So Michelle and I went to the doctor today for her sonogram. The baby looks perfectly healthy, all of the measure were proportional and no defects were found. The doctor was also able to get a good picture this time and said it is a girl! Here is a link to the ultrasounds if you'd like to see them.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/Baby?authkey=RVDuy5S0VIQ#slideshow
Now that we know the sex we can start thinking about names. We didn't start thinking about names yet since it would be twice as hard if you have to think of both boys and girls names.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Breakfast in Hesperia
This morning Michelle and I flew down to Hesperia for breakfast and to fuel up the airplane (their gas is 64 cents cheaper than at Inyokern). The flight down there was very smooth and we were cleared through Edwards restricted airspace above 5000 ft; we flew at 7500 ft. We flew around the unmanned vehicle airspace west of Victorville by overflying the Victorville airport. Hesperia's airport L26 was very difficult to spot as we were approaching, another reason the GPS is so helpful. As you can see from the picture, the airport is not much more than another road in a congested area. We did hit a gust just before touchdown, but I actually made a fairly nice landing.
The fuel price was $4.55 as advertised, but my Citi card was being denied again. They keep turning it off when I buy gas as an fraud early warning flag. I called them again telling them I'm a pilot and I have to use a credit card to buy fuel and when the keep shutting my card off, I'm going to get stuck since I won't be able to refuel. Breakfast was very good with portions twice the size of what I should have eaten.
On the way back to the airplane, I saw gas dripping from my right fuel vent. This is normal when fuel expands, but it was quite a bit of leaking. I didn't notice it earlier, but now I did notice the very slight angle I was parked on. The gas was flowing from my left tank to the right tank then leaking through the vent. This is a common problem with airplanes and is usually only fixed by not completely filling the tanks or parking perfectly level. I don't know exactly how much fuel leaked, but I think it was enough to offset the fuel savings gained by the cheap price.
The flight back to Inyokern was just a little bumpy, but nothing to complain about. It took awhile to get flight following since the controller was pretty busy. I managed to make a nearly perfect landing in Inyokern and that was a good feeling because I feel that even though I keep trying, my landings typically seem to be in the safe, but not great category.
Round trip I put 1.7 hours in my logbook and filled my last entry in my logbook. This was still my original logbook, which started back on January 23rd, 2000 and ends today with 422.2 hours total time, 615 landings, and 85 instrument approaches.
Here is a picture of the solar panels near Kramer Junction.
Here is a picture of the airplanes at the graveyard at the Victorville airport.
Here is a picture of the High Desert Mavericks stadium near Adelanto, CA.
Final approach into Hesperia, L26.
The fuel price was $4.55 as advertised, but my Citi card was being denied again. They keep turning it off when I buy gas as an fraud early warning flag. I called them again telling them I'm a pilot and I have to use a credit card to buy fuel and when the keep shutting my card off, I'm going to get stuck since I won't be able to refuel. Breakfast was very good with portions twice the size of what I should have eaten.
On the way back to the airplane, I saw gas dripping from my right fuel vent. This is normal when fuel expands, but it was quite a bit of leaking. I didn't notice it earlier, but now I did notice the very slight angle I was parked on. The gas was flowing from my left tank to the right tank then leaking through the vent. This is a common problem with airplanes and is usually only fixed by not completely filling the tanks or parking perfectly level. I don't know exactly how much fuel leaked, but I think it was enough to offset the fuel savings gained by the cheap price.
The flight back to Inyokern was just a little bumpy, but nothing to complain about. It took awhile to get flight following since the controller was pretty busy. I managed to make a nearly perfect landing in Inyokern and that was a good feeling because I feel that even though I keep trying, my landings typically seem to be in the safe, but not great category.
Round trip I put 1.7 hours in my logbook and filled my last entry in my logbook. This was still my original logbook, which started back on January 23rd, 2000 and ends today with 422.2 hours total time, 615 landings, and 85 instrument approaches.
Monday, October 13, 2008
1st Anniversary
Michelle and I have survived our first year in married life; so far life has been great! For our wedding gift, Michelle's brothers and sisters bought us a weekend at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas to celebrate our 1st anniversary. This weekend we cashed in their gift and had a great anniversary. We were set up in a spa suite that had a spa right in our bathroom.
