Marc's Public Blog

Well, since my local flight club had a fly in event to a drop zone, I decided to give it a shot, and flew to Lodi (1O3) with Jen to do tandem jumps out of a perectly good plane.
The flight to Lodi was somewhat interesting leaving out of Palo Alto as the ceilings were quite low (about 500 feet or less in some places) over the bay, but luckily, it cleared up when I reached Fremont. The rest of the flight was smooth sailing...

The tandem jump was easy, the jumpmaster does all the work for you, and just takes you along for the ride. His rig has two chutes as usual, and the backup chute is linked to an altimeter that auto-deploys it should he fall unconscious or be unable to deploy it himself.
Of course, those are the new sport chutes, not the round one like the army used ages ago. So, you have an airfoil that you can steer, and you can even flare at ground level so that if you're good, you can stop the decent and just put your feet down with no problems.
I brought my wrist garmin forerunner GPS for the ride, and got some nice graphs out of it, when plugged into Google Earth (the first color is the plane ride, and the second one is the end of the plane ride, the jump, and rest of the way down after the parachute has deployed).
Interestingly enough, despite severe agrophobia, I was not really afraid. It's just good that I didn't have to stay on the edge of the plane, and decide to jump myself: the jumpmaster did that for me :)
On the way down, the wind in your face is pretty extreme (well duh!, I guess, but still), and once the shute is deployed, you can steer pretty easily, and do loops (which are basically steep turns)
Kudos go to the cameraman/photographer that jumped with us, and did an amazing job of capturing the entire thing while freefalling himself.
In a nutshell, good time was had by all :)
I then got back to PAO just in time for a lesson in a 177RG :)

Here are the rest of the pictures of my first jump in Lodi , and don't miss the nicer and bigger Google Earth pictures at the end of the gallery

You can also download the garmin gps track of the jump , or the Google Earth kml equivalent (I used google earth linux and the kml was generated with gpsbabel. No windows were harmed in the making of those shots thanks to help from google :)

Ferry is another Dutch DJ who's not as well known here as he deserves to be, and it turns out that while I had heard him spin many times on various radio shows, I had never seen him live.

When I found out that he was coming at Ruby Skye, going to see him was an easy decision.
Ruby Skye's atmosphere has really gotten nice, and their decors and sound are quite good.

Ferry's set was enjoyable, although I wish he had played more of those top Trance songs, instead of some of those non distinct boom boom tunes, but eh, it was still a good evening.
It was also good to see that he was having a good evening, and giving it to the crowd.

You can also look at the rest of the pictures of Ferry Corsten @ Ruby Skye

I've been doing some flying again recently, working on my complex checkout (plane with retractable landing gear), joined a new (second) club to have access to more planes and be able to take one of their planes to burning man in August.
I've also worked on my night flying and landings, got a refresher in G1000 avionics and C182 flying, and flew to Harris Ranch two nights ago for dinner, trying out a brand new C172/G1000.

Hopefully I should get my complex rating this weekend, and also get checked out in a Cessna 177RG (cardinal) at Shoreline Flying club, sometime next week (the plane I'm planning to take to BRC)

The flight back from Harris was interesting as the G1000 indicated 19 gallons remaining, but there were only about 4-5 left in the wings when I checked with my dipstick... Check the G1000 picture below.

Today, I also got my complex rating (that means that I'm now licensed to fly just about any small plane, including those with retractible gear and high performance engines) and I passed my checkout in a Cessna Cutlass (172RG), although I've also flown a Socatta Trinidad, and I'm currently getting checked out in a Cessna Cardinal (177RG)

Flight Hours: 177.5
Landings: 532
Night Landings: 39
High Perf Aircraft Hours: 34.3
Complex Aircraft Hours: 18.2
Night Hours: 11.5

Current Music: AvB - Asot 253
Current Mood: Fair

I had been a while since I (well, we too :) ) had gone rollerblading to Los Gatos Creek Trail, which is a shame considering the yummy French bakery that is at the end :)
This reckon mission was to plot the route and set a GPS waypoint on the target, as well as evaluate the calories necessaries to make it there vs how urgent your pastry intake need is :)
Time was about 1H one way, and 47mn the other way (more leisurely on the way there, and a bit uphill)

As usual, the GPS track is here, and you can also look at the pictures taken along Los Gatos Creek Trail

Since Google sponsored the Stanford solar powered electric vehicle, the students were nice enough to bring their vehicle to our parking lot for us to look at.
The Stanford team won the race by a hair this year, and their vehicle can reach about 65mph with internal Li-Ion batteries plus full solar power. It was nice to see it face to face.