprehensive about the lesson; it's been a really tough road and while I have the deepest respect for my instructor, we've had our issues with each other at times and I've been pretty frustrated, even to the point of thinking about delaying my training.

Well, today ended up being fantastic. We took off out of PAO as usual, I got my IFR clearance, did my runup, etc as usual, and John complimented me on my readback, which served its intent of helping me relax prior to takeoff. We were sent on our normal route, and climbed up into the clouds at 1500', which was a real thrill, but not as much as popping out of the clouds a couple of hundred feet later into a bright, beautiful sky. WOW! What a phenomenal experience -- I just felt so lucky at that moment, to be one of the few people who can do that (well, almost).

I flew really well; totally relaxed, and the flight was totally smooth. My approach at Salinas was very good, and I remembered to start my time at the final approach fix and my procedures during the missed approach were in the right order, though John handled the radio for me, which was helpful. He also later pointed out that I used the wrong minimum altitude: I'd heard the ATIS say that the active runway was 31, and I even wrote it down, but I didn't connect the dots and realize that I'd need to use the "circle-to-land" minimums since the approach was for runway 13. Ah, well, lessons learned -- this is the advantage of not being afraid to fail. I'm actually learning!

I configured for the approach at Watsonville on the way to the holding pattern at MARNA -- mostly. There's usually plenty of time to do this, but because of shifting winds I had to spend more time on aircraft control, so I got to finish the configuration during the hold, which is something I should practice anyway. The hold itself was a bit sloppy, and John later said (correctly) that it was the worst part of my flight today, but that it was still OK. I just need to review the holding pattern procedures so I know what to do when, and not struggle so much with having to think through every step. Not rocket science, at least not in a piston aircraft!

My approach at Watsonville was good as well. John said I was chasing the needle a little, which may be true, but it was only a little. I had trouble with the radio when getting the clearance into Watsonville; I had trouble with that on Wednesday as well. I think it's just a matter of getting a lot of information quickly, something that will come with practice.

Then came Palo Alto, which was also good, and had the added bonus of charging through a giant cloud in the middle of the approach. It was fun, and we were relaxed enough to joke about it as John grabbed the dash with both hands just as we were about to dive into the cloud, but it actually did distract me enough to put me off course and force me to correct. But I did correct, quickly, so no harm, no foul.

All in all, it was a great flight! I made a few mistakes, but they were mistakes that I can learn from. I am starting to think that maybe I can really do this after all. John has taken my request for more positive reinforcement to heart, and has been doing a great job of it -- today, in particular, there was one moment where I did start getting just the slightest bit tense, and he instantly said, "You're doing great." Just like that, I was calm again; in fact, I only realized that had happened a while later. So, kudos to him for adjusting his approach to something that works for me -- that's the mark of a great instructor.

BTW: here's a link to today's flight. I'm not sure how long that link will work, but it's pretty cool; you can see the approach to SNS, the hold at MARNA (a little racetrack after departing SNS), the approach to WVI and the trip back to PAO.

Update on Instrument Training

2007-06-27T17:15:00.000-07:00

I suddenly realized that I haven't been writing here, and it's not been for lack of flying, but more for lack of time to write about it. Also, it's not been the most pleasant experience sometimes. I've basically been taking two training flights a week, doing an approach at Salinas and one at Watsonville each week. I've been really struggling getting the procedural stuff in my head (5 T's, 5 A's, etc). In addition, it's been very hard for me to stay calm in the cockpit, and the tension just makes things worse.

There have been so many factors. For one thing, it's really hard. It's hard to think about what to do at any given point on an approach, it's hard to remember those things as you're passing that point, it's hard to not stress out about the whole thing, it's hard to do all -- or even some -- of these things without compromising control of the aircraft.

The thing is, I can do it. I know I can do it, and John knows I can do it, and in a simulator, I CAN do it. But in the plane, it's a different story. Why? John and I had a talk last week about it, after a lesson in which I was tense through all the approaches and eventually just lost track of what I was supposed to be doing, which is what has been happening. John said I didn't have enough confidence in my own flying, that it was clear that my instincts were generally telling me to do the right things, but that I didn't trust it, and I showed that by hesitating and tensing up. This is basically true, so the question is, what can be done about it? It's not so much that I doubt my ability, it's that I don't know if I'm doing something wrong so I overthink it.

When I was getting my PPL, my instructor Sergey would constantly be saying random positive things: "Nice job." "Beautiful approach!" "Good call" for a radio call. Or sometimes just "Good job, good job.." even if things weren't perfect but just to relax me. After thinking about this last week, I told John about this this morning, and he understood -- it's not about ego or not being able to take criticism, it's about reassurance IN the cockpit environment that things are going OK and I'm not about to kill us. I can take criticism, for sure -- Sergey would criticize too, sometimes to the point where I would have trouble taking it, but he was always very positive about the positive things. So today John tried to be more praiseful in the plane. I think it worked -- it was a great lesson! Not that I did everything right, by any stretch; on the contrary I made more and bigger mistakes than I've made in a while, BUT I kept the radio the whole way, I owned the flight and I felt comfortable making those mistakes. I was more relaxed than I've been in a long time (in a plane). So, I think we're on the right track. We're going to try it again on Friday and hopefully it'll be a similar flight (without the potentially death-inducing errors).

On a side note, last weekend I flew for the first time outside of California. I was visiting relatives in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and I went to NS Aviation at North Perry Airport (KHWO). It was a little weird; there was a big problem since I didn't have proof of insurance with me and had to get AOPA to fax it over, but after a couple of hours I got it sorted out. The instructor, Alan, looked like he was about 19, and when I asked how long he'd been instructing, he said, "2 weeks." Um...O-kay! However, Alan was truly excellent. He had many great suggestions for me, and delivered them in such a way that they were very easy to understand and take in. He grilled me on airspaces and aerodynamic stuff, and we went out and did stalls and steep turns, which was great.

My intent was to fly my cousins' kids around on a subsequent day, but that never happened because of the thunderstorm activity in the area -- not anything I want any part of!

Cost Splitting And Mentorship

2007-05-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Today was a brand new experience for me. I answered an ad on Craigslist where a former and future flying student wanted to ride along with a private pilot to re-familiarize herself with the cockpit environment prior to jumping back into lessons and paying instructor rates. Great idea, really, so I answered the ad, and we had our flight today.

I won't use real names here, again; you never know how people will feel about their stories being on the internet for anyone to read, not that it's all that interesting, but you never know...Jessie brought a friend of hers from Ireland, Sean. It was his birthday, so we thought we could kill several birds with one stone by flying to Petaluma for lunch, having her do some simple turns and aircraft control along the way, and give him a nice view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate on the way.

We met up at the Caltrain station and drove over to the airport, picked up the keys, created a flight plan and headed out to the plane. The preflight went smoothly, and we got in and listened to ATIS. I called up PAO ground and requested a straight out departure -- at which point the controller informed me that no Class Bravo transitions were being granted at the moment.

Interesting. Now what? I told him I'd go the coastal route; he offered to hand me to Norcal to see if maybe they'd give me a high transition (instead of the usual low transition where the handoff is handled by San Carlos Tower). I declined and said we'd just take the coastal route; it sounded easier.

But as we were on our takeoff climbout, we saw some puffy clouds out over Half Moon Bay. It was hard to tell whether there were more clouds out there, so as we turned left and climbed, I figured I'd just give Norcal Approach a call and see whether I could get the transition. They did indeed give it to me, and vectored me up to basically the Sausalito VOR. It worked out well, since the Golden Gate ended up on the right side, where Sean was sitting. We got out over San Pablo Bay, and Jessie took the controls for a little bit and did a few turns. After she was satiated (at least temporarily) I took the controls back and headed for Petaluma.

The pattern at Petaluma was quite busy; there was a plane on every leg of the pattern at any given time. I crossed overhead high, about 2000' above TPA, because I already knew that 29 was the active runway. I kicked out very wide of the right pattern to give myself time to come in perfectly and to give everyone else time to adjust to my entry. I called the 45 entry, and just as I was turning to the downwind, another aircraft called downwind as well but they were on a departure climbout. We saw them late, but they were above us. The rest of the pattern was fine, and on final I ended up in a pretty significant crab for the crosswind. The landing was...not great; I had too little airspeed and leveled off high, so I came down a little hard, but it was OK. I definitely should've realized I needed more airspeed; I had only 20 degrees of flaps because of the wind, I had a third person in the plane, and I had a nice long runway. My landing was actually a very good short field landing! Not that it needed to be..

Lunch at the 29er Diner was really good. I had french toast, and it was excellent! Conversation with my flying companions was very nice; we talked about flying but also other stuff. After about an hour or a little more, we headed back to the plane (which was 739TW, by the way), and headed out. We took off and headed out for San Pablo Bay again. This time Jessie took quite a bit more time, setting up standard rate turns, trying to maintain her altitude while turning. She did well, and for me, it was my first experience with kind of doing a very tiny tiny bit of teaching. And I enjoyed it! It gave me the rough idea that I could actually do it -- I was encouraging, I had ideas for things she could do from the right seat that wouldn't exceed my comfort zone.

We then came back toward SFO. I was expecting another high transition, but he gave me 2000' or below. So I descended, and immediately started hitting some mild turbulence. The ride was basically slightly rough the rest of the way; not a huge deal, and my passengers seemed to enjoy it. We got a nice relatively low pass off the Golden Gate, over the city and in a very cool turn of events they sent us over mid-field at SFO as a 777 took off below us! That was awesome.

Coming into Palo Alto, they gave us the numbers: Wind 270 at 10 gusting 22. 10 gusting 22??? Um..OK. So I made left traffic, set up a very good pattern, and came in again with 20 degrees of flaps. My approach was good, and I leveled with a little extra airspeed. I ballooned a little, gave it a bit of power, re-leveled, and squeaked the landing beautifully. Jamie even applauded.

Everyone seemed to have a great time! I definitely did. I guess flying actually can be a way to meet some new folks and go on some new adventures. There's a little bit of added pressure, since I feel responsible and all that, but even that's kind of nice to cultivate. It's kind of like the first baby step toward being a commercial pilot of some sort. Very cool feeling!

I Am Above Such Petty Games.

2007-05-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

This entry really isn't about flying, though I will talk about it. No one reads this crap anyway, right? So I can vent all I want.

My new motto is, "I am above such petty games." Let's face it: Most of humanity is not above such petty games. You all know what I'm talking about. We live in a culture where we glorify the failure of others (exhibit A: almost all of pop culture, such as American Idol and most sitcoms), we have so little going on in our own lives that we get overly involved in the drama of other, sometimes fictitious people (pretty much every reality show, and the current stupidity at my office), we obsess about totally insignificant things and completely ignore problems that are real and huge, like global warming, oil and gas depletion, overcrowding, famine, and poor decisions regarding foreign policy (and this isn't a political statement; everyone across the spectrum pretty much agrees at this point that there has been some poor decision making). Currently there are many aspects of my life in which people feel they have some say over how I conduct my affairs, and in some cases have decided to express their opinion via petty games.

So, as of this moment, I am above such petty games. One way to be above things (and I mean literally, here, I have not lost my humility as a pilot -- believe me, instrument training keeps you humble!) is to have a propeller and wings, preferably attached to a hunk of metal (or plastic) with comfy seats. Today I flew N21705, a Cessna 172SP brand new to the fleet -- in fact I believe I was the very first renter! Actually that is kind of scary. I ended up doing an extra long preflight. It needed fuel, so I had to call for fuel. It had one of those really annoying covers, so I had to deal with that. It had the wrong type of fuel collection jar (the one in the plane would've fit a Piper aircraft just fine) so I had to change that out. My 10 minute preflight routine took 25 minutes, which isn't a big deal if you're flying 2 hours away but kind of is if you're on a lunch break.

She flew nicely to Livermore (except for one really scary cough from the engine just over the Sunol hills), I had lunch and came home through a little bumpiness. Very well behaved on landing, and very stable in the air, plus a nice GPS. Probably a keeper!

I've been continuing my IFR training. On Wednesday I decided with help from my Mom that the objective was not to focus more on the attitude indicator, or not chase needles, or leave the plane alone in level flight, but to just have fun. I'm paying for the training, I'm working as hard as I can at it, so instead of obsessing about it, I should just enjoy the process and let it happen. We flew to Salinas and Watsonville; one cool thing about Salinas is that I executed a "circle to land" procedure pretty much flawlessly. Next lesson is Monday; before then I'll be taking some strangers to Petaluma with me on Sunday. That should be interesting...

