Mercy Hot Springs

At 5,500' over Interstate 5 in the Central Valley, the outside air temperature (OAT) is reading 25C. That means it's hot down there (especially for Bay Area coastal types like me for whom a summer temperature above 20C is unexpectedly warm). The hills to our right as we fly south in the CalAir DA-40 are covered with that beautiful shimmering golden-brown that envelopes California in the dry season; the sky's California Blue, with a few high cirrus here and there. Mesmerizing.

J.'s sitting in the right seat, looking out at California passing below us. Suddenly she says "Mercy Hot Springs is around here somewhere, isn't it?!" It is —in fact it's maybe thirty nautical miles away if we head slightly to our right across those golden hills and keep going (a little local knowledge goes a long way here — I've driven past Mercy Hot Springs (a.k.a. "Mercey Hot Springs") a bunch of times on photo trips along the West Side, and I can easily recognize the hills and roads from the air). I ask J. if she wants to see it from above — "of course!". It turns out that it's one of her favourite hot springs (there's a lot of hot springs in California), and of course she's interested in seeing what it looks like from a few thousand feet up.

So we head off cross country, and maybe fifteen minutes later we're over the springs, a tiny set of green trees, brown buildings, and a grey parking lot just off the country two-lane blacktop that goes past it on towards Panoche. She looks down, totally absorbed, then says wow, I didn't realize how isolated it is — seeing it from up here makes it look like it's in the middle of nowhere. Well, Mercy Hot Springs is in the middle of nowhere — that's why people go there — but she's right, there's really nothing around it except for parched golden hills. It's beautiful, enticingly isolated; I could be persuaded to go there sometime myself. There's even a narrow dirt strip there, but I doubt that I'd be allowed to land the DA-40 there even if I wanted to (see this article for someone who has landed there). Maybe when I'm rich and famous and own my own nice little Husky… (ha!).

After a slow fly-by a few thousand feet AGL, I ask where she wants to go now? I don't know, she says, I just enjoy watching it all from up here. So I turn west towards Salinas (KSNS), and climb to get over the mountains between here and there. We're kind of making this up as we go along, which isn't my usual style, but it's a good day for it, and it's familiar territory, both from the ground and from up here.

* * *

This was supposed to be a flight up the coast to Shelter Cove (0Q5), but (as so often with a  California summer), the weather didn't cooperate, and there's a shallow stratus (fog) layer all the way north of about Point Reyes, meaning both Shelter Cove and Mendocino (Little River, KLLR) are IFR. Plan B was Monterey (KMRY), but if Mendocino's fogged in, it's likely Monterey is too — and, of course, it is. So I suggest we fly to Salinas the long way (via the Central Valley) and if Monterey is clear by the time we get there, great; if not, well, we'll go somewhere (or do something) else. Maybe we'll be able to fly back up the coast; maybe not.

* * *

Salinas airport is — as always nowadays, as far as I can tell — quiet. We call up Salinas tower from some distance to the east, and make a long straight-in to runway 26; there's one other plane on frequency. We taxi to the terminal, park, and wander in. It's actually cool and sunny down here: 21C OAT, presumably from the marine layer coming in from Monterey and the coast a few miles away. Very, very pleasant. We retrieve the lunch cooler and water from the plane, and sit outside in the shade at the picnic table in front of the rather classic little old GA terminal. It's a leisurely lunch — the three-hundred dollar hamburger, except we're Californian, so it's a lot of salad and healthy stuff rather than a hamburger (we did bring along enough chocolate to keep me from complaining; but I forgot to bring any coffee, though, which was a major mistake). I was sneakily hoping the restaurant at the airport would be open, but it's closed on Sundays, so no coffee (or hamburgers) there. At least there is still a restaurant at the airport — for some time there wasn't really anything open at all, if I remember correctly.