We were planning on flying into North Las Vegas instead of driving all the way there, but the terrible winds that finally passed through Ridgecrest were still howling in Vegas. At noon on Saturday, the winds were still strong and they were forecasting turbulence. The weather as forested to improve throughout the weekend so we would have been fine coming back. We could have flown to Vegas, but it would have not been the best flight, so we decided to drive. This also gave us some flexibility while we were there since we would have a car and not have to take a taxi everywhere.
We risked taking the I-15 through Barstow on a holiday weekend since we were leaving pretty late in the day. The traffic was pretty busy, but never slowed down and were were there in 3.5 hours. We checked in and took a tour around the MGM and decided to eat at Diego's for dinner. This was a fancy Mexican restaurant, the food was great. On the way back from dinner we found an arcade and I got to fly an airliner (I just sat there, I didn't actually play it).
Sunday, we decided that we would take advantage of being in a big city and go start our baby registries. I know I know, why were we doing baby registry stuff on our anniversary. Here's the thing, it's a 2 hour drive each way for us to do it another weekend and would have taken an entire day after doing the registries and eating. First we went to Baby's R Us (couldn't figure out how to type a backwards R), this took FOREVER since you have to go through the ENTIRE store and I have no idea what half of the stuff is. I'm sure I'll figure it out when I have to, but for now, I really don't know the difference between one bath thing or the other.
After Baby's R Us, we went to BW3 (Buffalo Wild Wings) for lunch and to watch the Packers! They put the Packers on the big screen and we were able to stay and watch the whole game. I can't believe how much food we ate there, but man was it good. After lunch we headed to Target to finish our registry there. This one was much quicker since you only have to worry about the baby section, not the whole store. While Michelle was looking at some toys, the dogs started acting up. They are pretty upset that we are having a kid and managed to convince me that the least I could do was to put some stuff on the baby registry for them...
After Target, we headed to the Rio to pick up our Penn & Teller tickets since the required that you pick them up at least an hour in advance. We got there around 6:30 and the show started at 9:00, but you had to be there 30 minutes early for seating so we decided to just stay at the Rio instead of going to the MGM and coming back. Not a big deal, but it would have been nice to sit down and relax for a bit, and we could have got our camera. To waste the time, we went to a restaurant for drinks and desert since we were still full from lunch. We got an Apple Streusel with ice cream that was incredible and I got to have an Alaskan Amber. Yes I just listed the beer I drank because it is a big deal; we just don't get good beer in Ridgecrest.
After desert we decided to gamble a little bit. All of the blackjack tables were $25 minimum so we skipped that. The roulette tables were $2 minimum so that was better, until we realized that it really wasn't $2 minimum as we thought. It was $10 minimum per spin, but you could have down to $2 per spot on the numbers as long as you had at least $10 total. That was more than we wanted to spend so we chipped out without playing at all. We headed over to the big wheel that Michelle talks about a lot. It's just like roulette, but it only has 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, 20s, and 40s. If you pick 1 and it lands on 1, then you get paid 1:1, if you pick a 10 and it lands on a 10, you get paid 10:1, etc. This was fun for awhile, Michelle lost $10 and I was even with $20. As we were going to cash out we passed the roulette table again and Michelle said what the heck give it a shot. As I was down to the last $5, I hit where I was playing 4 numbers so I got paid out 8:1. Long story short we won in Vegas again even if it was only $5.00! On the gambling topic, I've got no poker stories since I didn't want to ditch Michelle on our anniversary although she did bring a bunch of grading to do in the hotel and said I could go play.
The Penn & Teller show was great. I'm really glad we saw them since they were very funny in addition to their magic. The thing I thought was the most funny was how they would redo tricks while explaining them and you would still be fooled! Of course some of the audience stunts, you wonder if they planted people, but some of them didn't matter. They had one where an audience guy transformed into Teller, didn't matter if he was planted or not. The show did seem a little short at just over an hour, but I had more than my money's worth of entertainment and was very happy about our choice for our first Vegas show.
Monday morning we went to the Rainforest Cafe for breakfast and then headed to the MGM Lion Habitat. This was pretty cool and you got to walk right under the lions. There was only 2 lions on display today and some of their lions are direct descendants of the original MGM lion. The trainers walk around in the habitat right next to the lions since they are so domesticated. It was cool to watch the lions nuzzle their trainers. The gift shop had all sorts of neat safari stuff and we bought a few things that we will use to decorate the kids room including a giraffe picture frame and a monkey. No we didn't get any lion stuff from the lion habitat because the only cool lion they had was really expensive.