Anyway. I'm kind of in a grumpy mood (as if you couldn't tell). Only stuck at work for a couple of hours more, and then I can go home and be not only above, but far away from such petty games.

ILS Approaches

2007-05-09T17:15:00.000-07:00

Today's lesson was both kind of fulfilling and somewhat frustrating. I showed great improvement in some fronts. I had much better situational awareness, and I even flew a holding pattern all by myself. En route, I did a lot better with maintaining my altitudes and headings.

We started with the VOR 29R approach at Stockton. This is the same one we'd been flying the last two times out, and I think I did..OK. I had better awareness, overall, but I still didn't really know exactly what to do ahead of time -- staying ahead of the airplane, they call it. I'm having the same problem with this as I do with cooking: I read the recipe (or brief the approach), but can't remember it and have to keep referring back to it for every single step. Maybe what I need to do is commit to memorizing recipes before cooking. It might be the same skill.

The same goes for missed approach procedures. There's no time to think about the missed approach procedure and have to look it up when you're a couple of hundred feet off the ground, potentially in a high traffic environment, unable to see the ground. I have to memorize the first couple of steps of the missed approach before I get on the approach.

THEN there's the ILS approach. I did terribly on this; I was all over the place and John had to say something every couple of seconds (not his fault, I was just that far behind -- Airspeed. Altitude. Heading. Airspeed. Relax your grip. Glideslope. Watch the attitude indicator. Heading.) It was so frustrating that after flying the missed (at least I knew the first step this time) I channeled my frustration into that perfect holding pattern. John said nothing; I think he sensed my frustration and helpfully let me get myself through it while safely in my excellent holding pattern.

Basically, the deal is this: 1. I'm far too controlling on the yoke. I need to let the aircraft go, let it do its thing, which in general is to fly stably. This is especially true on the approaches, where not only am I too overcontrolling but 2. I need to fly the attitude indicator and not chase needles. I started doing this toward the end, in en route flight, to great effect. Attitude indicator is my friend. 3. I need to memorize my gaits. I'm making too many power adjustments (related to the overcontrolling) to unknown RPMs.

Friday morning, I'll try doing those three things, and that's all. And we'll see how it goes from there.

Nice Refreshing Flight

2007-05-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

Sunday seemed like just as nice a day as Saturday seemed like but was not. My friend Kindra wanted to go flying, so I checked the weather; there was definitely some wind but nothing like the gustiness reported for Saturday. Plus, it was the second warm day in a row, so theoretically there would be less turbulence. I was still concerned about taking a passenger up after Saturday's experience; if I'd had a passenger on Saturday I'm pretty sure they would've tossed their cookies -- in fact if I had been a passenger on Saturday, I'm pretty sure I would've lost it.

We didn't have much time, so we just decided to do a real bay tour over San Francisco and the Golden Gate and all that. We got 236SP out of SQL; it wasn't very busy and I got my squawk code for the class B transition almost instantly. 236Sp is a nice plane, very well taken care of and relatively new -- that's the problem with the Cherokees; they're all from the early '80s. So we preflighted, I wavered a little bit on the decision to go because of the wind, then decided we could always turn back if we wanted to.

So we took off, called up SFO tower, got our clearance through their airspace, and after crossing the airport, where I would ordinarily turn and head straight for the bridge, I got vectored directly over downtown SF. I tend to stay away from this area, just because I'm not sure where I can and can't go yet, but I'm learning! It was very cool; we saw the Transamerica building and Coit Tower, and of course the whole marina. We went up toward San Pablo Bay, twisting to get better views of Treasure Island and Alcatraz. I was holding 2000' exactly, in stark contrast to the previous day's sudden deviations of 200' or more. We flew back down, over the Golden Gate, and then took the coastline down to Ano Nuevo. That was new; I had to do some concentrating to not bust SFO's airspace since I was out of it, and there's a small area where it comes down to 1500' but mostly it starts at 2100'.

We turned around and came back over Crystal Springs, and into San Carlos where the controller helped me out by putting me in front of a plane doing pattern work, but of course this also resulted in my having to maneuver a bit more steeply than I would've liked. My landing was my best in a really long time -- winds were 320 at 10, nearly right down the runway and pretty strong, so I went with 20 degrees of flaps. I held it off for a really long time, and touched down very smoothly!

Next instrument lesson is Wednesday; I'm going to try to fly before then, maybe a quick cross country to someplace like Modesto or Salinas or Monterey.

Oh. My. God.

2007-05-05T16:38:00.000-07:00

The only thing I can say about today is that it was difficult. It was not fun, I don't even think it was educational, it was just difficult. And annoying -- difficult and annoying. Holy crap.

My plan was to go to Nancy's Diner at Willows (KWLW) Airport. It's a 24 hour diner, and I thought it'd make a great midnight destination, so I wanted to scope it out in daylight hours. Today looked beautiful; no clouds anywhere, and good visibility. It started out a little bit windy, but not a big deal.

I took off straight out from PAO, contacted SQL tower like a pro, got cleared through SFO's class B, and was on my way. During the transition, I hit quite a bit of turbulence passing SFO. Didn't think too much of it, I just figured that once I climbed to my cruise altitude, 6500, everything would be fine. As I got out over the bay, I started my climb and held it at 4500 by the time I got to SGD VOR. It was not any smoother, but it was manageable. At this point I noticed that I was having a lot of trouble with keeping the plane at a constant altitude. I'd set it up, and suddenly the engine sounded like it was racing, the RPMs were 100 higher than before, and I was climbing. So I'd reduce it, re-trim it get it all set up again, and a few minutes later, it would be descending, airspeed decreasing and power down by 50 RPM. I never did figure this out; it could have been an effect of the strong and shifting wind, but I don't know.

I continued climbing to 6500, and it got a little more manageable. I was starting to wonder whether I was still on flight following, because I'd heard nothing at all from the controller in about 40 minutes, but as I passed the Maxwell VOR I got switched to a new frequency. Shortly thereafter I began my descent and made left traffic for runway 34 at Willows. The approach was bumpy, but again, nothing too concerning.

I had lunch at Nancy's, which was really good, and only $7.50 including tip for 2 eggs, excellent hash browns and toast. I'm going back soon!

Then the fun started. I got back into N81034, got all set up, went to start, and...nothing. After a few more attempts I realized that every time I tried to start I lost electrical power entirely. Great. I'm stuck in Willows, and kind of need to be home at some point in the near future....so I called the club. They were pretty much useless; I guess maintenance doesn't work on the weekends? I don't know, but eventually I found someone at the airport who knew how to jump start an airplane. I was so clueless, but luckily the guy knew more than me. "12 or 24 volts?" he asks me, like I'm supposed to know..I probably AM supposed to know, but you know..in any case, the POH had all the answers, and he quickly figured out exactly how to get it done. It's just like jump starting a car, pretty much, and it did work, so after careful examination of the alternator gauge, and making sure it wasn't on 0 (it was close, but not 0), off I went. I was very nervous about whether the alternator was working -- I know I didn't leave the master switch on, even though that's the simplest explanation. I have no other explanation. I started out with the GPS (which I was only using as a comm device; it was pretty old) and the DME off to save electrical power, but as I flew it made its way back so I turned the additional equipment back on.

I took off and headed back south. Everything seemed to be in order as I climbed to 5500 and got flight following from a friendly controller. But then I started really getting knocked around by turbulence. And it just kept getting worse! I climbed to 7500, and it pretty much didn't help at all. I crossed SGD VOR at 7500, getting knocked all over the place, just trying to maintain a wings level attitude, which was actually somewhat challenging at times. When I had the Golden Gate in sight, I started a descent (hesitantly) and got handed off to a new controller. That controller told me to cross the Coliseum at or above 3500. What?? I told her that was inconvenient from my present location north of the Golden Gate. She cleared me through Class B at or below 2000. OK, that's better.

SFO Tower had other ideas, though. Instead of the usual transition at 2000 west of Highway 101, he routed me over Candlestick Park and to mid-span San Mateo bridge, at or below 1500. This was not comfortable -- it's the widest part of the bay, and I was still getting destroyed by turbulence. Losing 100 feet suddenly at 6500 is not a big deal. Losing 100 feet suddenly at 1500 feet IS a big deal, at least to me. About half way to the bridge, SFO Tower must have sensed my consternation, and gave me a new altitude of "at or below 1000." Bloody hell. OK, so now I'm at 1000...UNH! I mean, 850 feet above the water with no hope of any sort of emergency landing should anything go wrong with my engine, which, by the way, was still shifting somewhat erratically by 50-100 knots, not that I had any time to be concerned about that since I kept worrying that I would end up upside-down due to some jolt of turbulence.

Finally I was talking to PAO tower, and got the numbers at Palo Alto: Wind 310 at 20 knots. 20 knots, but right down the runway, thank goodness. My landing was bad, but safe -- level too high, balloon, add power, releveling, balloon again, add a little power, level too high, land flat. But safely. I taxied to my parking row and crawled out of the plane, and sat on all fours on the wing for a minute, breathing deeply, really glad to be on the ground.

And now I'm totally exhausted. I did a few things well; I did a good job maintaining my altitude for the most part, given the circumstances, and I did a very good job tracking VORs and courses. Fuel management was good. I did not keep track of the time elapsed on my trip; that wasn't so good. I did deal with an unexpected situation reasonably well, swallowing my pride and asking questions. My radio work was excellent, with the possible exception of the controller who told me to fly to the Coliseum. And I got 3.1 hours of cross country time. And a good breakfast. All in all, a decent bit of experience. Just no fun.

Update: There were definitely PIREPs of moderate turbulence all around the area, and a few of severe turbulence. Also, a Cessna made an emergency landing on a road in Newark, CA after losing its engine and electrical system, allegedly because of turbulence. I'm not sure how that works; I suppose a bad enough hit could shake something loose, but engine AND electrical? That's some bad luck. Apparently though the pilot showed some incredible airmanship to get the plane down on the street that had high tension electrical wires on either side of it, so I'm sure he'll call it even.

I now know my fears were justified when flying at 900' over the middle of the bay in this stuff.

Real Airplane, Real IMC

2007-05-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

I had two lessons last week; I've managed to create enough time in my life (and in my brain) to step up the lessons which really helps me feel like I'm on a path toward a goal. John has been great as an instructor, and as I found out, much more tuned into the touchy feely stuff than Sergey. That's both good and bad; it forces me to deal with it, which is good, but sometimes before I'm ready, which is bad. Anyway, this'll make a lot more sense in a bit..

On Tuesday, we went up for my first actual instrument approaches. I was really nervous. I still don't know why, I think it has to do with feeling like I was being tested. This isn't John's fault, it's purely a creation in my own head -- I'd been on a simulator a lot, and I felt like how I responded in an airplane was a test of how well I'd learned and how much I'd studied. We decided to fly to Stockton (KSCK) and do the VOR 29R approach.

Basically, I did far more poorly than I would've imagined. I couldn't even read back the clearance, I couldn't maintain my altitudes, I got completely lost and by the time we were doing the approach I basically had no idea what was going on. Not a good feeling, and John was doing his best to try and help me out but there was really nothing he could do -- I had psyched myself up so much that I couldn't think clearly, and that's a bad thing especially when flying IFR. The flight did accomplish a few things, though -- for one, I was able to see how the system worked, to learn where I would fall behind the most and what would present the greatest challenge.

After the lesson John basically asked me what was going on -- I think he knew that something was wrong, and I felt bad that I couldn't explain it to him because I didn't really understand yet. So, I tried to convince him that it wasn't going to be an ongoing problem, and that everything would be fine. I was also trying to convince myself, which went less well...

So I thought about it for a while, and realized that I was just putting too much pressure on myself to do something that I've only just started training for. By Friday's lesson, I was feeling very calm about the whole thing. Who cares if I mess up? I have an instructor sitting there. If I sound like an idiot to ATC, so what? I hear a lot of people WITH their ratings sounding questionable to ATC. They're used to it, they get paid to do it, they'll roll their eyes, say "stupid rookie" and move on.

Friday was just amazing, in every way. For one thing, there was weather! There were actual clouds, with PAO at a ceiling of 1500'. I was calm, I read back the clearance (almost) correctly, I took a few chances and learned. Takeoff was uneventful, until the ceiling got closer and closer, and I had to fight all my "avoid the clouds" instincts to force myself to keep climbing! I turned right heading 060 as instructed and just before we penetrated the cloud layer, I said to John, "I'm not sure how I'm going to react to this." He said, "Don't look outside." Ah. Brilliant!! So I didn't, and I flew (in my estimation) extremely well. John had taken over the radio work, except for simple heading or altitude instructions. I held my altitudes, I held my headings, I stayed mostly coordinated.

