Happy New Year!

January 1st, 2007 • 1 comment

Ok, its 2007, time for this year’s new year’s flying resolutions, presented roughly in order of likely completion:

• Stay PIC, night and instrument current all the time (night can lapse for the summer)
• Shoot some flying videos (already got the equipment for that)
• Fly once a month, even if just pattern work
• Take up more (cost-sharing) passengers
• Make some cool GPS tracks a la Jason (AnywhereMap is the best flight map but no native trip log available, sigh)
• Make a long cross country at least one state away, UT or CO preferred, (Northern CA would suffice)
• Get a new rating, seaplane, commercial or MEL
• Buy a plane (lol)

A very happy and safe new year to you all.

2006 Flying Stats

December 19th, 2006 • 5 comments

Been another disappointing year, flying-wise. I had hoped to complete my Commercial rating but being out of work for three months killed that idea, can’t see it happening next year either right now. Anyway, here are the sorry statistics for the year 2006.

• 15 daytime landings; 5 night landings
• 12 approaches (all simulated)
• 4.5 hours of instrument time (all simulated)
• 2.4 hours of night flying
• 13.0 hours total flight time

I read quite a few flying-related blogs but I’d like to single out the following for an extra special thank you this year for keeping me in the air vicariously: Big Country Flying, the IFR Pilot, and Pilot in Training (who we all look forward to celebrating her exam success next year).

Personal Minimums

December 13th, 2006 • 3 comments

Was reading some aviation magazines and blogs last night, mostly about “exciting” flights or accidents and it got me thinking that despite 300 hours of flying time I am still quite the ‘fair weather’ flyer. I find it hard to understand people who fly VFR into IMC because if the weather looks anything like it would be like that I don’t go, or I file IFR. Maybe this makes me a wuss, I don’t know. It obviously means I don’t fly as much as I could (though to be honest my wallet is the main captain of that decision).

Shortly after getting my Private certificate I took a short VFR trip to Riverside Municipal airport. Visibility was 4 miles which is VFR, right?! Getting to the LA basin I was met with a wall of haze, very hard to see much of anything. I had my Anywhere Map GPS showing me the way but it was not pretty. The tower gave me “suggested headings” to find the field but I can’t believe how late I saw it; the tower was still reporting 4 mi.

There are a few small hills on the way out of Riverside back to San Diego and I decided that my GPS would keep me out of the way. So, of course, on departure the PDA that was running the software froze and that was no longer an option. Some quick dead reckoning came up with turns and times and I was soon out of the murk and my heartrate back to normal. I called FlightWatch and RAL was still reporting 4 miles.

I really can’t believe that was 4 miles or, if it truly was, then I can’t believe that VFR minimums are 3 miles because I couldn’t see much of anything useful. So one of my personal minimums is 5 miles vis if I am going VFR, less than that and its IFR.

What You Don’t Want to Hear on the Radio

December 6th, 2006 • No comments

Spent some time listening to the radio in the car park at Montgomery Field this evening. A plane was coming in from the west and was given a clearance to enter on a right downwind for 28R. It is important to know that almost adjacent to the airport on the north is Miramar Marine Corps Air Station….

MYF: Enter right downwind for 28R
Cessna-123: Downwind for 28R, airport in sight.

MYF: C123, immediate right turn 40 degrees
C123: Right turn 40 degrees

MYF: C123, you are in Miramar’s airspace, turn right 40 degrees NOW
C123: ok, ok, turning right

MYF: F-18s entering the pattern, you are in Class Bravo, turn NOW

The Cessna pilot got a little snippy with the controller so I wondered whether he would get an instruction to call the tower but he landed without further incident. Either way, going into Miramar’s airspace with F-18s in the pattern is not something I’d want to do.

Losing All 4 Engines

November 23rd, 2006 • No comments

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

Currency, Glorious Currency!

November 17th, 2006 • No comments

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.

Instrument Current Again

November 17th, 2006 • No comments

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.

PST vs PDT

November 16th, 2006 • 2 comments

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!

A Failure to See and Avoid

November 10th, 2006 • 2 comments

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!

Catch Them Young!

November 10th, 2006 • No comments

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.