Flying

(well, with me holding the stick for the most part that is)
So, as planned I was at the Palo Alto airport at noon today for my introductory flight. The instructor was supposed to chip in his time for free (in exchange for you hopefully picking him when you sign up and select your instructor), but that didn't seem fair since he spent a good two hours with me, and in my book it takes balls to let some random dude fly a plane you're also in, even if there are dual commands (since they don't touch the commands until/unless it's really needed). So, I ended up typing him a little more than his hourly rate, since he well deserved it IMO.
Impressions: it confirmed that flying isn't easy, but at least I wasn't misguided enough to think beforehand that it would be easy. My main problem was really sensory overload with all the commands you had to deal with, and gauges to watch all at once (or at least it felt like it). This definitely reminded me of learning to drive a stick shift in the middle of parisian traffic, worrying about everything around you in addition to the car's controls and shifting gears of course, except that it felt harder :)
Either way, I did ok overall, except for the landing, where I struggled a little bit with the stick because I forgot to also reset the trim since I was too busy looking at all the gauges and doing the approach, and in the end, the instructor did the final part of the landing.
Too bad because my approach was decent otherwise, but I guess one isn't actually supposed to know how to land a plane without instruction, so that's not the end of the world :)

Either way, I just have to confirm which club I want to join (I think I know), and go through the fun new FAA paperwork to make sure that I'm not going to aim a cesna at a building since I'm not a citizen (more paperwork, fingerprints they already have, etc, etc...). If all goes well, the waiting part will happen while I'm gone on vacation anyway.

...and it's not even for a new credit card :)

All of the required information, including fingerprints, associated with the    
following Request for Training has been received.  Based on information         
available at this time, the Transportation Security Administration grants the   
following candidate permission to initiate training for the following flight    
training request:                                                               
Student: Marc Jacques Francois Merlin                                           
Provider: West Valley Flying Club                                               
Training Request ID#: 12939                                                     
Training Request Course Name: Private Pilot 101                                 
Training Request Course Description: Private Pilot                              
Training Request Aircraft Type: Cesna 152                                       
Training Request Category: 3                                                    
Training Request Date: 03-06-2005 to 10-31-2005

It does in a car, but even more in a plane.
This morning, after practising "flying" by going from Sunnyvale to the San Carlos airport (Redwood Shores, by Oracle) in about 10mn :) (kind of forgot about the DST switch), I got to the airport on time for my appointment.
Today was slow flight practise (down to 50knots, which is only a measly 95kph), which was ok until we turned it into stall inducing and recovery.
First, to stall the plane (Cessna 152) is hard, it just doesn't want to and you really have to push it (well pull on the stick) a *lot*. First, I was kind of failing because I was unconsciously not pulling enough, just because it didn't seem like a good thing to do :)
Recovery wasn't as much of a problem as creating a clean stall: I was getting the plane sideways at 40knots pointing up and got fairly close to inducing spins (well, maybe not, but it felt like it). By the end of practise, I was fairly nerve wracked (stalling and intentionally putting the plane out of control just sucked). Although on the way back I was half tuning out, I actually more or less managed the landing.

Anyway I noticed that my car shakes a bit around 110mph. One of my tires must be slightly out of balance. Damn... Oh well, that shouldn't matter too much for the track. I'm not above 110mph for too long on the circuit.
We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Current Music: The Thrillseekers - Synasthesia 2004 (ASOT 181 Top 20)
Current Mood: decent, you just don't sleep as well in coach. Funny that...

It was funny how people were telling me: "have a safe flight" when I was leaving for Australia (I'm speaking in Canberra at linux.conf.au ): I could just easily answer "oh, that'll be easy, I won't be the one flying the plane" :)

But anyway, during this crazy week, I managed to squeeze in a couple of more flights in a Cesna 152 with my instructor. Unfortunately, this will be the end of the Road for Justin and I as he is moving to Texas soon, so I'm switching instructors when I come back. I'll miss him actually, he was both a good teacher, and a smartass like me, so we got along great :)

My flight tuesday, we went accross the bay for my first time so that I could practise flying circles and rectangles around given points with a strong wind. I didn't expect it to be easy, and it wasn't :) The highlight is that I actually managed my first landing (i.e. without being rescued by the instructor)

As for my other flight (and last with Justin), that one was quite challenging too. First we went over skyline to the ocean where we usually train, but this time without me being able to see anything outside. I was flying instruments only with some kind of helmet on my head that prevented me from seeing outside the plane. It was interesting (i.e. 0 outside references) and I actually didn't do that badly.
After that, we went to my dreaded slow flight excercise (slow flight = stall warning on the entire time, flying at 40 knots or less (i.e. less than 65kph, which is very slow for a plane to still stay in the air). I think I got a bit better at keeping the plane coordinated (i.e. rudder vs ailerons). As for stall recovery practise, I was a bit less freaked out this time, and even recovered the plane stalling sideways, on its way to a spin with proper rudder. Yay! (the conquer your fear thing)



Well, I guess the next flight with me holding the stick won't be before a couple of weeks or so. I'll try to use the time to read the books.

Current Music: Belushi - Put Your Hands in the Air
Current Mood: Practise makes perfect

I had a couple of flight lessons this weekend and since it was with my now to be former teacher (he's moving to Texas), we just practised pattern flying and landing (take off turn in a rectangle and land). Saturday, I was just so not awake (don't ask :) and I just had a hard time getting it right at all (the crosswind didn't help).
Sunday wasn't stellar but it was starting to sink in slowly even though I was still having a hard time doing all the stuff at the same time, and I was overshooting my last 90 degree turn one mile off the runway, making landing both a sideways and up/down approach.
Let's just say that I admire my instructor for not having been too scared.

Today I flew with my new instructor, a much more seasonned guy, and after the excercises I pretty much did a perfect approach and landing. I was impressed and I'm wondering if it was luck or if I'll do just as well next time :)

Current Music: Markus Schulz - Global DJ Broadcast - 2004-11-15
Current Mood: Good

Just when I was finally getting used to doing intentional stalls without raising my heart beat too much, the next thing my instructors have found to toy with me is to cut power during flight and say "well, you have no more engine, I guess you gotta land somewhere now". This is in itself an interesting excercise which shows that from a reasonable altitude you actually have a fair amount of gliding time before you reach the ground (my instructor actually lost the engine and flew a plane more than 5 miles from stanford/woodside all the way down to palo alto airport, and barely made it to the runway purely on gliding from 3000 feet, impressive...)
Anyway, the second time around, we glided to less than 50 feet altitude from a field before he put the power back on. That was an interesting game of chicken...
No, I was alert, but I didn't freak out :)

The piece of crap Cesna 150 I was supposed to fly today was again not working (it's the smallest crappiest cesna you can fly, I was just curious enough to try it once, but I haven't managed to get it in working condition yet :)
Anyway, as a result I ended up flying a cessna 172SP which was only a few years old (as opposed to about 30 :)
Man, that was light and day: it had leather seats, all kinds of nice instruments, was very stable in flight and was fast. It was also nice not to have to add my weight, the instructors, our backpacks and decide how much fule we could add to the plane while it still being able to take off :)
In return, the plane definitely felt a lot less nimble but that made it more stable even if it also felt heavier to pilot.
But for my first flight in a real plane, that was quite fun.

Something weird happened the last two days: in total defiance of state regulations, we actually got rain after May. In June actually... WTF?