I did, however, lose my situational awareness. Once ATC starts vectoring me to places, I lose track of where I am. I could not picture how to enter the holding pattern at Stockton, which is the entry to the approach. Once John told me, I kind of figured out where we were, but this is clearly something that will need work. That's OK, though, I just need to work at it -- I know I can do it.

I also could not copy our clearance back to PAO when we were in the missed approach holding pattern near SCK. Holding itself is a ton of work! I managed to do that OK, but just to drill myself I tried copying the clearance too, and did not get very far.

On the way back, we used the GPS and the autopilot for some of the flight, which helped ease the workload considerably. I did lose my location again once we got vectors, but not as bad as the other end of the flight, probably in part because I'm so much more familiar with the area.

Anyway, it's been a great week, and I'm looking forward to the next time!

Instrument Training Continues

2007-04-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

I've only actually been in an airplane once in the last three weeks or so, and probably twice in the last six weeks. I went up on Tuesday to just make sure I remembered how to land, which I did, mostly, so I did five landings and called it an evening. In the mean time, I've had 3 or 4 more simulator lessons, working on navigation, en route planning and transition to approach procedures for IFR flight. This stuff is hard -- there is so much to think about, even straight and level flight is a challenge for me, so adding navigation, radio work, getting ATIS in a timely fashion, transitioning to approach, actually flying the approach, and thinking about the missed approach procedure is pretty overwhelming.

However, in today's lesson, in the last 15 minutes or so I really felt like I got into a rhythm with it a little bit. That was a surprising relief. I think it's all about preparation -- if the radios are set, if you know where you're going and exactly what to do when you get there, then things are OK. The "what to do" section is mostly about the five T's: Turn, Time, Twist, Throttle, Talk. Turn the plane to the appropriate new heading (or, since in many cases you'll be following a course, turn in the general direction of the new course), set the timer, twist the OBS of the nav aid to whatever it needs to be set to, adjust throttle once established on the course, if necessary, and talk to the controller if required. It seems so simple, but it really isn't. At least, not yet.

Transitioning to approach is again all about preparation. Before calling up the approach controller at the destination, you have the five A's (I guess that makes sense, since for you bio geeks out there, A and T are reciprocal): ATIS, Altimeter, Avionics, Approach Briefing, Airspeed. Get the ATIS at the destination, set the altimeter accordingly, [select which approach to use based on the ATIS], set the avionics for the selected approach, brief the approach, and have a plan for when to reduce airspeed. Pretty intense.

Flying the approach is also pretty challenging, at least in the simulator. In VFR flight it doesn't really matter whether you can set up a constant rate of descent to get you to a certain altitude at a certain point. Approaches are exactly that, and since there are almost no references to adjust against, the consistency is important.

So, given my comfort level at the end of today's lesson, John has opted to have us try it out in an actual airplane this coming Tuesday! I'm very excited but I really feel like I need to study, kind of a lot.

By the way, the book we're using is by Peter Dogan; I can't remember the exact title, but so far it is excellent.

Instrument Lesson...In An Airplane!

2007-04-05T15:40:00.000-07:00

Today I had an experience bordering on monumental in terms of my flight training. I went with my instructor John on our first instrument flying lesson in an airplane, rather than the simulator. First off, I haven't been in a plane for almost three weeks, and there was a long break before that too so I was not feeling great about my piloting and communication skills. But once I got into the cockpit, once again, it all just came back. I didn't even hesitate on my radio calls -- mostly because I didn't want to, in front of an instructor that had never seen me fly before. I know I'm being evaluated, there's no avoiding that, and in the end it can only help me to be at my best so that the suggestions I get are not things that I already know I should have done.

We took a left Dumbarton departure out toward the coast, and as I was climbing up to altitude, John had me put on the dreaded "view limiting device," also known as the "hood." We then spent the next 1.5 hours doing various maneuvers, including the different patterns that we'd practiced in the simulator. Except for one thing, it was actually much easier in the airplane, but that one thing was rudder control. The turn coordinator was kind of out of whack; the ball was always off to the left no matter what.

It was interesting really experiencing disorientation and vertigo. At least five times through the flight, I would have sworn that the plane was doing one thing, and the instruments disagreed with me (but agreed with each other). Trusting the instruments is truly an effort. Clearly it's worth it. The other really shocking thing was having to land the airplane after taking the hood off at about 400' above the ground on final approach. I felt like I'd been dropped into the cockpit of an airplane on final from some totally unrelated context, like sleeping, or working or something. Just boom: Land this plane, NOW! It's surprising, especially since I knew it was coming; it's not like I couldn't hear the radio calls.

But, my landing was good, as was the rest of my flying. It was really fulfilling; John even complimented me afterwards, saying my flying was excellent, my control of the aircraft on the ground and in the air were excellent. On my landing he even gave me a "nice job" even though I leveled off too high, and my second level-off at the appropriate height was a bit slow -- still, I did land nice and soft, which is the important thing.

It was a great lesson -- exhausting, but a lot of fun, a real workout and the kind of thing I can tell will get at least somewhat easier with time and lots of practice.

Bay Tours and Instrument Training

2007-03-30T10:39:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks haven't seen much time for the skies, which is unfortunate given how absolutely beautiful the weather has been. Two weeks ago I started my instrument training with John Otte. We began work on the simulator and did some basic maneuvering and pattern following, and getting to understand the different "gaits" of an airplane. Basically, it seems that for a given airplane, there is a specific configuration that will yield a certain result. So, an approach descent will occur at a certain RPM and flap setting, reducing the need for guesswork. Pretty handy tool! We also worked on developing my "scan" of the instruments -- basically the idea is to be able to glance at all six instruments at the right time depending on what you're doing to evoke the right response from the airplane and find and correct any errors. It's much, much harder than it sounds.

It was a great first lesson; John is a very good instructor and has a great, relaxed manner about him that keeps me from getting too tense or too down on myself. I had another lesson with him last Friday, where I was too exhausted to do much of anything but we managed to get some good simulator time in anyway before I crashed it into the ground (that's a big advantage of a simulator!), and another one this morning where I felt like I made some major strides in keeping things under control. I actually felt kind of comfortable for a few moments while stabilized in a turn or in straight and level flight, which is a good feeling. We also did some partial panel out work (meaning, some of the instruments are not working), which was a big challenge -- especially holding altitude with no attitude indicator (the trim on the simulator does not work at all like that on a real airplane). So on Tuesday we will be heading into the skies for a flight in an actual airplane!

Speaking of actual airplanes, the last time I flew in one of those was about two weeks ago. On both Saturday and Sunday I went on a bay tour, with two different co-workers. I did the same route each time; the first time was more kind of random and guessworky. I actually very nearly missed my turn toward the west to return home, but saved it by deciding at the right moment to have the GPS locate Tracy Airport, and seeing that I was just flying past it. The second time involved an initial departure toward the coast only to see that it was totally cloudy, so I turned and transitioned back through PAO's airspace and on the same route as the day before, but tighter, since it was more familiar.

It's kind of funny to note my co-workers' responses when I get my pilot face on. Things are official, and important -- the passenger brief is important, and I think for a moment they're not sure if I'm kidding when I explain how the seat belt functions. Hey, it's in the regs! Then when I start talking on the radio I think there's a moment of "Hey, he actually knows what he's doing!" It's pretty fun for me to see that, for people who know me in one context to get to know me in a totally different context. On a day to day level, I'm not really that much of a "take-charge" type of guy, but in the pilot's seat, I'm in command -- it's one of the many things I really enjoy about flying. And there's probably a life lesson in there somewhere, about recognizing appropriate moments to take command of a situation.

Instrument training will resume next week, and I'm hoping to go flying this weekend in the sunshine!

The last six weeks

2007-03-04T21:58:00.000-08:00

Prior to this weekend, I flew only once in the last six weeks, thanks to the weather (days of very low visibility, followed by days of rain, followed by my vacation to Mexico, followed by days of rain) and my schedule (work...work....). That flight was February 14, and all I did was take a Cessna out into the pattern and do 3 landings, at Palo Alto. The great thing was, the landings were very good, right out of the gate! This was a first, after three weeks off, having my landings not deteriorate at all. So that was exciting.

The next time I flew after that was yesterday. There was some excitement on my way down to San Carlos; as I left home and got on the freeway, I watched as the usual complement of jets made their way in on final approach to SFO's runways 28. One of them was quite far off to the left (from its perspective) out over Highway 101, and banking rather steeply to the right. A moment later I looked again and it had leveled its wings and begun a climb. I watched as it retracted its landing gear. It's always interesting to watch a commercial jet do a go-around; it's a great reminder that it's a good tool for all of us!

When I got to San Carlos, I ran into my alternate instructor from my PPL, and he was going on about an incident he'd seen happen the previous day. Here is a link to the story. Basically according to my instructor, the pilot, an elderly gentleman who's known at SQL for not really being able to see very well, ended up pretty far out on final approach at 100' and hit some power lines. He somehow maintained control, told the tower he'd hit something, did a low pass so the tower could check out his gear, and proceeded to freak out once all the way around the pattern before landing safely with some relatively minor damage to the plane. Crazy stuff! We ended up talking about my approach toward instrument training, and he had a few suggestions for instructors who might suit my style, so I plan to start pursuing that soon.

For the actual flight, I took Warrior N81020 out of San Carlos and just flew down the coast. I was initially going to do some pattern work, but my instructor recommended I take the plane down the coast and enjoy the weather, so I did, and it turned out to be a great suggestion. Actually before I took off, during preflight I noticed that one of the landing gear struts was inflated way more than the other. When I sat in the plane, I was tilted noticeably to the left. I had read the squawk sheet, and it had said the right strut was low -- I guess whoever pumped it up did not hold back, because it was very high now. I got out the POH and looked to see if there was a range of acceptable inflation, or just a minimum. Turns out it was just a minimum, which both sides met, so finally I decided to just go. It was nice to just fly the plane, concentrate on holding altitude, and look out the window. Pattern work is great, but it's a lot of work. This was a nice "it's good to be a pilot" flight. My landing back at SQL would've been fine if the runway were about 5 feet higher. As it was, I dropped it a touch harder than most would prefer. After that, the landing gear struts were nice and even!

I did want to try to work on my landing technique, which, while it may not have suffered after the initial 3 weeks off, seemed to have gone downhill after the subsequent 3 week break. So I went out again today, in N298CA, a 172SP out of PAO. Things were very busy in the PAO pattern, so I asked for a right Dumbarton and instead was granted a right crosswind. "You can ask for that any time," the controller said. How weird...so why would I ever want to take a right Dumbarton? It is easier to stay out of SJC's airspace when following the bridge, but really. I took the right crosswind (with a very nice takeoff) and went out to Livermore. They were using runways 7 instead of the usual 25, which was new for me. It was very busy there too, so I did one landing, taxied back and took off again for Palo Alto.

Back at PAO, I ended up doing 3 laps in the pattern. They were long laps as the controller struggled to get many departures out in between each landing. On my final lap, he had me extend my downwind out to Shoreline Amphitheater (which I'd done on the previous lap as well) and proceeded to line up two departures in front of my arrival. I'd slowed down considerably; basically any time my pattern gets extended I slow down as much as I'm comfortable with, usually no more than 80 knots on downwind with 10 degrees of flaps out. As I was on final, the controller decided he would try to get a third plane out. Here's where the new position and hold regulations come into play. He put the plane in position and hold, so I did not have a landing clearance, and here I was on a relatively short final. He said to me, "Cessna 8CA, one more aircraft holding in position for departure." I replied, "8CA, roger," but I must have sounded a bit apprehensive, because his reply was, "It's making me a little uneasy too." By this time I'd already decided that this was a good opportunity to try a short field landing, so my flaps were fully extended and I was at 60 knots. "I'm keeping it real slow," I told him, and he thanked me.

My short field landing was terrible, though I managed to rescue the landing itself for a soft touchdown, but it was time to terminate. Hopefully I'll be getting more practice in more regularly over the next few weeks!

What a weekend!

2007-01-21T23:39:00.000-08:00

I'm exhausted. In the last three days, I've logged 5.5 hours of flight time. Hopefully no "real" pilots read this blog, because I just lost all credibility with them, but seriously, the flying was great but it wore me out.

