Yankee Alpha Foxtrot Bravo

There's this weird sign just outside my studio window this morning. I'm not too sure what it could really mean in the context of my neighbourhood in Lovely Industrial East Oakland (we're not quite under any of the normal VFR or IFR departure or arrival paths for Oakland airport (KOAK), a few minutes' drive to the left down the road in the picture), but it kinda felt appropriate for this blog. I haven't been able to keep it up to date nearly as much as I'd like lately, mostly due to a relentless product release schedule at my day job and plain laziness on my part, so it's mostly just debris at the moment. I doubt that it's dangerous debris, but you never know.

Yes, I've been flying, most memorably a great flight down to San Luis Obispo (KSBP) and back with Evan H. a few weeks ago for the legendary hundred dollar hamburger, sharing flight duty and getting quite a lot of real and under-the-hood IFR flying in (well, Evan got all the real IMC; I had to make do with the cone of stupidity for a couple of hours). A lot of great scenery (that's a rugged part of the world, especially around Big Sur), generally benign weather conditions (if a little unusual for coastal California at this time of the year), and (as usual), some pretty good diner food from The Spirit Of San Luis at KSBP (right next to the ramp!).

As penance for my laziness, I've cobbled together a short video from the trip. Nothing special (and it turned out it was actually bumpier than either of us had realised, making a lot of the more interesting video footage useless), and not always entirely coherent, but it was a lot more fun than doing some of the pro videos I have to do now and then. If you've got a late-model Quicktime player and broadband, try this link; otherwise, try this one. If neither of them work, oh well, you probably don't have a Quicktime player for your browser… (or you don't have the patience to wait for it all to download). Oh, and it has a soundtrack, so don't be surprised if it suddenly starts blaring away while you're surreptitiously trying to watch it at work….

* * *

A few words about my fave useful iPhone app, ForeFlight Mobile (yes, I've reviewed it before on YAFB, and I'm even quoted on ForeFlight's site, but I'm not connected with the ForeFlight people, honest :-) )…. ForeFlight did much of the grunt work for the flight back from San Luis (the legs when I was PIC) — including IFR flight plan filing and a great deal of on-the-apron weather checking, not to mention NOTAM listing and much more. I'm finding this thing indispensable; not quite an EFB, but Pretty Damn Good at its intended uses.

I've only very rarely ever talked to FSS, either in person (when that was still possible), or on the phone (I've had online DUATS access since I was a student), but it's kinda ironic that I now file flight plans and get weather and airport info, NOTAMS, etc., through my phone. Just not by talking to a human with that phone….

Given the somnolent state of this blog, my few readers probably wonder whether I'm actually still alive or not, but never fear: as of this morning, the FAA has again certified my aliveness (if not my alertness at that time of the morning), and it's really only the high price of flying and the recession's grip on me and the local economy that's kept me from being more active. In any case, as with last time, my medical got renewed without fuss or bother, and the whole visit to the medical examiner was an enjoyable experience (as unlikely as that sounds — I've been using the same AME for a decade, and he's quite a character…).

In other flying-related news I helped shepherd a friend of mine's two-year-old kid through the Hiller Aviation Museum at San Carlos Airport (KSQL) over the weekend, which was a lot of fun (he's way too young to actually come flying, but he already likes airplanes and seems to have a good idea what they are for a two-year-old). When the Aviatrix had coffee with me in Berkeley a few years ago she'd just come up from visiting the Hiller herself, and her description of the place made me want to visit some time (like so many local pilots I've done dozens of touch and goes at San Carlos airport without ever stopping there, let alone visiting the museum). For a variety of dumb reasons every time I'd planned on going there the visit got canceled, but yesterday seemed like a good day, so off we finally went (it helps that it's mostly indoors in air-conditioned modernity, given that yesterday was wiltingly hot, by far the hottest day of the year around here so far).

Even with Aviatrix's description, I was unprepared for how good it was in reality: it's a sign of something, at least, that while at most aviation museums I can identify maybe 80% of the planes and gear (at least approximately), I couldn't do better than about 40% at the Hiller. Even more enjoyable (especially with kids in tow) was the way you could sit in and play with various real cockpits — a 747, a 737, an ex-Blue Angels F-something-or-other (wish I'd noted it down…), etc., and a bunch of hands-on simulators and other working displays. It's very different in size and focus from somewhere like Castle Air Museum, another local(ish) museum I like a lot, and I'd thoroughly recommend it for kids and adults of almost any age. They even have a little raised platform right next to the museum near the west side of the runway that you can stand on to watch the local air traffic in the pattern or on the runways and taxiways (and, of course, that's exactly what we did, regardless of the heat and glare).

I think one of the high points for me was buying a soft Southwest 737 plush toy that Alex, the kid, immediately took to heart, and apparently cuddled all night. It seemed kind of appropriate given Oakland's role as one of Southwest's main hubs, and the number of Southwest 737's flying past his place that he sees every day. He certainly seemed to know what the fuzzy purple-and-orange 737 was :-).

It was a dark and stormy night… I'm sitting in a nice G1000-equipped Cessna 172 on runway 15 at Martin State airport (KMTN), ready for takeoff. It's night time, and there are flashes of lightning illuminating the runway every ten seconds or so. Sitting there I reflect that a dozen or more years ago I sailed the Chesapeake — somewhere out there in the impenetrable darkness a few hundred metres off the departure end of the runway I'm on — for a week on a small sailboat based near Baltimore. Somewhere I still have the Approaches to Baltimore Harbor maritime chart that advises mariners to contact Martin State tower on VHF channel 16 if they'll be transiting the area off the end of the runway and they have a mast or superstructure higher than about 36'. I knew I'd heard of this place before.