Anyway, that was good, it gave for a very sketchy day and very low clouds, rendering VFR flight impossible (1000 feet cloud base is required, and we had 800 with the first layers at 500 feet).
We got a special VFR clearance, which can be given to only one plane, and it was me since I was the first one. This allowed me to go practise and fly without instruments while being the only one in the pattern.
It was quite interesting as we got to fly very low (300 feet or so), and do a pattern from a pretty low altitude. At that point, I actually had to worry how close I was to the ground, power lines, and other fun stuff like that.
The weather gradually got better over the following hour until the field went VFR again soon before I came back in.
The other fun part was that the plane looked it had a bad oil leak, but turns out that it was actually graphite coming out of the engine. As a result, I had an aborted takeoff since another pilot reported me on runup, thinking that I had a bad engine leak. Another good practice for that day.

Current Music: Rising Stars - April 2005 - DJ Chilli
Current Mood: Just tired.

So, after much work to try and find a CFI at the last minute to do my check ride this morning, I got scheduled for my check ride flight this morning.
It turned out to be harder than was I was hoping for, mostly because I had a bad night and showed up fairly non awake.
I was first quizzed on procedures and knowledge, and did fairly well there. For my flight, I did well enough, except steep turns, and I came out too early on a no engine landing (although I did land the plane anyway, but a bit too far on the runway due to my resulting speed on approach).
Outside of that, the check ride went well and the instructor said he was happy with my performance (I wasn't though, since I knew how to do the two things I screwed up, and was annoyed at struggling due to a bad night).
Oh well... Anyway, that's behind me for now, and I'll worry about the rest when I come back from Europe in July

Current Music: Top Gear - 06x03
Current Mood: Good

When I landed in France and was driving back from Charles De Gaules to my Dad's we had somewhat worse traffic than usual (it sucks regardless), and I found out that it was because of the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget which happened to bethat week.
The best part was that the next day (Friday) was going to be opened to the public. So I got there bright and early around 09:40 (getting there was "interesting", so I ended up getting a cab that took the back roads and left me from some walking distance from the back entrance, but got me there in reasonable time). By then, the line to get in was already longer than 1h, swell....
Due to a small queueing misunderstanding, I got in a bit early :) and proceeded to see as much as I could before the air show started. The Airbus A380 (two decker, 800 people) was the show's star and the crowd favourite. I also got to see its first flight in front of spectators :)
As for the other planes and displays, it was quite nice to see other things than US planes, from Mirages, Rafales, Eurocopters (including one doing a backflip in the air, impressive)































There are lots more pictures, including a visit of the very nice Air Museum all here

This was really time well spent, I had never been to that Salon or the Museum and I don't regret having done so. The only thing was the mad crowds, but turns out that it was actually a piece of cake compared to people who went on Saturday and Sunday (more than half a million total)

Current Music: AvB - ASOT 203
Current Mood: Good

After one flight yesterday trying to remember HTH you fly and land an airplane aanyway (and doing mostly ok by the time I was done). Today, Ali (my instructor) and I went for a few more pattern landings, and then he stepped off the plane, and I went for my first Solo: 3 landings by myself.
Incidently, even though I knew what to do, I still was a little tense, and managed ok landings, although none were flawless (i.e. nice, tidy and short). Turns out that I was a bit worried about slowing down the plane further even though I should have since I had less weight in the plane, being by myself (this just means that I glided a bit longer over the runway and took a little more room to touch down and stop)








Ali, endorsing my first Solo on my log book

Anyway, this is good news, time to go back and practise more :)

Today, I went flying higher up north to practise navigation and short landing on a pretty small runway.
On the way back, I got my first class bravo transition (flying through SFO airspace), and flew by the golden gate and San Francisco. That was pretty cool :)



see the little piece of Golden Gate sticking out?


San Francisco Piers

The rest of the pictures are here (especially the original sized ones)

Current Music: AvB - ASOT 206
Current Mood: All right

Tuesday and Thursday and Friday, I went to Palo Alto airport, hoping to go practise somewhere before going to work, but this week we've just had the morning haze, with a ceiling at 1000ft or so, preventing me from going anywhere away from the airport.
Not to worry, Saturday I went later and I flew to Monterrey with my instructor, and we practiced a class Charlie transition, talking to ATC along the way, and transitioning through the Moffett military airport, and San Jose international airspace.
I got a nice view of Santa Cruz on the way back.


Then, since it was my Birthday, they just happened to have acrobatic flight demos, I signed up for one. Since I was a student pilot with now more than 60 hours of seat time, I got to fly in front of the planes and the instructor was behind me (just two seats). It was my first tailwheel airplane, as well as the first plane I took that could fly upside down, or pull 5 positive Gs or 3 negative ones without sweating.
Of course, to put you in the mood, this starts with strapping on a parachute, and a quick introduction on how to use the said parachute should the need ever arise (my guess would be the plane snapping in the air due to over-stressing after some manoeuvre)
The plane was disconcerting to fly since it looked like was more than 50 years old, and all the "new" stuff like radio and intercom had been added in non intuitive places. Also, since the plane was designed for inverted flight and acrobatics, it was a lot more twitchy.
All that said, it was interesting to fly, and have the instructor demo acrobatics to me from the back (including full loops and hammerheads), and have me try to duplicate the manoeuvre.
To everyone who asked me if I was sick or puked, no I was fine, but thanks for asking :) (I did however not pull on the stick nearly as hard as my instructor on loops since 5Gs crushing you in your seat is indeed a bit disconcerting, and you tend to let the controls go a bit to lessen the impact)




Sunday, I did another cross country with lost procedure and find the airport while in flight (actually my bastard instructor made me fly with the hood on, i.e. without being able to see outside, made me descend to 1000ft, told me that I could look outside, and right as I did, cut out the engine to simulate an engine failure and emergency landing), and when we were back from that, I had to triangulate my position from radios with a map, and find my way to an airport of his choosing.
It actually went all right. More next week.

More pictures are here

No, no, not the aerobic kind on a bike :)
I didn't have any flying classes on sunday, so I scheduled a free instructor, we took a Cessna 152, and went to practise induced spins and recovery. Spinning is basically the spiral dive that happens after the plane stalls sideways, causing the plane to fall in a spiral fashion.
Recovering from it was actually pretty easy, but it was good practise.
The funny thing is that after 5 times or so, the instructor was feeling a bit sick, and wanted to go home :)
I'll have to go back though, and do fully developed spins, the instructor I was with was a little too squeemish for that ;)

Friday night, I did my first night flight. That was definitely interesting, and a very different perspective, trying to recognize things at night, with just about 0 lighting from the moon.
I found my way to the livermore airport but I couldn't see it because I thought the runway lights would be visible from any angle. Turns out they are only visible from the direction of landing.
I then proceeded to do 7 landings, with the landing lights or inside dashboard lights on or off. An all light off landing was "interesting": you aim between the runway lights but because of perspective you have no idea how far you are from the ground...
Got back to Palo Alto around 23:30 (which I couldn't really see either when crossing the bay), and got home a bit wiser... (the only scary thing is that if the engine quits, you are supposed to aim away from lights, and hope for the best. In real life, you have a good chance to be screwed compared to the day where you can pick a suitable landing site from the sky, aim for it, and safely land there)

Wednesday was interesting, while showing up at work quite tired, due to not falling asleep before 04:00 the prior night, I think in an unexplained moment of clarity, I found out a new direction for my work at google, neatly solving several problems at once. Stay tuned for more info as this story develops :)

Today, I was woken up a bit too early and showed up at the airport for my solo cross country flight, while being quite tired. I knew it was not going to be a piece of cake because I started by forgetting my plane headset and microphone at work, walked to the plane without the book and keys, and then proceeded to break the class bravo shelf by 200 feet before I realized that the plane was creeping up (i.e. close to 0 multitasking skills, and just a general hard time to think ahead and clearly). However, I managed to do the flight, talk to norcal air controllers along the route, do a perfect approach to modesto airport, and a very smooth landing, just like the one I did in palo alto on the way back, where I was totally hauling ass and cutting corners to get back as quickly as possible since I had left quite late and the plane was due back for another pilot).
I guess this served as a useful excercise to prove that I could fly reasonably well, even while fairly tired, and without having flown once for the 3 prior weeks. All in all, not too bad :)
Oh this makes me think that I totally forgot to log the flight in my logbook :)