First, Nirmala and I went to visit her parents down in Lompoc. Lompoc is right next to Vandenberg AFB, which makes it a little tricky to maneuver in without breaking military airspace, which is pretty much always a bad idea. We flew down on Friday, and back today, taking 1.9 hours down and 2.2 hours back. The flight down was absolutely great -- the weather was beautiful, and we had a strong tailwind so we got down there in 1:40, which is not only incredible, but also exactly what was predicted by my flight plan. It amazes me how accurate the planning process can be! The one thing I missed was the turn to head for Lompoc, but ATC caught me (yet another advantage of flight following): "4335K, confirm your destination is Lompoc." "Affirmative..." (turning to the right)

The flight back was a little harder. Most of it was fine, and I managed to get the autopilot to work for part of the time, but once we got into the Bay Area, it was really busy, and pretty turbulent. We got knocked around pretty good coming over the hills from Watsonville. My approach to landing at SQL was pretty rough, but the landing itself was quite good (the one at Lompoc was a bit hard due to a high flare).

Then, I took the same plane out to Petaluma tonight -- my band Hookslide was opening for Tower Of Power at the Mystic Theater in Petaluma, so I thought it'd be a great opportunity to fly up. So off I went, and it was a decent enough flight except, again, for the turbulence, especially close to Petaluma. Oh, and I ended up waiting 40 minutes for a cab! The flight was only 40 minutes; I could have driven and gotten there quicker! I was so upset.

The flight back was again turbulent after takeoff, but smoothed out as I approached San Francisco. I did the Class B transition well (the outbound one as well), and came in for landing at San Carlos. The tower was closed, so I decided to head for runway 30 after coming overhead and totally failing to see the windsock. I set up, made for the runway, flared, leveled off, and....OUCH I hit the nosewheel first -- holy cow, I've never done that before. It wasn't too bad, but it was not good. The Cherokee requires more force on the yoke than the Cessnas, and I think I really needed to manhandle the plane into a nose up attitude at that point, and didn't.

Anyway, I logged 5.5 hours total, 4.1 cross country. That gives me 10.6 hours for the month, and the month isn't over yet! Very exciting.

Instrument Written Test -- Complete!

2007-01-17T14:15:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I made it through the rest of the King Instrument DVDs. Now, these DVDs are excellent; however, by "excellent" I mean that they present the information needed for test preparation in a very clear, concise and memorable manner. In the end, though, it's still studying for a test, and therefore pretty painful. So I just powered through the rest of the DVDs and called it quits.

Incidentally, these DVDs had a problem on my computer (Windows XP) where any attempt to watch a second video clip would cause the application to crash hard. This is of course problematic, because the course is structured in such a way that you have to watch a video clip, then answer questions, then watch another video clip. I had been quitting the application after answering questions, before the next video clip, and restarting it. What a pain! I tried getting a new DVD drive, but to no avail. Finally I ended up downloading a codec pack from freecodecs.com, and somehow installing that fixed whatever the problem was. I guess the biggest reason to put this info in here is just in case someone else has that problem and manages to type the right search words into their favorite search engine.

Anyway, so I finished the DVDs, fixing a technical problem along the way. Monday morning, I was feeling pretty good about myself, so I took a practice exam: 2 wrong, 97%. Pretty good! Later on Monday, I had to go down to the flying club to do some paperwork for a Piper Warrior checkout. I told my instructor about my result, and asked him for an endorsement to take the exam, which he gave me. This saved me a lot of time; my other option was to get the endorsement from King, but to do that, I would have had to take three practice exams, mail or fax the results to them, and have them mail me the endorsement. So, with my endorsement, I reserved the club's CATS testing room, and called up CATS testing: "I'd like to take the instrument airplane exam." "When?" "Tomorrow at 8:30 am." "Sure, no problem."

So Tuesday morning, after scraping ICE off my car window (I know, I know, what am I complaining about...but I live in the San Francisco Bay Area!! This is NOT normal!!!), I got to the club only five minutes late (the 20 minute drive took 55 minutes, thanks to traffic), and started the test in the unheated room. I went through the questions at a pretty deliberate pace, but it still took me about an hour and five minutes. There was one question I kept vacillating on; the rest, I either knew or I had no idea. I submitted the results, and...97%, I missed 2 again! At least I'm consistent...

Based on the codes they gave me, I could guess at the questions I missed. One was, when does the pressure altitude equal the true altitude? I chose "when the atmospheric pressure is 29.92" but the correct answer was "in standard atmospheric conditions." This is the question that I spent a long time deliberating on -- I have the unfortunate ability to justify anything in my head, so I basically justified the wrong one with faulty logic. The bottom line? Temperature DOES matter. The other question had to do with what services were available on a given ILS frequency, and it came down to whether it has TACAN or not. I believe I said it did, whereas it did not. I have not yet looked up how to determine that, but I figure I'll be learning that in my flight lessons.

About flight lessons -- I'm not really sure how to handle this. Sergey is only instructing part time now, as is his first recommendation. And I'm still toying with the idea of doing a 9-day course, though it seems less appealing now than it did before. We shall see; it should be a fun process no matter what!

Meanwhile, weather permitting, we'll be flying out to Lompoc to see Nirmala's parents this weekend, and then back up to Petaluma on Sunday for a show, opening for Tower Of Power. Sweet!

Hey, hey, where ya goin'?

2007-01-14T16:15:00.000-08:00

Last TuesdayI met up with Sergey to get checked out in the Piper Warrior, mostly to try to save some money. It's the same plane as the Archer, but less powerful and cheaper. The 172SPs are much more expensive than either one; for that reason I'm thinking of doing my IFR training in a Warrior.

At my request we landed at San Jose, which is in Class C airspace. I just wanted to go over the operations and takeoff clearance stuff; it had been a long time since we'd done that in lessons. That lesson was totally great; I made two excellent landings (no winds in a Warrior means about as easy a landing as there could be), and it was great to see Sergey again.

So today, I put my refreshed knowledge to the test, and went on a trip to Monterey. Monterey is a Class C airport, about 60NM from San Carlos. I wanted to build on everything I have been doing: Flight following, cross countries, all that good stuff. I originally wanted to do the transition through Palo Alto, Moffett and San Jose, but the route over the hills seemed much more direct.

I took a Woodside departure out of SQL and after crossing the 280 freeway made a left. Over SLAC, I hesitated: I was not sure about which of my three route options were the best (over the hills, through San Jose, or coastal). So I circled twice and had a look around. There were a few clouds over the hills, so I wanted to avoid the most direct route (despite the fact that it was almost certainly not a problem; I just finished reading about standing lenticular clouds over mountains meaning heavy turbulence and I got paranoid). The San Jose route at this point would've been strange, since I'd have to fly toward Palo Alto, get transition clearance, make a right turn and then continue the flight. Not impossible, just unconventional. Meanwhile, the coast looked absolutely beautiful, so I turned and headed west for the ocean.

Once on the coastline, I called Norcal Approach for flight following, and set my altitude at 5500. I had a really easy time holding my altitude today; I was on the button with it. I was told at some point early on to make right traffic runway 28R, so I kept that in mind as I followed the coast. As I passed abeam Watsonville, I began my descent, and a few minutes later was told to fly heading 150 to intersect the right base for 28L. Cool, I get to land on the BIG runway!

I descended to TPA just as I entered what would've been a normal base leg. Unfortunately the TPA was 1500' AGL (above ground level), which is not something I'd dealt with before -- usually it's 800' to 1000'. So I had to make a pretty rapid descent on final; I even employed a forward slip for the first time. But I wasn't too worried since I had a gigantic runway in front of me and a decent headwind. My landing, after the somewhat abrupt leveling off process, was smooth and centered.

I taxied back and got my takeoff clearance, and flew back up the coast at 4500'. I stayed with Norcal Approach, but I think they lost me at some point. I heard, "Cessna 610SP, Norcal Approach." I answered: "Approach, Cessna 610SP." That happened twice, then a third time with a different controller. After the third time, I called them: "Norcal Approach, Cessna 610SP." They responded: "Cessna 610SP, go ahead." I didn't know what to say. "0SP, Making contact, I think I lost radio contact a few minutes ago." They responded with "Radar service terminated, squawk VFR." Um...OK, apparently I blew it, but I'm not really sure how (if anyone reading this has a clue for me, I'd gladly take it).

I tuned my VOR to Woodside and chose radial 240 after consulting the charts and seeing that crossing that radial put me under the 4000' shelf of SFO's class B airspace. I turned inward and crossed the hills just in time to put me at the south tip of the Crystal Springs Reservoir. I called up SQL tower, came in and landed...decently. There was a bit of a crosswind, which I corrected for well, but leveled off high at first. But I corrected and touched down pretty softly.

All in all, it was a good flight. What I didn't do was plan out checkpoints and time my progress, as I should be doing. It was a short enough flight that it didn't really matter, but I need more practice doing that. I guess it's time to take some longer flights where it does matter!

Two Niner Diner

2007-01-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

We flew from SQL up to Petaluma to have brunch at the Two Niner Diner this morning. The weather was absolutely beautiful; the winds over the last couple of days have pushed all the pollution off probably into the central valley or someplace. Yesterday the visibility was amazing; I could see Mt. Diablo from Palo Alto as if it was right next to me. Today was not quite as amazing, but still very good.

I booked N35583, a Cessna 172SP out of San Carlos. We got to the airport around 10:00, and went out to preflight. Nice looking plane; great interior and very nice GPS. Things were going fine, until...why is no fuel coming out of the front bottom fuel drain? Hmm. I tried again, and again. All the other drains were fine, but this one refused to budge. I saw that if I held the collecting jar in, liquid started coming out, one drop at a time. I held it there for a while, and looked at it. It was hard to tell, but it didn't really look blue. I threw out the sample and tried again. Same result. So my best theory is that there was ice in the lines, or at least water (though I don't know why water wouldn't have just flowed out).

So we got N236SP instead. Other than the oil being really low (I refilled), it looked fine, so I contacted ground and asked for a Bravo transition to Petaluma. After I taxied to runway 30 and did my runup, I was still waiting for a squawk code. Eventually I pinged SQL ground and asked if I should stay with them and wait, or go to tower. They came back with a code right away; I guess they'd just forgotten about me.

We took a straight out departure, and for once the voyage through Class B was totally uneventful. The eventfulness happened just above the Golden Gate, when Norcal Approach gave me a traffic alert, and then advised a 500' descent and 40 degree left turn ASAP -- naturally I complied. Score another one for flight following!

The rest of the trip out to Petaluma was smooth and scenic, other than not being able to see any of the traffic to which Norcal was alerting me. My pattern entry was good, but by the time I was turning base (early, at that), there were two other planes on downwind, so I was feeling a tad rushed. The early base turn led to a high approach, but full flaps and idle power got me down in time. I leveled off slightly high, but no big deal, just not the smoothest landing ever.

The food at Two Niner Diner was quite good! We shared a veggie omelette, which came with potatoes and coffee cake. The omelette was excellent; the eggs were really thin and properly cooked (i.e. not overcooked), and the vegetables were properly done and really flavorful. The rest of the food was pretty good (not amazing, but definitely not disappointing) as well.

A few clouds had started to develop by the time we headed back. One of them forced us to go around it, but nothing too traumatic. I contacted Oakland Center as soon as my ascent was complete (hooray for me!), and they routed me back through SFO's airspace. This time I got sent over midfield of SFO, which was a new view for my travel-mate Nirmala. Back at San Carlos, there was a mild crosswind, so I took the opportunity to practice all the crosswind technique I'd learned last summer. And, voila, probably my nicest crosswind landing ever! Smooth touchdown on the upwind wheel, nose pointed straight down the runway, right on the center line. It helped that the crosswind was really mild, but it was enough that my approach was crabbing in.

The only downside to the journey is that since I took off from San Carlos instead of Palo Alto, the distance to Petaluma does not quite qualify for cross country time. But that's alright; today was about having an enjoyable experience, not necessarily being goal oriented.

Tracy and back again

2007-01-02T17:22:00.000-08:00

We went out for a simple, short flight to Tracy and back in Cherokee 4319D. But no flight is without its share of adventure, and this was no exception. We left San Carlos at about 4:15, and when we got to Tracy, the pattern was busy. A C150 in front of me decided to do a 360 to get out of the way of myself and the Cirrus behind me. I thought about getting out of the way too, as the Cirrus was pretty close behind me, but then just decided that as long as I don't dilly dally my way through the pattern, it would be fine. It was, and it was my nicest touchdown ever in a Cherokee. And I got off at the first taxiway, which was a good thing -- as I cleared the runway, I looked back and the Cirrus was about 2 seconds from touching down.

