Been planning on this one for a while but finally gotten to the point where I want to do it - leftturnwhenable.com will be a bulletin board site where San Diego pilots can share trip ideas, routes, problems and, most importantly, find trip buddies and safety pilots. Nothing there yet, but look out for it soon.
1.2 hrs PIC
Last night I was safety pilot for a guy I met off the Plus One Flyers club forum. In order to keep current to fly on instruments the regulations say that you must perform 6 instrument approaches, holding patterns, tracking and intercepting radials every 6 months. These have to be done in actual or simulated instrument conditions. Here in Southern California we don’t get many days where you can practice in actual conditions so the only way to do this is to wear a view-limiting device to stop you looking outside, and a safety pilot who tags along looking out the window and stops you flying into other planes or mountains.
Santa Ana winds had been blowing all day and so the winds aloft were acting weird. Over the coast the winds were from the west but a little inland they were from the east, each time we flew near the coast we got a little light turbulence. Serge flew an excellent circuit of approaches at Oceanside, Carlsbad and back to Montgomery, even landing with no lights working on the plane.
My currency expired yesterday so I need to get up with Serge and shoot the full 6 approaches. Hopefully I’ll do that later this month.
Welcome to my new aviation-related blog. This site will be a mixture of things: trip reports from the flights I make, interesting aviation news and reports, anything really to do with flying.
Coming soon will be the ability to specify your own airport weather reports so you will see the airports relevant to you rather than the ones I’ve chosen. I’m trying to think of things to put in the sidebars to make it more useful/interesting so if you have suggestions, leave me a comment or send me an email.
I’m trying to keep the comment spam at bay so if you find that you can’t comment, drop me a note and I’ll look into it.