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Jerry's 66th Lesson: Bringing Baby Home!Today's lesson was different. No, REALLY different! I bought the airplane...... He'd said, "I'll make you a good deal for eight-two-Victor".... "Oh yeah? How Good a deal?"... The answer pleased me greatly, and after a couple weeks of waffling and soul searching on both sides, a thorough prepurchase inspection was done by a local shop, and a decision was reached. The only thing remaining was to move the airplane from where it was ( SJC ) to where I wanted it ( SQL ). Now I'm not too bright - there _is_ a difference between an idiot student pilot and a multi-thousand-hour CFI. Best I could think up was to drive to SJC, get the airplane and CFI, fly dual to SQL, get signed off for SQL. Then we would fly back to SJC where I'd leave him off, and fly back to SQL. _Then_ I get somebody to drive me back to SJC to pick up my car. His idea was much better: He would fly up from SJC and pick me up at SQL. Then we'd fly dual a couple times round the patch and back to SJC. He'd sign me off for SQL, get out of the airplane, and I would fly back to SQL. Note that this exercise ends with, him and his car at SJC. Whereas I, my car, and MY AIRPLANE ( ahh! ) are at SQL. So that's what we did. I met him at SQL at 10:30. We stopped in the airport restaurant, had a couple coffees, and did paperwork. 82V was his sixth airplane, so he knew how to fill out the forms. An application for registration, bill-of-sale, and FCC license application were given to me. As well as full tanks, a couple quarts of oil, a WAG-AERO catalog, a Cessna parts book, a couple of yoke-mount PTT switches, engine and airframe logs back to 1947, and a bunch of other stuff that I forget. After doing all the paperwork, we went out to the airplane. Low clouds covered the airport, the ATIS reported 2000' ceilings. "Jerry, if it gets any lower, you're going to have to land somewhere else" "OK, if SQL isn't doable, I'll land at PAO instead, and call the wife to pick me up" ( Time to spare....) We sat down in (my!) airplane, got did all the usual radio stuff, taxied to the runup area. Every new airport has new challenges. At SQL it was the runup area. There wasn't any. Just a hold-short line at the end of the taxiway. Good thing (my!) airplane has a short runup checklist! All the little Peninsula control towers seem to work closely together. SQL handed us off to PAO, PAO handed us to Moffett Federal, and Moffett handed us to SJC. Before you knew it, we were landing at San Jose. To make things easy, he jumped out of the running airplane, waved goodbye, and I just called Clearance and Ground again to go home. Well, I was facing the wrong way, but there was an intersecting taxiway to turn in. Oops, I missed it. Taxied down to a dead end. Did you know that a taildragger can be turned on a *dime* by hitting one brake pedal? Well, it can. And I did. Taxied back to the runup, did that, took off, rewound the whole flight in reverse - Moffett, PAO, SQL. Taxied out to Transient parking, shut down my(!) airplane. Went to the pay phone, called my instructor: "I'm there, everything's fine, you don't have to fill out any NTSB paperwork". Went to the airport office to rent a tiedown. Hit a snag there: the insurance paperwork wasn't quite right. I had the real, official "binder", but there was no mention of the county as named insured. That'll have to wait til Tuesday. Until then, I'm just a lowly transient. Ah, the joys of airplane ownership! I went to the pilot shop and bought a shpritz bottle of airplane cleaner/wax. Waxed the airplane for two hours. Well, everything I could reach. Gotta bring along a stepladder next time. While I was waxing, an old man came by to talk to me. "Nice Airplane..." Then a sudden desire for pattern work overcame me :-). Did a thorough preflight ( suddenly, I'm noticing more and more stuff! ), added a half quart of oil. Called Ground. Admitted to them that I was "new to this airport". Got kind instructions on how to get to the runup. Apparently, Ground and Tower are on speaking terms: on my initial climbout, Tower told me about SQL's noise abatement procedures. I think I'm going to like it here. - Jerry "94.5 Hours" Kaidor |