Walking on the Moon

As you may have seen form Brenda’s blog, we’re weathered in again in Midland, TX.

Go/No go decisions are really the hardest part of trips like this one. We spent yesterday hanging out in Frisco as a sizable cold front blew through Dallas – thunderstorms, tornadoes, the whole nine yards – and today was looking pretty good. The McKinney to Midland leg went pretty well, though we did have a solid, awful, 30-40 knot headwind the whole way, just like last time I flew this direction at this time of year.

We grabbed lunch and I set out to brief the (fairly short) hop to El Paso. Hurm. Icing airmet. And those headwinds. And there aren’t a lot of good choices for alternates out here in the middle of nowhere. I looked and thought a while and decided to stay put. These are always hard decisions to make, because I’m always worried that I’m being too conservative. I’ve made a conscious decision to fight that urge so I made the decision firmly and we decided to stop for the day.
This was a hard decsions to make because I do want to get home. Midland itself looked good, and much less threatening than the printed weather; maybe the El Paso situation was similarly overblown. But If it is as bad as it’s written, that would be a dangerous flight for the Archer, and if it’s worse, it would be a disaster.
However, I’m not beating myself up about the decision any more, because while we were waiting for a cab, I talked to a pilot who had come back after trying to get to El Paso and encountering ice en route. You have to make a fair number of these decisions, and usually there’s nothing more said on a no-go. it’s nice to hear I read the information correctly. Whew.

Not too much to say about Sunday’s exploits. I taxied miserably at ELP, getting redirected twice, but flew OK out to Midland and then on to McKinney. The controller at McKinney basically tried to tuck me in ahead of a seminole with a night short approach. I made the short approach, but didn’t quite get off fast enough to get the seminole in behind me. I think it was overaggressive sequencing, but I was still hoping to make it work. :-(

Anyway, we’re in Frisco and hanging out with Brenda’s family.

As Brenda mentioned, she and I are off on a cross country to see our families in Texas and North Carolina. It’s always interesting to take on the elements in a Piper Archer.

Fighting the elements is usually best done in advance. Earlier in the week, I didn’t like the way the weather was shaping up and moved our route south. Originally the plan was to fly through northern Arizona and wind up in Santa Fe for the night. Watching the weather this week, it looked like those areas would be having some weather (and they are), so I’m typing this in El Paso, TX. I like to be out of the weather’s way. We’ll see if I’m still out of its way tomorrow. :-)

I also got to see a black hole today. If you’re a pilot, you know that landing on an isolated runway at night without surrounding lights for reference can lead to the black hole illusion. The effect is that one can come in much lower than one intends with the result of hitting terrain or stalling. Flying into El Paso tonight (IFR) I was vectored to 26R for landing. As I’m on approach, I realize that I’m looking at the very definition of a black hole: no lights but runway markings, no VASI, no PAPI, no ILS. And the wind’s behind me. So I look at my altimeter and it reads lower than I’d guessed I was – not terrifyingly low or anything – but lower than I thought.
Now, I think it’s within my abilities to land on such a runway. But I’ve already hand flown more than 6 hours today, I’m at an unfamiliar airport, and it’s a sizable international airport. I can hear Southwest jets landing and taking off over on runway 4 oriented appropriately with the wind and I know it’s got an ILS and a PAPI. I think lots of people just land where they’re told, but I (cancelled IFR and) went around on 26R and requested runway 4. The result was a nice uneventful landing and a longer taxi.

I’m pretty sure a fair number of people just take the original landing clearance – and that the landing is usually without incident – but I’m pretty happy with myself for taking the better runway.

I took a new guy at ISI, John Hickey, flying this week, because he was vaguely interested and I love to take people up. Another good thing is that when I take new people up something fun usually happens. This trip was no exception.

On departure we got ordered on and then off the runway as things got tight and then an IFR release came through. Not a problem for me, but it wasn’t the kind of smooth, orderly operations that you like to show a new GA passenger. John took it all in stride, but it wouldn’t have been fun for a nervous flyer, I expect.
It was a clear day, but pretty hazy in the basin itself. We took my usual tour of the basin, down towards Torrance and Long Beach, up past Anaheim and Fullerton, out as far as Chino and then back past Santa Monica. We did get to pick out a few sights through the haze – I’m grousing more than I should, the view was pretty good – and then headed out to Camarillo.