We get to see a few helicopters and one or two planes arrive or depart; probably more than I expected, but it's a holiday weekend, I guess. There's briefly one other person in the terminal, but he disappears quickly. At one point a Citation lands on runway 31, then taxis slowly back towards runway 26, stops for a while with its engines still running on one of the taxiways, then departs on 26 to wherever it's going. Not the usual behaviour for a Citation, but whatever. Perhaps Monterey was full.

After lunch we stroll around the apron taking photos of the Calstar Eurocopter (that's its fenestron above) and a small old bubble-canopied ag helicopter with a massive spraying attachment. A reminder that Salinas is agricultural, for sure. We get back in to the DA-40, and a few minutes later we're on our way back to Hayward (KHWD). We can see that the coast north of about Santa Cruz is foggy, so we go back the long way, out over Hollister and back into the Central Valley. Those hills and mountains are way more attractive than going the short way up over San Jose, and we've got the plane for another couple of hours. This time, on contacting Hayward tower, we get "Report Cal State" and I can't make fun of the FAA for referencing a non-existent landmark any more. Oh well — the little things really matter in flying.

Back in Hayward it's cool and pleasant. We've logged just under 3 hours (Hobbs), and we take on about 20 gallons of fuel after landing. Not bad.

Traffic's A Coyote At 8,000 Feet

I'm under the Cone of Stupidity in Cessna 051 somewhere a mile or two out from the runway threshold on the Stockton (KSCK) RNAV 29R approach when the tower controller tells us to exercise caution for (as I hear it) a coyote at 8,000'. Several things immediately go through my mind as we bump along the approach: a) Umm, what?! It's bad enough that the approach is seriously bumpy, but we have to contend with a coyote at 8,000'?! b) Is "Coyote" actually some sort of aircraft type, and he's calling traffic? c) We're below 1,000' — why would he call out anything at 8,000' unless it was dropping like a brick (or, for that matter, a coyote). It's a mystery to me, so I quickly ask Evan H., my safety pilot sitting in the right seat, what the hell the controller just said.

Evan patiently explains that it sounds like there's been a report of a coyote on the runway at around the 8,000' marker. Well, that makes much more sense, but I still ask the controller to say again. He does, a bit more clearly this time, and I reply with an enthusiastic "Yeah! we'll definitely keep a lookout for that!". In the end there's no sign of any coyotes anywhere on this or the next few landings, but it's hardly the first time I've either seen or been warned about a fox or coyote or dog on the runway here at Stockton or Livermore or even at my home base, Oakland (KOAK).

And it's already been that sort of flight, not the flight I expected, and a flight full of little errors or miscommunications, none of which amount to much, but all of which when put together make me feel glad I was under the hood in clear (bumpy) VMC rather than in actual IMC.


* * *

It started a few days ago, when Evan and I were supposed to do this flight on a weekday evening (rather than a Saturday morning), but the flight was scrubbed when I noticed that the port side (red) nav light was inoperative (no matter how much I banged on the wing); we rebooked for this morning.

Then came the forecast: I'd filed a real IFR flight plan to and from Stockton because the forecast the previous night had implied there'd be a deep coastal stratus layer over much of the Bay Area today, and the weather had been rather weird for the previous few days (it very nearly rained in Oakland last night, which in California terms is surely one of the four horsemen of some sort of apocalypse). But the day dawns bright and clear, if a little cold and blustery. So none of the benign actual IMC I'd really hoped for, unfortunately.

I check NOTAMS and such, and notice that Oakland's radar — a large part of the Bay Area's approach system — is NOTAMED OTS, and with it out, Oakland's Class C surface area and associated services are temporarily gone. No big deal — this has happened before when I've been flying and it's not going to make any difference to the flight.

Then doing the rental paperwork at Oakland Flyers, we hear that 051's G1000 has some sort of problem that supposedly makes the database out of date, and that cross-filling from the PFD to the MFD also isn't working. OK, I guess we can do this flight VFR with practice approaches then… (I prefer to do things on a real IFR flight plan just to keep current on things like copying clearances, etc.).

