N951CC flies to Santa Barbara

The family flew to Santa Barbara to visit with Lisa for lunch and to hang out on State st. This was the first time I landed at a class C airport. Seems weird that I haven't flown into one earlier, but I just haven't.

I heard a lot of reports of steep ramp fees, but those were waived with just 7 gallons of gas. Their rate was a dollar more than my home field so I really only paid $7 for ramp fees. I'd rather not pay anything, but this wasn't the end of the world. I certainly won't avoid Santa Barbara if that is the most suitable airport.

The flight there and back was nice and smooth, but we had to rush out in order to beat the sun. We won, but only by 30 minutes. Hopefully we'll have more time to spend there next time.

Michelle did some camera work to get some new points of view while flying. Here's the video.

Katie is now standing on her own

Katie started standing on her own this past Friday (2/5/10). Before then she would stand for maybe a second, but would sit down right away. Now she stands for quite a bit at a time. She walks if she's holding a hand so now we just have to convince her to take her first real steps.

SPOT messenger and flight plans

This was a post on the Cessna Pilots Association forums that I thought was worth paraphrasing here just in case any pilots read my blog.

"BUT??? Did the pilot have a FLIGHT PLAN??? Isn't that the standard statement whenever there's a (non-News media) accident or incident..."

This comment spawned a question whether flight following or a flight plan was better.

There were a lot of comments saying flight plans were a waste of time unless you would be flying in areas where you are out of communication with ATC. Some people also brought up the SPOT messenger from http://www.findmespot.com/en/.

Here are my responses to these posts that I thought were worth repeating.

I'm really surprised and I guess disappointed by the number of people who say they don't file flight plans? You have to get a brief (if nothing else to check TFRs and NOTAMS) so why not just file a flight plan at the same time. You need to make them work for you so you don't have to put every twist and turn in and if you know it'll take you 30 minutes to close after landing then just add it to your time enroute. It's better than not having anybody come after you.

BTW, it doesn't matter which one is better, what is stopping you from doing both? I file a flight plan when getting my brief, turn on my SPOT and clip my "close flight plan keychain" onto my airplane key during pre-flight, open my flight plan as soon as I leave the vicinity of the airport, then call up approach for flight following. When I'm securing the airplane and take the keys out of the ignition, I'm immediately reminded to close my flight plan by the keychain.

My issue with SPOT is if you were disabled during the wreck or if it launched out of the airplane during the wreck, then you wouldn't be able to hit the 911 button. In my case I'd be relying on people to realize I'm missing and then remember I told them how to track me down using my SPOT track.



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I'm glad I read this message because it got me thinking after I wrote that last post... I was wondering if I can somehow connect my SPOT with the flight plan so that search and rescue would have access to my last known GPS location. I called SPOT and flight service to see what I could do.

First I called SPOT, my questions were related to if no 911 message was sent and the FAA or search and rescue called asking for the info, would they give it to them. The answer was NO unless they were one of my emergency contacts! I'm assuming that is unless you hit the 911 where they contact the emergency services. I asked if I could put "FAA" or "Emergency Services" as an emergency contact and he said yes. My primary emergency contact for my SPOT is now "Search and rescue and emergency services". I guess I do like the privacy considerations, but it seems stupid to let search and rescue have to search when they could be told where I am and to expedite the rescue.

I also called flight service and talked about the best way to get this information onto a flight plan. For VFR they said it was easy since the remarks field is free form type. He can put "Pilot has SPOT messenger on board" or "Contact family for last known GPS location". He said they only had 12 characters for IFR flight plans. I know some mountain search and rescue folks and they all know what the SPOT messenger is so I figure I can put "SPOT MSNGER" for 11 characters on the IFR flight plan and be good enough. I will be highly disappointed if they were to search for me and not google "SPOT MSNGER" if they didn't know what it was. BTW, the first hit on google for "SPOT MSNGER" is the company's website. I think this gives you the best of all worlds and is what I will be doing from now on.

Jayson

Furnace Creek Brunch 2010

Sunday we had the opportunity to meet Seth and Sue Dallob at Furnace Creek Inn for brunch. Seth writes a blog that follows his flights similar to my blog. The flight there and back was nice and smooth. Death Valley had a bunch of water from the recent rain and snow in the area. Hopefully they will have great flowers again this year, we'll have to fly back this spring for camping.

Furnace Creek Brunch 2009

On November 15th, after our first family pictures, we flew to Furnace Creek Inn for Sunday Brunch. They have a 5 star hotel there with an excellent brunch and they offer free transportation to and from the Inn from the hotel. The brunch was excellent as usual and we ate way more than we should have. Here is the video of the flight.

N951CC flies to Phoenix for the Packer game

This year Michelle and I didn't order DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket to watch the Packers and decided to actually go to our first game. We went to the last game of the season against the Phoenix Cardinals.

