Cruisin' the Bay Area

April 29, 2007

It's been over a month since I soloed and have been endorsed to fly to several other airports by Stan. He wanted to do this immediately after the solo so I could get out and do my maneuvers and hop over to other airports. As a student I am allowed to solo, no passengers except my instructor, within a 25 mile radius from my home airport of San Carlos (SQL). Basically I got checked out to ensure I know how to maneuver myself to other airports utilizing ATIS, making proper radio calls and setting myself up to get on the ground in a safe and responsible manner. Pretty darn fun!

The check out went well and I am now endorsed to fly to Palo Alto airport or PAO and Hayward or HWD. He wanted to get me into Half Moon Bay but it was foggy that day but no worries. I have my hands full getting over to Hayward which is fun because I get to cruise out over the Bay parallel to the San Mateo Bridge. Hayward is also an airport that accommodates large private jets and has two parallel runways, one short and narrow and the one for the big jets is HUGE. This is the runway in use most of the time and I feel like a gnat landing on a superhighway. I have to adjust my sight-picture for landings because the width of the runway can cause you to think you are closer to the ground than you are. You have to wait until you literally see the texture of the asphalt before you flare for landing otherwise you flare too high, and I have.

I really like flying by myself and while I understand this is a training exercise and that I need to be 'working' on all of my maneuvers, etc., I take some time to really be aware and enjoy the fact that I am piloting a plane by myself. Thus far I'm doing a pretty damned good job of it. I LOVE talking on the radios these days as well and was a little iffy at times before but now I am talking and sounding at least like I know what I'm doing. One thing I like to do and it is really 'piloty' and geeky but I enjoy saying, 'zero four alpha, g'day or so long', when I depart an airport and after I am told 'frequency change approved' by ATC. Pilots on commercial flights do this when they are talking to major 'centers' en route. Stupid but I like being a geeky pilot-guy.

I am going flying again with Stan this Thursday and it will be a fairly long cross-country flight. We are flying out to a town in the Sierra Foothills, Columbia, which is about 100 miles East of the Bay Area. It's an old gold-mining town and the airport is a mile from town. Stan says we'll fly out and have lunch in town. It takes a lot of preparation to do these cross-countries filling out flight plans and using my flight computer which is really just a glorified slide-rule. I have gotten pretty good at figuring out magnetic heading to compass headings, time, distance and fuel burn, etc. Again pilot geekiness has taken over. I love it!!

I've been lazy with the blogs but with serious cross-country stuff coming up my journals should be picking up.

ciao,
Russ