After my first solo cross-country, which was a bit botched (I found out after the fact that I did it in 1.4H, which is probably some kind of record in a Cessna 172SP :) ), so I had to make sure my next X-country lasted long enough (I had to have a combined time of 5H minimum).
My co-instructor, Sergey, recommended Visalia , which was not all that exciting, but was far enough :) The exciting part was when I saw a jet airplane take off soon after I landed, and wondered why I never heard about him on CTAF, the frequency I announced myself on when approaching the airport and landing. When on the ground, I found out that I had messed up when picking up the airport info from the FAA airport list I had, and picked up Visalia Sequoia Fld (D86) instead of Visalia Muni (KVIS) . Doh!
Anyway, after checking on the ground that my right fuel tank was indeed emptying too (my plane was mostly emptying the left wing, and the right wing gauge was pretty flaky), I headed for the next point: Castle Atwater Airport (KMER) . That was a more fun destination due to the 11802 foot (3.5 kilometres) runway. This runway was about as long as my plane could climb in altitude, which is also close to the altitude where you need extra oxygen if you stay too long.
What was almost funny is the amount of time I had to taxi on the runway before I found the first taxiway that let me exit :)

at Visalia


Almost VFR on top over fresno (one could actually see through the clouds and they didn't go too far)


I landed and stopped the plane in the clear/whitish portion at the beginning of the runway


this is the runway left on takeoff, I could have landed and taken off another two times in that amount of runway


Wind turbine generators


The nice salt lakes over the Bay

The funny thing is that as soon as I landed, I recognized the sound of autocrossing, and indeed, American Auto-X was having an autocross on the other side of the runway. First I thought about walking there after tying the plane down, and then I realized that it would have taken more than 30mn to walk there :)
I ended up taxiing the plane there (which even at a "fair" taxiing speed, took a while :-D), and I watched the rest of the Autocross ( picts here )

The fun part of being at Castle/Atwater was the aviation museum, and its walking tour narrated on tape. That made the trip well worth it. I even got to talk to a former pilot during the war, who showed me some cool stuff in the cockpit of an old bomber. All the pictures are here .

Eventually, it was time to head back. I wrestled with the auto pilot for practise instead of flying straight pilotage (I did the rest of the trip without GPS, just using landmarks, and one VOR for verification), and got nowhere with the auto-pilot (either it didn't work, or I was not able to couple it to either a VOR or the programmed GPS heading: it kept wanting to go somewhere completely different).
After a few landings at Livermore (KLVK) to burn some time, and not very fruitful steep turn practise, I got back at Palo Alto (KPAO) with more than 4.2H of flight, which is perfect for what I needed.

The pictures from the flight are here

Tuesday morning, I showed up for my pilot written test at West Valley Flying Club.
I had studied a fair amount, but had had a pretty bad night due to being oncall.
Long story short, I only scored 88%, due to a mix of stupid mistakes (most likely), evil weather and what's that cloud's name questions, and I think an error in the test question and answers (which I reported)

Of course, I still passed, but with less than I was hoping for (at least 90%). Damn...

Current Music: Matt Darey - Pure Trance - 2005-07-12
Current Mood: Ok

I've been studying my butt off and training quite a bit this week, it's the last stretch before my final flight test with an FAA examiner next wednesday.
I did a test flight thursday, and it was actually fairly bad. I made stupid and compounded mistakes because I was tired....
I flew again today and did better, including a power off landing (simulated engine failure) including a slip to landing, all a night, with a resulting smooth landing.
I think I also finally learned to do steep turns properly today so that I hopefully won't fail that on my check ride :)
Now, I'm back to studying, studying and more studying. Reminds me of school :)
(it is a lot of shit to know actually, and a lot of it is even important ;-p )

So, not very surprisingly, I failed today. I could not get decent sleep last night and have been feeling like shit and quite tired all day.
As a result, after doing the basic stuff, the examiner left me close to an airport, and gave me a bunch of things to do to overload me (which is expected and part of the exercise). The point was to redirect me to a nearby airport but I was about 30 seconds late getting everything done and calling the tower, so in the end, I had just penetrated their airspace by the time I called them (i.e. too late). If I had been awake, I would
- have been just a bit faster and would have had had the problem, or
- realized that I was just a bit too close and turned around until I had time to call

Well, I did pass ground (i.e. required knowledge) with flying colors actually and I still passed a bunch of things in the flying exam, so I won't have to take those again.

Basically, I know that while I can be very smart, my mental abilities are very uneven, and go way down with lack of sleep (much faster than others) or other physical reasons. I failed to be in the top 1/10,000 students in France and had to settle with 1/1,000-ish mostly because of costly and punctual brain farts. This has plagued me my entire life, and obviously it comes up in flying.
My goal however is to have my skill level be high enough that I will manage to do the right thing even if I suddenly become very tired or otherwise start losing mental "sharpness" while in flight (I shouldn't have left otherwise) and get overloaded with bad situations on top of that.
I have achieved that for driving since I do an instruct for high performance and track driving: I can manoeuvre at high speed and in dicy conditions (like opposite lock countersteering if I oversteer in a turn due to water or oil), even if I'm not much awake, because I've trained enough that I can do it out cold. I have to reach the same level for flying.

In the meantime, I'm just frustrated because I learned nothing that I didn't already know today, nor will this piece of the test really help me in real life, nor will another 20 or 50 hours of training really help with what happened today.
Now, I'll just take the missing pieces until I pass them, which is mostly until I either get lucky or a decent night of sleep the prior night, but that kind of defeats the purpose of additional training when the training is already enough, and additional training will not really help improve my odds of passing next time.

Anyway, I should be able to try again in a couple of weeks and in the meantime, I Emailed the controller at Livermore Airport to explain what happened (not required, just a curtesy), and filed an FAA form about the airspace incursion (not requested, but it's good practise).
If you are curious, here's the form, ( NASA 277B PDF header and report ), which is just an excerpt of the report I sent to my instructors , although that's more technical and mostly for pilots

I didn't get to fly Saturday due to bad weather (very low ceiling, which means that the clouds were way too low and that I would have needed a special authorization and a rated instructor to fly through the clouds and end up on top).
But sunday was a lot better, so I went for my bay tour flight, which is really a flight into class bravo (San Francisco airspace) to San Francisco, the golden gate and so forth. While I learn from each flight of course, this was more a leisure and sightseeing flight.

No complaints on the sightseeing, I got to fly around the golden gate itself, and then through oakland airport (well above), and back to San Carlos and Palo Alto.
I used the rest of the flight to do some training (steep turns and navigation).
See the rest of the pictures there (in higher resolution)






The plane waiting to takeoff on Runway 19L is doing an engine runup test (see the water)

Yes, I'm finally a private pilot. The short version is that the test was almost too easy, and the examinator very nice with me (i.e. he asked me to do the bare minimum required to pass

Today was an interesting day weather-wise (as I look outside and see the big cloud cover that's just arrived above us).

Anyway, I planned my cross country just for the diversion piece, to KRBL, and it was interesting to learn all the java flight tools on adds.aviationweather.gov, on something concrete: real interesting weather, worrying about 2 overcast layers, rain (-RA) and icing problems starting at 6500, while 4500 being too low for some other cloud issues, turbulence reports.
Ultimately, the flight that was possible, but pretty iffy, and I certainly wouldn't have done it without a CFII in the right seat, for both instrument bailing out if needed, and a second opinion on judgement calls from someone who has more experience than me



That said, this work (which was actually useful to me as an exercise), and the extra work I went through again to get all the airplane paperwork and prove that it was indeed airworthy, was never used during the check ride as Mike (the examiner) just wanted (for my sake) to go flying as quickly as possible before the weather got worse.