This was our first time both of us were away from Katie except for daycare. The weather looked good so we dropped Katie off with some friends and headed for the airport. It would have taken 8 hours to drive there not to mention stopping for meals and stretching our legs, but the flight took only 2.5 hours. It would have been shorter, but I've been wanting to see how high I can get my airplane to fly.

We are going to be flying ourselves home to WI again this summer and I'm hoping to fly through Colorado and the Rockies. The other 3 times I've made the trip, I either went well north through Washington or well south through Texas. So we spent a lot of extra time climbing on the trip to Phoenix, but I was able to get up to 17,500 feet. Although I wasn't at max gross weight, I wasn't light either. Climbing to 13,500 was no problem, 14.5 was getting slower and I was thinking I was going to barely make it to 16.5 and have to descend back to 15.5 (you are supposed to cruise at odd altitudes + 500 going east). The airplane kept climbing, although not very fast, but I was able to get all the way up to 17,500 feet. This will be great for flying home this summer, the only issue may be getting Katie to wear her oxygen mask - she doesn't like it so far.

The flight was nice and smooth and everything was well until we were switched to the Deer Valley tower. I didn't have too many problems with them, but I have NEVER heard controllers YELLING at pilots like this guy was. The controller wasn't very happy when I couldn't identify which airplane to follow. I could see 3 in front of me, but they were landing on parallel runways and I was 90 degrees to the runway so I couldn't figure out which one was landing on which runway. He vectored me and I had no other issues, but he really ripped into other pilots who were mostly students.

We had an unbelievable rate from Hertz, but we had to be there before noon to pick up the car. We scheduled our flight to get there just before they closed, but I forgot about the time zone change, so we were 50 minutes late and the guy was closing up. I begged for a bit and eventually the guy gave us a car, I gave him a fat tip and thanked him a lot. After getting the car, we ate lunch at the airport restaurant. It was good, but I'm not sure I'd fly there for a burger because I'd rather not deal with the tower. By the way, they had landing traffic land on the north runway and touch and go's landing on the south runway and parking and everything is on the south side, so they had a line of airplanes trying to cross the south runway. I think it took 10-15 minutes after landing to park, then on top of that, ground control directed me to the wrong parking spot.

Since we flew in, we got to our hotel around 2:30 instead of late at night so we went to the hot tub and then to go see Avatar in 3D and Cold Stone for dessert. I thought it was a good movie and had excellent visual effects. We had the worst night sleep in the past few years because of noisy neighbors. The people above us were having a wrestling match and were yelling and swearing all night. We called the manager several times, but that didn't help much.

In the morning we headed to the grocery store to pick up some brats and beer for tailgating. When we showed up at the public parking, there were signs everywhere prohibiting tailgating. You have to pay for premium parking if you want to tailgate! So we found someone selling parking spots and fired up the grill. I gave the left over brats to the Packer fans next to us and we headed in for the game. We walked around the stadium a bit then headed up to our seats. We had the first and second seats of the first row of the 2nd deck. I thought these were going to be great seats, but they ended up being right behind the stairwell. I would stand when they were playing along the 50 yard line since the stairs blocked my view and a bunch of people were harassing me. After a bit of an exchange and a visit by security, I told them to deal with it and go home if they wanted to watch the game sitting on their couch. I didn't have any more problems after that. It was a great game and the Pack game away with a W.

We switched rooms at the hotel because of the night before and the second night was fine, they were loud until 10 and started up at 7, but at least they were quiet through the night.

On the way home we decided to make a detour and head to Sedona for lunch. It was only 45 minutes or so out of the way so why not. The flight from Phoenix to Sedona was short and uneventful and the descent into Sedona was spectacular. The scenery was beautiful and inspiring and the approach to the "carrier" airport was pretty cool. The airport sits on a mesa high above the rest of the area. Thankfully, neither Michelle or I felt a vortex while landing and the arrival was safe and smooth. The food there was pretty good despite a few bad reviews. I'd definitely stop there again if we were in the area.

After lunch, we were on our way back home. Cruising at 14,500 feet, we made it home after a total flight time (including Phoenix to Sedona) of 3.8 hours. Now we're just waiting to see the 2010 Packer schedule so we can figure out what game we'll go to next year!

Here is the video of our mini-vacation.

I need more practice...

So after many weeks of crappy weather, I was finally able to get out flying today. Apple Valley got a new restaurant on the field; their other one closed a while ago. I read from a bunch of other pilots that they have really good BBQ so that was enough reason for the trip. The flight was smooth and the food was great.

To try to knock the rust of my instrument flying skills, I decided to shoot some approaches on the way there and back. I did the ILS into Victorville on the way there and the ILS into Palmdale and the VOR into Watsonville on the way back. I did a poor job on all of the approaches and really need to keep practicing so I can mentally get ahead of the airplane. Not too surprising though, I did say I had rust on my IFR skills...