We were planning on flying into North Las Vegas instead of driving all the way there, but the terrible winds that finally passed through Ridgecrest were still howling in Vegas. At noon on Saturday, the winds were still strong and they were forecasting turbulence. The weather as forested to improve throughout the weekend so we would have been fine coming back. We could have flown to Vegas, but it would have not been the best flight, so we decided to drive. This also gave us some flexibility while we were there since we would have a car and not have to take a taxi everywhere.
We risked taking the I-15 through Barstow on a holiday weekend since we were leaving pretty late in the day. The traffic was pretty busy, but never slowed down and were were there in 3.5 hours. We checked in and took a tour around the MGM and decided to eat at Diego's for dinner. This was a fancy Mexican restaurant, the food was great. On the way back from dinner we found an arcade and I got to fly an airliner (I just sat there, I didn't actually play it).
Sunday, we decided that we would take advantage of being in a big city and go start our baby registries. I know I know, why were we doing baby registry stuff on our anniversary. Here's the thing, it's a 2 hour drive each way for us to do it another weekend and would have taken an entire day after doing the registries and eating. First we went to Baby's R Us (couldn't figure out how to type a backwards R), this took FOREVER since you have to go through the ENTIRE store and I have no idea what half of the stuff is. I'm sure I'll figure it out when I have to, but for now, I really don't know the difference between one bath thing or the other.
After Baby's R Us, we went to BW3 (Buffalo Wild Wings) for lunch and to watch the Packers! They put the Packers on the big screen and we were able to stay and watch the whole game. I can't believe how much food we ate there, but man was it good. After lunch we headed to Target to finish our registry there. This one was much quicker since you only have to worry about the baby section, not the whole store. While Michelle was looking at some toys, the dogs started acting up. They are pretty upset that we are having a kid and managed to convince me that the least I could do was to put some stuff on the baby registry for them...
After Target, we headed to the Rio to pick up our Penn & Teller tickets since the required that you pick them up at least an hour in advance. We got there around 6:30 and the show started at 9:00, but you had to be there 30 minutes early for seating so we decided to just stay at the Rio instead of going to the MGM and coming back. Not a big deal, but it would have been nice to sit down and relax for a bit, and we could have got our camera. To waste the time, we went to a restaurant for drinks and desert since we were still full from lunch. We got an Apple Streusel with ice cream that was incredible and I got to have an Alaskan Amber. Yes I just listed the beer I drank because it is a big deal; we just don't get good beer in Ridgecrest.
After desert we decided to gamble a little bit. All of the blackjack tables were $25 minimum so we skipped that. The roulette tables were $2 minimum so that was better, until we realized that it really wasn't $2 minimum as we thought. It was $10 minimum per spin, but you could have down to $2 per spot on the numbers as long as you had at least $10 total. That was more than we wanted to spend so we chipped out without playing at all. We headed over to the big wheel that Michelle talks about a lot. It's just like roulette, but it only has 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, 20s, and 40s. If you pick 1 and it lands on 1, then you get paid 1:1, if you pick a 10 and it lands on a 10, you get paid 10:1, etc. This was fun for awhile, Michelle lost $10 and I was even with $20. As we were going to cash out we passed the roulette table again and Michelle said what the heck give it a shot. As I was down to the last $5, I hit where I was playing 4 numbers so I got paid out 8:1. Long story short we won in Vegas again even if it was only $5.00! On the gambling topic, I've got no poker stories since I didn't want to ditch Michelle on our anniversary although she did bring a bunch of grading to do in the hotel and said I could go play.
The Penn & Teller show was great. I'm really glad we saw them since they were very funny in addition to their magic. The thing I thought was the most funny was how they would redo tricks while explaining them and you would still be fooled! Of course some of the audience stunts, you wonder if they planted people, but some of them didn't matter. They had one where an audience guy transformed into Teller, didn't matter if he was planted or not. The show did seem a little short at just over an hour, but I had more than my money's worth of entertainment and was very happy about our choice for our first Vegas show.
Monday morning we went to the Rainforest Cafe for breakfast and then headed to the MGM Lion Habitat. This was pretty cool and you got to walk right under the lions. There was only 2 lions on display today and some of their lions are direct descendants of the original MGM lion. The trainers walk around in the habitat right next to the lions since they are so domesticated. It was cool to watch the lions nuzzle their trainers. The gift shop had all sorts of neat safari stuff and we bought a few things that we will use to decorate the kids room including a giraffe picture frame and a monkey. No we didn't get any lion stuff from the lion habitat because the only cool lion they had was really expensive.
