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| Lesson 12: The Bay Tour
Today, I tried a new tack re: airsickness. Somebody had suggested a substantial bread-based meal before the lesson, so I ate two bagels. Yum! There goes my diet! Well, today's lesson was something completely different. We basically just went for a ride, and did lots of talking on the radio. First we spread the Terminal Area Chart out over the hood of my instructor's car. "OK, runway 3-0 is in use. What do you ask the tower to go north"? We went through every radio exchange that would probably be made, starting at PAO, moving through SQL, through the SFO air space, up around the peninsula and back down along the Pacific Ocean. The day was beee-yoot-i-ful! Scattered clouds at 10,000 feet topped by a thin ceiling at 20,000 feet. The air was as clear as glass, and smelled of Spring. I had an excellent takeoff from PAO. The airplane stayed right on the center line until we took off, and when that happened, I pushed the yoke right down to a 70MPH climb. We just followed highway 101, my normal commute route, but much, much faster. The SFO controller talked to us in between calls to the Delta and United flights. Bay Approach, on the other hand, couldn't seem to make up their minds, on which of their umpteen frequencies to talk to us. We got through to them after about three calls. Apparently, their different frequencies correspond to different coverage areas. Coming up to the Bay Bridge, we turned left, shot out to the coast past the Golden Gate ( Look at the waves! Look at the boats! Now look at the nose :-). ) We went down the coast; he told me to study the chart a bit while he flew the plane. "Where are we? What's this airspace?" Then I flew some. We came up on Half Moon Bay ( HAF ), an uncontrolled field on the Coast, and landed there for high-speed taxi practice. We only did three or four high-speed taxis, but we took off at the end of each of them, and all the takeoffs turned out well! Then we went home. My instructor congratulated me on the good takeoffs. I asked him what to study for next time... "Landings". All right! A pattern is emerging: every week, I have three lessons clustered around the weekend: Friday, Sunday, Monday. And it's always between Monday and Friday that I have the greatest sensation of things settling into my brain and *clicking*. Things that were hard, becoming easy. On Monday, I didn't know how to take off. And today, Friday, I apparently do. - Jerry "15.7 hours" Kaidor |