Walking on the Moon

Brenda and I left 32169 in El Paso on our holiday trip because of delays in getting a fuel cap to replace our leaky one. Today I brought her home.

I dwell too much on not making a trip (I’m working hard not to come right out and say failure), as all pilots do, so this holiday trip left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s easy to remember the few problems of the trip, rather than all the fun.

This morning I was at El Paso International bright and early to head home.

In my sad little head, I was thinking “limp home,” but really everything went fantastically well. The plane was raring to go – that new magneto really makes starts smooth – and the weather was great throughout the day. The only sad thing was my empty co-pilot seat.

The first leg to Phoenix Goodyear was marked primarily by stiff headwinds. I kept an eye on the progress with choices in mind in case we couldn’t make the full leg, but we continued to stay within my conservative estimates. It was still almost a 4 hour leg.

Along the way I found myself wanting to get a better idea of our average speed. The GPS provides an instantaneous ground speed sample and an estimated arrival time based on it, but there was enough fluctuation that I didn’t want to subconsciously plan for the best time I’d seen. There may well be a way to get the GNS 430 to use a longer time to calculate its ground spped for me directly, but I used my cardboard E6B. It was cool to see I could still do a time-distance problem given how much I lean on the electronics.

The stop at Goodyear was pretty short, but I did get to see this replica mustang:

and Goodyear has this mysterious boneyard of old transport aircraft:

They cheerfully popped some gas into the plane and off we went for home. The trip to Santa Monica (SMO) was really uneventful. Well, no flight is really uneventful; I saw a pair of F-16s in flight, was alternately eagle-eyed and blind in spotting traffic. Even the winds slowed down. And flying the last leg for home from a long way is always exciting.

Landing at SMO was hampered by low visibility caused by mist in the afternoon sun. Since SMO is my home field, that was more an annoyance than anything else. I’m pretty good at safely winding my way back there.

When’s the next trip?

I’m out in El Paso, bringing 32169 back to SoCal.

Without Brenda, my heretofore unbroken streak of showing up in El Paso and having a reasonable room available has been, well, broken.  I managed to find a room near the airport, though for more than I expected to have to pay.  Apparently there’s something up in El Paso today; several places were full, and the remaining rooms were at a premium.  There is an upside, though.  The desk clerk booked me into a suite at no premium.  It’s a pretty nice place to crash for the night.

Weather looks good, so hopefully we’ll be back tomorrow.

Well, it’s New Year’s Eve, and we’re in Little Rock, AK (LIT).  Brenda’s napping and I’m planning tomorrow’s bucking of the winds.

Hope you’re all snug and happy.

Flying airplanes is a constant learning experience. Today I learned how to jump start a Piper Archer.

Brenda and I are getting ready to fly out to see our respective families for the holidays, so I’m trying to log a little extra time in preparation. I’m looking to make sure that I’m reasonably current on my skills and that the plane’s also ready to go. Today I stopped off at Flabob field for lunch, and almost didn’t get back out.

A couple weeks ago, I had a battery go completely dead causing me to miss an afternoon of instruction. After that, I had some starting problems that my mechanic couldn’t repeat. And today I had more of the same, to the point where I ran my battery completely down. A helpful fellow who was nearby offered to jump, and after I realized that I did indeed have a 12 volt battery, we gave it a shot. It worked like a charm, and away we went. It was an interesting thing to learn how to do, and I’m happy to know it.

But I think I need a new battery.

Tim Buchhiem points out that Salon’s Ask The Pilot column is willing to take on the iPhone.  While I was in there poking around, I came upon this beautiful remembrance as well.  You may have to look at an advertisement or something to view the stories.

Avweb’s picture of the week is a great source of airplane pictures, but this week they came up with something different.  If you have trouble identifying it, the first link has the answer.

I have a little holding entry quiz on the site that I wrote when I was writing Java more frequently.  A fellow named Ruben Pelaez pointed out a missing feature this week, so I added it.  Details are on the quiz’s home page.

This AP story (via CNN) alleges that NASA is being told to not release results of an aviation safety survey that might make people nervous and airlines less profitable (if that’s possible). If that’s true someone’s got a lot to answer for. Particularly troubling is:

The survey’s purpose was to develop a new way of tracking safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. The project was shelved when NASA cut its budget as emphasis shifted to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

That makes the whole hubub about the impractical Mars mission particularly alarming. While I’d love to see us get to another planet before I die, using it as a smoke screen to cut aviation safety programs isn’t good government.

Vatsim is one of the coolest things about flight simulators.  Let Chris De Young explain it to you on a guest post at Penny Arcade.

When dropped CFI extraordinaire Andy Hoover off at El Monte (EMT) last week, I noticed a restaurant open on the field.  I love an excuse to fly anywhere, so I filed El Monte away.

Now, it’s not far to EMT, so I set out to do some stalls and steep turns before heading into El Monte for lunch.  This had mixed results.  There were Santa Ana conditions today, so it was clear and gorgeous (EMT was reporting 50 miles of visibility), but there was enough turbulence that maneuvering at low power settings was laborious.  I was hoping to do a series of stall recoveries tp work on some finer points.  Conditions were variable enough that such fine-tuning was difficult.  I did do a few stalls and some slow flight to get the feel of doing them in the turbulence and mountain waves, but didn’t get to my tinkering.

Then, off to EMT.  It was bumpy, but fortunately there weren’t a lot of folks out because of it, which was nice.  I flew a wide pattern into EMT, and actually made a nice enough landing.

Annia’s Kitchen is the restaurant on the field, and I was impressed by the  service and the food, even though I don’t think I ordered the best thing on the menu.  I had a chicken sandwich with a chile on it – the Santa Fe melt – and it was really quite good.  Offering either fires or onion rings with the sandwich is a good call.  (The onion rings were crisp and not over-breaded, just right). But from the size and looks of the various breakfast dishes that went by, that was the way to go.  The ham slices on the ham and eggs were enormous and the pancakes thick and tasty looking.  Next time I go I’ll aim for one of those; a ham and pancakes dish would be optimal.

The staff was very pleasant and attentive.  The restaurant has a large patio – a veranda almost – overlooking the runway, and a half-hour watching airplanes while munching onion rings without my iced tea running dry would be worth it even if they didn’t serve any food.  There’s nothing too fancy here, but excellent quality for an airport diner.

Thus fortified, I headed over to Brackett Field to put in a few landings, and then back to SMO.