Camarillo’s usually a good choice for new flyers who like airplanes. The airport has such an active pilot community with so many experimentals and a strong CAF presence that there’s usually something interesting to see. Boy did they not disappoint today. Just getting in things were busy enough that I had to fly a modified entry – basically an overhead entry for beginners – while a flight of Lancairs departed. But the ramp was the real treat.

It’s not every day you come across a mirror-polished P-51 Mustang sitting on the flight line, even at CMA. I don’t really know where the pilot was coming from or going to, but he was going in that brilliant piece of aviation art. We spend more than a couple minutes gawking at it and taking pictures. Times like these I’m happy that I carry a camera in my flight bag!

After lunch we cruised over to the CAF hangar and had the run of the place for $5. Not to be outdone, the CAF had a spectacularly restored Corsair on the ramp that another transient pilot had parked there while he did whatever brought him to Camarillo. We got to both get a close up view of the Corsair and to hear the restoration folks chat about the details of the restoration. I never tire of hearing skilled restorers pick over a beautiful plane like this one.

The trip back was pretty boring, though we did get a nice view of the Getty Villa. If John attracts planes like that I’ll have to drag him around more often.

I spent last weekend, as in 20-24 October, hanging out with my parents in San Francisco. Much of the time my parents arew attracted to a city because of one of the many quilting/knitting/other-fiber-related conferences that my Mom attends. but this time they just wanted to see the place. Because it’s so close we went up to see it with them. Of course this was a good excuse to fly.

The trip up was a nice easy VFR flight, scarcely worth mentioning. It seriously went very smoothly. We had considered a stop at Paso Robles to check out their restaurant, which is from all reports excellent, but a late start put us on the non-stop.

We met the folks at San Carlos Airport and after the requisite waiting for Mom & Dad to find the airport, we took off for a fun weekend.

We had a great time. The weather was unbelievably good, with several days of completely unrestricted visibilities, which made for spectacular views of the city and the Golden Gate Bridge. Between my parents and Brenda, we had a fine selection of things to see including Muir Woods, the SF Art Institute cafe, many things in Golden Gate Park, the Winchester Mystery House, and a bunch of little restaurants in Burlingame. We even enjoyed a meal with Rod.  My parents are always fun to see, and we had a great time.

The return flight was Tuesday night, departing around 6:00 and I was hoping to get back to Santa Monica(SMO) before the tower closed at 9:00. Fortunately we had a good tailwind and got a timely reroute that shaved some time off our trip. We were IFR, both because I like to be IFR at night and because SMO was reporting 800 feet overcast when we left.

The flight was pretty routine. I did get a reroute, and got to hear a bunch of people shooting approaches in the Monterey area. Still, out over the Central Valley at night at 11,000 it’s quiet. The only troubling fact was that SMO’s weather had gone down to 600′ OVC. The approach bottoms out at 505′ AGL, so this was sounding a lot like an approach to minimums.

And it was, but still a really easy approach. I wouldn’t have though that made any sense, but here’s how it was. There was probably a 200′ thick overcast over SMO that got thinner as it went inland. For much of the approach we had pretty solid ground contact, and we reached BEVEY – a point about 6 miles from SMO – in good VFR over a thickening undercast. It quickly thickened up so we couldn’t see the ground, but at the last stepdown fix we plunged through about 200-300′ of clouds and popped out quickly enough to set up for a straightforward landing. Brenda actually enjoyed the approach quite a bit, and so did I, but it wasn’t a really challenging approach.

Fun flights and a great weekend.

My jaunt to do approaches Saturday was also interesting because it was the last entry in my first logbook.  When I started taking flying lessons on 12 Feb 2000, I bought a student pilot package that included a Jeppesen logbook.  Now the first 6 years of my flying experience are in one place, with a bow wrapped around them.
I’ve got an electronic copy of all the stuff, but the physical book is an interesting artifact in its own right.  There are the out of order entries around 9/11 that show how desperate I was to fly, but how I couldn’t look at my logbook while I was grounded for fear that I wouldn’t get to add another entry.  After I got to fly again and started instrument training I added the missing entries, but in the excitement I’d forgotten to add them in order.

There are a lot of firsts in there, too.  First passengers, first flight in 32169, first trip out of state, first everything, really.