During my preflight, I heard some local PIREP of turbulence on final, and as Mike was saying on my takeoff that things seemed pretty smooth, and I was replying that it probably wouldn't last, it got bumpy right away.
The flight was actually less than 30mn.
Mike had me go to stanford, i.e. a 3mn flight, redirected me to SQL. That time I did properly circle stanford while computing the new heading, fuel, distance, ATIS, and SQL tower, and did all the work done without going anywhere, and busting any airspace :)
At that time, Mike had me go towards Slac, I did an interesting steep turn, which was challenging due to wind and turbulence, but I mostly kept it within the numbers, and we then did slow flight at 60 knots due to the conditions (and the horn did go on and off at 60)
At that point Mike said "so, if you pass, Sergey did promise that he'd stop smoking, right?" (which was indeed what Sergey, one of my WVFC CFIs, had committed to doing), so he said "my plane" and flew it back down to PAO.
"you're done with what you had to pass, that way you can screw anything up on the way back"
Obviously, at that time it was difficult for me to not pass. I was actually awake due to an almost proper night of sleep for a change, but it just didn't seem wise to say "let me do it", when he offered to help.
On one side, I don't really have great satisfaction due to how easy it was, but on the other side I can't blame Mike for trying to make it as easy as he could on me, and the landing conditions indeed turned out to be mildly interesting due to wind shear.
Anyway, I'm a private pilot now, yeah! and I'll settle with the satisfaction of what I actually learned during my now about 110H of flying, and what I'll keep learning with instructors and by myself, as opposed to the one of having nailed the check ride, which I obviously didn't get close to doing.
A big thank you goes to my instructors: Ali and Sergey


Ali, my main instructor


Weather, while turbulent, made for some pretty clouds at sunset

Cessna 182 and G1000 avionics







Saturday, I went for my second flight to practise in a Cessna 182 (bigger
plane & more horsepower), and I picked up one with brand new Garmin
1000 avionics (aka glass cockpit), which is basically the fanciest instruments
you can get in a small airplane nowadays.
I started with a 2H class explaining the new avionics and giving
demonstrations, and then got to sit in a cessna on the ground to play
with all the buttons without having to worry about flying the plane.
I did got about 45mn ground time with the avionics and buttons, plus
the time in flight (2.8H).
My take is that some interface things are still quite non intuitive
on it, like some buttons from the left screen affecting the right
(nav/com), but not all, and not consistently like switching the nav/com
focus.
All in all, the learning curve is fairly high and there is a clear risk of
the pilot spending too much time looking at the screens instead of focussing
on the rest of the flight.
Also, the C182 had a separate auto pilot, which was mostly coupled but
not quite, so each time you got atis, you had to reset the baro on

1. the backup altimeter
   
2. the G1000
   
3. the autopilot

All in all, despite an experienced CFI (probably one of the ones with
the most G1000 time at my club), some quirks were hard to figure out and
quite distracting in flight.

However, for the rest, I was impressed:

• the 2 screens were awesome, quality wise
  
• they back each other up and you can get a combined screen if one fails
  
• they have their own battery backup in case main power fails
  
• soft keys all over make the interface much more liveable than the G530
  
• the real time weather maps, along with XM radio, are cool
  
• real time terrain distance under you is also quite useful
  

All in all, while the garmin folks still need some better UI/usability
people, the G1000 is well designed inside and quite interesting to use.

This was actually my very first leisure flight with passengers since I got my private pilot license. However, this is not like it sounds, the passengers weren't at risk since I had racked up about 115 hours of flighing and more than 350 landings by then :)

Harris Ranch is a good restaurant in the middle of California by Hwy 5 (between L.A. and San Francisco), that is well known by pilots since it has a runway right next to it. Quite frankly, I would never have gone there had I had to drive (2.5 to 3H), but it was a 1H flight, bypassing cops and slow roads, so that was all right.

The runway is known for being very narrow, but we had perfect weather and no cross wind, so it wasn't a problem. You can see what it looks like on google maps

I ended up with a slightly crappy plane to go there (172 upgraded to 172SP with no MFD, and a GPS that was missing half the airports I needed), so it forced me to make use of the skills I learned to navigate and find the airport (it's small, in the middle of nowhere, with no nearby navigation aids, and along a very very long highway 5). I had planned the flight so that I would arrive there before sunset (well, during twilight, i.e. after sunset, but with still enough light to see).
I got slightly distracted by a strip along hwy 5 that looked a lot like the runway I was looking for, but since it didn't match what my VORs (navigation aid) said: even without a useful GPS, crosschecking my map seemed to indicate the runway was still further down. I did a quick call to ATC (air traffic controllers) who were tracking my flight, and they confirmed that the runway was indeed a bit further. It's always nice to be tracked on radar and have confirmation.
We landed at Harris with a little bit if daylight left, as planned, by 17:00 or so and went to the restaurant.











I was a little off course on the way back, mostly because of the wind, a heading indicator gyro that went way off, even after I reset it, and the difficulty of seeing landmarks on terrain at night when you're just along 5 and then crossing a big mountain, but the good news is that outside of having crossed from 5 to 101 a bit early, I was on track and only 3-5 minutes behind schedule when I landed in Palo Alto.
The landing at Palo Alto wasn't as flawless than Harris as it was a night landing and I flared just a tad early (small drop and one bounce), but it was safe (i.e. landed in the center of the runway, proper nose up attitude, and no multiple bounces or anything close to purpoising).




Night landing at Palo Alto Airport, courtesy of Markus and his great camera

The rest of the pictures are here

After training in a Cessna 182, I decided to use the plane to get my mountain checkout. Not only it has more power, but also it was a good chance to learn to use the avionics (G1000) in that plane on a longer trip

I went to Tahoe via Bear Valley, practised at a small mountain airfield (a bit scary actually), and landed at South Lake Tahoe where I had a late lunch. The airport staff was quite nice and lent us a car so that we can drive a few minutes to Lake Boulevard, and have lunch there. It was weird to find myself in South Lake with no snow whatsoever, not have my snowboard with me, and only be wearing a T-Shirt...

Anyway, it made for some nice pictures.
On the way back, it was a night flight for the most part after flying past Truckee airport (visible in the picture list ), so I got to play furter with the avionics, ans the XM radio stations :)






South Lake Tahoe airport, and the lake




The primary function display (PFD), showing basic flight characteristics


The multiple function display (MFD), showing engine stats, real time map with altitude and airspace info, as well as weather


onboard XM radio was cool, I was able to listen to some good trance on the way back (Markus Shultz mix here)

Pictures here

While I fell sick half way through, and the end of the 4 day weekend wasn't as productive as a result. Yet, while I had to cancel my flight to Sunday to Harris Ranch sunday, I flew every other day, including some more complex practise in a 172RG (plane with retractible gear) on thursday, and more practise in a 235HP Cessna 182 G1000 which can comfortably sit 4 people while having about 4H of fuel.

Friday, I got really close to getting a C182 and high perf checkout, but didn't quite make it due to lack of time from the instructor. I'll have to finish next week.
By saturday, after my morning flight, where I got fairly close to getting my C182 and high perf rating.
Sunday, incidently, I got to spend a fair amount of time in my new bed, and cancelled my flight to Harris Ranch, I just wasn't up to it.

Flying Hours: about 130

I went back to PAO today to see my mountain checkout/182 instructor before he left on an extended vacation. Despite the conditions, I managed to do the required flight, landings, and all the ground paperwork to be checked out that new plane.

