Marc's Public Blog - Flying

AOPA Expo San Jose

2008-11-07T16:00:00Z

AOPA expo coming to our backyard was just not something I could miss, so I spent a couple of days at the San Jose convention center to see the expo, listen to some talks (quite good), and went to SJC to see the static plane displays.

I specifically enjoyed the talk from John & Martha King about flight safety, giving their own experience of stupid things they did and how it could have cost their life, so that we don't make the same mistakes.
"experience is a tough teacher: she gives the test first, and if you survive, then you get the lesson"

nice little plane to get around

always a nice picture to have :)

Anyway, I'm not sure this was a show to come from around the world to see, but it was still quite a good show, and something not attend if you are somewhat local. See more images for AOPA Expo San Jose

Oshkosh/EAA Airventure 2008 Report

2008-08-04T14:51:00Z

First, you should likely look at my report from last year for more details on the conference as I'll only mention new things.
Just like last year, trying to see everything was of course not possible, but knowing what to expect gave me a better chance to manage my time and plan for all the talks I wanted to see. This year I was able to attend several talks from pioneers in aviation, pilots who flew the U2, the SR71, as well as talks on night flying, and thunderstorms, and legendary pilots like Bob Hoover ( see video of what he can do ), or how Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew Voyager, the first and only unrefueled flight around the world .

Slides from the talk on thunderstorms

Bob Hoover

Those talks were definitely worth it, and I'm quite happy to got to hear from pioneers in aviation before they're not around to tell their stories anymore.

For the rest, I went through all the expos in the hangars, spent some time with the nice folks from Seattle Avionics who've been hearing a lot from me on bug reports or feature improvements :) and I also went to check out the other moving map/flight planner/EFB solutions, and from what I saw, Voyager is still the winner (Vistanav of course has nice synthetic vision, but they were lacking on the flight planning and EFB sides last year, and didn't show up at Oshkosh this year from what I could see).
A few notable things I saw this year outside of the great airshows, and finally being able to see the F22 perform, were unexpected things like a working jetpack (with a projected flight time of 30mn) and the first prototype of the terrafugia flying car.

Frasca had a very convincing SR22 simulator

Some exhibit was using a corvette LS1 engine with a gear reduction ratio as a plane engine

Impressive little plane (the biggest cargo lifter)

How Virgin Galactic will take you to space for a mere $200,000

Trainer U2

The first terrafugia car/plane prototype (should drive and fly this year)

Yes, yes, a working jetpack from Martin (not for sale yet, still being tested)

F

20

2 :)

Nice planes brought by attendees in the warbird section

this guy was looked like he was barely able to take off :)

Rocket Racers

I have many more pictures, you can find them in the EAA Airventure 2008 pictures and videos ( especially the airshow )

Flight to Oshkosh and Back in Turbo SR22 G3 Perspective

2008-08-04T13:37:00Z

After my trip to Oshkosh last year, I wanted to go back this year, especially as I found an even better plane to fly in: a brand new Cirrus Turbo SR22 G3 perspective (i.e. with G1000 and synthetic vision).
The turbo gave us the option to fly at 25,000ft (FL250) while perspective fixed my long dislike of avidyne in what is otherwise a fairly good plane, by replacing the avionics with a nice G1000 with G700 autopilot and synthetic vision, which was the first time I got to fly the last 2.
It is pretty cool to know that I'm probably the first person to ever rent and fly a Cirrus Perspective for such a trip :)

My CFI Dave and I went to San Carlos airport to get the plane ready, and figure out how to connect our O2 masks to the plane's O2 system, adn by the time that was done, we headed out, IFR, around 11:00 and climbed to FL250.
Unfortunately, I soon found out that the plane's 12V supply did not actually work and that my fancy new EFB (samsung Q1U tablet running Seattle Avionics Voyager), was running out of batteries. Unfortunately, I had to turn it off until our first scheduled stop (KRWL) where I was able to recharge it a bit. Luckily, we got such a tailwind (20-30kts) that we easily made the fuelstop I had scheduled, so I didn't have to use my EFB to look up other options in flight.