Out at the hangar I notice the lock's missing from the hangar door and point it out to Evan, thinking "that's careless…". Then I open the door and burst out with a surprised "Where's the bloody plane?!" The entire hangar is empty. OK, time to actually look at the book — sure enough, in tiny characters on the front where it used to say "Hangar XYZ" it now says "Hangar ABC" — RTFM, I guess, but no one at the club mentioned it'd been re-hangared a few hundred metres away — and it'd been in the original hangar only a couple of days ago when the original flight was scrubbed. No big deal, I guess.

We pre-flight 051, then get in and start up. Three things are immediately obvious: 1) the database is actually up to date — maybe we can do this on the IFR flight plan, after all; 2) Yes, there's some sort of weird PFD / MFD cross-fill problem, which is going to make things irritating but not too difficult with the two of us paying attention (I wouldn't want to do this in single pilot IMC); and, 3) The standby (mechanical) AI seems to have lost its tiny mind and is revolving and swirling like something from The Exorcist (a movie I've never actually seen, but never mind). The standby AI doesn't settle down after a couple of minutes, and since it's quite distracting, Evan covers it with one of his inop covers. We decide we'll depart VFR and just do the approaches as practice approaches — after all, this is just an IFR currency flight, and the weather is clear VMC as far as Stockton, at least.

By the time we've done the runup off 27R the standby AI's settled down, but we still depart VFR. We head for the Central Valley — and that lovely weather turns out to be bumpy. Not quite continuously, and not severely, but it's a factor in almost every approach and cruise segment for the next two hours, and it's the sort of bumpiness that anyone not a pilot would probably find tedious at best, sick-making at worst.

We get the practice approaches set up with a bit of extra programming (Evan just replicates on the MFD what I'm doing on the PFD), and after plodding on bumpily across the Central Valley we do the RNAV 29R into Stockton with full pilot nav, including the hold-in-lieu at OXJEF. The bumpiness is close to too much for the autopilot, but I sadistically keep it engaged for most of the way to see how well it could cope. Not very well, is the answer, and after the coyote thing and a smooth touch-and-go, we go missed back to NorCal approach. I re-engage the autopilot at about 2,000' in what I think is the correct altitude mode, but the bloody thing just keeps the plane climbing; at 2,200' I cut the autopilot out of the equation and start diving back to the assigned 2,000'. I can sort the issue out later… and, after setting up the next approach that's what I do.

This time around on the same approach it's just too bumpy for the autopilot, and I hand-fly the entire approach, a little roughly, but quite a lot better than the autopilot last time. However, this time my landing is really pretty bad — I blame the sudden windshear just as I'm flaring, but whatever it was, we bounced, and I had to use the throttle to ensure we didn't land hard on the second bounce. Not too bad, but a lesson in wariness. And, once again, on the missed I engage the autopilot in what I think is straight and level mode at 2,000' — and it starts climbing. This time I'm more on top of it and we don't bust altitude too badly, but I'm always a bit aghast at how much trouble I have with this unit in altitude mode (it's all me, the unit itself is just fine). Just to add to the overall feeling that not everything is going as well as I'd like, I keep making minor radio errors (missing calls, not understanding the controller, etc.) for the approaches (it seems to clear up as I get closer to Oakland for some reason).

We request, set up for, and get the ILS 29R with vectors, and things go better with the autopilot this time around, but I watch it like a hawk. And this time around my landing is OK, considering the windshear, but there are still no coyotes to be seen, which kinda disappoints me. We go missed as published and I let the autopilot drive us around the hold at ORANG, just because I really enjoy seeing this particular chore automated (and I am, after all, an engineer who delights in technology like this). After once around the hold we depart with VFR flight following back to Oakland.

