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Jerry's 54th Lesson: More Greener GrassToday we went down south again for some more air work. And as promised, I did the radios. I'd spent some time the previous evening going through the procedures for SJC, learning about the arrangements of taxiways, memorizing the needed frequencies - you need 5 just to get in and out of SJC:
I'd made up canned blurbs to get me past everybody. We did a half-hour ground session just talking about the radio procedures. We talked about getting in and out of SJC, about talking to Bay Approach, and about radio procedures at uncontrolled airports. When we got into the airplane, it turned out that I *had* to do the radios: he'd purchased a new yoke push-to-talk switch, and the microphone audio through it didn't work. So we had only one working switch. It was all or nothing; either we plug the switch into his side, and he does the radio work, or into my side and _I_ do it. Being that I had to do it anyway, and I was all prepared, I opted for me to do it. I got the airplane going, got the ATIS - I'd brought a notebook just for scribbling down ATIS and clearances - called Ground, and did all the ritual needed to get us off the ground. One strange thing - our clearance specified that we turn *right* crosswind to get out of SJC. Why is this strange? Well, SJC has three parallel runways from left to right - 29, 30L, and 30R. 30L is the long one, for the jet set. Us puny GA types do our best to stay out of the jet set's way; SOP is to be very careful not to drift right when you take off on 29; in fact, it seems to be considered socially respectable to drift *LEFT* over the taxiway. Most vectors given to GA folks taking off from 29 are to turn left. But here they were, telling us to turn RIGHT. So we would have to cross in front of the other two runways, including the jet one. Kind of like setting a small child to cross a busy street :-). One thing different from flying out of the little class D airports, is that Bay Departure talks to you for a long time, telling you about the other traffic. Finally they said goodbye: "Squawk VFR, frequency change approved". We got down into the farmland and started our airwork. First, he had me do a series of 30-degree standard-rate turns, in order to play with the compass. "Look, when you turn south it leads, so you have to let it go well past where you want to turn to before you roll out. Then it comes back". Then we did steep turns. Mostly they turned out pretty good, but one of them was the worst steep turn I ever did :-). I was uncoordinated, airspeed all over the place, up and down... Then the next one was perfect. Go figure... After the steep turns we did minimum controllable air speed and incipient stalls. No sweat. Flaps are fun: you can fly around at forty miles per hour. Then we proceeded on to Frazier Lake. On the way, he pulled an engine out on me. "Establish Best Glide", I intoned. "Carb heat, find a field and turn towards it." "Do the L check...." Only problem was we were in the middle of farmland, and there were too many damned fields to choose from :-). I just chose the biggest one. He said "How about that airport over there"? Sigh. Do all CFIs do that? Sure enough, there was Frazier Lake. We went there, I got tongue-tied doing the uncontrolled-airport radio calls. But I managed. After three landings, we set off back to SJC and civilization. Right into the setting sun. Ow! Coming over the mountains, San Jose was covered in haze. I said "Doesn't that count as a cloud"? "No, you'll see when we get there that you can see through it..." Sure enough, we could. Well, sort of. It's amazing how haze can obsure an airport! It came into view in plenty of time, though, and we landed the airplane. - Jerry "73.6 Hours" Kaidor |