A brand new 40h plane

FL250 required O2 masks

Once we were cruising at altitude, I gave my CFI control of the plane so that I was legally only a passenger, and I tried to use the nose canula for O2 instead of the mask. According to the oxymetre we were using, my O2 saturation was in the 90%+ range the entire time, and while it's not legal to be pilot in command with a canula at that altitude, it worked much better for me, especially compared to a mask where you lose O2 when you have to remove it to talk to ATC. From my research, and asking, canulas don't work as well for everyone at that altitude, which is why masks are required. That means I have to go with the less efficient solution and use the mask when I'm sole pilot in command.
Then, I tried to see what would happen if I didn't use oxygen at 25,000ft (8000 metres, or around the altitude at the top of everest), and I got intense tingling in my body first for the first minute, tried to plug my oxygen back in during the second minute, and passed out after that. My CFI who was also the pilot at the time then plugged me back in and I came back to in less than one minute. This was a good way to see how important supplemental oxygen is at that altitude, and how quickly you become incapacitated without it (I remember trying to plug my oxygen back in, but I never actually managed to do so on my own before passing out). This was the best way to see how little effective time of useful consciousness (TUC), you may have that high, and how important O2 and checking your oxymetre, are.

We got some interesting weather on the way

Nice Avionics shots

Our fuel stop also required an O2 fill

Now is a time to mention my two rants on the plane (I love just about everything else): with two 170lbs people in it, and a mere 80lbs of luggage, we were not even able to fill the tanks and had to settle for 86 gallons instead of 92 gallons. In other words, the payload is pretty poor with full fuel. While I had planned that we could actually do the whole trip with just one fuel stop, flying with 6 gallons missing made that a bit more dicy, and we had decided to cut the trip in two anyway since 10 hours of flying is a long stretch.
The second part is that it's pretty annoying how Cirrus couldn't get their doors right from the start. The old ones, you were supposed to close gently so as not to damage them, and the new ones have to be slammed shut pretty vigorously, to the point that I had just slammed mine a little after the first fuel stop, and we had to turn back after takeoff and land at KRWL again to shut my door properly because it wasn't secure.
Then, just to make things fun, as we climbed out the second time, we hit some icing on the way up, which thankfully we got out of quickly, and TKS was able to get rid of.
But the weather just got worse as we went more east, and we had to divert north and eventually land at KPIR, as the weather just wasn't good east of us.

Soon after takeoff, we hit some weather and got light icing while climbing to FL250. Thankfully we got out of it quickly and TKS took are of it

Weather got bad, we had to divert and go north. We even elected to land early at KPIR

The next morning, we finished the flight to Oshkosh, in time for half a day of show left.

Oshkosh, Finally!

Thankfully, the nice folks from Cirrus as Oshkosh were able to find someone who fixed the electrical problem on our plane, and allowed us to have 12V power on the way back home. Yeah!
For the flight home, I had initially planned to get out early Sunday morning and do a one day flight (timezones and daylight being on our side), but I figured out that by saturday noon I'd have seen what there was to see, so we were able to get out in time before they closed the runways around 14:30, and while we could have gone a bit further, our goal was to reach Rapid City and use the extra daylight to drive to the Mt Rushmore Monument.

Mississippi river

My Voyager EFB, finally working on the way back

We had a few hours to kill in Rapid City and used the time to go to Mt Rushmore

The next morning, I had a flight plan going a bit north, over Yellowstone, and flew by Jackson Hole, which my CFI recommended, and we saw portion of the national park, including Grand Téton :)

Grand Téton in Yellowstone

A nice demo of the synthetic vision showing the runway on an ILS approach

After a stop in Elko for fuel and lunch (no O2 because headwinds forced us to fly much lower, around 10,000ft which doesn't require oxygen. In return, we got a better view of what we were overflying), we finished the flight by shooting a quick approach at Stockton to check out the synthetic vision system (if you look at the picture above closely, you'll see the runway, aligned on the screen), and landed uneventfully at San Carlos.
The google maps track above shows the flight, but you can also download the GPX track of the flight .
Of course, I have plenty of other pictures. One good idea is to open the the map and you'll be able to click on the google maps links by the pictures in the library to see where they were taken, and open the picture links in a new window (right click, open link in new window). That way, by clicking on google maps link, you'll see where the picture was taken, on the SQL LVW PIR OSH flight and the OSH RAP EKO SQL flight .

Flight from Palo Alto to foggy Shelter Cove and back

2008-07-05T14:50:00Z

In order to save up to 10 hours of driving to Shelter Cove for our Lost Coast Trail hike, I looked into flying there.
The flight to Shelter Cove was going to be interesting. After checking the aviation maps, I confirmed that they had no weather reporting, and neither did anyone closeby outside of Arcata/KACV many miles North .
When preparing the flight, I knew from a few phone calls that the area was very frequently fogged in during the summer, and that my odds of landing were not that good. Checking weather at KACV seemed to confirm that even if they were far enough to not have to share the same overcast.
Eventually, I chose Garberville (O16) as my alternate because I found out after some phone calls that it was usually always VFR when Shelter Cove was IFR. Satellite Pictures confirmed that the clouds pretty much stopped at the mountains right after Shelter Cove.
Given that, and a guess of when Shelter Cove might not be under a thick cloud layer (i.e. around 18:30), we headed out from Palo Alto. From the beginning it didn't look good because San Francisco and the entire coast here was covered with clouds too.
When we arrived, it did look carpetted, but when I came down to have a look, I realized it was actually fog at 200ft, so I checked out the airport and as I flew over it, I could get glimpses of it between the fog pockets. I pretended to fly a GPS approach (fully in VFR from my altitude) into it from each side a couple of times, but the first two times, I just didn't have a good enough picture of the runway.
The 3rd time, things opened up and I was able to clearly see the runway numbers and was able to land. Soon after things closed up again and I was not even able to see the other side of the runway. It was indeed a close one and I'm happy we didn't have to use our alternate.