After seeing the lions, we checked out and headed for home. Knowing the 15 would be terrible today, we headed north and headed through death valley via Beatty. We were home in just over 4 hours, but we stopped to get cheap gas in Beatty. If we didn't stop, I think we would have made it in 4 hours, which is pretty quick for the death valley route.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Lisa and Matt's visit 4-5 October, 2008
Lisa and Matt stopped by on Saturday to visit. After talking for a bit and watching the Brewers win, we went out to eat at Mon Reve, a fancy French restaurant. I remember the food being very good, but expensive, but this time it was very good, but with normal prices. We hadn't gone there in years because we thought the prices were still high, but we'll probably start heading there more often now. On the way home, we stopped by Stator Bros for some beer and wine, in the parking lot we noticed an incredible spare tire cover of Jesus and the Lamb of God, you have to see this picture.
After dinner we watched the presidential and vice presidential debates. It was pretty civil considering how politically different we are. I think its good to hear opposing ideas and rationale.
Monday morning we recorded the Packers game and watched the Brewers game while Michelle cooked waffles. Matt wanted to go see the airplane and go flying so we headed out to the airport. I wasn't sure if Lisa would want to go to the airport since she's already seen the airplane, but I offered her to come anyways and offered to come flying, but knew she wouldn't. As we were getting ready to head to the airport, Matt noticed the growler we have from Laura and Steve from the Kern River Brewing Company and that was enough for Matt to want to fly to Kernville to go to the brewery for lunch. Matt also pointed out that this was the weekend of our 1 year anniversary so it would be fitting to go to Kernville.
Once we got to the airport, I let them check out the airplane while I pre-flighted it. Lisa decided that she would actually try flying! I showed them a little bit of what I was doing as I did the pre-flight. I feel that new passengers are more comfortable when you explain what you are doing. After we added some gas, we started up, did the run-up, and we were headed for Kernville. The winds were calm and the air was relatively smooth meaning a few bumps, but not too bad for Inyokern. There were a few more bumps along the way as we climbed and flew through Walker's pass, but everybody did fine. I tried to keep explaining things as we flew such as "you'll hear the engine rev down as a increase the prop pitch for cruise."
After we cleared Walker's pass I let Matt fly for just a bit. I didn't let him fly too much because I didn't want to have any sudden movements that would cause extra nervousness. The wind was a bit stronger coming into Kernville, but it wasn't a big deal. After tying down the airplane, I got a rental car from the restaurant. They gave us the "White Chevy." I absolutely love courtesy cars (although this one requires a very minimal fee to cover insurance), so I'm not complaining, just telling the story.
The car started up fine, but as soon as I put it into gear, the belts started squealing and I noticed that the rear view mirror was broken off and laying on the dash. The head liner was hanging down and the ladies had to hold it up in the back so it wasn't down to their heads. I decided to roll down my window, which only added to the adventure. As I tried to roll it back up when we got to the brewery, it came out of the tracks and fell back down into the door, you just have to see the picture for this one. For the rest of the trip, the window would slide back and forth.
Lunch at the brewery was excellent as usual, I had the Kern Burger with no pickle onion or mayonnaise and Michelle had the Olympic Pita with no olives and provolone instead of feta cheese. Michelle didn't have any beer because of her condition and I didn't because I had to fly back; no alcohol from bottle to throttle... After the brewery we drove by Ewings a.k.a. the Broken Oar and Odd Fellows where we had our reception. Then we headed back to the airport since I was warning that the turbulence gets worse as the day goes on.
The flight back was just fine as well and I kept it pretty slow. This way the turbulence would wobble the airplane more the bang it around. The wobbles tend to get more people sick, but the banging around tends to scare more people. Nobody seemed to have any motion sickness problems so slow and wobbly was the way to go. The winds were still calm in Inyokern and we were all back safe and sound.
I'm so glad that I was able to take Matt up and go flying and that Lisa came up for the ride. I know this was way out of her comfort zone, but she thanked me for getting her out of her box. I hope that she was able to get comfortable enough to really enjoy the flight, I know it's difficult for nervous first time passengers. I'm very happy that the weather for the most part was cooperative since more turbulence would had ruined the experience for sure. No the pictures are not edited, she actually flew!