This part — the VFR flight back to Oakland — is not without its hazards either. For much of the past 45 minutes we've been hearing parachute drop zone announcements (there were several drop zones NOTAMED for today in the area), and we have to be careful and listen to the controller to ensure we don't get caught in anything bad. There's a drop in progress over Lodi, but that's quite some distance north of us, and another supposedly closer in to Stockton, but nothing was ever announced on air as we flew by. And just as we're getting towards Byron (C83), Evan suddenly points out a flight of four or five military jets slightly below us, maybe two miles away, going rather quickly towards Sacramento. A nice sight (they're maneuvering in not-quite-aerobatic ways as they shoot past), but I kinda wish NorCal had pointed them out to us as traffic. Oh well. We watch them disappear rapidly northwards, hoping they don't reappear back in our direction.

All through the flight from just after takeoff one of the G1000's MFD fuel gauges intermittently shows a red 'X' for a few seconds and then reverts to normal; it seemed to stop doing this around Stockton, but it's back again. Oh well, another thing to squawk when we get on the ground.

We set up for and request the RNAV Y 27L back in to Oakland, and potter on towards JUPAP as requested. Nothing much to report about this segment except it's still bumpy, but (predictably) the air's clear and cool. We get vectored for the approach, and at first I let the autopilot handle things, which it seems to be doing OK. But just past the final approach fix, even though it's captured the (LPV) glideslope, it just can't seem to cope with the near continual windshear, and we end up two dots above the glideslope. Time to take over, I think, and I disengage the autopilot and hand fly the rest of the approach successfully and fairly smoothly down to about 400'. It's a weird sort of day when my hand flying is smoother and more accurate than the autopilot, but there you are. But however smooth the approach, I land badly on 27L. Once again, due, I think, to low-level windshear in the flare, I billow down the runway and have to salvage things with some throttle work. Nothing terrible, but a bit of a blow to the ego, I guess.

Back in Oakland Flyers I do the paperwork and notice that the tach time we took from the MFD is way out. I suspect that maybe the G1000 cross-fill problem has affected the tach time (or not — I just don't know) on the MFD without affecting the rest of the engine instruments. Whatever the cause, it means I have to trudge back out through the security gate to the hangar and back again just to see what the tach time is on the PFD; it's much more believable this time (and yes, I check what the MFD displays — we didn't misread it, it was maybe ten hours out). Back in the clubhouse again, my pen stops working as I'm trying to finish the paperwork. It's been that sort of day, really….

Apropos Of Nothing At All…

Just to fill in the space between real blog entries, here's a non-flying-related video I recently did around the Bakersfield and Westside (Central Valley) areas, posted basically as a response to the people who occasionally ask what I do besides flying…



I'm thinking of doing a Drive-by: Airport video soon….

What Could Possiblie Go Wrong? (Rust Never Sleeps, Part 2)

Things are going quite well for me under the cone of stupidity on Yet Another Quest For Currency (the aviation sort, not the hard stuff I can use to get boutique bagels and exotic coffees down at the neighbourhood local). John's in the right seat, watching carefully. We've left Stockton (KSCK) behind after having successfully completed several approaches and landings in the still darkness of a Central Valley autumn night.

John's given me his iPad to play with on the next approach, the ILS into Livermore (KLVK), and it's working nicely with my new Dual XGPS150 GPS unit sitting up there on the dash. I've also got my little iPhone in my hand as I watch how well it works without coupling to the Dual (it'll only couple to one Bluetooth device at a time). Well, it does quite well, actually, and I feel pretty impressed with all the technology surrounding me (but it's really me doing all the real work, telling the G1000 what to do and such — well, that's what I like to tell myself). Suddenly I can't help it: "Siri! Set up a practice ILS 25R approach into Livermore from our current position, please!" Siri does nothing — either she's not listening, or she's as confused by my accent as everyone else is, and I revert to doing it all myself again. Oh well; I'm guessing we'll have to wait a few years before that'll work (and if you don't know who Siri is, this blog's probably not for you :-)).

