Watsonville

The wind looked most favorable today at Watsonville, so I got to add another new airport to my list. It's always fun to fly over the hills to the coast so we headed out from Palo Alto toward Watsonville, pausing to do a few maneuvers on the way.  Dave showed me a trick with the trim that might help my steep turns to the right. Basically, as you start the turn, you make two quick turns of the trim wheel from top to bottom.  This helps to add some nose-up trim and makes it easier to hold the angle. For some reason, I have little trouble with left steep turns, but right always screws me up. The trim seemed to help.

Watsonville was interesting. I've actually been there on the ground for an airshow a couple years ago, but I didn't recognize it at all flying in. I'll have to go back to my airshow pictures and see if I can orient myself.

This was another good lesson on pattern work and landings, plus it's an uncontrolled airport, so lots of watching out for other planes in pattern. 

Aircraft: 669TW

Landings today: 3

Total landings: 13

Today's flight: 1.8 hours

Total hours: 24.7

Two new airports

More pattern work and landing practice, and two new airports to add to my list: San Carlos (KSQL) and Byron (C83).

Today's flight was pattern work at Palo Alto, a quick jaunt up to San Carlos, about two trips around the pattern there, then over to Byron where the winds were looking better and back home.  Nothing very exciting today. Just a lot of pattern work. 

Aircraft: 739TW

Landings today: 3

Total landings: 10

Today's flight: 2.3 hours

Total hours: 22.9

Flying after work

Managed to make it out flying after work tonight. 1.9 hours, four airports, lots of pattern work. I left work at about 4:30pm, made to Palo Alto by 5, and we took off around 5:30pm for Reid-Hillview. Probably the best thing about flying at this time of day is getting to fly right over all the poor souls sitting in their cars on the freeway.

We made a left downwind departure from KPAO toward KRHV, making a Class D transition over Moffett Federal Airfield, then a Class C transition through San Jose's airspace, and finally over to Reid-Hillview. The Class C transition was pretty cool, crossing San Jose's midfield at about 1600 feet. It's kinda wild looking straight down and seeing the terminals and taxiing 737's right below.

Reid-Hillview seems like a nice place to do pattern work on a Thursday afternoon.  There weren't really any other planes to speak of, so we made left traffic for runway 31 left. Final for 31 is a little interesting as we fly right over the top of a shopping center, clearing the roof by just a couple hundred feet or so. We clear the building, parking lot, a road, and a fence before touching down. Tends to get a little bumpy over the parking lot from hot air rising from the asphalt.

After Reid-Hillview, we headed to South County in San Martin.  This is a little strip right next to highway 101 down between Morgan Hill and Gilroy. We made a few trips around the pattern tonight and then headed back to San Jose, hugging the hills to the west of Morgan Hill to maneuver around the San Jose Class C airspace before getting clearance into San Jose for pattern work on runway 29. Again, I lost track of how many times we went around the pattern.  Soon enough it was getting to be nearly 7pm, so we headed back to Palo Alto to call it a night. 

Wow, what a way to spend a few hours after work. 1.9 hours, four airports, and credit for a couple landings.

Aircraft: 739TW

Landings today: 2

Total landings: 7

Today's flight: 1.9 hours

Total hours: 20.6

No flying again today

Just got off the phone with Dave.  We decided to call off flying today due to gusty winds. It probably would have been a good day for ground reference maneuvers, but there are reports of turbulence, and the gusts would have made things uncomfortable and stressful at this early point in my training.  Oh well.

On the upside, we're looking into doing a flight Thursday afternoon after work, so maybe I can catch up a little then.

Short flight

The weather continues to thwart my quest for flight. After spending a mostly beautiful week sitting indoors at work, the weekend forecast called for wind and rain. I went to the airport anyway, hoping for the best, and got 669TW pre-flighted.  I went inside to find Dave, who was confident that I was going to get some good practice in the pattern today land the plane. 

So, out we go. I got the aircraft started up, called ground (I'm getting a bit more confident on the radio, but I still don't do much talking to tower in the air) and taxied to runway 31 and did the runup.  We did some extra checking on the voltage due to a bad reading on the dash display, but it looked OK and we took off.  

It was more of a crosswind takeoff than I had done before, so Dave showed me how to hold the aileron up on the upwind side and slowly straighten it out as we gained speed. Takeoff was OK but the weather still had me nervous. I just couldn't seem to get the timing right to reduce throttle, add 10 degrees of flaps and push to smoothly hit the 800 ft pattern altitude.  I kept missing it and ended up at 900 or 1000 feet. 

Our pattern work was short-lived. We had barely made it into the pattern before the rain started. It really wasn't raining on the ground at Palo Alto, but at altitude over the bay in the downwind we got rained on pretty good.  You could just see the rain coming down over by SJC, and it was looking kind of dark and ominous. We made four or five trips around the pattern before calling it a day. We had to settle for an hour or so of ground work talking about navigation and VORs.

