May 2006 Archives
Time until 'Vacation': 06 days; 18 hours 13 minutes
... But who's counting?
Memorial day weekend was good. Time away from work (good on its own merit!), the Sacramento Jazz Festival, absolutely gorgeous weather, and of course, flying.
As to the flying, this was the third assisted cross-country. The route was fairly simple and not that long, but definately a step up from the previous crosscountries and skirting into the bay area.
First leg was the home airport at SAC, then over Franklin F72, then aimed into the delta towards Byron. This is a fairly small town, but dense enough to show up in the chart as densely populated. My compensation for the wind calculations turned out pretty good; tho we had to actually shoot a bit off course intentionally as there was skydiving that day at that airport. My instructor's advice was next time plan for the lake instead as a waypoint. The other item learned, was some of thoes big visible lakes on the map are totally invisible, when they are hiding behind hills. We ultimately arrived to Livermore LVK, which is a pretty darn busy airport, all things considered. Once we got over the hills and into radio range, the tower announced to everyone in the area about us as a new traffic hazard - a reminder that the radio frequencies we use are truely line of sight only.
Livermore to Concord CCR was fairly short. We simply followed the freeway up the canyon. Turbulance was a bit rough here; this is mostly due to the canyon we were in. Wind predictions were a bit wrong here, but.. I drive this section every week. I didn't need a map for this. Getting to Concord's airport was however a bit fun. The controller at the tower was testy (presumably working solo on a holiday weekend) and bit our head off for not calling as requested - alas, the radio frequency was too congested to get a word in edgewise to do so. Also, I managed to mislocate the airport diagram, so I was a bit lost once on the ground taxing.
We stayed only a few minutes, long enough to get my notes for the third leg - Concord back to Sacramento. Nothing to eventful other than we did follow the Sacramento river to Rio Vista, before heading almost due north back to SAC. I'm fond of the delta; I take the backroads in the delta when I drive to work most of the time, and have been driving through the delta since I was a teenager. It is neat to see the larger picture of the world, from the air, as compared to the roads I know so well.
My landings sucked this weekend. I'm going to hit my instructor up for some more time to observe what I'm doing, and see if we can't figure out where I'm getting sloppy.
Next week: First cross country solo!
A friend at work invited me to go up with him in a Citabria. This is an amusing plane. At a mere sub-1200 pounds, this plane is a lightweight, and that's mostly cause they threw most of the stuff I take for granted overboard. Attitude indicator? Look out your window! Flaps? Learn to slip instead!
The Citabria is a two-seater, one sitting behind the other. Visibility is awesome for both pilot and passenger alike. Maneuvering is a bit different - stick instead of yoke, and no flaps. If you want to slow down, you need to throw yourself at the wind sidewise and increase your drag.
This is also the first time I've seen a canvas covered plane (what I normally fly in is covered with sheet metal). Flying (at all) is amazing - but having canvas keep you up in the air is even more amazing.
As to the scenery.. we left Reid-Hillview (in San Jose); took a look over the mountains to the west towards Santa Cruz, and found that side to be totally fogged in. Instead, we cruised up and down the hills on both sides of the valley south of San Jose. Holy smokes, there are some huge mansions up in those hills.
(Yeah, this entry is out of order. Sue me!)
Saturdays are currently my "just practice" day. I head out to Franklin Field, which conviently has runways 09, 18, 27, and 36 (that's magnetic east, south, west, and north, lined up with the compass headings). The layout is great.
The wind, on the other hand.. I got to the field about 8:15a. With nobody at the field already practicing and setting the direction of traffic, I had to fly over the field, check out the windsock, and choose a direction.
Wind favored runway 18. Ew. I don't like that direction. But, that's ok. Get into the pattern, make the downwind paralle to the runway, watch the windsock, and.. it changes directions 90 degrees. Damn! I took a practice approach at it anyways, but aborted and did a go around.
Next time around, get on downwind, windsock favors me again. Get to turning base, wind changes direction, again full 90 degrees off. Bah. Another practice approach and go around.
Repeat this a third time, swear up a storm, and .. switch runways.
Thankfully, after I switched runways, the wind started gaining a bit of consistentency, and the rest of my morning worked out good with 8 landings before heading back to the home airport.
Our second crosscountry flight was from SAC to MOD. "exciting!".
For the trip down, I chose 6500 feet for the flight. Getting up to altitude was a bit tought, as I kept leveling us out due to the turbulance, so the climb rate was not what was expected. Once we got above 2000, the air calmed down, but then we had to hold altitude as we had oncoming traffic and we could not see each other. (We never did see the other plane.. tower let us know when it was no longer a factor).
The actual flight down there was fast; 18 knot tailwind helped. Of course, we had to fight that on the way back.
The service crew at Sky Trek aviation were real friendly. They pretty much did valet service for the plane, and invited us to make use of a rather nice pilot's lounge, even tho we were only staying a few minutes and not buying any fuel. Despite the lack of business, their service levels were still top notch. other comments show they are pretty good, except possibly for folks who converted their planes to run on car fuel ("mogas").