After dinner we watched the presidential and vice presidential debates. It was pretty civil considering how politically different we are. I think its good to hear opposing ideas and rationale.
Monday morning we recorded the Packers game and watched the Brewers game while Michelle cooked waffles. Matt wanted to go see the airplane and go flying so we headed out to the airport. I wasn't sure if Lisa would want to go to the airport since she's already seen the airplane, but I offered her to come anyways and offered to come flying, but knew she wouldn't. As we were getting ready to head to the airport, Matt noticed the growler we have from Laura and Steve from the Kern River Brewing Company and that was enough for Matt to want to fly to Kernville to go to the brewery for lunch. Matt also pointed out that this was the weekend of our 1 year anniversary so it would be fitting to go to Kernville.
Once we got to the airport, I let them check out the airplane while I pre-flighted it. Lisa decided that she would actually try flying! I showed them a little bit of what I was doing as I did the pre-flight. I feel that new passengers are more comfortable when you explain what you are doing. After we added some gas, we started up, did the run-up, and we were headed for Kernville. The winds were calm and the air was relatively smooth meaning a few bumps, but not too bad for Inyokern. There were a few more bumps along the way as we climbed and flew through Walker's pass, but everybody did fine. I tried to keep explaining things as we flew such as "you'll hear the engine rev down as a increase the prop pitch for cruise."
After we cleared Walker's pass I let Matt fly for just a bit. I didn't let him fly too much because I didn't want to have any sudden movements that would cause extra nervousness. The wind was a bit stronger coming into Kernville, but it wasn't a big deal. After tying down the airplane, I got a rental car from the restaurant. They gave us the "White Chevy." I absolutely love courtesy cars (although this one requires a very minimal fee to cover insurance), so I'm not complaining, just telling the story.
The car started up fine, but as soon as I put it into gear, the belts started squealing and I noticed that the rear view mirror was broken off and laying on the dash. The head liner was hanging down and the ladies had to hold it up in the back so it wasn't down to their heads. I decided to roll down my window, which only added to the adventure. As I tried to roll it back up when we got to the brewery, it came out of the tracks and fell back down into the door, you just have to see the picture for this one. For the rest of the trip, the window would slide back and forth.
Lunch at the brewery was excellent as usual, I had the Kern Burger with no pickle onion or mayonnaise and Michelle had the Olympic Pita with no olives and provolone instead of feta cheese. Michelle didn't have any beer because of her condition and I didn't because I had to fly back; no alcohol from bottle to throttle... After the brewery we drove by Ewings a.k.a. the Broken Oar and Odd Fellows where we had our reception. Then we headed back to the airport since I was warning that the turbulence gets worse as the day goes on.
The flight back was just fine as well and I kept it pretty slow. This way the turbulence would wobble the airplane more the bang it around. The wobbles tend to get more people sick, but the banging around tends to scare more people. Nobody seemed to have any motion sickness problems so slow and wobbly was the way to go. The winds were still calm in Inyokern and we were all back safe and sound.
I'm so glad that I was able to take Matt up and go flying and that Lisa came up for the ride. I know this was way out of her comfort zone, but she thanked me for getting her out of her box. I hope that she was able to get comfortable enough to really enjoy the flight, I know it's difficult for nervous first time passengers. I'm very happy that the weather for the most part was cooperative since more turbulence would had ruined the experience for sure. No the pictures are not edited, she actually flew!
Saturday, October 4, 2008
It's an UNSURE!
We had the ultrasound yesterday morning that we were supposed to find out the sex of the baby. It turns out that it was positioned so they had to look through Michelle's belly button and it wouldn't open it's legs so he couldn't tell. He said if he had to guess, he'd call it a girl for now, but he said he really didn't know. The last ultrasound before this one he said he thought it was a boy, but it was too early to know for sure so we are still at 50/50. We are going in for a sonogram in 2 weeks so we'll have another chance then to find out.