Aircraft: 669TW

Today's flight: 0.6 hours

Total time: 18.7 hours

Lesson #10 & Another new airport

Another day of low ceilings and mediocre flying weather, but things looked better toward the central valley, so we headed out looking for somewhere to maneuvers. We headed out over Sunol toward Livermore and Tracy, where we found clear skies and room to practice. 

It had been quite a while since I had done any steep turns, slow flight, or stalls, but we managed to practice all three. Again, I discovered that I am pretty decent at steep turns to the left, but I suck doing them to the right. I just don't have the sight picture of the horizon correct yet and I can't seem to gauge my bank angle correctly.  Stalls and slow flight went OK as well, but it had been so long since I had done any slow flight I really needed Dave to coach me through entry and exit. I'm really looking forward to better weather so I can get out and do more work on these basic maneuvers. 

It got pretty bumpy as we approached the hills on the way back from the valley. I managed to get a little queasy for a couple minutes, so Dave flew while I cracked open a vent to get some air. We decided to stop and take a break for a few minutes in Livermore, just a few miles ahead. We made a straight in approach to the comparatively huge runway 25R at LVK - more than twice as long as the runway at Palo Alto. We got directions to transient parking, struggled to chain down the plane in cold howling wind, and walked to the terminal. After 10 minutes or so, we headed back out, took off again from 25R and climbed back under the low ceiling over Sunol and back home to Palo Alto.

Aircraft: 739TW

Lesson #10: 2.0 hours

Total time: 16.2 hours

Landings today: 1

Total landings: 3

Headset choices

There is so much gear to buy when one takes up flying. At the top of the list is the headset. I've been borrowing my instructor's spare 10+ year old Lightspeed (15XLc, I think) since I started taking lessons, but I really needed to get my own. I did a bunch of research, and the two top rivals are the Bose X and Lightspeed Zulu. 

The Bose has been regarded as top-of-the-line for a long time, but the Zulu seems to be the hot new contender. I did a lot of online research, which basically came down to "you'll love either one, they're both great." It's nearly as bad as Mac vs. PC, Ford vs. Chevy, etc. There are a lot of people with strong opinions on both sides. It's nearly impossible to make a rational choice.

My instructor uses an older Bose, but also has really good things to say about Lightspeed and owns a Zulu for his wife. He let me try the Zulu out few flights back, and it was impressive, especially compared to the older Lightspeed I've been using.  

I had no in-flight experience with the Bose, but I happened to be at the mall a couple weeks ago and stumbled across a Bose store.  I was surprised to find they had the Bose X available to demo and even had two in stock, which the salesman said was not normal. I have to say, the Bose customer service was really good, the headset sounded great, but $999 is pretty steep. Bose does run a 12-month no interest payment plan billed to your major credit card if you buy online or over the phone, but it doesn't work in the store, which was a bummer. I was tempted by the Bose 30-day no questions asked return policy and in-stock-take-it-home-tonight instant gratification, but I decided to hold off. If I was going to buy the Bose, I figured I'd either buy with the payment plan or order from an online seller somewhere with no sales tax.

So how did I decide between the two? It was tough. The Bose payment plan makes the financial pain of a $999 headset easier by spreading it into a bunch of sub-$90 payments, but it's still the most expensive and you have to pay sales tax ordering direct from Bose. That's just the financial part. When you get right down to it, the Bose has fewer features. The Zulu is $150 cheaper, has aux audio input, sound quality on par with the Bose, and even Bluetooth capability to connect to a cell phone. Although I don't expect to ever fly and talk on the phone at the same time, it's a nice feature to have to be able to make calls while sitting on the ramp in the plane.

So, all things considered, I decided that the $150 price difference and extra features were enough to sway me to the Zulu. I ordered it from Sporty's on Tuesday and it arrived today along with some other gear (Cessna 172S AIM and a AA battery holder) I'd been needing. Seems like a great choice so far. I immediately plugged it into my iPhone (it comes with the necessary audio cables!) to check out the audio quality. The ANR seems impressive sitting in the house, but the true test will be flying this weekend. I can't wait.

Who says ATC and pilots don't have a sense of humor?

I got to fly this past weekend, but as a commercial passenger only on a quick trip back to visit family in the Midwest. 

I flew United, which for all the faults the airlines have these days, is the only carrier I know of that provides the ability to listen to ATC on in-flight audio, which I greatly enjoy.

I was listening to ATC somewhere over Nevada or Utah when a voice suddenly said "Hi, this is Bob..." and disappeared. Perhaps "Bob" tried to answer his cell phone but keyed the mic instead? Within seconds, came the cheerful chorus of "Hi Bob... hi Bob... hi Bob... hi Bob..." from the controller and a string of other pilots. I just about busted out laughing in my seat.

Now I have first hand evidence that controllers and pilots really do have a sense of humor.