SFO was under that

Approaching Shelter Cove, we had a seemingly solid overcast plus fires

From here, it just didn't look like I'd be able to land

and yet...

Visibility was not good, but on my 3rd pass I was able to keep the runway numbers in view and land

Departure was IFR, but was trivial. I left around 16:30 and the cover was thick enough that I would never have been able to land.

Solid overcast on departure

Shelter Cove was just under that :)

The Bay Area was barely better

Here are the rest of the pictures from Palo Alto to Shelter Cove 0Q5

To fly, or not to fly: crossing the Sierras to and from Reno-Fernley

2008-05-23T23:59:00Z

Flying to Reno-Fernley went fine. I had been watching the weather since there would be chances of thunderstorms there, and the weather was overall cloudy. That aid, the ceiling was forecast to be broken around 8000ft MSL (4000 AGL) there, and it only showed mild precipitation here and virtually no winds over the Sierras (although with a cloud cover).
I figured I'd give it a shot head over there and see how things were. Since it wasn't overcast but just broken, I figured I wouldn't get stuck above high ceilings and crossing wouldn't be that bad.
Turned out to be right, there were some extended stratus like clouds, nothing convective looking and I was able to cross Tahoe without problems between a couple of cloud layers (avoiding precipitation). While the temperatures were definitely freezing at the 14,500ft I climbed to for a nice smooth ride between cloud layers.

It was a good time to use the Samsung Q1U I had just bought, with Seattle Avionics Voyager , my new Electronic Flight Book solution. It definitely has potential, but I ran into connectivity bugs, software bugs, and I'm still learning to use it. Nonetheless, when I get everything ironned out, and after a few missing features get added, it should be a very nice replacement for my Garmin 496.

Once on the other side, I was ready to shoot an ILS into Reno to get under the cloud layer, and then fly under the ceiling to Fernley. Turns out the broken ceiling was still half broken and not overcast, so I was able to get down with no problems and finish on to Fernley and land by the race track.
While I had the de-icing just in case, I never had to use it.

After a so so weekend at the Fernley raceway (due to weather), I was supposed to fly home, but the current and forecast weather were just horrible: widespread mountain obscuration, thunderstorms, and icing as low as 7000ft. Oh, and flying on top was not really an option as the tops were forecast to be over 20,000ft. It's kind of an ever changing 3D maze for which you don't have the map, and where the maze might close in front of you and behind you.
I kept looking at my weather displays and forecast to see if I could make it. I think I found a plan that could have worked, but with possibly changing weather, but quite frankly "could have worked" wasn't good enough.

this is an idea of what the weather looked like over the Sierras the previous evening

and the time of intended departure (red arrows shows the one spot of sun I was in (greyed out = clouds over the Sierras), and where I was supposed to go back to)

First, I was thinking about spending one more night in Fernley and just fly back the next day, but forecast for the following days weren't that good either, so I ended up cutting my losses and riding back with a fellow coworker who was also at the track and will pay the club to get the plane back when they can.
Just for fun, I played the "what if" game and pretended to be flying over Hwy 80, following the road under the clouds, and in some places it would have been really dicy as I would had to fly 100ft over the road, or fewer...
Needless to say that I'm happy to come back by car, although now I'm trying to get the plane back...
The other pictures ...

A weekend in Mammoth for spring skiing.

2008-04-18T00:31:00Z

Jennifer and I had only gotten a short stay in Mammoth when we were able to fly there for a half day 2 days ago. I had really wanted to go back since then, and in a faster plane this time. In a Cirrus SR22, it took 1.2h of flight time in each direction.
We flew there saturday morning, picked up the rental car in Mammoth, and were on the slopes by 10:30, in time for the icy snow to be nice corn snow.

my trusty copilot, at work :)

Hello Mammoth, we're landing and we'll be back in a minute

The snow coverage was still pretty good considering, although considering the warm temperatures, it's probably going to melt fast now.
I took Jennifer around all the lifts and the entire mountain over the two days we were there. As long as we stuck with the sun during the day, the snow was actually fairly decent.