More flashes of lightning. Good thing this isn't for real — I'm sitting at the California Airways certified G1000 sim again — but the pre-takeoff tension I always feel on IMC departures feels real enough. For me the transition to IMC out of visual flying immediately after takeoff is always by far the hardest part of real-world IFR flying, mostly because you're typically still getting a feeling for everything at that point — aircraft trim, ATC requests, slightly-unfamiliar instrument layout, orientation, etc. — and in cases like mine, you're a little rusty (I'm sure this is less a problem for the well-practiced out there). At least when you hit IMC on an approach or in cruise your aircraft is (hopefully!) well-trimmed, you're comfortable with the instruments, you've had time to get familiar with things, etc. (in fact, descent into benign IMC in those conditions is something I absolutely love).

John releases me into the void, and the sim gets gratuitously nasty by giving me a pretty realistic-looking bird strike on the way out, smack bang in the middle of the windshield. Talk about topical…. Never mind — on with the show. John repositions me away from the airport, and I dig up the charts for the selected approach: the Martin State (KMTN) VOR/DME OR TACAN Z RWY 15 approach. Take a look at it sometime — you'll see why John's chosen it for this evening's IFR currency workout. The approach is a continuous DME arc that ends at the runway, aligned with the centerline. Cool! Not in itself particularly difficult, but you need to keep pretty much exactly 14.7 DME from Baltimore VOR as you approach the threshold or you'll miss the runway; and DME arcs, while not difficult, can be demanding in cases like this, especially when carried on for a full 90 degrees or so — in a dark and stormy night.

I'm actually most interested in how the G1000 + GFC700 autopilot will handle the arc (I can fly a DME arc fairly well on my own), so when the sim can't find the approach in its database, I'm mildly irritated, but decide to press on regardless, using the raw OBS and DME display against Baltimore VOR, and hand-flying the last few miles. Nothing too strenuous, for sure, and it turns out to be a lot of fun, with a mild mental work out here and there, and it's gratifying to be at 14.7 DME when the runway comes into view just above the MDA. I land, surrounded the sort of weather I'd normally run screaming from in the air or on the Chesapeake, and we suspend the sim to prep the next approach.

* * *

The rest of the "flight" goes well — smoothly and without incident, at least. We'd started with the ILS into Oakland's runway 29 (only because I'll probably never fly it in real life, even though it's my home airport, because I don't really want to pay the landing fee :-)), then Oakland's RNAV 27L as an LPV approach (something I do in real life regularly), then the long arc into Martin State (above). And then — for light relief — the Silver City, Arizona (KSVC) LOC/DME RWY 26 approach which has DME arcs to the localizer from a couple of the outer IAFs. This time the approach is in the database, and I watch with my usual sense of amazement as the G1000 simply flies the plane around the arc smoothly with the autopilot coupled. Well, nothing's ever quite that smooth in the world of sims (otherwise what would be the point?), but nothing went horribly wrong, and, as always, I learned a lot about systems management and the devil lurking in the odd approach detail here or there. Plus it's a fair bit cheaper at the moment than going out in a real G1000 C172…

Argh! I was originally supposed to have written and posted something here late February (yes, months ago)… but I got caught up in a product release at my day job, then came down with a persistent bronchitis / sore throat / sinus infection / cold thing that went on forever, and now have to prepare for a small conference in Vegas on top of the product release and all the rest (including my six week photo show at the local coffee place).

So I'll keep it brief: yes, I've flown, but just barely. The most memorable flying bits of the past few months were a night VFR flight with John to get my BFR out of the way and to get club-legal and club-current again where we barely managed to avoid being run over by a series of planes (including a very expensive-looking and rather large Legacy Jet) because it seemed Oakland's North Field ground controller simply wasn't listening to what we were telling her (and seemed to have lost the plot completely at one stage), and where we witnessed yet another screamingly-loud and anti-social bizjet departure off runway 27R (with an almost-vertical departure until it throttled right back at a few hundred feet and disappeared into the night towards Alameda). At least it wasn't the Justice Department MD80 bearing down on me this time, even though I could actually (and quite eerily) hear it on-air in the background approaching across the other end of 27R from where we were as Ground kept unerringly routing planes on the ground (and in the air!) towards us as we were sitting there on taxiways charlie and juliet trying to get to and depart from runway 33. We had to take our own evasive action (and flash our lights repeatedly) a couple of times in the ten minutes or so it took to taxi out to the runway and actually depart for San Pablo Bay. All this in an admittedly-busy but tightly-controlled airport ground environment that until a year or two ago always seemed competently and thoughtfully controlled. Oh well.

Argh. It'd be nice to fly again sometime, but work (and the need to keep a job…) keeps getting in the way. I hope to do some more G1000 sim work in the near future, but We Shall See — low-level Java socket and channel programming sounds more likely for the next month or so….

It's a perfect night for some VFR flying, and we're taking good advantage of it: the Bay's spread out 3,000' below us, San Francisco and Marin to our left, Berkeley and Richmond below us, Concord and Walnut Creek to the right, and Vallejo, Benecia and Napa in front of us. It's a calm night, and relatively warm for a winter's night (no scraping the ice off these planes, that's for sure…), it's a good break from preparing for my photo exhibition, and for me it's the end of the longest period without being in the left seat of an actual airplane as PIC in the decade since I got my license (I blame money and too many other damn things going on in my life at the moment). Part of the point of flying tonight is to get me back into VFR (and club) currency (I'm easily IFR current due to sim work), and to start the WINGS thing for BFR currency (I'll explain this in a later posting). We decide to head out VFR for Napa (KAPC) for general VFR practice and night landing work, something I'm looking forward to a lot, as I don't fly VFR much nowadays, and any night flight in clear weather over the Bay is just magic.

