[ Home ] [ jerry/aviation/student-links.html ] [ jerry/aviation/lessons/index.html ]

Hello!

Bet you all thought I was gone, eh? NO such luck, I'm a persistant cuss. Hope you all enjoy this journal about the long XC I did this week..

This Wednesday morning, it was time for my long crosscountry. Or was it? After a week of storms, California was finally basking in the sun, drying out. Everywhere but Ukiah. The Ukiah AWOS was reporting 100-foot ceilings and mist. "Maybe it will start burning off around 10:00". I drove out to SQL at eight-thirty, fighting rush-hour traffic all the way. Called WX-BRIEF from the airport phone. Ukiah was still IFR.

I had two cross-countries planned: the first was up to Ukiah, and then out to Chico in the Central Valley and then back via Livermore. The second, "backup" XC was just up to Ukiah then back down again to Watsonville and Hollister. Basically up and down highway 101. Not very exciting, that backup XC, but it would satisfy the letter of the law to get me my license, even if the Valley was fogged in. In the winter, they get this "tule" fog in the Valley, enshrouds it for days at a time. Once in a while, you'll hear of a ten or twenty car accident out there because of the fog.

For both the main and backup crosscountries, Ukiah was the lynchpin. It was my "greater than 100NM from home" airport. And it was IFR, big time. In my mind, I set my drop-dead time to 10:30. If I wasn't off by then, I'd just close up the airplane and drive to work.

I went out and did a leisurely preflight, took three quarters of an hour at it. After all, I was waiting on that weather report anyway. Noticed just a hint of avgas smell in the cockpit. And a fair amount of semi-dry fuel slime on the rear of the left wing. Oh-oh.

I popped the round inspection cover off the underside of the wing, and felt in there. There was a bunch of gas-soaked gunge inside. I reached in with a rag and cleaned it out. Then noticed some sort of sponge tucked in the next compartment, inside the wing. Pulled on the sponge. It was an avgas-soaked wasp's nest. Wonder how old it was?

Still I was worried about that wing tank. Was it leaking? There didn't seem to be any sort of active drip. Then I remembered: this was the tank that the engine doesn't like: normally, even with the fuel valve set to both, the engine likes to draw fuel from the right tank. It doesn't start pulling from the left tank until the right one is less than half full. This often fakes out the line guys; they just start putting fuel in the left tank, and it's already overflowing! So they overfill the tank over and over, and the avgas just keeps gathering in the gunge and in that wasps nest. So cleaning the wing out in there was a Good Thing, although the avgas didn't seem to have hurt the fabric.

Preflight finished, I went back to the airport office around 9:50. Called the FSS: "Nope, still IFR. But this AWOS is an hour old; Call back after 10:00, we'll have a new one for you". I went into the restaurant, had a hot coffee, and waited. Went back out at 10:10, called the FSS..... "Now we have a visual eyewitness report, WX at UKI is severe clear, VFR all the way, unlimited visibility, scattered at 20,000 feet" All right! I went back to the airplane.

Blasted off at 10:30. Opened my first flight plan( I'd split the XC up into 3 flight plans, so as to minimize the time 'til they called out the pilot-sniffing dogs ). Instead of going all the way out to Half Moon Bay, I tried calling Bay Approach over Crystal Springs reservoir. This worked well, and Bay cleared me through the class B at fourty-five hundred feet.

Navigating up to Ukiah was simplicity itself - just follow the road. I sailed right over Santa Rosa airport at 3500; their class D only extended up to 2600 feet. You can bet I'd noted that down in my nav plan! I amused myself by timing my legs; My finger is 6 NM wide, and I worked the E6B to figure out where I'd get to things. The times came out to within a couple minutes of my figuring. "OK, there's Gnoss. There's that funny-looking reservoir. There's Santa Rosa".

I had a new toy in the cockpit: a West Bend double timer/clock. I'd pried the magnet off the thing's clip so as not to mess up the compass, epoxied an aluminum plate in its place, and had covered the plate with loop velcro, matched by hook velcro on the instrument panel. I can't say enough for the efficacy of this contraption; it made all the difference. I used one timer for the fuel, setting it at four hours on takeoff, and the other one to time the legs.