The weather was so nice, that a bunch of college students crowded the mountain in bikinis and swimmers, even at 11,000ft (3000m), which was definitely fun to see. I don't even think they got too cold :)

For the first day, we ended up doing the side of the mountain on the side
of Canyon Lodge.

While the base lodge is a clusterfuck to park at (their parking lot is a joke, and you have to park down the street, quite a ways away), the main lodge itself was nice, and it had the famous Mammoth of course.

We ended up not parking by the main lodge, and by Mill's Café, which is midway on the mountain, and by the Stump Alley/Gold Rush Express lifts going on both sides of the mountain. When the sun allowed, we checked out the other side of the mountain and the back side for our second day.

More pictures of Mammoth Mountain
By sunday late afternoon, we had covered a combined 80 miles of terrain (120km) and used all the lifts that went to terrain (we skipped a few baby lifts).
I was pooped, so we drove back to the airport around 15:30, and had another 1.2h flight with a few nice views of Mammoth on the way home. We were back home after 2h45 from when we left Mammoth (which included rental car return, loading/unloading the plane, and driving to and from the airport), so it wasn't too bad considering, and definitely beat the otherwise 6.5h drive.
And if you'd like it, here's the GPS track of the two days in Mammoth .

More pictures of the flight to and from mammoth .

Bay Tour + Flight to Castle

2007-12-09T08:30:00Z

Michel and Xav met us at PAO for a quick flight north for a bay tour

(more photos of that bay tour )
We then turned around towards Castle Airport, former airforce base with one of the best outdoors display museums of war planes in the US.

See more photos of Castle

2007 Reno Air Races

2007-09-16T10:23:00Z

It was time for another Reno Air Races. This time I brought Jennifer with me, and we flew in the previous evening. It was an interesting flight for me, because it was my first night flight on a moon-less night, and over the Sierras. I took that flight seriously since I had to be very aware of where I was, and how high I was over the pointy bits. The garmin GPSes with terrain warning I had came in quite handy as a triple confirmation that I was well clear of the terrain (which was mostly an issue when I had crossed and had to get down in a hurry to make the runway, it would suck the clip a pointy bit on the way down).
We made it safe and sound in Reno in about 90mn from start to shutdown, and my friend Brian, came to pick us up for dinner.

The next morning, Brian took us to Reno Stead for the air show. In the morning, we first went to see the planes on display, and spent the rest of the day watching the planes racing, and a very impressive 9 plane formation from the Canadian Snowbirds. It was pretty cool when they flew in a maple leaf formation.
We were also relieved that there were no crashes that day (as opposed to the several mid air collisions and 3 fatalities earlier in that week)

Here's a link to the rest of the pictures or the reno air races, air show, and static displays , and another link to the upcoming Thunder Over Reno Movie

Oshkosh/EAA Airventure 2007 report

2007-07-28T14:18:00Z

One of the few things you're likely to notice when you get there, is the amount of planes parked everywhere. It's pretty amazing.

Then, you get through the main gate, and go look around at all the vendors and displays. If you're thorough, it can take 2-3 days (especially if you account for pretty much guaranteed times of bad weather where you'll be hiding in vendor tents).
Seeing the vendors in the big hangars was definitely useful, I learned about a nice Angle of Attack (or reserve lift) indicator which should be on all planes in my opinion, as well as saw the Vista Nav 3D synthetic vision device, and got to meet the nice folks from Seattle Avionics I had corresponded with many times.
I also learned in the process that Garmin were actually a bunch of bastards who managed to get near exclusive rights to all XM weather hardware, preventing innovation or competition among XM weather receivers for PC tablets, which is a damn shame considering that XM weather should be available to all due to the extra safety it brings to pilots. Anyway, I'm personally hoping for a combined PC tablet with solid state hard drive, a small XM weather receiver/GPS combo and vistanav + voyager on it. We're close, but not quite there yet.

The Xwind trainer is a great idea, I paid for a session and it was quite useful

What's also cool is some of the formation flights over the expo. Likely more planes than you'll have seen anywhere else.

There was so much to see and do. In 3.5 days, I only got to see a portion of it (and missed a few evening movies and talks due to being a bit too far and too tired to come back just for them). It was nice to be able to see and hear historic people like Chuck Yeager recounting his war stories and talking about how he broke the sound barrier.

Of course, a good portion of your day is likely to be taken by the airshow performances, some of which are quite good. Unfortunately, the F22 performance got cancelled two days in a row (the second day, due to a fatality during the air show unfortunately), so I never got to see them perform outside of their arrival from a distance. Seeing a couple of Harriers doing hovering up close was pretty ool though.