In return, I received:

• mountain checkout
  
• high perf (in C182T)
  
• G1000 avionics

The pattern work and landings, in rain, gusts, and SJC traffic flighing over my head (Runway 13 at PAO) was fun
Eh, at least I now have one of my two cars that has almost less HP than the plane I fly :) (235hp for the 182T)

The good news is that after finishing my complex rating (I have enough hours for that), I'll then get to build a lot more hours before I do anything else.
This is just as well since I can definitely use more time away from the dashboard and dials, and more time looking outside, and developing a good feel for what the plane is doing without having to look at the instruments (sooo tempting with the G1000 :) )
I'll be celebrating by flying to our SMO office to work there next week (in a 172XP)

Right after the Google Party, which I left a bit early to get a little sleep, I offered to be safety pilot to my coworker, fellow pilot, and charter pilot to burning man :), Pablo.
Pablo did his flight to Salinas under the hood (i.e. without seeing anything outside), while I sat in the copilot seat to make sure he wasn't going to hit anything, or anyone ;)









After that, I was supposed to meet an instructor at WVFC to be checked out in the Cessna 172XP I was planning to fly to Santa Monica monday, but that got cancelled due to her falling sick too (I was still under the weather at that time, but capable of some things as long as I had rest in between).
I spent the hour after that trying to find an instructor who could check me out in that 172XP, but it was hard as few had ever flown that plane (that's why I want it, it's always available)

The other pictures from that flight are here

Next morning, just so happened to be the day, my other coworker and fellow pilot, Jim, showed me his plane, a French Socata Trinidad, and took us for a bay tour ride. It was quite nice indeed, and a quite interesting plane to fly (not right away for me, though, as WVFC requires 200 hours before you can take that one)
Thanks much to Jim for the ride











The rest of the pictures from that flight (including a fair amount of the golden gate), are here

Believe or not, my second backup instructor also fell sick, and had to cancel too.
This was getting a bit unnerving as I had to have an instructor fly with me to check me out in that plane if I wanted to have any chance to fly that plane to Santa Monica the next morning for my week trip there.
Somehow, I did manage to find the last instructor available, and he did have a 2H slot right at the only time I could go with him.
We did a few patterns (3-4 I think), and he checked me out. Sweet!

Flying Hours: around 135

Since I also had just gotten checked out in a G1000, I had also promised to take a few other people to Harris Ranch, so I did so, entirely at night, using the awesome G1000 avionics (among other things, they show you Mountain proximity, and how close you are from the terrain (very nice to see how close you are from mountain tops you can't see).
I was still not in great shape, so I had a judgement call to make, and in the end I figured that with suitable rest (i.e another nap before the flight), I'd be ok (since that had been the case for the rest of the week).
My landing at Harris wasn't stellar, mostly because it was hard to see the ground, and my soft field landing flare was started just a little bit too late. I'll know better for next time...
Dinner was good, and the flight back without issues





Viktor carried a GPS and made some great graphics with Google Earth, showing our route








The remaining pictures are here

My goal was to fly to the Google Santa Monica office, and spend a week in LA without a car. Since the office was across the runway, I just took my skateboard and flew there. It was cool to have actually spent an entire week without renting a car in LA :)

Monday:
Weather was good, and despite a not very good night, I felt that it might be the first day of me not being sick anymore (which considering how much I pushed things the previous day, is nothing but amazing).

The flight went fine, and was scenic. I got in Santa Monica airport 2H20 later, but I never had to go through security, didn't have to check my luggage in, go back to the carousel, and hope it was there for me, I just tied the plane down, took my stuff and my skateboard, and skated to work, almost across the street (it was slightly more complicated than that as it was also across the runway)
My landing was a bit rought, I flared high even though I know better (while I was fine when I started the flight, I did get a bit tired by the end), and dropped a bit when the plane settled on the runway (no bounce though)




161 knots ground speed (185mph/300kph), sweet!



The rest of the pictures from that flight are here


Friday:
I used the morning time to do a flight to Santa Catalina. Since I heard that one needed a checkout to go there, and flying through LA and over LAX could be tricky if not done exactly right, I elected to go there with a local instructor.
I figured it was cheap insurance, and I don't regret it.
I flew right over the LAX runways, made it to Catalina, and had a buffalo burger at the restaurant by the airport, and did a few patterns there. It was interesting practising there due to the crosswind, downdraft on final, and holes in the runway :)















The rest of the pictures from that flight are here


Sunday:
Sunday was time to fly back to Palo Alto.
I snuck in the airport from the main entrance (on the wrong side of the runway) so that I could skateboard around the vehicle taxiway (not the plane taxiway) around the airport so that I didn't have to do the much longer loop outside the airport (especially as it went way downhill and uphill, which with a big backpack and a skateboard wasn't something I wanted to do).
When I was almost all the way around, I could see an airport vehicle, probably alerted by the tower guys, who was driving towards me, probably to find out why a wacko was skateboarding around the airport :)
He did go away when he saw that I reached my plane, and was loading and preflighting.

The flight was interesting since there were a few different things wrong with the airplane that I found during preflight, or found out about during flight, some more minor than others:

• one of the fuel gauges didn't seem to work and always showed full (I just had to make sure I knew how much fuel I was using, how much I had, and rely on the other tank's gauge for computation)
  
• The CHT (cylinder head temperature) gauge looked like it didn't work (not too important as long as I made sure to keep track of oil temperature, and EGT)
  
• One of the doors had a tendency to half unlatch during flight, but thankfully not to the point that it would open
  
• The front landing gear strut was very low and didn't look like it would absorb anything but a fairly soft landing
  
• The engine seemed to burn a quart of oil per flight (ok, I made sure I had extra oil to carry and would top up/check the level each time)
  
• The airspeed indicator was acting up a bit. This one is touchy as it is a reason it itself not to fly the plane. Luckily, it was only sluggish on takeoff and would show 0 speed until I hit 40-50 knots, but it worked fine in flight and slower speed on landing. Otherwise, I had the backups of using the GPS indicated ground speed, and my eyes (which I'm ok with during the day)

While I would regularly have made the return flight at night, with the above list of things not quite working, it was just not a good idea.
For instance:

• even with GPS backup and lights, losing your airspeed indicator at night just isn't that great
  
• Having a fuel gauge go bad, and maybe have the other one get stuck mid way, and then the engine use twice as much fuel as you had planned, would have dire consequences. Sure, I'm reaching a bit here, but doing a forced landing at night because you ran out of fuel is not something you ever want to have to do.

The flight itself went fine, it was a little less than 2H30. When I arrived in Palo Alto, I knew I had to be very gentle on the front gear, so I did a low approach at short field speeds (60 knots), full flaps, and landed with power to do the softest soft field landing I could, and indeed, it was probably one of my best soft field landings, which made sure I would not abuse the little travel left in the gear strut.
(this is another one where if the winds hadn't be calm, I would have had to cancel the flight, or redirect the landing destination elsewhere instead of chancing a possibly very rough landing on a possibly not well working strut)





The rest of the pictures from that flight are here

Since I had a half decent night, and only woke up at 06:45, I thought I would go for a quick refresher flight today.
The reasons were twofold:
1) I needed to do a few night landings for training, and more generally make sure I was still up to par
2) A coworker had been asking to go fly with me for a while, as she was interested in learning herself. We tried to go in december just before I left, but the flight club office left early, and we never go the keys to the plane I had scheduled

I was slighly worried to see how much I had retained after not flying for a month or so, but while I was happy to have the checklist to help jog my memory, in the end I wasn't too rusty. The only stupid thing I did was to ask for a left crosswind departure at Palo Alto, which you can't do for noise abbatement reasons (I knew that), and is called a "left dumbarton departure" instead.
Emily got a variety of take offs and landings (short and soft), as well as a couple of power off landings, one at night. I also checked if I could still do half decent steep turns, and did a stall. This all worked out all right. She was just a bit scared when I gave her the stick, since afterall she'd have to take it sooner or later if she was going to learn :)
I was actually surprised by how smooth my landings were, they actually felt better than usual :)