Ukiah was a strange field: I called Unicom for landing advisories and nothing happened. Then I called "Ukiah Traffic; Cessna.... inbound for landing..." on the CTAF and an official-sounding voice came up on frequency and gave me landing advisories: it turned out that there was an FSS right there on the field. Almost like a control tower, but not quite. After I touched down, the official voice announced that they were closing my flight plan.

As I was tying down the plane in Ukiah, a pretty blue Luscombe came taxiing by, and parked in the next row. The pilot strolled over to talk to me:

Unfortunately, I didn't have time for a proper visit. Heck, I didn't even have time for a hundred dollar hamburger. Had to satisfy myself with a brownie out of the vending machine. It was the closest thing they had to real food.

I stepped into the Ukiah FSS, asked what the weather was like in the Valley.... "Clear, VFR all the way". Great! That meant I'd get to take the interesting XC instead of just trundling up and down highway 101. I filed two new flight plans on the spot, and went back out to the airplane. Took off from Ukiah three quarters of an hour after I'd arrived.

There is this one "interesting" terrain feature between Ukiah and Chico: a white-capped mountain range. My plan was to fly through a 2000-foot pass abeam 7000-foot Snowy Mountain. I planned to pass the mountain at an altitude of 7500MSL. To be over the valley, and yet higher than the mountain, satisfied my safety concerns.

To get a head start on that 7500', I did a "box departure" from Ukiah. I just went round and round the pattern, climbing higher and higher:

As it worked out, I was up to 3500 feet befor leaving the pattern. Good thing, too. Baby was definitely not climbing as eagerly as she does at sea level: up around 6000', I was only seeing 400FPM on the VSI. And those mountains were getting closer....

No problem, I made it to 7500 in plenty of time, and sailed over the pass. This was some mighty desolate country; the mountain was on my left, and Clear Lake on my right. I thought the "where would I land if...." thoughts, and congratulated myself on filing a flight plan AND getting flight following.

This leg showed me the most impressive scenery of the whole flight. My mind, however, dwelt more on potential landing sites than on the beauty of the snowcapped peaks. I figured that from this height, I could always glide down to Clear Lake - there was a settled area north of the lake. Do pilots ever just admire the scenery?

Once I'd was past the mountain, I pushed the nose down until the air speed indicator registered a satisfying 120MPH, and commenced my descent into the California Central Valley toward my next destination - Chico.

Chico is, among whatever else, a college town. There's a California State University campus there. Back when I was in school, this campus had the reputation of being the best party school in the state. That's the sum total of this aviator's knowledge of the place. On with our story...

Chico has a VOR on the field. The plan was to capture it as soon as I came 'round the mountain, and follow it home. I dialed in the VOR and ID'ed it. Flew the compass out into the Central Valley - still not capturing that radial, are we? Descended well into the valley and still no intercept before I started to suspect something was not precisely kosher. Sure enough, I'd tuned and identified the wrong VOR - the one for the next leg of my flight. Oops.

I retuned the radio and shortly afterwards, captured my radial, and flew straight to the field on it. Good thing they had a VOR, because...

...I couldn't see the damned airport. See, the Central Valley, seen from an extreme angle, looks like a grid of airports. Light green airports, dark green airports, brown airports, all laid out in a crazy-quilt pattern. My job was to find the grey airport at the end of the VOR radial. Kind of like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Here's where my pocket GPS proved its worth; minute by minute, it told me exactly how far I was from the field. I was able to call the tower at the appropriate time, and descend at the appropriate time. But the visual cues didn't add up to an airport until I was about 6 NM away from it.

They cleared me for a right downwind entry for 31R, but as I approached the field, the controller changed his mind, told me to turn sharp right onto downwind for 31L. "Clear to land on the little runway"

I made a sharp right turn, pulled the engine, cranked in full flaps, turned base and final, and then slipped her in. That was fun.

Just as I was tying down the airplane, the fuel truck came by to fill an adjacently-parked 172. I stepped over and asked him to do mine when he finished that one. This was a mistake, because that ole' flight plan was still ticking away. After fueling, I went over to the pay phone, called WX-BRIEF, and was told: "You're running behind; we already called the tower to ask about you". Oops.

Chico must have been an old military field; no other way could you explain the vast stretches of asphalt. The whole field was covered with it; but only on the taxiways and runways was it maintained. Elsewhere, the asphalt was covered with cracks and fissures.