Getting out of the airport was another challenge. Everything was locked up! It seemed like there was no way out, but then we found a gate where there was a button to open it for pedestrians to exit. OK, great, but how would we get back in? We figured out that Nirmala, my travel companion, was actually small enough to squeeze through the closed gate. So after a nice time at our friends' place, we broke back into the airport and went back to the plane.

We took off into the beautiful night sky, and just admired the lights from above. Traffic was so light that even I wasn't worried. We touched 4500' and immediately began our descent to get under SFO's Class B airspace above us -- it seemed like as soon as we got to cruise altitude we could actually see San Carlos off in the distance. Then, of course, there was a complication: The panel lights decided they were going to flicker on and off in the most annoying possible fashion. Now, I had two flashlights with me. One was decidedly too bright, and the other was on its last legs (I have a cool LED white/red flashlight coming that I ordered a couple of weeks ago, but for some reason it's not here yet). So I ended up having to perform the landing without having a clear read on my airspeed indicator. It wasn't that hard, it was just an additional challenge. But, it was probably my second best touchdown in a Cherokee! Finally Nirmala is convinced that I can land!

Also, I'm making significant headway in the King Instrument DVD course. I am through the section about instrument approaches, which was probably the biggest and most foreign section to me. Martha King does a great job explaining all the concepts -- I haven't taken the test yet, but so far I highly recommend this course!

My next step in flight training will hopefully be to go land and take off from a Class C airport, so I get familiar with takeoff clearances and all that. Minor thing, I could probably figure it out, but it's also a good way for me to audition instructors for further training.

Oroville!

2006-12-30T17:30:00.000-08:00

Today I did the longest flight I've ever done. It was great! I planned a flight last night from San Carlos (SQL) to Oroville (OVE), a non-towered airport about the same latitude as Fort Bragg. My flight plan took me out of SQL, over the Sunol Golf Course, and then north over the 680 freeway, basically staying between Mt. Diablo on the right and the 4000' shelf of SFO's B airspace on the left, at 4500'. I had planned an early departure, around 9:00 am, but when I checked the weather in the morning, there was a lot of fog everywhere except in the Bay Area. I waited, and by 10:30 things were looking more clear (9SM visibility at the destination, pockets of 6 and 7 in between) and I figured as the day went on, things would clear up.

So I took off. The flight up was good, but again I had the same experience I did on my previous longest cross country (to King City, back almost a year ago), where I kept thinking about calling up Norcal Approach for flight following and then not doing it. I kept thinking about it, and I did keep switching frequencies and listening in, but I didn't call in for a long time. What finally persuaded me to call in was when I was coming up on the Williams VOR, and it seemed like there was a lot of traffic in the vicinity, so I called in finally. I found the airport without a problem, and there were other planes in the pattern so I used the same active runway as they did, 30. My touchdown was smooth and on the center line -- I couldn't have been happier with it! I taxied over to transient parking and tied down.

Turned out everything was closed at the airport! I called a cab, and asked to be taken to "a diner for lunch," so the driver took me to a local place that advertised breakfast for $1.99. That can't be good...but the Gardenburger I had was actually very good. After lunch I cabbed it back to the airport, and was in the air at 3:05pm.

Now, the visibility was a bigger issue. I was travelling primarily westbound for the first leg, right into the sun, and I couldn't see much at all. I got flight following right away, and it was a good thing, because there was another Cessna coming on the same route the opposite direction at the same altitude. The controller had me descend 500' to avoid him, and I never saw him. I decided based on the visibility, and my guess that it'd be clearer toward the coast, to abandon my plan and instead fly toward the Scaggs Island (SGD) VOR, and then to Sausalito and take an SFO Class B transition -- this also seemed to be what the controllers were expecting, and it was a shorter path, so I went with it.

The middle of the trip, between the Williams and SGD VORs, was actually stressful enough that I got out my portable GPS to verify what I was reading on the VOR indicator. The plane's GPS was out of commission, and the plane had no DME, so I really wanted some better indication of my position. The portable worked great, and I found my way OK. They cleared me through Class B automatically, and I flew it perfectly (though I did miss one instruction from the tower; I'm sure the jet pilots were rolling their eyes at my amateurish performance!). The SFO controller transferred me to the San Carlos tower, and I came in and landed again really smoothly and on the center line!

All in all, this was a really good flight. I think this really establishes my personal minimums for flight visibility -- 10SM for comfort, 6SM in a pinch and with flight following. Nothing less. Improvising in the air is always exhausting and difficult, and I think I did it pretty well this time. I changed my route, but I had my backup route in mind, and it was actually an easier route. I read the charts, made sure I had obstacle clearance and all that, and of course having flight following helped a lot. My landings in the Cessna were really good, which I'm really happy about!

On another note, I've been studying for the instrument written test. I tried reading the Jeppesen book, and learned a lot, but just didn't have the ability to visualize some of it. Also, the chart-reading sections are confusing because they teach you the FAA chart stuff as kind of a secondary step to teaching their own charts. Their charts do seem like they might be better, but the test is going to use FAA charts, so I don't want to confuse myself. So I ordered the King DVDs and have been working through them. They're quite good, and are really good about making me feel like I'm learning something. Whether I am or not, I guess we'll find out!

Practice

2006-12-22T18:55:00.000-08:00

I flew a new (for me) Cherokee Archer out of PAO today, N81034. I've tended to shy away from the planes with "all numbers" call signs for some reason; I think I was afraid the call signs would be less identifiable by me in the air. No such problems today, and it turns out the plane was really, really nice! Nothing fancy, or anything, it was just totally solid and flew really well.

I took off out of PAO at about 4:30pm and stayed in the pattern for two landings. Both landings were excellent -- nice and soft, I remembered to look down the end of the runway (unlike last Friday). So I decided to head out to SQL. There I got a straight in landing clearance, but the controller (who's not the best, frankly) then got overloaded with 610SP in the pattern wanting a short approach and a King Air coming in faster than he'd thought. He made both me and the SP do a left 360, which for me was a little uncomfortable right over 101 between PAO and SQL at 1000'. But oh well. I came in and landed again very well, and taxied back.

I stayed in the SQL pattern for two more landings. I became steadily more precise both on holding pattern altitude and on following the VASI glide slope. I tried leaving the power on for the third landing, since it was getting dark, but I think that just served to confuse me and land a little harder. After the third landing I took a right downwind departure back towards PAO, and came in and landed again with the power on and again less smoothly than before. But still, pretty well.

All in all, a good day/night of practice!

Nighttime In Modesto

2006-12-19T18:48:00.000-08:00

I returned to Modesto for the first time since the Satanis....I mean, Stanislaus County Fair last August, in 610SP, a nice 172SP out of San Carlos. I thought I'd kill several birds with one stone by stopping at Palo Alto on my way back to San Carlos.

Things went well! I took off from SQL with a left crosswind departure off of runway 12, and proceeded over the mountains. I decided I really wanted to try to fly headings that I'd precalculated and not rely on the GPS, as much as possible. Once I got clear of Sunol Golf Course, my first waypoint, I tuned the VOR to Modesto, and went straight for it. Well...almost. Turns out hills are kind of scary at night, and even though I was at 5500 feet, and knew for a fact that I was not anywhere near any of the hills, I still kind of veered around the hills.

My landing in Modesto was good; I did need the GPS to track my distance from the airport on my way in, though, since either there was no DME or I couldn't figure out where it was. One mystery yet to be solved. I taxied back and took off on a straight out departure, and this time at 4500 feet decided I would fly directly to Sunol (using the GPS). I looked at my chart and saw that the minimum safe altitude was 4200, so I was safe by at least 600 feet including the 300 built into the MSA. So I did it, flew straight to Sunol, uneventfully, and then made for Palo Alto.

That landing was pretty crunchy. Nothing too bad, I just hit a little hard. No bouncing, though, so it couldn't have been too bad. I taxied back and made straight out for San Carlos, where I got a straight-in for 30. Decent landing there.

So, I'm now night current for 90 more days, I've added some cross country time to my total, and I think I've bumped my Cessna 172 currency as well. A good night!

Three flights in three days

2006-11-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of flying over the last three days, totaling 4.5 hours, six landings and three round trips. On Thanksgiving morning, it was such a beautiful day that I just had to go flying. I was scheduled to visit my friends in Tracy over the weekend, and I thought, how nice it would be to fly there instead of driving. But the last time I'd tried to fly to Tracy, I hadn't planned it at all, and getting within 10 miles of the airport made me realize that I was totally unprepared, so I turned around and went home. That was a few months ago. So this time, I decided to treat the trip more or less like a real cross country, with a flight navigation log and times and a real plan. As a result, things went much more smoothly! In fact it was completely uneventful -- except I missed my climb checklist. Luckily in a Cessna 172 the only thing that I missed doing was turning off the landing light. I had two excellent landings in Tracy and back at San Carlos!

Being encouraged by that flight, I decided the next day that I should do a real cross country, to someplace I'd never been before. I chose Los Banos, since it was a greater distance than I'm used to but still not all that far. I did extensive planning, and found that it should be an hour each way or so. This time I took a Piper Cherokee, N4319D. This was my first cross country in a Cherokee, which is significant because there is an added step in fuel management -- the Piper has completely separate left and right fuel tanks, and unlike the Cessna, has no capability to draw from both simultaneously. I have read many accounts of Pipers making emergency landings due to fuel starvation when they have a full tank on the other side.

Everything went really well with the trip! We practiced finding our location on the chart, finding check points, and marking down times. The approach and landing were totally smooth. We only had about 15 minutes to look around, which was a little disappointing, but I had to get back to go visit my parents in the evening. It was kind of a long time in the airplane especially for Nirmala, but it was good to have done it -- after all, if we want to take longer trips, we need to get used to it!

So today, we flew to Tracy. I knew there was supposed to be a cold front coming through, but according to the forecasts, a layer of scattered clouds at 4000 was supposed to develop around 8:00pm, and I was planning on getting back no later than 6. But I knew that these things had a way of being wrong, so I planned to check the weather on the other side and leave early if necessary. It was necessary -- at 3:30, I checked the METAR at San Carlos, and it was already reporting a scattered layer at 3000! Great. So I basically interrupted the festivities and said we had to leave pretty much right away. My friends were more than understanding and happy to get us back to the airport, so we took off by about 3:50. As I departed Tracy, I heard another plane saying "straight out to San Carlos" so I knew we'd have company.

I took it up to about 2500, and steered out over the Altamont Pass to avoid the higher hills. I told the GPS we were going to Livermore so that I'd know exactly what our distance from there was and I could stay out of their airspace. But I got nervous about it anyway, so I took it up to 3200. As I came abeam Livermore, there were a slew of clouds at 3000, so I got down to 2500 and got below them. I crossed the Sunol ridge at about 1900, and settled down at 1700 over Fremont and on to Coyote Hills. As I was about to make my call to San Carlos, another aircraft reported inbound over Coyote Hills at 1700'! I made a call immediately afterwards, and then a third Cessna reported the same position! The controller had us all ident, and then gave me clearance to go ahead -- I was lucky enough to be first. I entered the right base for runway 30, and made kind of a crappy landing thanks to a few wind gusts.

It was a bit of an adventure, but I felt like I had a plan the whole time. I think that I've really learned the importance of doing some planning, however informally, on the ground so that I don't have to think so much in the air. In this case, the instant I saw the SCT030 in the METAR, I started thinking, well, if it's at 3000 over Sunol, I'll go through at about 2000. So when I got there, I knew it was a possibility.

Nirmala was a real trooper through this whole thing; I was very honest with her about being very worried when we took off from Tracy, and telling her there was a real possibility of having to turn back and spend the night in Tracy (and probably the next day too!). I'm sure I made her more tense than she would've been otherwise, but at least she knew the possibilities.

Luck: -1. Experience: +1.

2006-10-29T21:51:00.000-08:00

Once again, I've reached into the depths of my bag of luck and made a withdrawal. Tonight I decided to take Nirmala out on a night flight -- it was a really nice night out, and there are a few storms coming through this week so I wanted to get one more flight in the Cessna before not flying for a while.

Things started out a little messy. I accidentally left the passenger headset next to the box of plane keys by the door to the club. I almost left the tail tiedown tied down. And, my flashlight is on its last legs. I probably should've just canceled the flight at that point, but startup went well, and taxi and runup went well, so I went ahead.

We took a left crosswind departure out of San Carlos runway 12, and flew across the bay over Fremont. We did a 180 and came back in toward Palo Alto. Palo Alto gave me a base entry to runway 31, so I took it, and recovered from a high approach to land pretty smoothly. I taxied back, and we were cleared for takeoff so I took off.