While going to a boat for a week long dive trip, we got a scenic flight to Cooktown. Unfortunately, the weather was very overcast with tops of 1500 feet or less in some places, but the pilots did a good job of trying to give us as much of a scenic flight as possible despite the iffy conditions (they flew some portions of the flight in IFR conditions). It was doubly interesting for me as I was in the first row of seats, right behind the pilots, and got to see the avionics up close, and chat with them, about how it's like to fly cool planes like theirs (a dual turboprop)

You can see other pictures I took from that plane of the great barrier reef

Since I had a few hours to burn on Monday morning after boating back into Cairns, and before taking one of my 3 flights to reach Dunedin New Zealand. So, I thought I would drop by the general aviation area and do a quick flight with an instructor in a Cessna.
Turns out that it was indeed possible, and I found an instructor who was able to take me. After a few questions from me on how flying in Australia was different from flying in the US procedure-wise, we headed out for the great barrier reef as my plan was both to do a quick fun flight, and sightseeing.
Unfortunately, a few minutes after takeoff, it became quite clear that the weather was quickly turning for a worse, and a huge front of rain with overcast down to a few hundred feet was heading right for us

turning on a far away base, you can see the bad weather we were getting away from


and on a (very long) final, which was more a straight in, very low tops were also coming from the left (I was at just 1000ft)




mmmh, this runway looks short, I'm not sure I'm going to make it :)


The sectional looked a bit different to what I'm used to, interestingly enough, Australia has no Bravo classes, but that Charlie extends to 36 nautical miles

Ok, it was a very short flight, but it was still fun to have done it, including my first landing at an international airport with a runway that was 3.2km long :)
(although that doesn't beat my landings at Castle: Castle/Atwater was 11802ft (KMER) whereas Cairns International (YBCS/CNS) is 10488ft (3.2km))

The few other pictures from that flight are here

One of the linux.conf.au organizers (conference I'm attending and where I'm speaking) happened to know the local flight club, and set ourselves up for a flight with a CFI there.
Unfortunately, someone had just wrecked their Cessna 172, so we took an ancient Cherokee 140E, which was all in all scary for me :)

• I had never formally taken off in or landed a low wing airplane (different ground effect)
  
• I didn't really know the fuel management procedures in detail (when to run with the fuel pump on and when not to, in addition to switching tanks every so often)
  
• The stall indicator is a small light on the dashboard. That's useless and dangerous in my opinion (it should be a loud horn)
  
• The elevator trim was a car window pull down lever, on the roof
  
• There were no foot brakes, it was a hand lever (hard to get used to)
  
• The flaps were different too: it was a hand brake lever (that was weird too)
  
• The plane felt underpowered for 3 people and I didn't feel like we were clearing the trees by a whole lot
  
• and the runway wasn't that long, and was grass (meaning more drag and more room required to takeoff, requiring a weird mix of short field and soft field takeoff and landing)
  

All this to say that I was very happy the CFI was there to help :)

and the rest of the pictures of that flight in Dunedin

After speaking at linux.conf.au, the organizers were nice enough to treat us to a helicopter ride around the city. Incidently, it was my first helicopter ride ever, and I was lucky enough to get shotgun.
I was actually impressed by the payload the helicopter could lift (5 people with fuel compared to 3 people with fuel for a cessna 172). Fuel consumption is a bit higher though, 22gph instead of around 10gph for a 172.
While it was a fun flight, I'm still not too sure how I feel about helicopter safety, those things just don't feel that safe to me, even with autorotation, but maybe I'm wrong.
A few pictures are below, and you can also look at the rest of the pictures of the helicopter ride over Dunedin

Since I hadn't gone flying in a while, and the conditions looked bad for snowboarding, I used the weekend to keep up my flighing skills.
Saturday, I did a couple of different flights in an Cutlass (Cessna 172RG) to work towards my complex rating (variable pitch propeller and retractible gear), and those went reasonably all right considering that I was not super awake and sharp.
For sunday, I had decided to go to the mountains anyway, and did my reconnaissance flight to Mammoth lakes. Getting there can be tricky since you really have to worry about winds and the direction they're blowing (since they can induce tumbling downdrafts and smack your airplane down the face of the mountain faster than you can climb out of it)
Turns out sunday had the best weather you could possibly get: calm and reasonably cold (cold = better plane performance).
I ended up landing at Mariposa-Yosemite/O68/KMPI , then crossed to the other side of Mammoth and landed close to the ski resort ( KMMH ), checked out the airport, and then went north for the scenic Mono lake which I hadn't seen in a while ( Lee Vining O24 )

The flight itself ended up being fairly easy and the only time I was slightly nervous was when heading up the closed HWY 120 from Mono Lake while still climbing to 12500 feet at a respectable 3-400 ft/mn: this was the first time that I was nervous seeing peaks around me instead of under me. I'll take that as a healthy fear :)
All in all, I was very happy to have Einar, our CFI, in the plane, as I felt it was good to have a second opinion or someone making sure I wasn't making any bad decisions. Outside of my so-so performance with radio calls, things went all right.
I should also mention the backup photographer in the back seat who took great pictures when not sleeping on the job or not too jittery due to too much caffeine or overindulging with a 10x zoom :)
(actually those pictures below are quite nice and steady)

Mammoth airport






Lee Vining airport




Mono Lake


Those peaks were high :)




Beautiful Yosemite, courtesy of Ms 10x zoom :)




Back at PAO just in time for sunset

You can also look at the rest of the Mammoth Flight Pictures

I hadn't been flying much (make that at all) for a while since it was snowboarding season, and weather pretty much sucked every weekend (well, good for snowboarding, but bad for flying)
Today, I finally went for a practise/refresher flight and boy was I rusty... Actually my landings were pretty good, but the procedures, checklists and all were tough. If it weren't for the checklist, I would most likely have been screwed.
I went to livermore (KLVK) for multiple kinds of take offs and landings in a high performance plane (172XP), and things went mostly ok, I just could tell the practise was well needed.

Oh, the cool thing is that thanks to my handheld GPS, I can record the flight, and replay it later



Oh, and here are my flight stats to this day:
Flight Hours: 153.4
Landings: 470
High Perf Aircraft Hours: 25.8
Complex Aircraft Hours: 8.1
Night Hours: 8.1
Night Landings: 21

It might not have seemed like much but going to Mammoth again is something I had wanted to do for a long time now (7 years) because it was the very first time I had gone to a ski resort, and the first time I had flow in a small plane too.
I thought both were cool, and I picked up snowboarding soon thereafter, and flyiing a few years later (better late than never ;) )
This day was my first time doing a solo flight to Mammoth and going to the resort to enjoy the snow. My last and first time there, I spent my entire day on a bunny slope, and kicked myself for it later considering how much there was to see in the mountain :) (not that I had a choice, I had no idea how to ski or board).
Turns out I have some pictures from that day, and even found the exact date and ex-coworker pilot I went with back then. All the pictures from back then are here

Anyway, this time it was my turn to go on my own.
The flight to Mammoth was mostly uneventful, due to nice weather, and a triply redundant navigation route: VORs (Merced/El Nido/HYP, Vector 023 off Friant VOR with a shortcut by the GPS intersection CAINS), and two GPSes: the built in Apollo GX60 in the plane, and my hand held hiking Garmin Etrex Vista Cx (used for the maps shown below).
My path, unbeknownst to me, actually went right over the ski slopes of Mammoth (pictures #3 and #4 below), so it was nice to get a glimpse from the sky.
The landing was uneventful, except for a not very square base to final turn which overshot the runway a bit, as I had a hard time turning. It's only later that I realized that I had forgotten to turn off the quite primitive 1 axis autopilot (don't laugh, in that plane, it's not actually that obvious that it's on as opposed to just feeling some wind resistance)

the ski slopes are tracks are easier to see on the full size pictures in the picture library

