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!

Hey....I CAN Do This!

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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!