Hollister

I didn't ride into Hollister on a motorcycle as depicted in the movie, 'The Wild One'. I did however make a bad-ass teardrop in for a nice 45 degree entry to downwind on runway 24. The x-countries continue...

Stan's wife underwent surgery this last week and will be out of commission for several weeks. Stan and his wife have three little girls which means my main flight instructor will be out of commission at least as my instructor for several weeks as he tends to his brood. Enter Dan my interim instructor until Stan is back on line. I like this guy. He differs from Stan in several positive ways and I may retain him as my instructor when I get my instrument cert. His style of instruction has a more finessed touch it. I like Stan but sometimes get a chapped hide from his blistering critiques with slight twinges of impatience. Stan has made me a very diligent pilot and for this I am grateful to have been learning from him. Dan has a good sense of humor which makes flying with him feel more enjoyable and relaxed. I am pretty proficient these days and need a little minor tweaking but otherwise I am really doing some nice flying.

We took off yesterday from San Carlos for a 55 mile trip down to Hollister along the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains with the Monterey Bay off to my right. I had a great preflight and nailed my radio calls to open my flight plan and get flight following from Norcal Approach. One thing I have never had before was clearance into Class B (Bravo) airspace. The Class B airspace surrounds SFO and is airspace that surrounds the bigs like NY, Dallas, Chicago, you get the point. It is taboo to go joyriding in this airspace unless you get clearance from a controller who must say 'YOU ARE CLEARED INTO THE SAN FRANCISCO CLASS BRAVO'. They can call out your tail sign a thousand times but until you here those words keep out. They typically vector (give headings) 747's coming in from the Pacific right over San Carlos. They are at 5,000 ft or more but you don't want to get too close and can't with the airspace restrictions. So anyway I got the Class B clearance. Must have been a lag in big jets coming in from Asia. I climbed out to 5,500 and locked on to the Woodside VOR then Dan showed me a few tricks to lock on to the VOR using my GPS and then enter some way points also right into the GPS as well. This was really helpful and I had a lot of fun cruising down the SF Peninsula. I had the Bay to my left and the Santa Cruz mountains to my right with the Monterey Bay off the right tip of my nose. Damn nice place to learn to fly. You see this stuff on commercial carriers but usually you are staring at one portion of it out a little porthole of a window - usually with some jackass sitting in front with the seat leaned all the way back. It's like flying in bloody steerage class! Cessnas are slower but you get a better view.

We passed over Lexington Reservoir then Uvas Reservoir and over Gilroy before descending in to Hollister for a landing. Hollister is an interesting airport because it does not have a control tower. It is still a very busy airport with glider operations and big tanker planes carrying fire retardant materials to those ubiquitous California wild fires we experience during this time of the year. You gotta watch your tail feathers when maneuvering around that airport.

I made a great landing and took off Northwesterly for our trip back to San Carlos. The flight was great and we were 'stepped down' into Class B airspace in no time to get down to under 3,000 ft for our approach into SQL. As soon as I passed over the salt ponds on the outer edge of the Bay the wind really picked up. Pretty soon I got clearance to land and was angled in to the left crosswind to keep my ground track moving towards the centerline for runway three zero. As I crossed over the runway threshold I powered to idle and kicked in right rudder and left wing low to keep moving down the centerline of three zero. The wind was at max for my Cessna and I had to really fight off getting blown to the right. Dan gave me a little help as I touched down to the right of centerline despite my efforts. I then wobbled around a little bit on the runway like a drunk duck forgetting to keep the yoke to the left which keeps the plane from being being blown further to the right. OY! It really pissed me off that my perfect flight had such a sucky landing to finish. That was some serious wind and I was glad to have Dan in the plane with me. I am going up with Dan again this Friday and will be practicing all my maneuvers which I had scheduled before just to make sure I am sharp for the runup to my FAA check ride. We will be practicing landings and if the winds are right I can get in some good cross-wind landings also.

Good day and despite my sketchy cross-wind landing I felt like I had a really strong flight.

-ciao,
russ