Unfortunately, at liftoff, I was only going about 45 knots, way too slow. I pushed the yoke forward, fighting the liftoff forces and trying to gain some speed. I was already in the air, above the runway. At 65 I could do no more, and we were climbing. But why so slowly? I showed normal power, the engine sounded fine, but I was climbing maybe at 200 or 300 feet per minute. I was frightened, but I managed to make about 70 knots and still climbing. I thought about turning back, but I figured that it was just as far to San Carlos as it would be to turn around and get back to Palo Alto. And, I was climbing, just not how I expected to.

I went ahead and switched to San Carlos tower and got a clearance to land straight in to runway 30 -- the winds were calm. I'd made 1000 feet, finally -- it sure took a long time, and the plane would not break 80 knots.

Then I realized.

My flaps were still out. Fully out, 30 degrees of flaps. I just frickin' took off, at night, with a passenger, with full flaps.

I am still reeling from my stupidity; I can't believe I did such a stupid thing as to (a) not clean up the aircraft after coming off the runway, and (b) not check the flaps prior to takeoff. I could've easily entered a low altitude stall, and then we'd have been totally screwed.

My lessons from tonight: 1. Flaps, and the flap switch in the Cessna, are not visible at night. They don't enter your visual scan; you have to make a special effort to think about them. 2. Checklists are your friends. Use them every time, even in the most familiar of circumstances. 3. Even the most friendly, well behaved passengers give you more to think about and make it harder to focus. 4. A Cessna 172SP CAN actually take off and climb with full flaps. Just don't ever, ever do it again.

Piper Archer Checkout Complete!

2006-10-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

Two flights, over and out. Interestingly, I needed more than that to complete a Cessna 172SP checkout, and that's coming from a Cessna 172N! Two factors are at play -- for one, this is a classic example of how much more efficient with my time Sergey is than anyone else. He knows my flying, he knows what to look for, and doesn't waste much time. It's very impressive. For another thing, I went into this checkout with a lot of practice, so I didn't have to relearn much in the way of fundamentals.

Today we took off from Palo Alto in 2395V, a nice Archer from the 1980s. I've noticed that the Piper aircraft from the 80s just seem much more solid, in better repair than Cessnas the same age. I mentioned this to Sergey, and he agreed -- basically he attributed the difference to the quality of manufacturing. Very interesting -- I'm starting to think that if I decide to purchase an aircraft, I'd be more comfortable with an older Piper than a Cessna, and the Piper might hold its value a little better. Just an opinion based on limited observations.

Anyway, we went out to Livermore and basically just did a bunch of pattern work, starting with normal landings, which are dirt simple in an Archer, then Sergey pulled the power on me on downwind. I actually was heading for the wrong runway, but Sergey caught me and said, "You've already drifted too far; I don't think you'll make it." I saw my mistake, and immediately turned for the numbers. We had a nice conversation on the way down, basically with me claiming we'd make it and him saying "I don't know..." In the end, we did make it, and it was such a great glide in! I can't describe how nice it feels to fly the Archer; it's so intuitive, it's a real pleasure.

We then did a short field takeoff and landing, a couple of more touch and goes, a no flap landing, one more power off approach, and then a forward slip, which is a lot less scary in a Piper than a Cessna. Once again, while the high wing design may be more inherently stable, the Piper Archer just feels a heck of a lot more stable than the Cessna 172 or SP. I'm not, however, one to choose sides in what has been a heated debate within aviation for years; I really want to be good at both platforms (and others). But I do feel that mastering the Cessna has made me a better pilot, and more able to transition easily to other aircraft.

Anyway, I'm now checked out on the Piper Archer -- oh, one mistake I continue to make is a failure to do a prelanding checklist. This time there was a distraction in that another plane was reporting the same position as us (turns out it was a half mile closer to the airport). But still, that's no excuse.

Man, I Feel Like A Pilot!

2006-10-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

There's something about getting into a plane that's totally unfamiliar and finding myself able to fly it that makes me feel like a "real pilot." Today I began getting checked out in the Piper Cherokee with Sergey, my original instructor. For one thing, it was really great to see him again. He went off and joined the airlines, but came back recently to instruct part time. He has such a calming, encouraging presence that even though he's teaching me the whole time, I still feel like a pro.

For another thing, wow, what a really cool feeling to fly the Cherokee! This was a Cherokee Archer, with the 180HP engine. It's interesting, it's like everything's the same, but not really. The first difference that really struck me (other than the wings being low unlike the Cessna, but I knew that) was that there was only one door! I walked around to the left side of the aircraft, and stared blankly at the plane while Sergey explained to me that no, I actually had to climb in the passenger's door.

So after that, we went through the preflight procedures, which are pretty simple with a couple of minor differences. The biggest one was the importance placed on the linkages to the rear stabilator -- "if these go out, you're screwed," as Sergey put it. One nice feature is that the stall horn is testable without sucking on it. Eew, bugs.

We took off from San Carlos from runway 12, and took a Woodside departure as we climbed to 3500'. From there, I just did a few turns and a little light maneuvering as we made our way out over Crystal Springs reservoir and out to the coast. There, we did a couple of steep turns, where I realized how much harder it is to pull and push the yoke than I'm accustomed to, but also how much more stable the plane feels when it's turning. Then we did some slow flight, which was trivially easy compared to the Cessna. The Cessna, compared to the Cherokee, feels like it's constantly about to flip over -- in steep turns, in slow flight, and stalls. Sure, the 172 stalls very friendly, but the Cherokee was in a different world -- Sergey went into a power off stall and held the controls back, and the thing went into a cycle of stalling and recovering all by itself, bucking like a bronco through the air! It just wouldn't drop a wing, it wouldn't go into a full stall.

Then, at my request, we went and did a landing at Half Moon Bay. As you may recall, a few weeks ago I tried to go out to Half Moon Bay and land, but the turbulence scared me away on downwind. Well, it was pretty much the same story here, except this time we actually rode it out. It was amazing how in control I felt, even when we were having the heck kicked out of us by the turbulence. We stayed the course and actually landed on runway 30, then just turned around and took off on 12 and headed back to San Carlos.

We entered the pattern for 12 at San Carlos, and Sergey walked me through a landing. I flared a little high, so he helped me correct for that. The next time through, he let me do it myself. I flared high again, but corrected myself. Both times my turn to final was late and I had to make an adjustment. The third time, I was still late, so the fourth time I paid more attention and flew a proper pattern without the overshoot. All of the landings were quite good!

Hopefully my checkout will be complete in one more flight, which is currently scheduled for Saturday morning. Then, once I check out on the 160HP Cherokee Warrior, I'll have access to most of West Valley's fleet! I think these are enough to keep me busy for the time being, and there's always the greater challenge of the Cessna 182 and the Piper Saratoga for when I get bored!

Much more practice

2006-10-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

I went out twice yesterday! The first time was at 1pm out of San Carlos. I went up in 610SP, and did six takeoffs and landings in the pattern. It's interesting -- just because you have your license, doesn't mean this stuff all of a sudden becomes automatic. It's a lot like practicing your swing-out in Lindy Hop; even if you've been dancing for years, you still tweak your swing-out. I don't know if landing is the same way, but so far it sure seems like it.

Anyway, so I think I finally shook off my ground shyness that had set in over the last couple of months of not flying very much. I got my landings to be on the center line. And I learned the hard way that Kaiser is not the same as the AT&T Tower (any SQL pilots reading this are pointing and laughing at me right now).

After that, I went again last night at 7:30pm out of Palo Alto. Sunset was at 6:26pm, so my goal was to go out and do three takeoffs and landings to maintain my night currency. I took 222MF, a really nice plane. It was so nice to do pattern work with nobody else around; while my six landings earlier took 1.3 hours, my four landings at night took only 0.7 hours, with a much, much longer taxi. I did four landings because the first one was kind of flat. The next three were great though, and on the last two I used my soft-field technique with some success.

This week, weather permitting, I'll check out on the Piper Archer. I've never been in a small low-wing aircraft before, so I'm very excited!

And by the way, I'm still lusting after the Diamond DA40-TDI. 5.0 GPH at cruise in a 4-seater! And Jet-A fuel, which is cheaper than 100LL. Trouble is, these aren't sold in the US :-(

The importance of planning

2006-10-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

I took 610SP out of SQL today, and it started out fine -- I decided I'd go out to Tracy, land, and come home. So I got my left crosswind departure, went out over Sunol, and then I realized: I had no plan at all. The GPS would tell me which direction to go, but..where am I? What altitude should I be at? What's the weather like in Tracy? What's my descent pattern? Basically, I got within about 10 miles of Tracy, realized I had no plan, saw how hazy it was, heard at least 4 other planes in the pattern, and decided to turn around and head back.

So I stopped and did a landing at Livermore, which was fine except that I couldn't understand one of the tower's instructions for the life of me (it ended up being "traffic on the runway" which was fairly obvious). Then I came back to San Carlos, landed, and waited 12 minutes behind a dozen other planes to take off again. So, only one more loop around the pattern. The landings were not nearly as good as yesterday, but still decent.

I'll go again tomorrow; either just stay in the pattern or go up with a plan.

A bit to the left

2006-10-20T23:16:00.000-07:00

I went out and did some pattern work today. I flew 739TW out of Palo Alto -- a really nice plane! The day was pretty much completely perfect, so I decided to try and land as smoothly as possible. Everything went well, except that every landing was off the centerline to the left. I thought about it later and realized that I hadn't been using my right rudder during the flare -- and certainly left turning tendencies would take effect with a nose high attitude during the flare. So I'm going tomorrow and I'll try some more.

Practice again

2006-09-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

Short post. I went out and did 0.9 hours of practice last Friday. It was a beautiful day, and I went up in the early morning so it was quiet and incredibly peaceful. I just did a few steep turns out between SLAC and Crystal Springs, then I went out by the ocean because it was clear. While I was out there I decided to try landing at Half Moon Bay, which is usually too fogged in. I was very clumsy about getting in the pattern, in large part becaus there are all kinds of hills to the east, which is where a right pattern for 30 would put me. So it was awkward. Then as I was descending on my downwind, I encountered so much turbulence that I bailed on the whole thing. "Half Moon Bay traffic, Cessna 54JA departing the area." Good thing nobody was listening.

That's about it. Landing back at SQL was uneventful. Hoping to go out and practice again sometime in the next few days.

Angwin Trip

2006-09-17T14:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first time in about six months that I'd flown to an airport to which I'd never been. It marked a number of other milestones: my second Class B transition, my first night landing with a passenger, only the fourth passenger I'd taken up, my first time at an airport with no taxiways, my first time landing as high as 1850 feet (2000 and higher requires the mountain checkout), and the crossing of the 100 hour mark. What a day!

My friend Katherine wanted to go flying, and she came prepared with a plan: We'd fly to Angwin airport above the Napa Valley, get a cab over to Bothe State Park, go hiking, and come back. My first reaction was, holy cow, can I handle this? So I did some research, and basically could think of no reason I could not do this flight, despite the number of firsts and seconds involved. The previous two days had been pretty excessively windy, but yesterday was beautiful and calm. So we went!

Takeoff was uneventful. I had a lot of trouble understanding the SFO controllers for some reason, and on the way out I completely missed the fact that I had been given clearance into Class B airspace. They asked me why I'd turned away, and I had to sheepishly admit my mistake and thank them for their assistance. The rest of the journey up was great! We tracked the SAU VOR, then the SGD VOR. From there, my plan was to fly direct to Angwin, but the turbulence off the hills was pretty bad, so I decided instead to get over Napa Valley and follow it up. That was a good decision; things were much smoother. Kat actually found the airport first, which is impressive -- most non-pilots have a lot of trouble seeing tiny airports.

And tiny it was -- a single, narrow strip, no taxiways, and an upslope at the end, surrounded by trees on the top of a hill. What a totally different experience for me! We came in at about 4200 MSL, with the airport sitting at 1850 MSL and TPA at 2700 MSL, and me being nervous about the surrounding hills and trees. I chose runway 34 based on the windsock, and clumsily came into the pattern. My final approach was high, but I got it down in what turned into a pretty bad landing -- off center (on a narrow strip -- not the best idea!), and a little fast. There was a crosswind, and I came down on the upwind wheel correctly. I think the speed really was the biggest problem. But in any case, we got down, turned around and taxied back to the parking area at the approach end of 34.

