...or, not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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!