Turns out the my Etrex Vista would make quite a decent GPS for flying: it has routing capabilities, built in altimeter and compass (with magnetic and true heading) to backup the GPS data, and as a GPS (with WAAS built in), it's actually a better GPS than most GPSes in older planes. Unfortunately, according to FAA regulations, Garmin apparently cannot provide airnav maps for that GPS, so while it has most airports, it's missing all airnav GPS intersections (like CAINS here), and of course navaids like VORs (El Nido/HYP and Friant/RIU in my flight).
It's kind of a shame that airnav data can't be put easily on that GPS, because in some ways, it would be a more useful GPS to use than the one in many planes (many don't even have a real/usable moving map screen), and it can be conveniently loaded with a route at home, as opposed to in flight (on the ground is hard since you may run out the battery if you haven't started the engine, and if you are running the engine, you pay $100-$150/h just to program a GPS :-/ )

Anyway, I ended up trying a route southbound from KPAO towards the SJC class charlie, and crossed over 101 going east as soon as Norcal cleared me for crossing the approach into SJC, and go eastbound towards Merced. Looking at the route logged by my GPS, it seems to confirm that going a bit too far north via Sunol pass is just easier and quicker than trying to take a short cut under Charlie to SJCC and then trying to shoot up to clear the mountains in front of you. I'll know that for next time.

The flight looked like this (going there was the bottom line, and coming back was the top line).



You can notice that the top line (return trip) takes a different path than the way there because we had some very interesting clouds on the way back. They were so wild and high that I could not clear them at 14,000 feet, and barely clear them on the alternate path I took (after checking the map to make sure that I would be nowhere close to any obscured mountain top, and indeed I had at least 5000 feet clearance).
I took full advantage of my allowance to fly 30mn at 14,000 feet and I'm apparently lucky to have a body that doesn't mind that altitude much, as I felt fine. My passenger however reported mild altitude sickness, but thankfully nothing serious as flying lower would have likely meant aborting the flight and going back to Mammoth. All the cloud pictures below were taken while I was at 14k feet, it was interesting to plot a course between them, as if they were high mountains. I also paid close attention to my VSI to make sure I wouldn't somehow get into a downdraft, but the air was quite smooth.

clouds were going higher than 14k feet, I had to find a path between them where I wouldn't end up IFR, while not ending up totally out of course

Due to where I ended up once I had cleared the clouds and the mountains, I was north enough that it made more sense to come back via Livermore and Sunol pass, so I just did that.
What was a bit weird was that I was having a hard time setting the plane down at PAO: I had bounces on all 3 landings, despite an approach speed of 65knots, and wind that didn't seem gusty. The first two times, I just elected to go around and come back for another try, and was able to set the plane down the 3rd time, but I wish I knew exactly why I got those landing bounces and if I could have done something to avoid them as in more than 450 landings, I've never had this problem. I asked one of my CFIs, but didn't get anything conclusive. Oh well, a mystery for the day, and what matters is that I went through procedure and did proper go arounds when warranted.

You can look at the rest of the pictures from the flight to Mammoth (KMMH) and download a mapsource compatible gdb GPS file of the flight and the snowboarding

Anyway, enough about the flight, here is some info on the resort itself:
Driving to Mammoth from the airport is about 15-20mn and costs around $28 each way, which is close to what you'd pay for a rental car, without the hassle of renting a car that is.
The resort itself seems to have 4 different lodges that you can start from, and the peak is at 11,053 feet. While the snow wasn't too great by end of April, it still made for decent snowboarding, and even if we only had 4H of boarding before the resort closed, it was still enough to see most of it.

Jen was a bit tired, but did ok considering, and it was a good day. I was keeping an eye on the clouds that were coming down as the day progressed, and even if they worried me a bit, I figured I'd find out in the air whether there would be a path home, or not, and they were, so it made for a good exercise.

You can look at the rest of the pictures from Mammoth resort

I was part of the lucky few to be on the ZeroG plane (see the link for details).
They came to San Jose for 3 days and 5-6 flights, and I was on the 3rd flight on Saturday, which happens to also be the first time they've done 3 flights in a single day (there is a fair amount of reset time between flight, as they are required to do intensive engine checks and maintenance between each flight).

We got a little excitement before the flight, as someone forgot a driver's license and when we got there, just on time, we had to go back, as an ID was unfortunately a TSA requirement. I somehow managed to drive back from SJC to mid-sunnyvale and back in 22mn, and be back in time for the flight :)

The staff was pretty incredible, they are indeed fully committed to making everyone's experience as enjoyable as possible, and as they jokingly advertise, the flight had the most legroom available of any flight I've been on :)
In a nutshell, they take you in a modified cargo airplane, where they added padding so that you don't hurt yourself too much when you bounce off the walls ;) and after taking off and going to an area of airspace where the pilots can play, they oscillate between 24000 and 34000 feet with a 45 degree nose up pitch (which technically qualifies as acrobatic flight per FAA rules), and stop the plane, which makes it go up and down a parabola during which the plane falls and accelerates down at the speed of earth gravity, making you weightless.

This is not a new method, it's been used for astronaut training for many years, but it was only approved very recently for use by the public. It's kind of funny how it is categorized as a passenger airplane per FAA regulations, and therefore you need an ID to get in, as you get searched with a wand by a TSA official.

The flight itself was obviously very fun. After getting to the right area and altitude (and that part is a big loud because the plane, being a cargo plane, is missing its sound insulation, so I couldn't even hear the announcements from the captain), they started to do parabolas, first leaving you a little perceived gravity left (simulating marsian and lunar gravity when you can do double backflips easily :), and then 0 gravity where you can just launch yourself sideways, bounce left and right, and up and down off the walls, and drink floating water for about 25 seconds or so.
Needless to say that it was super cool, and it was over way too quickly for me, although it was about right for other passengers who started getting some signs of motion sickness (that's one of the reasons why they limit the number of parabolas)
Long story short, if I could go back tomorrow, I would :) Now I can't wait for the videos that they took of us, to see the results. In the meantime, credits go to David T for a few pictures in addition to mine, as well as the videos, which you can all find here

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

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 :)

After a 3 day hike and dinner, we ended up at Visalia Airport on monday night (July 3rd) around 20:15. I went to preflight the plane after we had just dropped the rental car keys in the Enterprise lockbox.
Small problem: the motor would crank as soon as the master switch came on (key was not even in the dashboard).

I elected to start the engine, which went ok, and tried to see if by any chance it would disable the cranking.
I looked in the POH for the crank motor diagram and it doesn't show any fuse unfortunately (that's lame, you'd think that there would be a disable fuse for that)
The ammeter showed a charge, which is what I expected with the alternator running and I then came to guess that the crank motor had stopped, otherwise I would have gotten a discharge. I found out later that this assumption was incorrect and the ammeter didn't actually include the starter motor draw, so the alternator was likely charging the battery while the battery was discharging 10 times faster trying to keep the crank motor running (there as no good way to know that it was still actually running)
So, I continued preflight, but a short time later, the avionics go dead. Sure enough, the battery died and the crank motor must have still been running.

The engine was still running of course, and I'm now on a taxiway with no lights, no avionics, and thinking what will happen if I shut the engine down:

• stuck in a deserted airport
  
• no car since I just gave the keys back and there is no one from entreprise that could be called at this hour
  
• even if I slept overnight, the next day, July 4th, didn't seem like a great day for getting a mechanic in a deserted place. Even enterprise where I dropped the keys would be closed too, so I couldn't drive home.
  