Anyway, that's not the "what" that could possiblie go wrong in the title (diehard Simpsons fans will probably get the reference). What went wrong was the string of mostly weather-related cancellations and postponements that lead up to this flight — all sparked off (I'm absolutely certain) by my ending an earlier email to John with the words "what could possibly go wrong?". I'm just not the sharpest tool in the tool shed: one day I'll learn not to tempt fate like that. So what did go wrong? An example: we had to cancel our previous attempt when a howling gale caused by an unusually-strong high pressure system sitting somewhere over Utah was driving high-speed rivers of wind down over the Sierras and the coastal ranges towards the Pacific. As locals will know, this makes for unpleasant turbulence pretty much anywhere within sight of a mountain range or even hills (and there are ranges everywhere in California…). I looked up the winds on DUATS: 65 knots at 6,000 — a nice tailwind if you can get it, but we'd be going straight into it for at least half the flight, and that's a fierce source of rotors and bumps even over the Valley or in the lee of the Berkeley Hills (especially in the lee of the Berkeley Hills).

I might have been up for it even given all that, but my knee's still a bit iffy and I thought the better of it. So here we are, several non-existent flights later (I'll spare you the details of the other delays and cancellations).

The ILS into Livermore goes reasonably well — I'm getting better with practice — and we do the low approach past the tower over 25R when I come out from under the hood. Woohoo! (I always feel like doing a victory roll on low approaches — a hangover from my aerobatics days — but I know better, honestly). And now it's off to Oakland for the ILS 27R approach back home….

This goes fairly well as well, but we get the slam onto the localiser from somewhere between GROVE and UPACI intersections, and I can barely bring myself to program in the required 1,100 fpm descent to capture the glideslope from below. We just don't get low enough, and in the end I take over and hand fly the last few minutes (which kinda negated the point of this approach — it was supposed to be about managing the G1000. Oh well). The landing on 27R goes well (they've all gone well tonight, which was pleasing after all the time off from flying) and we taxi back to the Port-A-Ports.

* * *

Yes, I'm current again — but still a bit rusty. There's a touch of the old death grip creeping back to haunt my control of the plane, and my radio work definitely needs some polishing, but overall, this flight went basically as planned, despite all the preceding hiccups. We started it by taking off from Oakland's runway 9L, a bit of a treat for me: the winds nearly always favour one of the 27's, and I hadn't taken off from 9L for literally years, and we ended it an hour or two later with me feeling fairly OK about my flying, especially the landings and the big-picture procedural issues on the approaches. My hand flying on one of the approaches was definitely a little agricultural, but hey, I can't do everything.

* * *

Earlier, while prepping the flight I do due diligence with DUATS and notice the following NOTAM:

!FDC 1/1954 SCK FI/T IAP STOCKTON METROPOLITAN, STOCKTON, CA.
   ILS OR LOC RWY 29R, AMDT 19...
     S-LOC 29R MINIMUMS NA.
     CIRCLING MINIMUMS NA.
     JOTLY LOM HOLDING NA.
     TERMINAL ROUTES ORANG TO JOTLY LOM, LIN VORTAC TO JOTLY LOM,
     WRAPS TO JOTLY LOM, ECA VOR/DME TO JOTLY LOM NA.
     MSA WITHIN 25 NM OF ECA VOR/DME, 070-160 3000, 160-250 5300,
     250-340 3400, 340-070 4200.
     JOTLY LOM DECOMMISSIONED.

Hmmm, I think — what the hell does that mean? It basically seems to mean there's simply no way to do my fave ILS for currency at the moment. But why make the approach unavailable that way? Why not just NOTAM the entire approach N/A? I ask John — he's not entirely sure what the FAA's thinking with this either, so I decree that we'll just do the RNAV 29R approach out there instead. It's all flying to me….