Somewhere over Richmond we can see Napa's rotating beacon in the distance, but not much else. No runway lighting, just the rather dark airport area surrounded by urban light that's in more-or-less the right place for Napa. We get the frequency change from NorCal Approach and pick up Napa's ATIS. It sounds a little odd for the still, clear, calm night, but I don't think much of it — nothing too odd, just windier on the surface than I'd have expected. It's claiming runway 24 is the main operating runway, which is plausible, but I'd have expected 18R given the time of day. Then John (sitting in the right seat as instructor this evening) notes what I'd missed: the ATIS is something like six hours old. None of the ATIS's around here are ever more than an hour old unless there's something wrong; I should have picked this up, but the weather's so benign and ATIS didn't have anything terribly interesting to say that I basically heard what I wanted to hear. Coupled with the total lack of runway lighting in what's supposed to be a towered airport with a tower open until well after we'll be finished our practice work there, things seem a little odd. I look up Napa again in my Blue Book, wondering whether they've changed tower hours. Nope. There were certainly no NOTAMs about early closing on DUATS or Forelfight when I'd checked just before startup. We switch to tower frequency — it's deathly quiet, which isn't all that unusual, I guess. John remarks that maybe they've had to leave early and forgotten to switch ATIS to the standard after-hours ASOS re-broadcast on ATIS frequencies (which usually contains a small announcement about the tower being closed until the morning).

In any case I try calling tower to see what happens. No response. I'm suspicious of the lack of runway lights — I can't help feeling I'm missing something, maybe we're heading for the wrong place — so John suggests I treat them as PCL's (pilot controlled lighting), and I dutifully click the lights on from maybe eight miles out on Napa's tower / CTAF frequency. Voila! The runways come into very clear view against the dark background. I still think it's odd that the tower's apparently out, but never mind, on with the show. I broadcast our position and intentions on tower frequency as though it were a CTAF, and continue inbound for runway 24. At maybe five miles out I try to contact Napa tower once again, mostly out of a sense of duty, and because it'll be the last chance before hitting Napa's class D airspace if indeed tower's actually open. Miraculously, this time there's a response. A very quiet, crackly response, and one that I couldn't read at all, but a response. I assume it's another aircraft on CTAF, and transmit accordingly. This time I can just pick out the response, and, mirabile dictu, it's Napa tower. Sounding like they're using a hand-held and just woke up, but never mind, it's still Napa tower. She instructs me to join a left pattern for 18R, clears me for touch and goes, and tells me to make a standard right closed pattern for further work. This all sounds more normal to me. She tells us the wind's calm. ATIS still says it's quite windy; ATIS is still hours out of date.

As we join the pattern for 18R, and still the only aircraft on frequency, John asks Tower about the ATIS and the lights. The controller doesn't comment on the PCL Thing, and claims that the ATIS isn't nearly six hours old, and that it'll be updated again in a few minutes. Hmmm, okay….

We do a bunch of practice landings, short approaches, etc., over the next twenty minutes or so, and the controller's generally on-the-ball and competent (Napa Tower usually has good controllers in it which is one reason I really enjoy doing practice work there), and except for the terrible quality of the radio she's using, we forget the earlier confusion until the bloody runway lights go off suddenly as I'm on short final. Dammit, I think, and quickly click the lights back on from the left seat as I cross the threshold. What's going on? I don't bother asking this time.

We decide to depart back to Oakland, and get routed straight out over the Bay, as usual. On the way out, a mile or two off the departure end of 18R, we monitor ATIS. It's now something like seven hours old, still claims runway 24 is in use, and still claims that it's really quite windy. And that it's early afternoon locally.

Hmmm, is all I'll say here.

* * *

Later, after a bit of fun airwork over San Pablo Bay, we head back to Oakland for some more landing practice — touch and goes, full stops, short approaches, etc. — on 27L. Nothing that I can't do without a bit of coaching from John, and overall a lot of fun; as I've said, it's a beautiful clear still night, and there are few things around here more visually interesting than a large airport at night.

So after an hour or two of flying, we put the plane back in the hangar and debrief. Just as I'm locking up, I somehow walk straight into the wing strut and nearly knock myself flat. Not unconscious, but painful, at least. I guess it's a sign of how little I've flown this plane lately that I just didn't think about the strut. Oh well; days later my head still hurts where it's bruised….

* * *

Earlier, as we're taxiing next to Oakland's 27R for runup and departure, we hear a Citation cleared for takeoff on 27R, and a few seconds after it roars past us we hear an on-air request from another pilot (in a Caravan) for the Citation's tail number. The controller gives it out with a crisp professional-sounding flourish. The back story here is that Oakland's North Field, especially runways 27, have stringent noise reduction policies due to the good burghers of Alameda settling just across the water under the departure ends of those runways, and that policy is pretty clear about not using 27R for turbine departures in these circumstances. ATC can't forbid these departures, even if they're pretty good at spelling out on-air the policy when someone asks for a "forbidden" departure, and it's basically up to the rest of us to try to bring pressure to bear so that anti-social departures don't end up closing the entire North Field. Departing 27R instead of the South Field's 29 is surely somewhat quicker if you're taxiing from Kaiser (the main FBO), but the costs to the rest of us (not to mention to Alameda…) make this a deeply unpopular act with some of us locals…. Not sure how this played out in the end, but I can't help noting that a rather well-known local who routinely did screamingly-loud departures off runway 33 straight out over San Leandro Bay and Alameda in a Citation came to a very sticky end on the other side of the country in that same Citation. Nothing to do with the departures themselves, of course, but the attitude may have had something to do with it.

