Diary of a Private Pilot

I’m flying to England for a week and a bit tomorrow so its a slow work day today. Whilst reading about rumours of a Virgin 747 gliding into JFK this week with all 4 engines out (as you guessed, its not true) I was reminded of probably the most famous of the few 4-engine out incidents - British Airways Flight 9.

Hopefully on my (two-engine) flight across the pond tomorrow I will not be hearing the infamous words: Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress

Took a 172 to French Valley this afternoon. The hope had been to do some daytime touch and goes, have something to eat, then some night time stop and goes, and back home. But I underestimated the arrival of darkness and was after sunset before I was halfway there. I was too high on final and, is my habit when I am out of practice, landed too flat, not real pretty. Taxied to transient and enjoyed a very tasty hamburger in the restaurant. To my delight the place was getting fairly busy by the time I left. My hunger sated, back into the plane and once around the pattern, this time still high on final but it worked out ok. Next time around I was high again and this time I went around rather than fight it. Made a much slower pattern and greased it in nicely. I patted myself on the back as I taxied back and decided it was time to go home. I tuned Ramona into the GPS and followed the needle, got a Class D transition, over the reservoir, Gillespie Field and home. All in all a nice little flight.

For the first time since I don’t know when I am current in all three areas - PIC, Night and IFR (ssh, don’t ask me about my complex and high-performance currency). Now to keep them all up without lapsing.

0.7 hours in the simulator, two approaches and I’m good until the end of Feb. I really really really mean it this time when I say I am going to keep all my currencies up.

If the early morning clouds lift today I plan a short hop to French Valley for PIC and night currency this afternoon. First thing this morning, I logged onto DUATS to take a peek at NOTAMs etc, put in my departure time as 1600 PDT…. and I notice that all the surface observations have a reported time later than it is right now. Hmmm….. a little asking around and who would have thought that PST meant Pacific Standard Time, rather than Pacific Summer Time?! Ok, so every American would!

In my defence, in the UK we have BST which is British Summer Time so all this time I’ve been in CA (about 6 years) I’ve thought that PST was summer and PDT was winter. And all that time my DUATS-filed flight plans have been off by an hour!

Amazing to think that no one was killed in this accident in which a plane landed on top of another just as it had touched down.

Another report I read reported that the accident pilot was transmitting on the wrong frequency and so did not hear the earlier pilot announce that he was on final, also. Obviously the second plane was on a higher path than the first and, being a low wing it would have been difficult to see beneath him. Either way, its incredible to think that at no time did he see the other guy. One of the dangers of uncontrolled airfields!

I was hanging out at the airport tonight waiting to meet some friends, sat outside transient parking listening to the traffic on my radio. After a while a car pulled up and a lady got out with a young boy, obviously thrilled to be watching the planes. I had time to kill and I thought why not offer the kid a look inside one of the club planes - I had the key with me, though not my flight bag. So I went out, told the lady I was a pilot and would her son like to sit inside a plane?

Well, the kid needed no prompting and after what was probably a weighing-up of the likelihood of my being a child molester (or more likely the realisation that she could take me if it came to it!). I picked a 172, opened it up and told the kid to sit in the left seat while I got in the right. I explained some of the controls but it was going past him as he looked around. I flicked the master switch and let him put the flaps down. Pretty soon his mother said it was time to go, the kid thanked me with a big smile and off they went. I felt a smile myself from having given the boy something to remember for a while.

I’m not sure anyone reads this blog these days (if they ever did!) but in case anyone was wondering where I’ve been recently, the answer is Tokyo! I was sent there by Sony to do performance testing on the new Playstation 3 for the Japanese launch next week. Having now had my hands on the real thing rather than the test units we have in San Diego, I can say they are fantastic if you like games.

Had planned to be IFR and night current by now but the trip put a stop to that. I’m real jet lagged so not sure I will get back into the air next week. I’m going home to England for Thanksgiving so shall try to get back up at least once before then.

Didn’t see a single small plane the whole time in Japan.

I spent last night watching a whole bunch of aviation videos on youtube.com and came across this excellent pilot website - 160knots.com. Watching his videos has me thinking about videoing my own flights in the future. I have a bunch of cameras at home, will have to see if any of them are suitable.

I’d never really heard of the Bellanca Viking until reading Frank’s website and I must say it a really impressive sounding plane, and now I want to fly one. Prices are actually pretty reasonable and you get a lot of plane for the money in most cases. So I’ve updated my plane wishlist:

• Cirrus 22-GTS when I win the lottery
• an RV-6 if ever thought I could build my own plane.
• a Bellanca Viking come the day I just decide to go for it and get myself something reasonable

Tonight I met Serge at the airport for his turn to suffer my simulated instrument flying. He seems to enjoy it though, go figure. I needed 4 approaches and, as said earlier, I planned to do two ILS approaches back at MYF. SoCal asked my intentions immeadiately on contact and I gave them my request. It took a while for them to get back to me so I wondered if I had confused them but it turned out he was working out what he could do, and that turned out to be the usual IFR to Brown and then practice VFR for the rest.

This is probably the last time I will do this circuit, it is just so fast and there is so little time to prepare for the next approach. It must be tough for the controllers too. Tonight I was given a 90 degree intercept onto the localiser at SEE, for the ILS at MYF it was a 45 degree one. In future I will fly IFR more often, but on short cross countries so I will get more time in between approaches.

When we got back to MYF the controller had forgotten my request and I was cleared to land so I didn’t get my 4th approach. Its possible to file MYF - MYF for a very short flight, I’ll try to do that next week.

My IFR currency expires at the end of the month and, according to logshare.com, I need 4 more to extend it until the end of February. Our simulated IFR currency rides are usually three approaches: the “south pattern” of the VOR approach at Brown Field, the LOC at Gilliespie, and the ILS at Montgomery; or the “north pattern” which is holding at Oceanside VOR followed by the VOR approach into Oceanside, the ILS at Carlsbad, and the ILS at Montgomery.

So I’ve been trying to think how best to fit in one extra. Carlsbad is a natural choice by extending northwards from Gilliespie, or perhaps even doing Calsbad, Gillispie, Brown and then home. But recently SoCal has not been allowing low approaches at Carlsbad and I really don’t want to do a full stop and then back up. Or, how about a brand new approach - the VOR into Ramona, a little out of the way and almost certainly a bad idea in the current Santa Ana winds. Nah, I think it will probably be the south pattern with a missed approach at Montgomery and back around for another go. Flight is set up with my safety pilot Serge on the 27th.