• just to make matters better, I had a surgery scheduled 2 days later, and I really didn't want to miss it as I had been waiting for it for months
  

I also had with me:

• one handheld GPS that was already setup to point towards PAO
  
• 2 handheld radios, one NAV capable
  
• several battery powered lights
  

Against me:

• I wasn't feeling my top
  
• it was dark
  
• no landing lights, nav lights, or flaps
  
• no xpander for Charlie transition or ducking under Bravo towards PAO
  

Like any pilot, I have been trained in flapless landings and had just done a few a few days prior, and also had trained in light-less landings. So, if you add the additional handheld avionics I had (I was really only missing a transponder and navlights), it was very tempting to go instead of being stranded in BFE over July 4th and likely miss my surgery on the 5th.

The temptation to go home was strong, but in the end, just too many things were stacked up against me, and I especially did not like the fact that I had no engine gauges working (fuel / CHT / EGT / oil) to warn me of any separate problem that could have happened. I also really didn't like the idea of gliding to an emergency field at night with no lights and a handheld radio. And of course, doing that flight wouldn't have been legal anyway, so I taxied back to parking.

Luckily, at least I had a bunch of hardware and toys with me, starting with a new cell phone battery, which allowed me to call a coworker, who nicely agreed to come pick us up the next day. Turns out however that I didn't have to call on this favour as I had even more luck: a pilot had just landed and was tying down his plane. He was nice enough to drive us to the closest hotel, pick us up the next morning, and fly us to PAO (he was too tired to do it that night, which was fine with me).
I got to fly a portion of the flight in his 180hp V-tail Beech B35. Weird beast to say the least (3 separate fuel tanks, one fuel gauge, and no electric fuel pump), but lots of payload apparently (4 people plus 120lbs of luggage in the back)
A few pictures are here

The faulty C172XP is still sitting at Visalia, waiting for a mechanic to fly over, or being looked at by a local mechanic, but at this point, it's not my problem anymore :)
Too bad this 172XP seems to have a few quirks like this, because it flies a great 130-135kt, had good payload, and is only $112/h (quirks = broken fuel and CHT gauges during my last 2 flights in it, although they have been fixed)

Since I was going to meet my dad there, it felt like a great reason to fly there myself, and go visit the Grand Canyon while I was there.
I used the opportunity to try some new (for me) flight planning software: Voyager from Seattle Avionics

While I've been having a few problems with it, which their support folks are looking into, it looked kind of slick, and its main feature for me was to have a chart with restricted zones, MOAs, and allow me to plot a few waypoints and routes through that space. Similarly, I was planning on flying a couple of corridors in the grand canyon which aren't very wide and easy to fly without exact GPS coorrdinates. In this case, it's a lot easier to set all those waypoints on a computer beforehand, and upload them in a handheld GPS (Garmin Etrex Vista Cx in my case).
This was all nice and good, but unfortunately, my Garmin Etrex died soon after I landed in Vegas, so I was never able to use the navigation routes I planned for the Grand Canyon. For the rest of the flight, it didn't really matter because the charts in the G1000 that the C182T I was flying, had, were more than good enough for precise off-VOR flying.

Anyway, I selected North Las Vegas airport instead of the closer Mccarran which can sometimes be too busy and would have delayed both my takeoff and landing, possibly by hours (I've heard that some days they only handled IFR traffic, even in VFR conditions). Since I flew there on a sunday, I was able to cut through the MOAs, and restricted zones, and didn't even have to tip toe around the Trona corridor. In a C182T-G1000, the flight was still slightly over 3H due to 20 knot winds going the opposite way (and incidently, I also had winds against me on the way back).

I used the dead time during the flight to play with the G1000 avionics, setup waypoints on the map, and flight plans while listening to the XM radio :)

Below are the few of the pictures of flight from Palo Alto (KPAO) to North Las Vegas (KGVT)

The flight back, I did have to fly around the military and restricted zones as they were hot on a friday, and I don't feel too bad about it anyway because the shortcut area was having some mild precipitations, and 20 knot+ winds over the mountains, which would have made for a bumpy flight.
The entire flight was otherwise uneventful, and Garmin took care of doing pretty much all the flying :)

You can look at the few pictures of return flight from North Las Vegas (KGVT) to Palo Alto (KPAO)

While I was in Vegas, the plan was to fly my dad and myself east, towards Hoover Dam. Unfortunately, checking the weather forecast every day showed low ceilings and on most days thunderstorms.
After delaying to the last possible day, without any weather improvements, I ended up flying on that last day, fully prepared with turning around eventually, as I knew we'd likely not make it to, and land at the Grand Canyon airport (KGCN).
Flying to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam was nice, and we got to see a good portion of the Grand Canyon, even if eventually we did have to turn around.
This is where the G1000 came in quite handy, as I was able to do real time checking of weather thanks to XM weather in the G1000. The one drawback is that the maps it had didn't show any of the no fly zones in the Grand Canyon area.

Anyway, even if I had to turn around, it was still a nice flight, and I was able to use the track saved by my backup handheld GPS to map the flight on google earth, and generate the nice pictures shown below.
You can look at the rest of the pictures of the flight to the Grand Canyon

You can also download the Garmin GDB GPS track , or the Google Earth KML file for viewing over satellite images

I was excited this year because I went from being a passenger in a small plane headed to BRC, and back, and thinking it would be cool to get my pilot's license, to getting the said license, and managing to rent a plane from the fine folks at Shoreline Flying Club at Palo Alto Airport

The flight was about 1H50 each way, although you have to add pre-flight, tying down the plane, and in my case taping every orifice in the plane to make sure playa dust wouldn't get in (playa dust is not very kind to mechanical hardware, which is why we were all surprised to see some rich folks who showed up just for 6 hours, paid $2000 cash at the gate, and flew in in a Cessna Citation Jet. That was more rich tourist spectator behaviour than in Burning Man spirit...)
Anyway, here's the gps info of the flight, and the city and you can also find more pictures from the flight from KPAO to BRC ).

The airport went over 100 planes this year


welcome home




Virtually all orifices were closed, and the wheel bearings/grease protected


If all customs agents were like this, flying wouldn't be that bad


The lovely black rock travel agency


cleaning the playa dust out of the engines in this planes must suck

A big thank you goes to all the people who made the airport possible yet again, be it setting it up and tearing it down, or manning unicom, to advise incoming pilots. You can see more of the pictures from the airport and The city seen from the sky

While I spent most of my Burning Man time outside of the airport, and in the event (you can read about it here ), but I was still able to see the formation flight that happened (7 planes flying in the shape of the man), as shown in the picture below or video of the formation flight

On the way back, even if going to the airport is a bit of a trek (thanks so much again to Ranger Fixit for the ride there), and factoring in preflight time, as well as taking all the tape and plastic wrap off the plane, it wasn't as bad as the 1.5-2H it took people to get to the road.
I heard that on Monday, the wait time spiked to 4H. Egads! I guess despite the flight planning and pre/post-flight time, this is one of the times where flying makes sense.

All right, I guess there are many rows of cars trying to get onto one small road

The flight home was uneventful for us (a few pictures here ). Luckily I was more awake than my passengers :)

I had planned to do a flight in the trinidad TB20 I just got checked out in, to
see how it behaved on a cross country, and check its typical fuel burn, and when I found out that that weekend happened to be the reno air races, it was a perfect excuse for a flight.
The flight there was barely 90mn thanks to the trinidad's superior speed and no head winds, and after taxing to a very full parking area, we got a quick cab ride to Reno Stead Airport.

I had never seen airplane races, and I had no idea that they do fly next to one another around pilons, although in most cases, they do spread out due to noticeable performance differences between the different planes.
It was interesting to then see the same thing with jet airplanes too ( see more pictures and videos than the two samples below

The intermissions, which were mini air shows, were quite entertaining too, especially the USAF Thunderbirds, which still do an impressive job. A good example was landing a tailwheel on top of a moving RV ( more airshow pictures and videos , and