750 Hours

My 750th hour - San Jose on a beautiful November day

There's a saying that goes something like this.
Pilots log hours flying as if no other hours matter.

I can't say that's entirely true. One year I logged 1000 miles run. I didn't count how long it took to run 1000 miles. Figuring I ran a 10 minute mile on average that year I ran for approximately 167 hours in one year. Coincidently, looking at my logbook, I've flown about 166 hours in the last 365 days, over 150 hours in 2015 so far.  Hmmm... I digress.

I flew my 750th hour yesterday. I thought it was going to be today, but it was yesterday. What did I do yesterday. Ah yes, I did the same thing I do most times I fly now-a-days. I worked on refining some maneuvers, saying fresh or better as I wait for my CFI check ride date to be set.

Yesterday I wanted to improve my emergency approach to landing. After which I was going to practice a bit of slow flight and steep turns. Happy to report that I pulled power around 4500 feet within glide range of South County and not only did a successful approach to landing, I landed it on the centerline, within commercial spec of normal landing distance and made it a soft field landing to top it off. Sweet! Then I flew over towards Lick Observatory to practice slow flight (that's where I took the photo above). Very good. Then I was going to do steep turns. I've been doing great to the right and "bouncing off the bumpers" to the left. I knew what I was doing wrong and I knew why, but I had trouble improving as much as I wanted. I was on a schedule so I didn't waste too much time on that and flew back to RHV. Unusually for me, I did not let the steep turns bother me. As I went about my day I thought about the problem and thought of a couple different ways to address it.

Today I flew again. First I flew to Half Moon Bay for lunch with my friends. Then I flew south to the practice area near South County and worked on the two ideas I had to improve my steep turns. One worked well. It took about half of the error out of my turns. My second idea took the rest of the error out of the turns. I repeated a couple times just to be sure it was repeatable. I was pleased and went back to RHV. I can't describe how good it feels to be able to correctly diagnose and resolve problems with maneuvers. It's especially hard to do for oneself.

I can't say my last year of flying has been my easiest. I've come close to quitting training many times. However, most of my problems have been "between the headsets" as my CFI likes to say. Good news is - I have learned much "between the headsets" as I've struggled and fought with myself to get past them. 750 hours ago I never would have said I'd be where I am today.

As I told a young man last year when he said he wanted to learn how to fly...

Learning to fly is the hardest, most wonderful, and most rewarding thing you will ever do.

With over 750 hours in my logbook, I'm still learning!

A Beautiful Weekend Day

Smiles all around as we enjoyed our flight!

Today my friend, Roy, and I flew up to Petaluma airport for breakfast at the 29er Diner. He was very interested in how to fly through Bravo airspace. So I suggested we go up the East Bay route (avoiding Bravo) there, then go south through Bravo over San Francisco Airport on the way back because I knew it would be busier later in the day. I didn't know how much busier it would be!

On the way there we took off on a Calaveras departure and got an un-asked-for Bravo clearance direct to Petaluma within 5 minutes of contacting NorCal. Nice! We flew direct past Oakland airport and directly over the water from Oakland to Petaluma. It was very quiet with almost no traffic on the radios or in the air. Roy had fun taking pictures. Eventually I gave him the controls to fly straight and level and talked him through using the default nav page on a Garmin 430W to maintain a precise ground track. I also practiced staying out of the way in a crowded cockpit. A skill every good CFI has to learn.

Things changed on the way back! We took off from Petaluma and climbed to 5500 feet towards the Sausalito VOR. We listened to NorCal's approach frequency which was very busy with a bunch of planes doing Bay Tours and getting traffic call outs. It took a while to get a word in and request a Bravo transition. I was given a squawk code and told to stay clear of Bravo for now.

We continued towards SFO. I was monitoring the distance to SFO airspace and preparing to circle rather than enter the airspace without a clearance. For the first time I was denied my Bravo clearance. ATC said they weren't accepting any transitions due to traffic at SFO. They asked if I'd like to fly at 2500 feet over Oakland Colosseum instead. Sure! Just a 3000 foot rapid descent required to get below the Bravo shelf before heading towards Oakland and finding the colosseum. At least this time I had an idea of where it was!

We were switched to Oakland tower who sent us to Lake Chabot - we didn't know where that was so we requested vectors. After that we were offered the option to fly along the 880 towards Hayward at 1500 feet. We took that and were switched to Hayward tower and told to remain north of the extended runway centerline. Eventually the tower told us we could fly south of the runway centerline and maintain VFR below 4500. I turned south and started to climb to a more comfortable altitude. The tower asked my altitude shortly thereafter. Told him it was 1600 and he said we were supposed to stay below 1500. I apologized and said I thought it was 4500. He apologized too.

No harm done, we continued to Reid-Hillview at 1500 feet over some very populated areas. The whole time the radios were buzzing with planes talking with ATC and little planes were flying everywhere. Reid-Hillview as crazy busy too.

It was a beautiful fall, weekend, day, right before Thanksgiving and a perfect day to fly. It seemed we weren't the only pilots who wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. We are so lucky to be able to live and fly where we do :)

The Value of Flying Less

It's odd for me to say, but there is some value to flying less it seems. At this point in my training, I'm done with training and now what I'm doing is maintaining my skills. I'm no longer meeting with my CFI on a weekly basis. My lesson plans for private and commercial are complete and ready for the FAA to look them over. The request is in to the FSDO for my check ride. No word yet on a date. So there's not much for me to do now but maintain.

I had been flying 3-4 times a week, trying to perfect my technique. Now I'm flying 1-2 times a week and, what I'm finding is, I seem to do best with about 10 - 14 days between "practice" sessions. A practice session is when I go up and go through all of the maneuvers to keep them fresh in my mind and reflexes.

Today I went up on a gorgeous fall morning and did all of the maneuvers that I may be called upon during the CFI check ride. Takeoffs, landings and go-arounds (9), fundamentals of flight (4), performance maneuvers (4), ground reference maneuvers (4), slow flight & stalls (7), and emergency operations (3). 1.7 hours, 6 takeoffs and landings and everything I did was easily within spec and quite fun.

It's a different type of flying now... not trying. Not thinking, just doing and "teaching" as I do. I ran into my CFI after the flight and told him how happy I was with my performance. He said he wasn't surprised at all. I'm glad it didn't surprise him. It actually didn't surprise me either... I found after a 10 day vacation when I came back I flew extremely well so I was hoping for a similar result with a 2 week break between practice sessions.

Tomorrow I'm going flying for brunch with some friends, I'll practice general good airmanship then. The same thing I did last weekend when I flew with my daughter to Sacramento so she could tour her future school. At the moment my plan is to touch each maneuver once a week, or once every two weeks depending on work and weather, and not stress it. I'm ready... and I think my job now is to maintain my readiness as simply and economically as possible. I need to start reviewing my lesson plans I think, so they're fresh in my mind whenever the FSDO calls!