Outside of the main conference location, about a 15mn walk way, the air museum was nice to visit, and across from the museum, they were selling cheap 7mn heli rides above the whole place. Nice to get a bird's view if you were too busy flying the plane when you got in (as you should have been :) )

Before heading home, at the recommendation of Dave, my CFI, I got a real live briefing at a flight service station, probably something I won't get to do again in the future. It was nice to see one of the guys who picks up when you call WXBRIEF

I was a bit apprehensive about landing at Oshkosh, mostly due to some horror stories I heard about very long wait times to get out. I didn't quite figure it out, but on wednesday morning, I walked to the entrance instead of taking the bus (not very smart: 2.5miles/45mn), but I got to see a scary line of people waiting to get out:

Luckily, when we left on saturday morning around 09:00, they were sending planes out 2 at a time and we got out in less than 15mn.

I obviously have many many more pictures. You can following this link for the pictures of EAA/Oshkosh 2007 including the 10H flight from and to Oshkosh.
It was definitely worth attending and made for an interesting cross country flight.

Long cross country flight to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and back

2007-07-24T02:59:00Z

I hadn't been able to go to Oshkosh last year because it conflicted with OLS, which in turn conflicted with my Birthday. This year, I only had a double conflict (my BD), so I figured I'd give it a shot.
I used the flight to make more serious use of Seattle Avionics, my flight planning software, and it did a good job. My main problem was to have to print all those pages of airports I might stop at, or not, just because I couldn't use my laptop at altitude in the plane. I think I'll be getting a custom laptop/EFB with a solid state hard drive (i.e. Flash Ram) so that I can just use that in flight and not have to worry.

I was first hoping to rent a Mooney 231 for the flight so as to get a good cruising speed (190kts), but unfortunately, it was already rented, so I had to select another aircraft. I had to settle for a Cirrus SR22 :) (well, it was settle because it did cost a fair amount more and was somewhat slower. That said, we got slightly better avionics in return)

The trip was nice for my getting used to the plane, There is no better than a 22H/3200NM cross country to get used to a plane :) but it confirmed that I don't like Avydine avionics. They have too many quirks and just aren't well integrated. We had several bad behaviours from the STEC 55x autopilot (going left and right on an ILS without staying on centerline, or pitching wildly down), a total localizer heading failure on NAV 1 (Garmin 430) where it went on a completely incorrect centerline, and weird communication problems between the PFD, MFD, and Garmin 430s. Stuff that's just unacceptable for a $400k plane.
Apart from those issues, the plane itself flew well though, and we ended up averaging 160kts ground speed on the way there, and 170kts+ on the way back (yes, I know it's opposite from the typical prevailing winds), and I did the flight with one of my CFIs, both to learn from his experience in flying around or close to thunderstorms, as a copilot to help out if I got too tired, and because I wasn't fully checked out to solo in the SR22 yet.

Let's now look at the legs:

Flight from Palo Alto to Oshkosh

The flight was about 1900NM (3060km) in 10.9H of hobbs time and 3 legs. We left a bit after 09:30 and first stopped at Evanston, Wyoming to refuel. In hindsight, we had enough fuel to go a bit further and we should have because we almost got pinned in the airport by a thunderstorm. Luckily, it was only a big rain and thunderstorm cloud, and it blew over while we waited on the runway.
After that, we went to Sioux City and we had to traverse a line of thunderstorm sigmet to get there. Luckily, it was rather mild, and thanks to XM weather and looking out the window, we were able to find a reasonable hole in that line of thunderstorms to get through.
The next morning, we left for Oshkosh by first finding a hole in the low broken clouds at Sioux City, and we got to Oshkosh under lowering overcasts 'on the green dot' of runway 27 thanks to Dave's help feeding me the instructions on how to fly there while I was doing the flying.

Our plane at Palo Alto

I brought in a good bottle of Oxygen so that we could climb at higher altitudes (low fuel flow/high speed cruise at 12500 to 14500)

Departure at Palo Alto was almost IFR but we got out

Salt Lake City

Approaching Evanston, NV for landing

By the time it took to refuel, weather had caught up with us: thunderstorms with lightening on upwind. Luckily we were able to get out

I went through my first convective sigmet, a line of thunderstorms, that was exicting (even if they were mild)

Arrived in time at Sioux City (KSUX) before sunset and before the fuel tank ran dry :)

Flight to Oshkosh was medium to low-ish ceilings

Landing at KOSH on runway 27

The pictures from this flight are here

Return flight from Oshkosh to Palo Alto

The return flight was easier to do in a day since we had 2 hours additional in that day instead of two hours fewer (or a 4 hour differential).
I had planned the flight a bit more to the north to stop at Rapid City, South Dakota for refueling and a quick lunch, and then to fly by Mount Rushmore before flying north of Salt Lake city towards Elko, Nevada. We did a quick refuel in Elko and got to Palo Alto "soon" after that.
Turns out that by sheer luck, my alternate routing mostly kept us out of thunderstorms, which made the flight pretty uneventful.
We got home a bit quicker, but I still recorded 10.9H hobbs on the way back since I shot some approaches for each of the 3 landings, including an ILS approach into Moffett, which was a bit of a detour.