We had lunch while waiting for the cab, and then went for a hike at the Bothe Napa Valley State Park. It wasn't the hike that we'd planned on, as we walked right past the entrance to the correct trail and got on the wrong trail. But it was great anyway! The cab picked us up at 6:30 as I got more and more nervous at the prospect of having to take off at night, on a runway whose lighting I was completely unsure of. But we got back to the airport and lifted off about 15 minutes before sunset, and headed south. I started to worry as I saw fog in the valleys toward the coast, so I called up Oakland Center and got the current weather for San Carlos: Sky clear. Whew! But I was having the hardest time seeing anything. Why can't I see anything? Oh...my sunglasses are still on. Very clever!

On the way back, again I had a lot of trouble understanding the SFO controllers, so much that I think I had to say "Say again, please" four times. But whatever; we made it through. I contacted San Carlos, entered the pattern, and executed one of my best landings, especially fortunate considering that it was my first night landing with a passenger ever!

Overall it was a great trip! I highly recommend it. I clearly need practice with my Class B transitions, so that might be the next order of business. And I really want to fly more!

Comfort zone?

2006-09-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since I last flew. A MONTH! And a summer month at that. It's been a terrible waste of daylight, a waste of a summer that should have been spent in the air. Now, it's not been without its causes. For one thing, I've been happier recently with the rest of my life (job, home) and therefore less eager to run away and go flying. For another thing, I was without a car for all of August, which was problematic at best.

I love flying. It's such a tremendous feeling to be up in the air. But as it is such a new skill for me, it requires a LOT of maintenance. I've read The Killing Zone, and I'm doing exactly what The Killing Zone says not to do: Stop training, fly occasionally. From now on, that ends. I fly once a week at least, and make sure I have at least one "good" landing per week. If I fly a cross country, and both landings are merely "OK" then I've got to go out and do pattern work.

Anyway, so it's been a MONTH. And today almost didn't happen, except that I was determined to go -- not a good state of mind in general, but necessary today. First, I came to Palo Alto and found out the plane I'd reserved was actually in San Carlos. My goof. No other 172SPs were available at Palo Alto, and I didn't want to fly out of San Carlos because while it was windy in Palo Alto (9 KT direct crosswind), it was even windier in San Carlos (by a lot). Plus, I hadn't flown in a MONTH, and PAO is definitely my comfort zone. So to extend my comfort zone, I ended up in 6521J, the plane I did almost all of my training in; the plane that led me to my license in the first place. Good plane.

So: Preflight was totally smooth. Radio work, taxi and runup were all great. Takeoff was...acceptable. I correctly went controls into the wind, but I kept feeling like it wanted to take off too early. I think the trim is not properly marked for takeoff. So I took off. First time around the pattern, I came in on a relatively short approach and ... whoops, I'm way too high, I can't align myself with the runway, screw it, I'm going around. I went around; it was a good go-around (and dealing with carb-heat again at that, a "feature" that the 172SP neither has nor needs thanks to its electronic fuel injection). OK. Second pass...not too high this time, but man, that wind is a pain! Actually I came in too low. Added a bit of power, and 6521J does this thing where the engine hesitates when adding power from idle in flight. I'd forgotten about that, and it was freaky, so I added more power. THEN I was high. Go around again.

Third pass. This time I took a nice long approach. I got positioned early. I kept the crab angle all the way in, and this time the same thing happened as last time, but I panicked less, so I didn't end up way too high -- just a little. I landed long, halfway down the runway, and ugly, with a little bounce, but safely. OK, one landing. Taxi back.

Fourth pass. An even longer approach thanks to the controller wanting to let a few planes out. Fine with me. This time I kept the approach under control and didn't panic when I felt low. This is a recurring theme with me, I feel low when I'm not. I didn't land as long, and this time I landed on the upwind wheel, as I should. My nose came down early and I had trouble controlling the plane to a standstill, though I did it. Yes, getting better!

Fifth pass. Another nice long approach, not as long as the last. This time I maintained my TPA better, and planned my descent much better. I cut power right over the numbers. I did everything almost right, touching down on the upwind wheel. I think the nose wheel hit a little harder than it should have after that, but not a big deal. All in all, a decent landing! Still a little controlling issue after all three wheels were down. I think this gets to what they say about "continuing to fly the plane even when it's down."

So, hopefully I can try again in the next couple of days, and maybe in an SP!

Lunch in Livermore

2006-08-13T22:33:00.000-07:00

Today's flight was actually very tiring, considering that we only went to Livermore and back. For one thing, it was a plane I hadn't flown before, so I always do an extra careful preflight. For another thing, my sister Shilpa and her fiance (and my good friend) Bud were with us, and they had many questions. It was great, it really gave me an opportunity to teach them a lot of what I'd learned, and frankly to remember some details that are generally..not forgotten, but compartmentalized..after the checkride.

It was really fun for me to take them up, as they are among the (many) people who expressed some consternation about flying in small planes. Afterwards, they said they had a great experience and gave every indication that they'd have no problem going up again, which is a good sign!

The flight itself was pretty uneventful except that the visibility was lower than I'd been used to going in. It was listed at 10SM. My yardstick has been that if I couldn't see the hills to the east of Fremont (probably about 20SM away) I wasn't going, at least not in that direction. Today, I could barely see the outline of the hills, and I'd cancelled flights in these conditions before. But today we went, and it was fine. So I have a new, lower personal minimum for visibility, which in this case I think is a good thing.

The only other eventful part was trying to find my way around Livermore ground. I basically wasn't totally prepared and kind of blew it, and the controller kind of handed me my hat at first, but then helped me out. I do need to do better at studying ground diagrams before going off to new airports.

Beeb's at Livermore is excellent, by the way.

Clouds at night are scary

2006-08-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere that pilots start out with a bag full of luck and an empty bag in which to put their experience. The trick is to fill the experience bag faster than you empty the luck bag.

Tonight I definitely filled the experience bag some, and took something out of the luck bag. I flew to Modesto for the final day of the County Fair Gig From Hell, after checking the weather and feeling quite sure that the marine layer was not coming in until 2 or 3 in the morning. The flight out was quite nice -- windy, at both ends, but nice otherwise. I got flight following, which made my transition into Modesto really easy.

I parked at regular transient parking this time, and the place was nearly deserted. Very strange, and very different from the Sky Trek experience from last time. This came into play when I got back to the airport at 9:30pm, and ... I didn't have the code for the gate. All the doors were locked. I had no way to get to my plane, until a very nice guy opened the door for the local flying club. Whew, was I lucky. Experience says: Never leave your plane without knowing the gate code.

I took off without incident, and kept contemplating getting flight following and then getting distracted by trying to stay on course or avoiding other planes. Soon enough, I was near Livermore, cruising along at 4500', and all was well. Then I was past Livermore, and ... what exactly am I looking at, down there below me? Hey, I know what that is...it's a SOLID deck of clouds!

Alright: Options. 1. Go to Livermore. It's wide open, I know I can get there, and it's inconvenient but it's ground. 2. I can see that there are some clouds over the east bay, but I can see the far side of the bay. See if I can just play giant slalom with the clouds. 3. Call up NorCal and ask for help.

I decided for option 2, keeping options 1 and 3 as a backup plan. I descended down past 3000 as I cleared the Sunol hills, so as not to break the SFO class B. There were clouds over the bay, but there were also clear patches, and I could see some lights where I thought San Carlos should be. Palo Alto was in the clear, so I knew I could go there.

I descended to 2000, then as I got over the east end of the Dumbarton Bridge, I brought it down to 1400 and called up the CTAF for San Carlos and announced my presence, and asked for advisories. Eerie silence. Two large dark splotches loomed at my 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock positions, so I concentrated on the lights dead ahead, which conveniently corresponded to where I thought San Carlos airport was (and my GPS agreed). I turned on my taxi and landing lights -- what the heck, let's get through this stuff lit up like a Christmas tree. Wisps of cloud entered my visual field and I went through them. I started to worry -- am I going into a cloud? No, I can still see the lights ahead. Keep going. I'm sure I just busted my 2000' horizontal cloud clearance requirement. Whatever, keep going.

After that, I was pretty much at the cement plant, the reporting point for entering on right base (which in my radio calls I'd been calling "left base") for runway 30. The area around the airport was clear, though I was really trying not to go around because the area just north of the airport was NOT clear. My landing was good, and I taxied to parking and let out a huge sigh of relief.

I was lucky. Experience says: Never fly back to the Bay Area without getting a recent weather report. 1-800-WXBRIEF had gone to a recording, and I never bothered calling FlightWatch or an FSS. That was pretty stupid.

The Stanislaus County Fair is now over and hopefully my flying in the near future will be more fun and less stressful.

PS:

Here are the METARS from SFO/SJC/OAK/HWD:

KSJC 070636Z 36007KT 10SM FEW011 SCT019 BKN026 16/12 A2996 RMK AO2
KOAK 070553Z 27011KT 10SM OVC012 16/12 A2998 RMK AO2 SLP150 T01560117 10200 20156 51010
KHWD 070554Z AUTO 27010KT 10SM OVC012 16/12 A2996 RMK AO2 SLP155 T01610122 10200 20161 51009
KSFO 070556Z 28014KT 10SM FEW009 OVC012 15/11 A2997 RMK AO2 SLP149 T01500111 10189 20150 51012

Hayward, Oakland and San Francisco are all reporting overcast at 1200. San Jose is reporting a less intense experience, which is basically what I saw. San Carlos is about halfway between San Francisco and San Jose.

Flying to a Gig!

2006-08-04T23:20:00.000-07:00

Today was the first time I successfully flew to a gig! I've been performing with my a cappella group Boyz Nite Out at the Stanislaus County Fair for the last 9 days, which seems totally unbelievable. It's been such an effort to get out and perform every day, and I can't believe I still have 2 days left.

Anyway, that's a different story. The real story is that I actually flew to Modesto today, and I flew back after the gig at night! The flight there was quick and easy, except that I got there much faster than I thought I would and had to take a quick descent path. When I got there, the main terminal building (where I thought I wanted to go) was closed, so the tower directed me to Sky Trek Aviation, an FBO next to the terminal. I landed, and what a squeaker! One of my best landings ever, so great that I actually was cheering out loud for myself! I taxied over to Sky Trek, and they helped me park. They actually waived their $25 fee even though I bought no gas (I intended to, but I'd used so little that they had nothing to fill).

The gig was quite good, one of our better sets. But performing takes a lot of energy. I got to Sky Trek at about 9:15, and did a thorough preflight before taking off. I set the VOR to the opposite as it was when I came in, and sure enough it led me directly to Tracy. I turned on my portable GPS (the one in the plane was completely uncooperative) and it helped guide me back to San Carlos.

San Carlos was a bit stressful; I asked for advisories, and somebody with a thick French accent murmered something completely unintelligible. Then a few minutes later, he said he was lining up on runway 12, which was news to me because I was preparing myself for 30. Anyway, I made left traffic for 12..or I tried to anyway. I could not see the airport! At all!! So I guessed. Turned out, I guessed right, which is a very lucky thing. Since I wasn't sure where I was, I turned base very early (I got really nervous about keeping clear of SFO's class B airspace), and my final leg was very steep and my landing quite long. But all is well that ends well!

Getting Back Into It

2006-07-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've written, and as you might expect, it's been a while since I've flown. A strange combination of events, or in some cases, non-events, put me in kind of a strange place with respect to flying. After my last practice session, I'd planned to take a plane out to Mather Field near Sacramento for a gig. But when I got to San Carlos, I could not see the Sunol hills. It wasn't cloudy, just really hazy, and certainly seemed like less than the reported 10SM visibility. In any case, if I didn't really have to be at a gig, I probably would've gone up, checked it out, and turned around if I got uncomfortable, but without the luxury of time, I got in my car and drove as fast as I could.

That, combined with a couple of other aborted flights due to what I considered to be marginal weather, combined with my reading of "The Killing Zone," basically caused me to become a little less comfortable with the entire concept of flight in a small craft. I've spent 90 hours piloting these planes, but somehow it started just feeling like there's so much I don't know and I put myself in so much danger.

So I didn't fly for a while, which is both good and bad. I finally went out last Thursday, and decided I should do my standard 5-landing practice. I went out to PAO and flew 751SP. The session actually went way better than expected. I'd ducked out from work, so I felt some time pressure, which caused me to not think so much about my radio calls. And guess what? They were fine! And my landings were quite good -- my nose (meaning, the plane's nose) is still a little unstable on my approaches in the wind, but the touchdowns are consistently good.