I haven't been flying much lately, in some ways because of this — a show I've got coming up next month that I've spent way too much time preparing for (if I see another mat I have to cut or frame I have to glaze I think I'll scream). If you're in the Bay Area on Friday Feb 6, you're invited to the informal opening reception 5-7pm at Kefa Coffee (a nice local coffee shop / cafe near my studio in East Oakland). Details here…. I'll probably be the only person there who doesn't look like an artist (well, I guess I don't look like a pilot, either, for that matter).

(I might actually escape to get to do some flying in the next few days; we shall see…)

People sometimes describe themselves as being "on autopilot" when they mean they're figuratively sleepwalking through a situation, but after crossing Roanoke VOR (ROA) inbound for EXUNE, the initial approach fix (IAF) for Roanoke's LDA RWY 6 approach on autopilot, I can't help thinking that's a really silly usage. Whenever I fly a coupled approach with an autopilot in IMC I spend my entire time probably more awake than if I were flying the approach by hand: as John once remarked sometime during my instrument training, you really have to treat autopilots like wayward students and keep a paranoid eye on them every second of the approach. Otherwise you might sleepwalk your way into the ground. So I'm not sleepwalking, I'm concentrating intensely on the G1000 screens in front of me, with a workload that's greatly increased by my using the unfamiliar Garmin GFC700 integrated autopilot coupled to the G1000. I've really never seen this combination before, and learning on the fly probably isn't the smartest way to cope. Never mind; damn the torpedoes, I guess. I can always fly by hand if things get too complex, and I have a strictly minimalist need-to-know approach to the G1000 and associated autopilots when I fly single-pilot IFR anyway. In any case, as always with this unit, I'm curious to see how it flies the course reversal (this part — along with automated holds — always seems a miracle to me).

Of course the G1000 / GFC700 works flawlessly around the hold, and I head back to EXUNE and then RAMKE for glideslope capture. Somewhere before RAMKE as the G1000 switches to localizer mode and I'm looking for the glideslope to couple, I sense that something's wrong: I've been dead on track for the localizer according to the GPS version of the approach, but the switch to the localizer comes with a sharp deflection indicated on the CDI and a smooth right turn by the autopilot to compensate. OK, I think, maybe there's a mild alignment issue here and it'll sort itself out; in the meantime, the glideslope comes alive properly and couples. A few seconds later I'm still well to the left of course according to the G1000's CDI, but the magenta GPS course overlay is now receding to my left. Something's horribly wrong, and I know it. I don't know what's wrong, but I blurt out that the localizer seems to be broken and I'll go missed.

Well, I'd go missed in real life, anyway; in this case, John clicks the mouse and suspends the sim. We're both puzzled by what just happened: the sim seems to think the localizer's way out to the right, while the GPS has it basically correct when cross-checked with the other fixes. After a quick discussion we think it's probably because the sim doesn't understand LDA's and thinks the localizer is aligned with the runway, which, being an LDA, it isn't (never mind that this LDA has a glideslope too, which is pretty special). We abandon the attempt and set up for the Bishop KBIH RNAV (GPS) Y RWY 12 approach, starting somewhere before the RBRTS initial approach fix.

A useful lesson, if unintended: cross-check, cross-check, cross-check. Unlike with the Air New Zealand case highlighted on John's blog, the GPS makes my job easier: a graphic display of inconsistency that's much easier to interpret than the basic DME / OBS / ILS gear in the Air NZ plane; and much as I hate to admit it, I probably trust GPS (in something like the G1000 implementation, anyway) nowadays at least as much as I trust a localizer. Trust, but verify.

* * *

A few weeks ago John had mentioned that California Airways had a new FAA-certified G1000 C172 sim available for rent; it's loggable, it's cheaper than flying the Real Thing, and since I'm a member of CalAir (although not particularly active since the long(ish) freeway drive to Hayward (KHWD) is a real pain compared to the local jaunt to Oakland (KOAK)), I leap at the chance. The sim's in one of the rooms at CalAir's new premises across from the Hayward Toys-R-Us on the eastern end of the airport, and it turns out to be a full physical panel full physical controls thing with a large HDTV screen in front of it for terrain, all coupled to X-Plane and full G1000 emulation. Not bad, and, as far as the panel and instrument operation go, very realistic (even down to the operation of the wet compass and the annoying lack of approach plate clip on the yoke). Everything seems pretty familiar about it except the new autopilot buttons and the flight director software that comes with it for the G1000. The control behaviour isn't particularly realistic for a C172, but it's definitely better than with most sim controls I've experienced. The seat is realistically Cessna-GA-ish in being quite inscrutable and clumsily difficult to set up for this pilot's absolutely average physique — top marks for realism there.

The basic plan is to do a handful of varied approaches to get used to the GFC700 autopilot and to keep current on the G1000. I'm supposed to study up for the GFC700 beforehand, but I blow it and turn up with only a vague idea of how it's different from (or the same as) the autopilots I already use. Flying blind, I guess. John gives me a quick rundown on how it all works, and we start with a couple of easy approaches: the Oakland KOAK ILS RWY 27R and the KOAK RNAV RWY 27L (LPV minima) approaches. I can do both of these in my sleep, but the autopilot and flight director are novel, so I hand-fly the ILS (with a missed to REBAS, which is unrealistic in real life) and fully couple for the RNAV. No real problems here — but no sleepwalk, either — but as with any sim, it's harder to fly than a real plane, and difficult to land accurately (my sim approaches tend to end with a victory roll at decision height over the runway because that's actually easier for me to pull off as a lapsed aerobatics type than landing the damn sim nicely).