Luckily, there was a deli/restaurant right on the field. Still no time for that hundred dollar hamburger, but I did get a hundred dollar roast beef sandwich. I figured it'd be ready quicker, since they didn't have to cook it.

Leaving Chico at three PM, I worried about the time; would I make it to the Bay Area before dark? And I found a couple new ways to annoy the FSS. First, I called them "Red Bluff Radio", and was told that that erstwhile establishment had been closed for two years. Gotta talk to those pilot guide folks.... Then I asked her "Please open my flight plan" and only afterwards said "and could I make a change to it?". She said she'd already transmitted the "open", and now would have to send another message. Profuse apologies followed..... All I wanted was for them to tack another hour onto the time enroute. So that they wouldn't be calling SQL tower to check on me, too.

The plan was to fly out to the Williams VOR, and then fly out from that VOR on another radial, and turn right at the town of Brentwood, which was on a radial of another VOR.

As usual, things didn't work out precisely as I planned. On departing Chico, I stayed on downwind for quite a while, talking to Oakland Center and the FSS. Going for a 30-degree intercept angle, I flew and flew ( and flew ) and still wasn't getting it. No problem, I knew I was going in more or less the right direction.

Smack in the middle of the Valley, there's this rather strange mini-mountain called Sutter's Butte. It rises like a acne blemish from the smooth surface of the valley. Inspecting the Butte and the map, I realized that I was on the wrong side of the Butte, and the VOR was on the other side. Oops. So I flew over it at 3500MSL, out to the VOR. Instead of trying to right to the VOR, I decided to cut across and intercept my outbound radial, for a probable savings of 5-10 minutes. The chart showed a marsh on the other side of the Butte; actually, there was a lake. There's been a lot of rain in California lately....

Now the last piece of VOR navigation was to find the town of Brentwood. Brentwood is a small, nondescript town without an airport. ( Actually, an oxymoron: towns without airports are nondescript, towns WITH airports are distinctive. It's true, you can trust me on this one :-)) Brentwood was on the 266 radial of the Manteca VOR.

It's hard to fix on two VORs with one radio; even though the one radio in my airplane is a King KX125, with dual flip-flop frequencies and a digital OBS display. The display is made to act exactly like an analog one; so when I'd flip the frequencies, I'd have to change the OBS to match, and it would take several seconds to settle down. So I'd fly my outbound radial "on the compass" while I checked the other one.

At this point, the Travis AFB controller asked me if I was flying to San Carlos, or just "maneuvering". I answered that I was going to turn right at Livermore. His response? "Radar services terminated, frequency change approved, squawk 1200, have a nice day". Apparently, REAL pilots fly straight into the Bay Area over Concord. This saves them serious time as opposed to sneaking around past Livermore.

Speaking of Livermore, where WAS it, anyway? I knew which way to fly from my plan and the compass, but there was a bit of a mountain range in the way. And the airspace was starting to get complicated around here; I knew there was a restricted area close by..... So I elected to continue flying down the valley a bit until....

A freeway appeared, heading west over the hills. This HAD to be highway 580, and that HAD to be the Altamont pass. I turned right, commenced a climb to 4500 feet, and called Bay Approach.

Coming into San Carlos, the sun was right in my face all the way out from the Valley. I descended into the Bay Area, talking to SQL tower, knowing where the airport was, but totally unable to see it. That area of the peninsula was already in the shadow of the foothills.

I entered a right base over the cement plant ( I've bought cement at that plant :-) ) and took it on faith that the field would be there. Keeping my fingers crossed, I turned final and....bang! There it was. I was never so glad to see something in my life!

That runway was at least 2 miles away. After five hours in the saddle, I was sick of flying for the moment. Wanting to get it over with, I raised the flaps, removed the carb heat, applied cruise power, pushed the nose down, and approached at a blistering 115MPH. At about a half mile out, I reconfigured everything for a normal 65 MPH approach, slid on in, and squeaked her down. Home!

I had covered about 350 Nautical Miles, or 402 Statute Miles. It had taken me 5.1 hours to do this, ( Oh my aching back! ) for an average ground speed of 68 knots ( yowch! ) or 78 MPH ( that's better ). The airplane had sipped 23 gallons of 100LL; about 17.5 MPG, or 4.5 GPH.

Back to Jerry's aviation page

Back to Jerry's Homepage