Here is a link to the ultrasound pic if you want to see. The head is on the right and it has it's hand over it's mouth.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/Baby?authkey=RVDuy5S0VIQ#5253327579089623250
Here is a link to the ultrasound pic if you want to see. The head is on the right and it has it's hand over it's mouth.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jayson.brouchoud/Baby?authkey=RVDuy5S0VIQ#5253327579089623250
Friday, October 3, 2008
Whitney GPS tracks
I just wrote about Kevin and I hiking Mt. Whitney. Kevin was nice enough to carry his GPS up there so I didn't have to carry mine. I have a Garmin 296 portable aviation GPS that is much bigger than Kevin's hiking Garmin etrex legend GPS. Unfortunately, the GPS lost track a lot due to having limited sky exposure at points. Some places had rock cliffs all around which made the GPS lose signal, but if you piece all the tracks together, it provides a pretty good track of the hike. There are a few spots that jump off the trail and I think those are from when the GPS got it's signal back, but the accuracy was still low. Here are some picks of the hike using Google Earth.
Overview of the trail
Top down view
View from Trail Camp including some of the switchbacks, which was just to the south (left) of the lake.
View of Mt. Whitney from Trail Camp.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Visit with Julie and Pancho, and the "Bay Tour"
Saturday Michelle and I flew up to Santa Cruz (landed at nearby Watsonville) to visit with Michelle's relatives Julie, Pancho, Joan, Tom, Sarah, and Shawn at Julie and Pancho's fall party. Since we had some extra time in the morning and could carry enough fuel, we decided to try to take the "Bay Tour" before heading to Watsonville.
The Bay Tour is simply flying to the San Francisco Bay where you can fly around Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and other sites in the area. It is more complicated from the pilot's point of view because it consists of entering class Bravo airspace around San Francisco (SFO) airspace and flying in congested airspace with much larger aircraft while you transition to the north over the bay. Once you get to the bay, you're flying under the class B airspace so the controllers let you "resume own navigation", but still keep an eye out for you to help with conflicting traffic.
There was a lot of activity up there while we were there, but I found the controllers extremely helpful and considerate. Since you are in such congested airspace, they need you to follow exactly what you are told and for you to understand exactly what you are told. The controllers are talking unbelievably fast and there is no spare time for inexperience. The only problem I had the controller quickly picked up on and corrected. I thought he told me cleared to enter class Bravo airspace and to remain west of the San Jose airspace, then pick up, but stay west of the 101 Bayshore freeway. The controller confirmed my read back so I heard it properly so I guess I didn't know what he really wanted me to do.
Since I wanted to start descending I turned slightly more westbound to avoid some upcoming terrain, doing so I would remain west of the upcoming San Jose class Charlie airspace. As soon as I turned, the controller questioned what I was doing and he clarified that he wanted me to overfly class Charlie then descend to 3500 ft on my current (before I turned) heading. I guess I'm not sure who got this mixed up. Thinking back, maybe I was still being vectored. While I was talking to the prior (or even the before that) controller, when I asked if I could take the bay tour, he said sure and gave me what I wanted to do. After I told him I wanted to fly up the west side over SFO to the bridge he told me a vector to follow to be in the correct position to pick up the class Bravo transition. I thought that vector was more of a suggestion in it's context and would have long been expired, but if hadn't, then I shouldn't have started my turn. The controller was very nice and we quickly got on the same page and my bay tour went without any other issues.
Back to the actual tour, as we were flying up the peninsula, there were plenty of sights to see including San Jose International, San Francisco International, Stanford, the San-Mateo bridge, the Bay bridge, The Golden Gate bridge, and Alcatraz. As we were flying past SFO, the controller advised my of nearby traffic at my 3 o'clock down low and climbing towards me. It is usually very difficult to find other airplanes when you are flying because they are small, most are white and blend into the sky, and they are usually too far away. Not this guy, here was a jet flying right towards us. He passed behind and below us, but not by much. Soon we passed the majority surface class B airspace and we were free to navigate on our own.
The Bay Tour is simply flying to the San Francisco Bay where you can fly around Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and other sites in the area. It is more complicated from the pilot's point of view because it consists of entering class Bravo airspace around San Francisco (SFO) airspace and flying in congested airspace with much larger aircraft while you transition to the north over the bay. Once you get to the bay, you're flying under the class B airspace so the controllers let you "resume own navigation", but still keep an eye out for you to help with conflicting traffic.
There was a lot of activity up there while we were there, but I found the controllers extremely helpful and considerate. Since you are in such congested airspace, they need you to follow exactly what you are told and for you to understand exactly what you are told. The controllers are talking unbelievably fast and there is no spare time for inexperience. The only problem I had the controller quickly picked up on and corrected. I thought he told me cleared to enter class Bravo airspace and to remain west of the San Jose airspace, then pick up, but stay west of the 101 Bayshore freeway. The controller confirmed my read back so I heard it properly so I guess I didn't know what he really wanted me to do.