We move on to Aspen (KASE) for the LOC/DME-E approach, mostly because it's justly famous as a difficult and occasionally lethal mountain approach with a backcourse established solely for the missed, and a long visual segment that's a source of trouble. Plus, of course, I've always wanted to fly this in real life; I can't ever afford that, so a certified sim will have to do. In any event, the approach goes fairly smoothly except for the final segment where I have trouble lining up to land (again, I'm going to blame the sim's unreal control feel for this…) and we have to reset things so I can do the missed smoothly. The backcourse is easy to intercept by hand, and after a short run along it, we stop the sim and set up for the next approach, the Roanoke (KROA) LDA RWY 6. Which is where things go wrong…

By now I've sort of got the G1000 / GFC700 combination under control, but as John notes, I'm having trouble estimating the sink rate needed to get down to appropriate segment altitudes or for the ILS glideslope capture, and I tend to be too gentle with the descents, meaning I miss the target altitudes or join them a little later than I should. This seems odd to me — in real life I don't have much trouble with this — so it may just be an artefact of the unfamiliar autopilot controls and coupling: in all my previous coupled flying with the G1000, the autopilot (usually the King KAP 140) has to be told what to do separately, and things seem simpler to keep on top of; here, I suspect, I'm still a little too unsure of how to command the autopilot to do what I need it to do, and I'm reluctant to force the plane down as fast as I should with the unfamiliar gear. It's all good practice, anyway, and the associated flight director on the G1000 is great for hand-flying the plane (as long as you're on top of setting it up, which is much the same as setting up the autopilot) — we don't have this setup on the G1000 C172's I fly, but maybe one day it'll all come in handy in Real Life. The flight director is to an HSI as the HSI is to one of the old HI's: magic!

The final approach is the RNAV approach into Bishop, my fave Owens Valley town (I've been visiting there at least annually for twenty years). The approach goes well with John emulating an imagined Bob Channel-like CTAF at Bishop; I actually land the sim this time in the teeth of typical Owens Valley wind without breaking anything, and without departing the runway in search of elk or tumbleweed or (this being Bishop) LADWP trucks.

* * *

So I get to log a handful of approaches and learn a lot about what can go wrong and what can go right with them and the associated equipment, and to do it all in the safety and comfort of CalAir's upstairs aerie (plus, of course, it's cheaper, by some way, than actually flying). I really like the G1000, and I think I really like the G1000 + GFC700 combo, but I probably need to do a little more reading of the associated literature before I do this in real life. In fact, I probably need to start reading the literature — flying the combo blind was a challenge, but my head didn't explode, and with a great deal of prodding from John, I didn't fly things too badly; I still feel good about recognizing early on that the LDA wasn't right at Roanoke, but that's the beauty of simulation: I'm sure in real life I'd have been a little slower on the uptake, but it's given me one more real-life(ish) item for the mental checklist.

It's not so much that I haven't been flying, it's that I haven't been blogging (well, not here, at any rate). Too much work and not enough money or time to sustain the habit the way I'd like, unfortunately. But I did get to do an enjoyable IFR currency flight with Evan to Sacramento (KSAC) and Rio Vista (O88) and back a month or so ago, with me under the hood for a little under one and a half hours, and Evan for a little less. There was really quite a lot to blog about from that flight, including an occurrence of the sort of botched hand-off and ATC miscommunication we're seeing more of in NorCal as more trainees seem to be coming on line, and a truly classic GPS Moment on my part just past the initial approach fix on one of the KSAC approaches (I'm actually getting pretty good at doing the "damn the torpedoes" thing nowadays); but otherwise, all I have to show here are some pix taken during the flight (the top one's of Mt Diablo from the northeast; the other's of the wind farm to the south of Rio Vista in the Delta; click on an image to see a larger version). More next time, for sure…

We're 4,000' over the cold, cold, Pacific on an IFR flight into Monterey (KMRY) from Oakland (KOAK), about fifteen or twenty miles out from the airport itself, cleared direct MUNSO, the ILS 10R approach outer marker / LOM. As a result of an earlier ATC-initiated descent for traffic, we're a few thousand feet lower than I'm used to at this stage, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. There's a pretty solid coastal stratus layer below us; I'm estimating tops are about 2,000', but I'm not sure; Monterey ATIS is saying the ceiling is something like 800' overcast (I don't remember the details, but whatever it is it's pretty typical for a late summer / early autumn morning 'round here). The scene is beautiful — we're in bright sunshine, the various rugged mountain ranges around the Bay Area and Monterey are clearly visible poking through the stratus or further off across the landscape, and the stratus layer itself is one of those classic benign-looking fluffy-topped layers that's probably only a thousand feet thick.

Just as I'm admiring the view and reviewing the ILS 10R approach I've set up on the G1000, the NorCal Approach controller tells me to descend and maintain two thousand feet. Hmmm, I say to my safety pilot Evan, this is a new one on me. Two thousand feet this far out… way out over the ocean? And it's likely to leave us in the murk almost the entire way to the final approach fix (not that I'm complaining about that). My (by-the-book) response to the controller apparently comes across as so skeptical that he responds again with "83Y, two thousand feet, correct" (or maybe it was my accent). So I start us down by programming in a slowish 600 feet per minute descent on the autopilot, and look over at Evan. Hey, how well can you swim? I ask him with a grin. There's sharks down there. And it's bloody cold. If one doesn't get you before you swim the ten miles to Santa Cruz or Moss Landing, the other one will.

