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Jerry's First Solo CrosscountryI'd been planning this cross-country for several weeks. At first, the Bay Area was seeing some major winds - 20 gusting to 25, that kind of thing. Not only did I not want to cross-country, I couldn't even do pattern work in that kind of stuff! Heck, I was out at the airport retying the airplane and install gust locks. Then the winds died down, and the first major rain of the year came through. I decided I'd better grab the first good day that rolled by. Got agreement with my boss for a half-day of time off "whenever the weather was right", and started pestering the folks at 1-800-WX-BRIEF. Yesterday finally looked pretty good. Winds at 3000 were 350@6, clouds were reported as "5000 & broken". The nice weather briefer told me that Paso Robles was socked in, but King City was sure to be VFR. I decided to go for it. One problem was that I didn't figure out that the thing was doable until about noon. At that time, I got the winds aloft, too. I raced home and started running the whiz wheel. I had entered all the numbers that were not wind-dependant into the form already - so I knew all the distances and True Bearings. Everything else had to be done from scratch, and by the time I got it all down, wolfed down some lunch, zipped out to the airport and got the plane topped up and preflighted, it was 2:30 in the afternoon. It was getting uncomfortably close to the end of the day. If the flight went precisely as planned, it would be 5:00 by the time I got back. I had no desire for my first solo cross-country to turn into a _night_ cross-country. On the other hand, the ship and I are both signed off for night flight, and even if it took a bit longer than planned, I'd be back in the Bay Area by the time the big light went out. So I blasted off at 2:37. Got a frequency change from SQL tower, called Oakland Radio and opened my flight plan. I'd planned to call Bay Approach and get flight following down the Peninsula, but they were real busy, handling the heavies coming into San Francisco International. There was so much chatter on the frequency that I was hard pressed to get a word in edgewise, and began to worry about busting the class C. The Bay Area valley was totally in the clear, but there were clouds hanging over all the hills surrounding it. These would become important later. Finally, I got my word in, and they gave me my squawk code and secret decoder ring. :-) Coming into the San Jose class C, I surveyed the scene. There was that ring of hills around San Jose. Each hill with its own cloud. I'd planned to parallel the SJC ILS corridor south, but it didn't look too friendly. That particular cloud was the lowest and tallest of them all, and it looked dark and misty under it. I stewed and thought for a couple minutes, and decided to turn southwest and fly out to the coast. I could get out to the coastline, find Watsonville, then intercept the Salinas VOR and get back where I belonged. There was a cloud there, too, but I could see sunshine on the other side of it. So, keeping the quick 180 as a constant mental option, I changed my course out to the Coast. Flew under that dark cloud, feeling like a spelunker exploring a giant cave. "It's not getting any lower, is it?" I can still turn back, right?" Yes and yes. Many long seconds later, that light-filled hole got larger, and I shot out into the bright sunshine over the Pacific coast. Large in my thoughts loomed the fact that I'd have to come back, and the hope that things would be better by that time, and not worse. I consoled myself with the fact that I could always land in Salinas and work credit card magic to stay a few days.... I looked up Monterey approach on the chart, called them and got flight following. Bay had been unable to keep me all the way out because of my low altitude. There was a broken layer at about 5000'. So my original plan, to fly down at 5500, was toast. I decided to fly to Salinas and down that valley at about 3000. That way, I'd be in sight of the ground, have enough altitude for some options if anything went wrong, and still be a couple thousand feet under the white fluffy things. Flying down from Salinas, I mostly just paralleled the freeway. IFR: I Follow Roads, right? I kept careful track of where I was: "OK, that's Gonzales, the freeway sort of jags through it, and the back side is real square." About halfway down the valley, I started wondering which way the wind was blowing. The clouds were all going north at a good clip, but that didn't mean much for the ground, right? Then I looked at the cars. Either there was a headwind at 3000', or those guys were a bunch of scofflaws. Because I was showing over 90MPH IAS, and they were pacing me. And among California drivers, it's a well-known fact that the Highway Patrol has its academy in King City. And that that particular stretch of highway 101 tends to be well populated with student CHP officers. So those folks down there were probably doing 75, which gave me a 15 MPH head wind. After passing Soledad I gave my first self-announcement: "King City Traffic, Cessna 1882Victor is ten miles northwest of the field inbound for landing". Then I thought to ask: "King City Unicom, Cessna 1882V requesting landing advisories". No