So today I went out again, and decided I need to get used to going to other airports. Why? Because the 11-day-in-a-row gig in Turlock is coming up, and I'm really hoping to fly to at least some of these shows. I needed a bit more landing practice, preferably trying out the soft-field landings too (since I need that for the night landings), and also to go to a different airport. So today I flew to Livermore and did 4 landings there, two soft-field and two normal. They were pretty good -- again, my touchdowns were great, but my approaches were high. Stable, but high. My last landing at PAO was better, so I think it's just getting used to a 1000 foot pattern altitude.

There were some trippy clouds, and a touch of pretty nasty turbulence on the way back, but all in all everything went really smoothly. So I may try to get a night flight in before Thursday; otherwise, I'll just go and hope for the best!

One thing is sure -- my confidence is returning, and I think one of the good side-effects of my little bout with myself is that now that I've thought about all that I don't know, hopefully I'll be better at preparation, and more motivated to take the next steps in my learning.

Practice

2006-06-30T20:52:00.000-07:00

It took me a while, but I finally came to the conclusion that even though I now have my private pilot's license, I still need to keep doing what I was doing before and go out and practice. Prior to today's flight, I hadn't flown in two weeks. And guess what? The same thing happens now after a long layoff as before I got the license. The piece of paper does not keep me from getting rusty and losing my feel for the plane and for landing.

So I went out and practiced today. I want to fly to Sacramento on July 4 (my band has a show), but I would not have been comfortable just getting in a plane after 2.5 weeks off. My goal today was to do 5 landings in a 172SP, at Palo Alto. Pretty much my standard pre-license drill.

So I went out in 751MF, a 2000 172SP. When I got to PAO, it was a beautiful day, but much windier than I'd thought. The METAR report said the wind was from 340 at 12 knots but the windsock said that it was gusty and shifting a little, but mostly right down the runway. Good practice day!

Starting up the plane went totally smoothly! That was gratifying, since the last time I had some trouble. I paused for a long time prior to giving my radio call; when I haven't done it in a while I feel the need to make sure I know exactly what I'll be saying. Of course, someone wound up stepping on my transmission so I had to say it 3 times anyway.

The first couple of laps were a little frustrating in that everyone and their brother was leaving Palo Alto for the long weekend. There were eight planes in line to take off at one point! I was #4. Another time I was #5 to land. So I was not able to make normal patterns; everything was getting extended out, and that combined with my lack of practice and the wind conditions pretty much made my first two landings sub-ideal. They were not bad; I touched down gently, and both times rather extremely on the upwind wheel. I'm not sure if that was really necessary, because the sock was saying the wind was almost directly down the runway, but on the other hand I was just reacting to what the plane was doing, so maybe it was OK.

The third landing attempt was bad, and I wound up pushing the power full and going around. I executed the go-around OK, except that I lost pitch control of the plane for a few seconds upon adding power. Pretty scary so close to the ground. Now this might sound a little overconfident or cocky, but it's not and I'll explain why in a sec: I'm very glad that my reflexes tend to compensate for my lack of experience. In this case, I put myself in a little bit of a scary situation and was pitching up and down very close to the ground, but my instincts said "Level the plane!" and that's what I did, which was the right thing. The reason I say it's not cocky is that even though this has happened a few times, I still cannot and do not ever expect it to happen, and use that as an excuse to either stop learning or stop doing everything I can in the planning phase.

Anyway, so I went around, and my third landing was pretty decent. By this time I was thinking about just terminating, but the amount of traffic dropped off dramatically, so I stayed and did landings #4 and #5, both of which were quite good.

So, all in all, I'm very glad I went. It was exhausting, and I made a few small mistakes (I forgot to turn on my beacon on the first lap, and I couldn't understand what I assume was a "position and hold" call at one point), but all in all it was really good, and I handled the wind pretty well. I think I'll be ready for Tuesday, but just in case, I have time scheduled on Sunday and Monday too. I need to do at least one of those, because they're both in San Carlos, which is where I'll be flying from on Tuesday.

Bay Tour

2006-06-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Today Nirmala and I went up for a little trip up over SFO, the City, and the north coast. It was a beautiful sunny day, which was part of the motivation, but the other part of the story is that we have to go to a wedding in Lodi tomorrow, and before we can do that I need to get my night currency up, which means I need three takeoffs and landings at least one hour after sunset, before I can fly with a passenger at night (and we'll be coming back at night tomorrow). Also, I hadn't flown in nearly two weeks, so I didn't want my first flight to be at night. So, we went for a daytime flight. Originally I was just going to do pattern work, but Nirmala wanted to come with me, and I was pretty sure she'd be bored of the pattern pretty quickly!

So we went to SQL -- as we drove up, I saw N236SP (the plane I'd reserved) in its parking spot, with the flaps extended! Very strange, I thought, but we went into the club and checked out the book. It turns out that the battery has a draining problem, and the plane would not start for a renter last night -- and nothing had been done since the squawk (I guess nobody even went out and looked at it to put the flaps back in!). The only other 172 (SP or otherwise) available was 4849D, an older 172N, old enough to have the 40 degrees of flaps.

We had to sit for a while as I convinced myself that I was indeed ready to try a Class B transition. After a while, I figured, what's the worst that can happen? What I'm nervous about is not a piloting issue, nor a weather issue, nor anything that is really all that hazardous; what I was worried about was just the workload and whether I could handle it. And the workload was pretty much making sure I could hear my clearances, altitudes and routing, and frequencies. So we went for it.

Things didn't start out so well; I actually had to ask my passenger what SQL ground said! Turned out it was "squawk code on request." That was mildly embarrassing, and I'm sure it didn't inspire confidence. But whatever. We went out to the 12 runup, ran up, and took off on a left downwind. I wasn't sure what altitude to go to, so I went to 1200'. SQL Tower handed me off to SFO Tower, and I stated my request. I had to circle over Bay Meadows once before entering Class B, but no big deal -- Nirmala said she saw Whole Foods.

So up north we went! It was totally smooth, I got handed off to Norcal Approach, who eventually asked me if I was going to stay in the north bay for a while. After an affirmative response, he let me go and we flew up the coast up to Point Reyes, where we'd been hiking the previous weekend. The weather was beautiful! Only a little turbulence going over the hills, but otherwise it was totally smooth.

We took an inland route back, over 101 and the Golden Gate. I used the wrong frequency first to contact approach, but no big deal. I called the right frequency and they cleared me into Class B, so we went back down over the City, and followed 101 down. I had not gotten the SQL ATIS weather, so approach gave me the numbers -- by this time, the winds had shifted and SQL was using runway 30 instead of 12 that we took off on. So I crossed over at 1200', entered a right pattern a little high, entered final right on target, and....what a crappy landing. Flat, too fast, a little bounce, and a nearly skidding halt.

So tonight I might go out and take care of my night currency requirements, but we'll see how I feel. Otherwise we'll just drive to Lodi tomorrow!

$100 Sandwiches in Salinas!

2006-06-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this nearly two weeks after the fact, but I wanted to document that it had happened. This was my first cross country flight post-license, and first with a passenger! Nirmala and I flew down to Salinas for lunch. I had landed at Salinas twice before during my training, so I was pretty comfortable with the airport.

We went to SQL to pick up N54JA, but when we got there, I overheard the receptionist (that's not the right word, but I'm going with it) on the phone with someone, saying that they were stuck in Half Moon Bay after the fog had rolled in. Which airplane? 54JA. She was saying, "Well, someone else has the plane, and I can't really cancel..." Meanwhile, I was outside thinking, hopefully these crosswinds don't get worse! So upon hearing this, I went in, and cancelled it.

It turned out that 222MF was available at Palo Alto, so we drove down to PAO, got 222MF, and after a little trouble starting her up, we took off toward Salinas!

This flight reminded me of my long solo cross country, in that there were patchy clouds out there that I had to avoid. But this time my comfort level was much higher, given that I'd done it before. We flew down at 5500', and everything went great. I remembered everything, including the leaning on the way down. My landing was a little bit hard due to a high flare, but not so bad.

The lunch was quite good! The sandwiches were big, and the curly fries were delicious. And the price (not counting the flight itself, of course) was very reasonable. Recommended!

So we headed back for Palo Alto, this time at 4500'. Some more cloud avoidance on the way back, but again, nothing too bad. We reported over SLAC, entered a left pattern for runway 31 at PAO, landed, and went home!

Hopefully the first of many!

Crosswind Practice

2006-05-31T07:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I completed my checkout in the 172SP, which is great since West Valley Flying Club has about 10 SPs between San Carlos and Palo Alto, and only two regular 172s that I'm willing to fly. Plus the SPs are newer and more comfortable, especially for passengers. Now I can start flying people around!

Steve and I then took an hour and tried to get my crosswind landing technique to be better. My previous attempts were all messed up; I'd get blown all over the place, and let the wind get up under my upwind wing, which is really a dangerous thing to do -- a great way to lose control of the plane and potentially get flipped over.

I'd been taught to do the whole approach crabbing into the wind (i.e. like a boat crossing a river points several degrees upstream to go across in a straight line, the classic trigonometry problem), and then at the end, straighten the nose with the rudder and drop the upwind wing. But that was getting too challenging, too many things happening at once, since I also had to think about the landing flare. So this time we did the whole approach aligned with the runway and with the upwind wing low. We did a couple of rounds splitting the controls; first I controlled the ailerons for alignment and he controlled the rudders, and then we traded. Then I tried to put it together. By the end, I had it kind of working, but not smoothly. I'm still overcontrolling with the yoke, deflecting too far instead of just making small corrections, and controlling too little with the rudders. But I'm getting it; I think one more lesson and I'll have it!

In the meantime I can fly SPs out of the more wind-friendly Palo Alto!

First 172SP Flight

2006-05-21T08:50:00.000-07:00

I took my first flight in a 172SP, N236SP out of San Carlos, last Wednesday. It was a little crazy; I was supposed to meet Steve (the instructor) at 4:00. I had a meeting at work from 3:00 to 3:30, and at 3:30 the CEO walked in and the meeting then got extended. At 3:55, I walked out of the meeting and got to the airport by 4:15.

Steve and I started by going over the major differences between a 172 and a 172SP. There are 13 fuel drains instead of 3 -- they tried to reduce fuel sloshing by contouring the bottom of the tanks, but that resulted in fuel, and possibly impurities, getting stuck in certain spots. So they drilled holes in those spots and installed drains that now must be checked during preflight. Brilliant.

The SP is fuel injected, so no more worrying about carburetor heat! Also, the fuel selector switch has no "off" position; instead there is a separate cutoff control. The startup procedure is bizarre: Priming is no longer manual, but instead, the auxiliary fuel pump is used. So: Throttle 1/4" forward, mixture full rich, turn on the fuel pump, wait for the slightest bit of movement on the fuel flow meter (it calls for 5GPH, but that's a tiny bump the way the gauge is set up), then pull the mixture full lean and kill the pump. Then, start the ignition, and advance the mixture to full rich when it fires, and immediately adjust the throttle for 1000RPM.

Crazy, huh?

After that, things are pretty normal. I got dinged a couple of times for advancing the throttle too quickly, which apparently is never good practice but fuel injected engines particularly hate. We did a Bay Meadows departure, and did a steep turn, slow flight and stall out over Crystal Springs Reservoir. The plane handled so well! Once I got it trimmed, it would just stay there! Amazing. The old 172s are so loose, that this just felt great.

We came back in and did some pattern work. My first approach and landing were all over the place, and Steve told me so. He demonstrated one, and then I did one. The last one was good except I flared high.

And that was it! So hopefully sometime this week I will complete the checkout, and be able to take passengers up in style!

First Passenger

2006-05-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago, I took my first passenger in the air! What a rush. We were in 6521J, my trusty old training plane. I felt like an airline captain! I gave a safety briefing, demonstrated the use of the safety belts, and showed how to latch doors open in the event of an emergency. How cool was that!

We had a bit of a limited timeframe. My passenger Nirmala was not the least bit scared; she was cool as a cucumber. We had a little bit of trouble getting her headset to work; the first time the headset was just broken. The second time, the headset would not pick up her voice and transmit, so I had to talk first and then she could answer. Not a bad arrangement!

So we decided to fly out over Half Moon Bay and try to fly over the coast for a while. I asked for a left Dumbarton departure out of PAO and got clearance to taxi. Nirmala said, "I didn't understand a word of that!" We taxied over to 31, did a run-up, and got clearance to take off. I started the roll, and we lifted off. Nirmala told me later that at that point, she got scared.

The rest of the flight was pretty smooth. We flew over Half Moon Bay, but clouds were coming in, so we turned around, transitioned back through Palo Alto airspace and out toward Sunol, and then around and back in with a pretty smooth landing.

Now I'm training in the 172SP so that my next passenger will be more comfortable.