Waiting in line for takeoff (thankfully a short wait)

People were leaving let and right, and those were only the ones that had their transponders on (they were supposed to be left off for about 30NM)

Some light thunderstorms on the way back too

Crossing the Mississippi

Our lunch stop in rapid city, mixed with a few airliners

Mount Rushmore

There were some thunderstorms on the way, but by luck, my flight plan managed to skirt the edges of them without having to worry about them much

Salt Lake City seen from the North this time

A quick fuel stop in Elko, NV for fuel (KEKO)

The pictures from this flight are here

Conclusion

All in all, it took about 20H of flying (plus ground run time), 3800NM (7000km) of distance covered, nice landscapes along the way, and weather that was interesting enough to learn from, but never a thread to the flight.
It was definitely a nice experience, in addition to the time at EEA itself (see separate entry for that)

Recent Flying

2007-07-23T10:53:00Z

After some trouble with paperwork and getting the phase check to happen, I got checked out in the Mooney 231, my first turbo plane. I'm exited, it'll be the perfect plane to fly across the Sierras to Lonepine for our John Muir Trail hike.
The Mooney 231 is a very capable plane, but it does require some special handling (risks of overboost, and crappy flaps actuator). Yet, it can easily get to FL 240.

The rest of my time, I've been working on learning the Cirrus SR22. It took a while to learn the avionics and the specificities of the plane, but it is our most advanced plane up for rental right now, and it looked like a good choice for my upcoming flight to Oshkosh (the mooney 231 being already taken), so while I really don't like the avidyne avionics, it'll be useful for most destinations (and will get me there faster than the other planes I've been flying so far).

Last, but not least, I've been studying the flight to Oshkosh, some 1700 miles (about the same as SJC -> Chicago). I used Seatlle Avionics' Voyager to make a few routings and spit out some flight plans and plates. It's very good software for such uses, I just wish I had a laptop with a solid state drive to use it inside the plane to view my real time routing and approach plates if/as I need them

Flight to Tiger (N58) by Fernley in Nevada

2007-06-23T14:32:00Z

Since I had a track day close to Reno, I made plans to fly to the track instead of driving there (thanks to Samer from Tailored Relocation Services for trucking my car there).
The flight to Tiger was uneventful. I climbed a bit high above Tahoe due to winds past 25knots, which means more than 50knots over the mountain ridge, and possible downdrafts on the other side.
Anyway, we were high enough not to have to worry about any of this, and got over 200knots (240mph) of ground speed on the way down.
Landing was a bit tough due to a pretty mighty crosswind, but we got down ok.
Once on a ground, though, I had a hard time finding tiedowns, so I ended up shutting the plane down, and it's only later that the cab driver drove us around the airfield and we found one set of tiedowns.
The funny part comes in then; I was not able to restart the plane due to vapour lock, so we ended up using the cab to toe it to the tiedown spot :)

Lake Tahoe

Heavenly

Tiger Field and the Reno Fernley raceway

The best way to taxi a plane is a taxi tow :)

We got the plane back in the air thanks to a NASCAR 200amp peak charger/booster

Check out the VSI: almost 2000fpm sustained for a while at altitude, thanks to a nice updraft

Northstar ski resort, by truckee airport

On the way back, I was first a bit apprehensive due to the 20knot+ crosswindws that we had been getting the previous day, but in the end, we got lucky: the next day had almost no winds in the valley that the airport was in (at altitude, it was a different matter though).
Just to make things interesting, the plane's battery died when I tried to crank it. Luckily, I was able to get the semi private airport's owner's son over, and he very nicely helded us out with a nascar high amperage charger.
It wasn't meant for airplane use, so it didn't have the ground power receptacle, but after taking a couple of panesl apart in the plane, I was able to hook it up directly to the battery. Turns out that it didn't charge the battery at all, but it had enough amperge to allow for the plane to start and for us to get out of there (thanks Jeremy).
Once in the air, I went towards Reno to pick up some altitude before crossing the pointy bits: I was worrying about the headwinds, probably in combination with some downdrafts that gave us a resulting 90knots of ground speed in level flight instead of the normal 150knots. I was happy to have a powerful plane at that time. Despite the winds, in a few places, we picked up some nice updrafts of 2000ft per minute. This came in pretty handy because climbing was otherwise pretty excruciatingly slow.
And here's a link to see many other pictures of the flight, including Tahoe from the sky