answer. Just about now, for the first time EVER, I experienced carb ice. The engine stumbled. I looked around for a field. Pulled out the carb heat.... instant fix! Whew. Actually, this farming country was an embarressment of riches: the whole valley was nothing but fields. I dropped down a couple hundred feet so the carb wouldn't ice any more. Pushed in the carb heat, and waited for something to happen... Nothing, the engine just droned on. The airport showed up exactly where I expected it. The freeway jagged right, I kept going left, and there it was! I crossed the field at 2000' and looked at the windsock. There wasn't any! Oh, there was a segmented circle, sure enough. And there was a mast in the middle of the circle. There just wasn't anything on the mast. What to do? I just said "well, I'll assume it's the same down there as up here, and land on runway 11". And that's what I did. Flew away from the field, turned back, self-announced the 45, downwind, base, and final. Did a nice landing, and as soon as all three wheels were on the ground, I pushed in the carb heat, firewalled the throttle, and got out of town. The time was on my mind - I really wanted to get home before dark, and it was already a quarter after four. After blasting off, I rewarded myself for getting there with a chocolate bar ( that I'd stolen from the family Halloween stash ). I wasn't too happy about not being able to stop - my right leg and lower back were starting to ache. Unwound the trip down, back up to Salinas. Got flight following just past Soledad. This time, instead of going up to the coast, I thought I'd try my original, planned route. Hopefully, some of those clouds had blown away. My right leg was starting to ache more and more. I found a way to rest it: I stretched it out to the other side of the cockpit, and put it on the OTHER rudder pedal. Yay for dual controls! I mentioned it to my CFI later, he said "Yeah, I always used to do that". Either the clouds had indeed blown away, or they hadn't been as bad as I thought in the first place, because I had no trouble coming past Gilroy and Morgan Hill. Monterey Approach had handed me off to Oakland Center, which handed me off to Bay Approach. Bay Approach gave me a couple vectors to keep me well away from SJC, and then dropped me when I left the class C. I flew up the Peninsula at 2800 feet - high enough not to have to worry about Moffett Federal or PAO's airspace. The sun was low on the horizon - almost sinking behind the hills. In fact, the ground down there was already in shadow. I turned on the nav lights and beacon. Called SQL when I was abeam PAO. Came down over SQL, crossed the field at 1300 feet, joined the pattern, and the adventure was over. Well, almost over. The party ain't over til the fat lady sings, right? I came on downwind, wondering if I was clear. Turned base. Me: "Is Eight-Two-Victor Clear to land?" Tower: "Eight-Two-One, widen off, your traffic is...." I immediately changed my right turn to final into a left turn away from final, and added a couple hundred RPM. Tower: "Eight Two Victor, that's OK, you're clear to land, I was talking to someone else".I tightened my turn to the left, made a graceful, coordinated 270, straightened out right on the runway centerline, pulled some throttle and slid right down. Made a beautiful landing, the kind you hope people are watching :-). Turning off the runway, Then I heard him call the other guy "Eight Two Victor". Oops. :-) I stopped the airplane, and nearly fell out, shaking from fatigue. My lower back ached. My right leg ached. My upper back ached. Then I remembered that I hadn't closed my flight plan on the radio. Oh darn. I quickly tied down the plane, and drove to the other side of the field. Made three telephone calls in the twilight. First I called 1-800-WX-BRIEF and closed my flight plan. Then I called home and told my family I was OK. Then I called my instructor, and told him I was OK. With light heart, and a pocket lightened by three quarters, I drove back to the airplane and shut it down for real. Put on the gust locks, transferred my pack to the car. Noted the fuel: pretty good, still almost half full. Filled out the logbook. Two point nine hours of cross-country PIC time. Whups, make that "solo" time. :-) The scariest part of the whole afternoon was driving home from the airport. I never saw such fierce traffic on the Peninsula! Apparently, everybody was trying to get home for Halloween. In retrospect, I felt I hadn't done the nav log justice - hadn't made a single mark in the damn thing since I started. On the other hand, I always knew pretty exactly where I was - just following along the chart lake by lake, town by town, road by road. I learned that you don't always get to do what you plan - guess I'd done my first "diversion". On the other hand, I possibly should have waited - the WX briefing had told me about those cloud layers - but had called them all "scattered" or "broken". Today, as if to mock me, the sky was absolutely clear - not a cloud anywhere. On the other hand, there's haze. You can't see one side of the Bay from the other. Today might be one of those days when everything disappears except the stuff right under your wing. Well, anyway, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it :-). - Jerry Kaidor |