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Jerry's Third Solo Crosscountry

Today, I set out on a solo cross-country, the last of the "short" ones. I'd had a longish one planned, from San Carlos, to Castle ( formerly AFB ). The weather just was not cooperating for that one. Either the central valley would be fogged in, or the Bay Area would be, or there'd be a SIGMET for mountain obscuration, or turbulence, or.... And that's with me owning the plane! I can't imagine how people manage to do these things with airplane scheduling thrown in the pot.

Since the SQL-MER-SQL crosscountry was just Not Going to Work Out, I punted. I took an obsolete sectional ( of which I am accumulating an impressive collection ) and drew a fifty-nautical-mile circle on it, centered on SQL. I then scanned the outside boundary of this circle for airports.

I immediately removed the western half of the circle from consideration, as this was occupied by an ocean. I also eliminated much of the eastern portion because of central valley fog.

That left the south and north quadrants. Since my other two solo XCs were to the south, I felt that going that way would be just doing the same trip over again.

So that left the North. Pretty close to the circle edge, and yet far enough away to definitely be a legal XC, was Sonoma County Airport. This is a controlled field about 40 miles north of San Francisco. There's a VOR on the field. No fuss, no muss, just follow the VOR and the freeway :-).

The only snag to this rosy picture was that big fat SFO class B between me and my desired. I had hopes that problems with the TCA would be minimal, because SQL ( my home airport ) normally handles getting people squawk codes for "bay tours". I called SQL tower one peaceful evening to verify this. We had a nice chat.

I was going to fly it this weekend. All last week I sat at work admiring the glorious VFR weather at lunch and breaktimes. Unfortunately, the nice weather went away on Friday, and foggy, misty, wet and miserable IMC reigned for the entire weekend. Then Monday dawned and taunted me with robins-egg-blue skies on the way to work. AUGH! I decided to take a half day off from work to fly the XC.

Got up this morning, it was clear and cold. No, make that clear and COLD. As in freezing. The morning TV brought news of traffic accidents due to black ice. I got up, called 1-800-WX-BRIEF. "Scattered clouds above 10,000 feet, winds aloft 090@6, visibility 20 miles...." Excellent!

The first inkling that this flight might be an adventure came when I was getting my stuff together... Where did I put that flight plan? Oh, oh.... It's at work... Gaak! My meticulously crafted flight plan....is 30 miles away! OK, we can work around this. Get out the charts....the E6B...some blank planning forms.

I slapped together a plan with all the directions and altitudes, the destination airport information, the VOR frequencies. Called the FSS and filed. Was about to race out to the airport, stopped at the front door: "Whups, forgot to eat breakfast!". Ran back in the house and wolfed down a microwave snack.

Finally, I was off...not quite! Got to the freeway, realized I really needed a pair of gloves. Drove back to the house, got my summer motorcycle gloves out of the helmet. Couldn't find the winter ones. Consoled myself with the fact that I probably couldn't fly in winter gloves, anyway.

Finally, I made it out of the house and down to the airport. Jumped out of the car and started taking stuff off the airplane. I keep "Baby" ( my Cessna 140 ) with rope tiedowns, gust locks, a pitot cover, and a KMART baggie tied around one strut to keep rainwater out of the cockpit. Threw all the stuff in the car, preflighted the aircraft. Everything was in order. Just a teensy bit of water in the left drain.

I pushed the airplane out, sat down and ran through the prestart checklist. Primed the engine, turned on the mags, yelled "CLEAR", pulled the starter handle. The engine started quickly, ran for about 3 seconds, and then died. I was flabbergasted. It had never done this before. I ran the starter some more, it just turned the propellor around. I primed it some more, it caught and then died again. Had to be the temperature. Did I mention it was COLD out there? OAT showed 35 degrees F. No snide remarks from you Minnesotans!

I shut the mags down, got out of the airplane, drained some more fuel out of the sump drain.... still good blue avgas. Got back in the cockpit. Primed a couple more times. "CLEAR!" I ran the starter again. It caught again. And died again. I primed some more. Ran the starter. It caught again, and this time....kept running. Whew! You can be sure I was extra attentive during the runup. Blasted off at 10:25, almost an hour later than I'd planned.

I asked Ground for the squawk code, they cleared me to taxi to the active. About half way there, they gave me the bad news:

Basically, I had two choices: to go out via the Oakland class C, or back out to the Pacific Coast. I chose the latter, because it was easier: no class C to deal with, less distance out of the way, and I'm familiar with that area.

Once I was out at Half Moon Bay, I called Bay Approach to ask for flight following: "Squawk XXXX; You're cleared into the class B at or below 4500'". Fantastic. That removed the only disadvantage of the Pacific Ocean route: having to sneak under the TCA at a thousand feet over the ocean past a couple miles of cliffs.... Not many options if you lose an engine there.

Flying out over San Francisco toward the Golden Gate Bridge, I mused the utility of fancy flight plans: "What's the use, if approach control won't let you fly it, anyway?"

Flying over the Golden Gate Strait, I tuned in the Santa Rosa VOR... There it was! "Di-di-dit....dah....di-di-dit". I now had four things to follow:

• The STS VOR
• My compass
• Highway 101
• The cheap backpackers GPS that I bought last month.

This last item was on its shakedown cruise. I must say, it performed admirably. I left it on the cowling with a couple velcro dots to keep it from sliding around. Held it up to check the course. Of course, I'd entered STS ( along with everything else of interest ) as a waypoint.

I flew along 101 at 2900MSL, so as not to worry about VFR cruising altitudes. Oakland Center kept me company. I asked for a frequency change to pick up the ATIS, then said goodbye to call STS tower. Here's where the GPS proved its worth:

It was so nice not to have to guess that distance.

I'd called the STS ATIS earlier to check their weather. Winds had been calm. Now, the winds were not calm anymore. Rather, they were 090@15, which gave me a healthy crosswind component. So I had to work a bit at that landing. But it came out OK.

Since I'd left late, I couldn't stay, or even stop. I did do a full-stop landing, though. Got off, asked to taxi back, took a straight-out departure back to the Bay Area. Cruised back along the same freeway, still flying the compass, the VOR, and the GPS. Well, if truth be known, I mostly flew the compass. Once you get used to it, the compass is a pretty damn good little instrument.

Oakland Center handed me off to Bay Approach, and Bay asked me if I'd like to fly straight down instead of out to the coast.. "You bet!" They cleared me into the class B "at or below 2000 feet".

Here at one point, I got confused. I was flying over the City at 1800 indicated. The controller told somebody to watch for a "Cessna 140 at 2800 feet". Whups, I thought I was at 1800! How many C140s can there be out here anyway? Could I be misreading the little needle? So I asked: "Please verify altitude for 82V". With annoyed tone, he told me my altitude was just fine, proceeded to give me a lecture about which altitudes were OK, and wound it all up by handing me off to SFO tower.

SFO told me to parallel freeway 280 ( "Gee that's almost as bad as flying out to the coast!" ). I asked if I could switch to 101 after passing the field. This was refused. No real problem; when I left the class B, they let me go, I picked up the SQL ATIS, and came in for an eventless landing.

On the ground, I called the line guys before shutting down the plane. They came by just as I was tying down. Baby took 9.5 gallons. The GPS tripmeter said I'd covered 140.6 nautical miles. My watch said it had taken 2.1 hours. So we averaged 77 statute miles per hour, and got 17 statute miles per gallon. Just like a car :-).

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