Passed 300 hours of flight

2007-06-16T12:00:00Z

I just updated the latest page of my logbook, and passed 300 hours of flight. This is good as it opens me up to the remaining few planes that I couldn't yet rent (after WV adjusted the minimum hour requirements for some of their higher perf planes)

Flight Hours: 306.7
Landings: 699
Night Landings: 64
High Perf Aircraft Hours: 106.6
Complex Aircraft: 54.2
Night hours: 21.5
Cross Country: 101.3

Mooney 231, and welcome to class A (FL200)

2007-06-13T08:46:00Z

I spent 3 days learning and flying the Mooney 231 with a West Valley CFI who also happens to be a pilot for American Airlines (he gave me a few tips on flying to the midwest in overbooked planes and bad weather).
The mooney is an interesting plane as it uses a reasonably frugal engine but gets high performance out of it by adding a turbo and making the airframe very efficient. The Mooney is a so efficient as a result that you have to plan your descent and speed way early, or you'd come in too fast and too high and miss the airport (it does have speed brakes that help with that though).
It is however a delicate airplane that requires specific handling, and it also requires a fair amount of runway for takeoff and landing (compared to a typical cessna)
On our second day of the checkout, we decided to do a high altitude checkout, and go visit class A for my first time (i.e. more than 18,000ft of pressure altitude for the US). I suggested we fly to Mammoth since I was curious to check out the snow levels and I was hoping to fly back there for an upcoming hiking trip.
Flying up took a while because the POH didn't make it very clear that you could climb for 30mn at full boost (40 inches) and my CFI suggested we stick to the more conservative 33 inches instead. I found out later that 40 inches all the way up is actually ok in that plane (too bad it was a few hours after the flight, and not before :) )
Anyway, it was nice for me to do my first flight in class A (we were both breathing O2 from my backup bottle which ended up being enough for the trip), but it was however uncomfortable for me since we climbed to FL200, the true (GPS) altitude turned out to be 21,000ft, and the density altitude was actually around 25,000ft: I apparently had some gas in my stomach due to some digestion issues, and that gas more than doubled in volume due to the pressure change, causing somewhat painful stomach spasms.
Things got better when we came down towards Mammoth (with a few minutes in IMC through the clouds that were over the mountain, and we picked up traces of ice).
The flight back was VFR and 30mn faster since we got a more direct route and didn't have to climb nearly that high :)

FL200 baby!

Crossing the Mammoth Mountains at 20,000ft makes it much easier to cross without worrying about the pointy bits :)

The trip back was VFR and we only climbed to 12,500ft, and due to the density al titude, it took us some time to climb high enough to clear the mountain

All in all, I like that plane. While I wish its autopilot had an altitude preselect, and while it's a bit cramped inside, it's a very capable plane which is frugal on fuel at the same time (and here's a link to the rest of the pictures to FL200 to KMMH )
We also scored a top speed of 205knots at altitude, which sure isn't too shabby :) (you can download the GPS track or google earth kml )

Nice Takeoff and Landing with minimag

2007-06-10T10:58:00Z

I did a few flights next to work, first in heavy gusts. Let's just say that I had a few bad landings, it was almost unflyable (15-20knots).
I did a later flight around 20:00 when the wind had died down, and things were much better then. One of my coworkers took a video for me, and I actually did a good job for a change :)

Flight to Santa Monica and Catalina

2007-05-30T00:39:00Z

I went to work there for a few days and flew to Santa Monica airport with a coworker and my boss. I wasn't able to rent the Trinidad TB20 I like to fly (cheap and fast), but I got a C182 G1000 instead, which while expensive got us there and back in a bit less than 2.5H each way.

