John's Flying Page

I thought about learning to fly since I was a teenager, but it took a move to California to get me to do something about it. In May 2001, I took my first left-seat flight in a Cessna 152 at the Sundance Flying Club at Palo Alto Airport, midway between San Francisco International (SFO) and San Jose International (SJC). In March 2002 I passed my Private Pilot checkride - the story is here. In May 2002, coincidentally a year to the day after my first lesson, I started on my Instrument Rating, which I obtained in November 2002 after almost exactly six months. Lately I've had the chance to fly in England which has been interesting as well as enjoyable.

In October 2002, I bought my own plane - N5296S, a 1980 Cessna T182RG. Originally I hoped to get something more expensive, but this is the perfect plane for me - fast enough (160 KTAS or so, 170 up in the flight levels), and can carry four normal people plus baggage, with enough fuel for a good three hours with generous reserves - or for over five hours with two people. For a 22-year old aircraft, she's in excellent condition. She now has a beautiful leather interior by Aviation Design of Camarillo. With some avionics upgrades she's as good as the best of new planes, with Skylane take-anything, go-anywhere dependability. Next will be a repaint - the paint is in good shape but the style is so 1970s.

By Spring 2003, I was getting a bit bored by the absence of flight training from my life, so I started a couple of things. First, I started to do my tailwheel transition in a Citabria. I've now got my tailwheel endorsement and it's a lot of fun, particularly in the Decathlon, but it was a struggle at times. Even more fun, I started to do aerobatics at Attitude Aviation in Livermore, first in their Grob aerobatic trainers and now in their Decathlon. It started as unusual attitude recovery, but somehow turned into aerobatics along the way. So far I've done loops, rolls, spins and simple combinations such as the Immelman and the Cuban Eight. I'd recommend basic aerobatic training to anyone. It really could save your life. Once you're used to seeing the world upside down, or seeing nothing but ground vertically down through the windshield, or to recovering from an accelerated spin, you're much less likely to panic if you do get an accidental upset.

Places to Go

Often at weekends, if there's nothing else going on, we try to fly somewhere for the famous "$100 hamburger" – here are a few places we've been to.

A trip to the desert - Furnace Creek (L77) and Palm Springs (KPSP). Two great destinations.
Oceano (L52) - worth visiting - once. Fantastic fish and chips just around the corner from the airport. Miles-long beach, but walk on it at your peril as it is also a racetrack for all-terrain vehicles of various sizes and kinds. The action is at Pismo Beach, a two-mile walk away.
Boonville - a very quiet airport serving an even quieter town.
Columbia (O22) - well-known destination, the town is an easy stroll from the airport. It's a very touristy gold-rush town, complete with stage coach, gold-panning experience and the rest - a great place to take visitors. Good food and service at a very charming place just off the main drag, in a pretty garden - sorry but I forget the name.
Santa Barbara - a $100 hamburger very much above average at the Beachside Cafe, a pleasant 15 minute walk from Mercury (or they'll take you there in their van).
Siskiyou (KSIY). I visited Siskiyou while building solo hours for the insurance in 5296S. It's absolutely in the middle of nowhere (5 miles from the nearest town) with not a soul in sight when I visited, though it does have self-service gas. It's in a beautiful setting in the plains north of Mt Shasta. It also has the NDB approach from hell, a kink at the FAF (the NDB) and a truly dive-bomb descent, which I'd love to try some day under the hood.
I recently finished visiting every public-use airport within 50 nm of Palo Alto, with just one exception, SFO. The last one was New Jerusalem at Tracy. I'm not really a collector by nature, but when I landed at Concord (CCR) for the first time, on a recurrent instrument training flight, I realised I only had a couple left that I hadn't been to. I'll have to see if I can get them to let me sneak in and out of SFO at a quiet time without having to pay all the handling fees.
I did go into LAX once, for a business trip. The FBO handling charge was very reasonable, $40 I think, and a taxi-back would have been free. Other Class B airports I've been into include SLC and LAS.

Places to Go

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