I watch the top of the stratus layer rise up towards us until, just as we're about to hit it, we level off at 2,000 feet. I'm about to put on the cone of stupidity when I think "bugger that! This looks so cool…" and put the hood aside. And the next five minutes or so are just magic — one of the most visually enjoyable vectors-to-the-localizer I've done in years. We dip in and out of the layer as it rises in soft-looking waves up and over us and back down, the tops being roughly our altitude, and the alternation of sunshine, blue sky, almost unlimited horizontal visibility, and blinding white waves around us is really cool. The controller asks us for best forward speed to the final approach fix as he has faster traffic behind us. I briefly wonder whether having us this low that far out was an attempt to let the faster traffic overtake us a few thousand feet above us, but I let the thought go as I get preoccupied with actually approaching the approach. Due to the coastal stratus and fog, this is one of the few airports I regularly fly to where you may have to go missed at ILS minimums on days when it's benign clear weather even ten miles inland (or a thousand feet above you), and I have the missed approach procedure burned into my brain. Nonetheless, I look over it several times again just to be sure; there's a lot of terrain around here you just don't want to hit….

As we get closer to the ILS, the layer rises up completely around us, and we intercept the localizer and turn in towards the outer marker deep in the now dark grey murk. This I like, of course, and the air's fairly still and the plane predictable, making for an easy approach. We intercept the glideslope a little early and start on down, still in the murk. I predict we'll break out somewhere just past the outer marker, and it'll be one of those weirdo abrupt Monterey break outs that's more horizontal than vertical due to the cloud layer sometimes ending suddenly around the coastline. I slow us down at MUNSO, the outer marker, and start mentally preparing for the landing itself. There's a mild quartering tailwind, and I don't want to blow the landing in front of Evan or any observers on the ground.

Tower clears us to land, and the approach and runway lighting slowly become visible through the windshield as the stratus starts clearing patchily around us. We break out fully well past the coastline, quite a bit further past the outer marker than I'd predicted, and softly rather than abruptly. So much for predictions, I guess. But it's always really cool to watch the runway lights slowly appear in the right place in front of you at times like this, I have to admit. The landing's pretty routine, and since I have this nagging mental image of a Citation or Gulfstream or something like that barreling down the ILS just behind us in the greyness, I turn off 10R at the first taxiway, trying not to rip the tires off or brake too hard.

And now for the next Big Challenge: where to park. Evan and I have been pondering this the entire way down, as we want to get both fuel and coffee, and I haven't actually used an FBO here for years (despite all the approaches and landings I've done here) — and Evan's apparently never actually done a full stop landing here at all. There used to be a transient parking area on the south side ramp near the tower, and what my Blue Book tells me is a Chevron self-serve pump in the same area, so we decide that's where we'll go — we can get coffee in the main airline terminal building (there's a security gate you can usually get through). But when I tell ground we're going left to to transient, he tells me there's no transient parking at Monterey any more — we can either go right to Del Monte Aviation or past Del Monte to Monterey Jet Center. Hmmm, I think, that doesn't sound so good — the last time I was at Del Monte (building complex hours years ago in the Arrow) it was an expensive place full of jet drivers with stripy epaulets. And the Jet Center's likely to be even worse…. But what the hell else can we do? It's still IFR, we need fuel, and I could really do with some coffee (and bagels if there's any such thing down here). Oh well. I tell ground we'll do Del Monte, and turn right on taxiway alpha. Just as I'm reaching for the Blue Book to see what UNICOM frequency is here, a Del Monte guy strides out on to the ramp and starts waving us into the corner parking lot, and a few seconds later I've signed up for twenty gallons of Avgas. As we wander into the rather nice-looking old Del Monte building to do the paperwork, we can see what looks like a King Air breaking out on the ILS over towards the coastline. I'm still not sure what the rush was, if that was our traffic. But who cares? It's coffee time….

* * *



The view along KMRY runway 10R on departure (note the terrain in the middle distance, itself hiding much higher peaks a little further along and to the right…).

This is actually Evan's first IFR flight as a certified instrument pilot. The original plan is to do a day trip much further down the coast to San Luis Obispo (KSBP) for lunch, maybe getting a few approaches and holds and whatnots in wherever, and just generally admire the view (if you do the coast route past Big Sur, the view's spectacular). But that plan falls through late in the day when Cessna 051 is delayed coming back off a 100 hour inspection, and instead we're only able to take Cessna 83Y (the club's other G1000-equipped C172) for a morning trip IFR to Monterey and back. The weather at both ends is light IMC, so we're going to need real clearances and some real-world IFR flying. It's clearing quickly here now at Monterey (within a few minutes of landing it's basically clear to the east and marginal VFR in the other directions), and we sort of expect Oakland to be VMC by the time we get there, but my ForeFlight iPhone app is reporting that Oakland is still IMC. In any case, Evan decides he's going to file a real IFR flight plan, and starts using his own iPhone to file.

I wander off to find the coffee, which turns out to be not too bad for machine-made stuff, but I can't see any bagels or cookies or anything. The counter staff are too busy handling the King Air's passengers (a family of four or five) and fuel to ask, so I walk back outside to the entrance area. The King Air's right outside, and the pilot's hanging around talking to another passenger. He looks over at me and nods, so I introduce myself and tell him I was flying the tiny slow Cessna in front of him on the ILS — hope I didn't cause any problems…. We spend the next five minutes or so talking — he's a friendly guy about my age, based in Palo Alto doing charters and private flying, and we spend a few minutes bemoaning fuel costs and the dearth of flying opportunities for potential pilots these days. He says he had to slow down to 140 knots before the approach because of us; we both laugh — 140 knots is about what our little 172 could do in a dive at full throttle. But then I didn't use forty-something gallons of Jet A just to cross the Santa Cruz range, did I?! He grins and says something like if he wasn't being paid he'd probably do it in a tiny 150.