As a nice coincidence, I didn’t get to make the last entry.  Flying with Andy as a CFI he gets to make and sign the entry.  Just like he made and signed the first one in 2000.
Now I get to start another one.  I’m a lucky guy.

For a post about a really great event, this is going to be kinda boring. Almost 2 weeks ago, Kevin Lahey and I flew over to Chino for the Planes of Fame Air Museum‘s annual airshow.

If I haven’t said it before, the collection of WWII aircraft at Planes of Fame is really phenomenal, and you can get right up close and personal with them. They have several one-of-a-kind aircraft and many, many rarities. Many are flyable, and on the first saturday of each month they have a special event and fly something cool.

As wonderful as all that is, it really pales before their airshow. Now, I haven’t been to an airshow in a long time. I love to fly, but I just don’t get to a lot of them. This was huge fun. There were tactical displays from the Navy and Air Force flying modern jet fighters and a few aerobatic and wing walking displays, which were all fine. For me, the really impressive stuff was the incredible array of WWII (and even WWI) aircraft that they put in the air. Most, if not all, of them from the Planes of Fame collection.

At one point they had probably 25 flying classic warbirds in flight simultaneously, including 2 B-25s and a B-17. There was also a Spitfire and a P-38. And I know for a fact that wasn’t the whole collection. They didn’t fly the Zero in that formation (though it flew in the show), nor the Northrop Flying Wing.

Of course, I took no pictures. Because, well, I wouldn’t have been able to capture things very well at all. If I get a chance, I’m going to try to get my brilliant photographer buddy Tom Beecher out to one of these.

If you like old airplanes at all, you should check it out.

Brenda and I made a return trip to the Bay Area this week to attend the nuptials of our friends Hal Pearlman and Andrea Leonard. This was basically a party celebrating their marriage, and like most things they do was focussed on the fun stuff.
Having just made the trip last week, the route was fresh in my mind. However, it’s a trip one can make with much more piece of mind when one has full tanks. I like having more gas than I need. The flight out was IFR, but over the top in clear blue skies. We passed through a thin layer going out and maybe penetrated one thin cloud coming into SQL. Brenda was knitting, I was picking out airports and it was a nice trip. We did get asked to confirm and ELT, which we unfortunately did. I’ll have to check the NTSB reports now for someone down near PRB that day.

We stayed up in Pacifica, where Andrea and Hal have a place. Pacifica’s a strange and wonderful place. It’s a really small town that’s right next door to San Francisco, but they’ve managed to keep development all but absent from the area. We didn’t see a house more than 3 stories, and the streets were quiet and pedestrian friendly. We did some shopping, mostly nosing around antique stores and thrift shops, walked the pier and hung out at Nick’s Sea Breeze Motel until the reception. I was delighted to have the room in the plane to bring home furniture for Brenda. (OK, a small knitting cubby…)

The reception was fun with good food, good friends and a goofy and fun band. It was great to hang out and enjoy the evening.

The next day we had time to stop by the Hiller Aviation Museum and check out the displays. It was a well run interesting museum, but didn’t have the more rough and ready charm of, say, Chino’s Planes of Fame. There was much to see and enjoy, though. I found the flying platform displays especially interesting. They also have a great collection of restored very early (even pre-Wright Bros.) aircraft. Great to see that old stuff.

The flight back looked like it would be VFR, and the pre-flight briefing sounded that way, too. We squeezed out of the SQL airspace, and south out of the Bay Area, enjoying a beautiful view of Monterey Bay. However, I heard another aircraft looking for a pop-up IFR into Van Nuys (VNY), which prompted me to check the weather. Sure enough, SMO was IFR. I got a clearance still northwest of Santa Barbara and we settled in for an instrument landing at SMO. It wasn’t an approach to minimums, but was one of the lower ones Brenda’s done with me, so it was interesting for her and fun for me.

All in all a good weekend of flying.

It’s always nice when you confirm another fact from your POH. This weekend I confirmed that you can safely fly an Archer with people in all four seats. It helps a great deal if one is a kid and you don’t take a lot of gas or luggage. We were at about gross weight and I could tell, but overall 32169 performed like a champ. The pilot seemed to do OK, too, but I’ll admit a strong desire to just jerk the little bugger off that 2600 foot runway at San Carlos (SQL).