Since I was feeling a bit weak/tired during the flight, I used the O2 bottle I had when we climbed at 12500ft, to stay focussed. This turned out to be a little hard because for some strange reason, I had a very bad need to go pee, even though I had gone right before the flight, and hadn't drunk much of anything at home. Before some of you ask, I had the pilot pee bags in my flight bag, but unless it was an absolute necessity (which it got close to in the end :), I wanted to avoid doing #1 in front of my manager in the right seat :)

This flight was nice for me as it was the first flight where I was able to use my IFR rating solo: LA was still mostly overcast at 2200ft when we arrived around 12:30.
The only little problem was when I messed up my last radio handoff where I got two frequency digits swapped and lost radio comm for a little while. I've always wondered if I'm slightly dyslexic sometimes or if it's just the occasional brainfart... Anyway LA Center got worried a bit when they lost me for a few minutes, and they were glad to have me back when I checked back in on the old frequency and got the correct frequency instead.
Flying IFR over LA can always be challenging when they give you a victor airway to find and join, and the map is full of them, but I eventually found it and got on it.
It was a soft IFR day, just the usual overcast over LA and I wasn't in the clouds long, but I shot the VOR/GPS alpha into Santa Monica, went through the layer and was nicely pointed at the runway, and managed a nice and soft uneventful landing even though I had to pee so badly by then that I could barely raise my legs to put them on the rudder pedals.
Once the plane was parked, I barely managed to make it out the plane to the FBO's restrooms, my kidneys were hurting by then, but all was well a few minutes later :)

A few days later, we flew to Catalina, which I wanted to do VFR because there's no reason to fly IFR if it's going to be a scenic flight, but we had to wait past 13:00 to have reasonable VFR conditions over overcast/smoky/foggy LA.
We headed for Catalina via the special VFR corridor over LAX, but we weren't able to circle the Island because one half of Catalina was still low IFR.
That said from what we were able to see of the Island on the flight out (after the obligatory Buffalo burger at the restaurant there), there were more obvious signs of the fire that raged over the Island a few weeks prior (although the Island's vegetation did look a bit sparse like I'm pretty sure it was before)

The flight back to SMO was uneventful, and so was the flight back to PAO, in nice VFR conditions each time. Oh, and Rob did a great job flying the plane on the way back (and he gets credit for the a few of the pictures)

The rest of the pictures are here

Nice view

2007-04-01T13:03:00Z

On the flight back from Dallas, the day after the worst weather ever, the next day, the weather was quite nice, and I noticed on my GPS (never mind the fact that AA seems not to want you to know where you are) that we were flying over the Grand Canyon. I also shot the Hoover Dam, where you can see new pillars having been built and the upcoming bridge due for some time 2008.

Hit some kind of bird while flying at night

2007-03-16T05:51:00Z

Current Music: Markus Schultz, Global DJ Broadcast 2006-03-23
Current Mood: Good

So, monday night, I went for a practice IFR flight, and while I was flying with a hood on (i.e. I could see nothing outside, the instructor was the safety pilot who could see, except it was dark), we apparently hit a bird 10mn before landing.
Neither of us realized and the plane flew fine, but now the club wants to charge me up to the full not at fault deductible for the accident, or $3500.
I am now disputing this because I think it's bullshit that they don't cover this on the intructor's policy when the instructor was responsible for looking outside, even if it was dark.
It's going to be a fun one, two pilot situations can be tricky when you try to determine fault...
(not that I blame the instructor, I don't think it ought to be for him to pay out of pocket either, the club should have insurance to cover cases like this, but it looks like they don't...)

Night IFR training

2007-02-02T11:57:00Z

After coming back from Australia, I had of course lost my local club currency for both Cessna C182 G1000 and down, and Trinidad TB20. Since I had promised to take my friend Markus for a bay tour in a TAA (technically advanced aircraft), I decided to kill a few birds with one stone, and regain my C182 currency, night currency, and keep my IFR currency while practising on a new plane.
We went to livermore in actual IFR (ceiling was around 2600ft), almost let the plane land itself on the ILS approach, and come back IFR to PAO on the GPS approach, and added another landing for my 3 night landings.
This was time well spent, and it was cool to fly over a layer of clouds lit by the moon, as well as see planes lined up at a distance for San Jose, enter and disappear into the sea of clouds as they were approaching for landing at SJC

Great Barrier Reef Flight, take 2

2007-01-23T07:46:00Z

Last year, I had planned on flying over the great barrier reef in a small rented plane, but unfortunately, we hit some bad weather as soon as we took off, and had to do an immediate U-Turn and land back at the Cairns airport.
This year, the weather looked quite suspect too, especially with the bad rain the previous day, but we got lucky: there was a ceiling of 1600ft, which was high enough for a flight over the ocean.
I ended up renting a C172S, along with a commercial pilot/CFI to be responsible for air traffic control and radio in general (I'm not licensed to fly an Australian plane), and flew with Jennifer towards Green Island and towards Port Douglas, before heading back to the Cairns airport.
The views of the reef were quite nice, and flying just 100 feet under the clouds in VFR conditions with no traffic separation from other traffic (including IFR) felt quite wrong, but that's apparently the Australian way from what I'm told.

You can look at more pictures of the flight from Cairns over the Great Barrier Reef