Since I wanted to start descending I turned slightly more westbound to avoid some upcoming terrain, doing so I would remain west of the upcoming San Jose class Charlie airspace. As soon as I turned, the controller questioned what I was doing and he clarified that he wanted me to overfly class Charlie then descend to 3500 ft on my current (before I turned) heading. I guess I'm not sure who got this mixed up. Thinking back, maybe I was still being vectored. While I was talking to the prior (or even the before that) controller, when I asked if I could take the bay tour, he said sure and gave me what I wanted to do. After I told him I wanted to fly up the west side over SFO to the bridge he told me a vector to follow to be in the correct position to pick up the class Bravo transition. I thought that vector was more of a suggestion in it's context and would have long been expired, but if hadn't, then I shouldn't have started my turn. The controller was very nice and we quickly got on the same page and my bay tour went without any other issues.
Back to the actual tour, as we were flying up the peninsula, there were plenty of sights to see including San Jose International, San Francisco International, Stanford, the San-Mateo bridge, the Bay bridge, The Golden Gate bridge, and Alcatraz. As we were flying past SFO, the controller advised my of nearby traffic at my 3 o'clock down low and climbing towards me. It is usually very difficult to find other airplanes when you are flying because they are small, most are white and blend into the sky, and they are usually too far away. Not this guy, here was a jet flying right towards us. He passed behind and below us, but not by much. Soon we passed the majority surface class B airspace and we were free to navigate on our own.
I descended down to 2,500 feet as we headed towards Alcatraz to make sure I maintained 2,000 ft over the area since it is a National Park. As we flew to Alcatraz, we could see sailboats everywhere. As we circled Alcatraz, we also had a great view of fisherman's wharf. Then we flew west and overflew the Golden Gate bridge. Once we passed the bridge, we circled it to the right, then got we started on our way back. I told the controller we needed to transition back through class Bravo on our way back to Watsonville and they let us fly down the coast, which unfortunately was fogged in.
Our trip from the bay down to Watsonville was pretty uneventful. The only interesting thing is that as we were flying over Soquel and we were looking down at the Redwoods, we were wondering if this is where Julie and Pancho lived. We knew it was in this area, but didn't manage to spot their house. Later when we were at their house, I fired up the GPS to mark their location with a waypoint and I noticed that we had actually flown right over their house while we thought we were in the right area.
We grabbed a bite to eat at Zuniga's, the Mexican restaurant with very good food right on the airport as Tom and David (a friend of Tom and Joan's) came out to the airport to pick us up. After lunch we showed of the airplane to Tom and David then headed to Julie and Pancho's house. Once we got there, preparations were already well on the way for the party. We met lots of new people and enjoyed the live music of Terry and Terry out on the back deck overlooking the Redwood forest. It was a great party and I'm really glad we were able to make it up there. Unfortunately Lisa and Matt weren't able to make it, but they're planning on stopping by here next weekend so we'll be able to see them then.
This morning we got up at a relaxed pace and ate breakfast. There was no rush to get out to the airport since they were still reporting fog. Eventually we went out the airport around 1 and pre-flighted the airplane. Everything was good to go and I called flight service. The airport was reporting 900' scattered clouds, but as we watched airplanes taking off, we could see them climb out and turn staying below and clear of the clouds so we decided to head out. There was little traffic and light winds so we took off runway 8 instead of the normal runway 20. We took off and headed towards a corridor through the clouds. As it turns out, it was more of scattered to broken at 300 ft. The corridor through the clouds was plenty big and I was above the layer in no time flat, but I think I ended up below VFR conditions.
I wonder how this works because they leave the actual condition decisions up to the pilot not the automated recording and I had watched airplanes in the pattern not entering the clouds. I thought that this was enough to satisfy me that the airport was VFR, but I was obviously wrong. I wasn't ever worried about safety since I could see the edge of the cloud layer only a quarter mile or less off the end of the runway, but I really don't like to mess around with legalities when it comes to flying.
Flying back was pretty much normal, turbulence over the mountains and a headwind. Michelle found an airport that had some kind of field around it that had a maze carved through it, some day we'll have to drive there and do the maze. After 2 hours on the tach we were home once again.
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