The occasion was the Make magazine-sponsored Maker Faire in San Mateo. Aaron Falk talked me into taking him and his daughter up (fly to the Bay Area? not a hard sell), and when she saw the program Brenda was interested, too.

We got a good early start out of SMO (well, as early as the weekend curfew allows – 8:00 AM) and stopped in San Luis Obispo (SBP) for gas. There was a solid undercast most of the trip, but we spent most of the trip on top at 8000. It was cold enough for ice, but no clouds. We got to shoot an approach into SPB, but broke out at the FAF, so not so exciting. I did get an automated altitude check alert from the tower, but wasn’t ever below a charted altitude. I think it was one of those trend-based alarms that didn’t like my steep decent to each step down. At any rate a nice flight.

From there IFR to SQL. Another fun, mostly on-top flight. Only really in IMC while getting vectored for the approach. The controller pretty much put me into the clouds just in time to get busy, vector me around, and then I popped out at the FAF again. SQL is in a busy corner of the woods.

Coming out of SQL on Sunday, I got a fairly complex VFR/IFR departure clearance but the rest of the flight was pretty straightforward. Aaron would make a fine flight instructor with the number of questions he asks during departure, but that was actually good practice dealing with the distraction. And he was happy to take “I’ll tell you in a minute” as an answer. I actually got some IMC this flight as the cloud deck slowly rose up to meet us outside SBP (another gas stop). Overall a pretty smooth flight.

The last leg was equally pleasant. Departing full from a 5300′ runway is much easier on the nerves than a 2600 footer. We flew through one cloud on departure and descended through a layer over the LA basin and were in at SMO. Between there we cruised above layers and Brenda taught Aaron’s daughter to knit.

We did get to see a one of a kind phenomenon. Up above the clouds in an airplane you often get a circular rainbow centered around the shadow of the plane, called a glory. As we turned east from San Marcos, we were flying right out of the sun, and as it set it arranged itself directly behind us both laterally and vertically. Everything was perfectly aligned so that as we entered a cloud bank on descent we met a very clear glory-haloed silhouette of the Archer perfectly nose to nose. It was a 120 knot collision with the fantastic that you can only see from the front seat, and well worth the trip.
The faire deserves a post to itself, and it’ll get one.

I’ve been able to get up in the air twice this week, once purely for training and once for a little training and a little fun.

Training first: my primary CFI, Andy Hoover, took me up Thursday (30 Mar) and beat up my IFR skills. One of the sad facts of life of flying in SoCal is that we really don’t get a lot of hard IFR days to keep current and safe without going up and getting under the hood. Even though Andy’s spending most of his time flying for American Eagle, he’s good enough to come round every couple months and work me out as well. He really had a sadistic streak going this time; we did an ILS at the top of the green arc to a hold, then a partial panel ILS into Bob Hope – featuring some patented SoCal vectors in lieu of a hold, so it was basically a partial panel hold. We finished off with a different failed instrument instrument for the VOR-A into SMO. Nothing the way it usually works, and all of it went pretty well. After a couple years of this I seem to have a little of it down.

Today, I worked off my PDT disorientation by taking an early afternoon jaunt out to the inland empire. First stop was San Bernardino (SBD) to work some engine out landings. It’s an old military base with a 10000 ft runway, which makes it a great spot to practice things you need a big margin for. Unfortunately, SBD was pretty crowded. There were 3 or 4 of us in the pattern most of the time I was there, with a few more at the peaks. I hung around for a while shooting touch-and-goes and practicing uncontrolled field radio technique, and working landings in up and downdrafts. Good fun. Spotting someone out in their warbird doing a quick aileron roll for the fun of it en route only improved my mood.
After I got tired of that, I went next door to Flabob AIrport (RIR) for some lunch. Flabob is a great little GA airport. It’s a cool little field, but it’s really odd going from the 10000’x200′ runway at SBD to RIR’s 3200’x50′ strip. From wide, long strip illusions right to short, narrow strip ones. Whee!

There are many, many interesting little planes tied down at Flabob and an active pilot community that seems to have good relations with the surrounding community. It’s the site of EAA chapter 1 – where that very cool organization was founded. It’s always an interesting place to drop in to. I walked around, took some pictures and had a practically free chicken-fried steak sandwich. Hard to imagine better.

The trip back to SMO was uneventful – well as uneventful as getting into SMO ever is.