I go back in (it's still quite cold out there on the ramp) and find Evan. He's filed his flight plan and got some coffee, and we lounge around the lounge for a while. According to several flyers and posters around us, the Thunderbirds are in town next week (or rather, the airshow's at nearby Salinas (KSNS), but they're normally actually based at Monterey for the duration). A few years ago I once landed at Monterey on 28R (the smaller runway) while various massed Thunderbirds did the overhead break and formation landing on the left. Way cool. Especially when the leader ironically saluted us as he taxied past in a cloud of dust, burnt jet fuel, and fumes (dammit, that's what I want to do when I grow up!). Pity I won't be in town for the Thunderbirds this time — I always seem to miss them… (as a kid my parents took us to airshows at RAAF Richmond (I think it was) several times, and I always really enjoyed that). At least I get to see (and hear) the Blue Angels locally during Fleet Week.

Our plane's been refueled, so I go back to the front desk to sign the bill. The staff there are friendly, efficient, and funny, and one of them does a dead-on "oh mahvelous!" in imitation of my Anglo-Australian accent as she takes the signed bill. This sort of thing always makes my day.

We wander back out on to the ramp and preflight the plane. What follows — pretty much the entire flight back to Oakland — is a real world flight, for sure, but not what either of us planned for or really expected, and not (I'm sure) quite what Evan would have wanted as a first Real World IFR experience :-).

* * *



Evan Pre-Flighting Cessna 83Y On The Ramp At Monterey.

Back in 83Y Evan starts up and calls combined clearance and ground for our clearance. The controller sounds confused and not entirely on top of things, and issues us a standard VFR clearance out of Monterey's Class C airspace ("proceed on course…") rather than the expected IFR clearance back to Oakland. Evan questions the guy; he swears there's no clearance for our aircraft in the system. We swear. Now what?! We can certainly depart VFR towards the east at this particular time (ATIS is reporting marginal VFR, but there are no clouds at all past the departure end of 10R all the way to at least Nevada), but half the point of this flight is a real world IFR workout. We decide against pushing the issue with the Monterey controller — Evan's starting to suspect he put the wrong departure time in when he filed the flight plan, but I can't help wondering whether the controller's a trainee and just missing something — and plan on departing VFR to the east with flight following. We'll pick up a clearance from NorCal further along, probably somewhere near South County (E16). Oakland ATIS is still reporting IMC at Oakland, so we're going to need a real IFR clearance for the approach anyway unless it clears soon.

So we depart VFR with Evan in the left seat; I'm just along for the ride until Evan dons the cone of stupidity nearer Oakland. On departure I look out over to the right at the old transient parking area — it's still physically there, but there are no aircraft parked there at all. The place looks dead; I don't know what the story is.

The view's excellent, the air's smooth, I take a bunch of photos of all the interesting and bizarre sights on the ground, and things go pretty well until somewhere near Hollister. On NorCal's frequency we can hear a string of planes asking for pop-up clearances back into various Bay Area airports due to the long-lingering stratus, and a good proportion of them are being denied by NorCal with a simple "unable at this time". This doesn't sound promising, even if we're already in the system due to flight following, and especially since we have to have the plane back by 13.00. Evan wisely decides to put in an early request for the Oakland ILS 27R, well before South County.

The good news is we're not immediately rejected (no "unable"); the bad news is we're not given any sort of clearance, either, just a variant of the usual "request on file" response. Better than nothing, I guess, and we press on. We can always land at Livermore (KLVK) if we can't get in to Oakland, and wait for the stratus to clear (which it clearly will, and soon), but that would mean blowing the return time. Oh well. At every hand-off Evan reminds NorCal of our request, and in each case we get pretty much the same response — either remind them again in a few minutes (which we do), or they're still working on it. At one point on air someone asks for "the approach" back into Hayward (KHWD, a little southeast of Oakland, at that time reporting the same sort of mild IMC). The pilot sounds confused and doesn't seem to know what he's asking for, but he also doesn't sound like a student; the controller keeps prompting him until it's clear he wants (or will take) the VOR approach. Sometimes I wonder why controllers put up with this sort of thing….

We can still hear pop-up requests being refused for other aircraft and airport combinations, so we feel pretty lucky that we haven't been completely rejected, but I start feeling edgy as we approach Reid Hillview (KRHV), the traditional decision point for East Bay airports when approaching from the south. The most annoying thing, though, is that although we can almost see the individual runways at Oakland from where we are (some thirty miles out at 4,500'), Oakland ATIS is still reporting IMC at the airport itself. We still need that bloody clearance, even though I'm betting we'll never see even a second of IMC on the way in, and we'll probably land in bright cloudless sunshine. But I was wrong about Monterey earlier, so I don't complain too loudly.

Then out of the blue the NorCal controller asks us to "navigate towards SUNOL" (using that exact phrase). I like this sort of thing: an informal instruction that's basically saying something like "I can't give you a clearance right now or even vector you, but if you head off towards SUNOL [the traditional initial approach fix for many of Oakland's approaches] it'll probably make things much easier for both of us if I can suddenly slot you in". It's what we were going to do anyway, but it's a sign that things are progressing. Even so, I still feel edgy and worried that we might miss the boat or get lost in the rush.

In the end although we don't get an actual clearance until we're turning onto the localizer, we're formally vectored for the approach well outside SUNOL, and Evan (of course!) flies the ILS 27R approach flawlessly back into Oakland under the hood. We didn't even get the NorCal slam onto GROVE several thousand feet above where we should be. In any event, we land dead on time for the next renters. And as predicted, while it's still supposedly IMC at Oakland, we never come close to even the smallest of clouds (because there aren't any, dammit), and we land in bright cloudless sunshine.

Back in the office, as we're doing the club paperwork, we can hear Oakland ATIS still now reporting marginal VMC, on what's essentially a cloudless early-autumn day right across the Bay Area. Oh well. Welcome to the real world, I guess.

Sometime a week or two ago I managed to get my high performance endorsement (and log a bit of actual IFR, a couple of approaches, and an ad hoc hold) from John in the club's G1000-equipped Cessna 182 that I've flown a couple of times now (thanks John!).

I think the only thing that struck me as unfamiliar was the use of flaps 10 (degrees) at the beginning of a cruise or approach descent, i.e. miles from anywhere, and at a relatively high speed and altitude. In all the planes I've flown so far (well, those that had flaps, anyway), flaps typically didn't get used until well into the final approach or even only once you'd joined the pattern — mostly, in the case of the older planes, because the flaps could only be used at relatively low airspeeds (from memory, the Arrow allowed you to lower flaps at a fairly high airspeed, but I seem to remember lowering gear first before the flaps in that plane). The cowl flaps were also novel, but hardly complex or conceptually difficult; and the increased attention to leaning was predictable and fairly easily done with the G1000's engine analyzer display.

Landing was initially a little odd — the plane felt predictably nose-heavy — but it didn't take more than a handful of landings to get a feeling for the stabilized final approach and the various sight lines and to round out and flare at the right altitude for some nice smooth landings.

In any case, the club's 182 is a joy to fly: very stable, very predictable, and the engine has that same smooth powerful operation I remember from the Cirrus SR22; the G1000 and associated autopilot also make things more manageable. But hell it's expensive to rent and refuel, and it's difficult to believe it'll stay on-line at the club much longer unless more members see it as a way to do longer trips fairly economically with passengers. I'm unlikely to fly it much if at all myself unless it's to Santa Monica or Corvalis or somewhere like distant like that, with The Artists or someone who's willing to help defray the costs.

* * *

Oh, and I know I mentioned this in a comment elsewhere, but sometime safety pilot and instrument student Evan H. got his instrument rating first try with Rich Batchelder, DPE. Congratulations to Evan (and of course John, his instructor).

I was roughly nine or ten when I first flew in the front seat of an aeroplane (it was Australia, so it was spelt that way), a Cherokee piloted by a friend of my father's. We flew out of Belmont airport (usually known as Aeropelican by the locals in those days), and I spent about half the flight in the right seat propped up on top of a cushion manipulating the yoke as we flew down and around my then home-town of Woy Woy and back around the lower Hunter Valley. I loved it, but then my parents and my father's friend knew I would.

So when Stephen, a long-time friend of mine from Australia, and his seven-year-old kid Dan visited me for the day we just had to go flying. I wasn't sure, but I sort of suspected Dan would enjoy it a lot, and if nothing else, Stephen would get to see a lot of the Bay Area from a perspective most people never get to see it from. I'd informally planned the flight a week or so in advance as an extended Bay Tour, but unfortunately the weather didn't quite cooperate, and rather than circling the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and the City, and doing the 101 transition south (east) to Palo Alto, we had to step over a coastal stratus layer and concentrate on Napa (KAPC), the Delta, Mount Diablo, the Diablo Valley (landing at Livermore, KLVK), and just generally pottering around VFR under the benign oversight of various bits of NorCal approach and sundry towers. Dan, of course, spent about half the flight in the right seat, propped up on a couple of cushions, flying the plane along with me or on his own. Cool!

As far as I can tell they both enjoyed it; Dan said several times later that he really wanted to fly again and (maybe) be a pilot. Stephen — who has a lot of experience being flown around in GA planes taking photos over Sydney — while probably not wanting to be a pilot quite as much as me or Dan, at least got to see the sights from an unusual perspective. All in all, a lot of fun, and a really welcome break from the rush of the rest of my life at the moment.

Oh, and since Stephen's also a photographer, there's some great snapshots from the flight done with his little point-and-shoot; here's a tiny handful from the back seat….

I know I'm not the only blogger in the neighbourhood playing catchup, but sometimes in comparison to the usual suspects like Cockpit Conversation, Blogging at FL250, or Flight Level 390 (just to pick some obvious examples from my daily reading list of blogs that have been going roughly the same length of time as this one), I feel positively lazy. It's not that I haven't flown lately, it's that I haven't been able to sit down at my leisure and edit up anything compelling (or otherwise) about my flying, so the blog stays bare. So, instead, a few telegraphic lines before I have to run out and do something else….

First news is that John's student Evan and I went flying together again a few weeks ago, alternating PIC / safety pilot duties for a really enjoyable long flight to and around Napa (KAPC), Sacramento (KSAC), Rio Vista (O88), and Oakland (KOAK, home base). Lots of real-world IFR work under the hood (and just enough actual IMC for me to have to do the flying in and out of Oakland to get through the unexpectedly-persistent stratus), including being slammed onto Napa's localizer some two thousand feet too high and way too close-in, being vectored around and around (and back again) while being sent to Oakland's ILS 27R for an IMC approach (I don't think I've done that approach straightforwardly now for several years — it's always one damn thing or another nowadays, usually the result of traffic spacing issues by the sound of things), my forgetting to cancel IFR on the missed at Napa and unintentionally tying up the airspace for billions of nautical miles around us (or so the Oakland Center controller rather testily implied when he finally got around to asking whether we really intended to stay IFR; usually I cancel on the missed and tell the controller we'll do the rest as practice approaches, which is essential at Napa but not so essential at Sacramento or Stockton or places directly under NorCal's control rather than Oakland Center's), and landing straight into the teeth of a steady 30 knot headwind at Rio Vista (Evan did the landing after a perfect VOR approach from Sacramento VOR under the hood; I remember looking out and thinking we could as well be walking at that speed). Evan's booked for his instrument checkride sometime soon, and unless he makes a silly mistake, he'll pass it with better flying and instrument work than I'm capable of.

Second news is that the other E, "E." (another of John's students and an occasional safety pilot for me), got her instrument rating last week on her first attempt. Cool! Congratulations...