Hot And High

It's another hot Central Valley day out there; this time, though, I'm in the right seat as safety pilot for Evan. He's under the hood as we approach Linden VOR (LIN) for the VOR/DME RWY 1 approach into Westover Field / Amador County Airport (KJAQ, a.k.a. "Jackson"). I briefly look over the approach plate and make fun of Evan for picking what looks like the easiest approach in the state. About the only thing that's even mildly interesting about it is the note that says use Sacramento Executive's altimeter setting if you can't get the local one — but KSAC's something like 35 miles away and in a different sort of physical environment altogether. I guess the 300' MDA penalty takes care of that, but in any case we've got the local AWOS on COM 2 and it's not just giving us the altimeter settings and all the usual boring stuff about wind and ceilings, etc., it's giving us the local FBO's Avgas and Jet-A prices! And damn they're cheap, at least compared to home (Oakland, KOAK) or a lot of other places in the area. Pity we don't need fuel.

We get to Linden VOR and turn to the final approach course. It's hot dry country down there, shimmering golden-brown Sierra foothills studded with green oaks and the occasional man-made lake or reservoir under the relentless California sun. Classic gold rush country. We've been cleared for the practice approach some time ago, and we're turned over to CTAF quite early. It's the usual Central Valley mass of incoherent, inconsistent, or hapless calls and stepped-on transmissions from the usual distant suspects like Gnoss (KDVO) and Tracy (KTCY) and much (much) further away, but there's no sign of anyone on air at Jackson itself. We potter on along the approach course at a steady 3,000' MSL, past the LIN 8 DME fix and towards the LIN 15 DME fix. We both think it's kinda quaint (or at least unusual) to be doing a VOR approach, let alone one without a GPS overlay (I was kinda surprised to see it existed at all when Evan mentioned that'd be the approach we'd do). There's no doubt that this is a straightforward approach, even if it's a VOR approach — in fact it's one of those approaches without even a published procedure turn, and whose missed approach notes just basically tell you to turn around and backtrack twenty-something nautical miles to Linden VOR, at which point … well, what? That's where the missed instructions end.

I can see the runway from about five miles out, and we debate whether to do a circling approach to runway 19 or a straight in to runway 1. The AWOS claims a very mild wind favouring runway 1, but we actually have a slight tailwind at 3,000'. We decide on the straight in, especially since the runway's long enough that even if the density altitude is fairly high and there's a 2 knot tailwind, we'll be fine. Evan makes a few calls on CTAF, but all we hear is the staticky squeally babble from far away, and we potter on. Past the LIN 15 DME fix the runway and airport environment get clearer — the runway basically sags in the middle and it seems to be sitting on a small semi-wooded hill. Nothing terribly unusual for the California foothills, but you never know — a deer might dart out from nowhere or the hot wind might suddenly start gusting something terrible at ground level.

As we get closer I notice that Evan is still going along at 3,000'; my instincts tell me we need to start lower now, and I hint at the issue over the intercom. Nothing worrying, at least not yet, but that airport environment down there looks a little unforgiving if — like me, and like Evan — you've never even seen the place before, let along landed there. Evan's OK with the current altitude, and we potter on; the weather's hot as hell even up here, but there's really no wind at all. Still no one else on CTAF or (as far as I can see) in the pattern. A minute later we're still too high in my judgment, and this time I let Evan know a bit more forcefully. Still nothing too worrisome, but Evan mutters something and points the nose down while cutting back on the power.

We start descending, but maybe not enough — within another mile or so I tell Evan we're still high; he says he's working on it. We're bang on laterally — it's just the altitude that's off. We both notice simultaneously that the tailwind has strengthened quite a lot in the last few miles, and Evan again considers circling. I obsess more and more about the altitude, and say so out loud again. We approach at quite a high rate of speed, the runway looking more and more scary as we get closer. Evan starts counting the altitude down in hundreds; I start thinking we're going to have to go missed, but I stay quiet this time. At the MDA, Evan looks up — and swears. Yes, we're way high, very fast across the ground, and it's even hotter down here than either of us had expected. And the runway's almost beneath us. It takes Evan about a second to decide to go around and go missed, and we do what amounts to a low approach over the runway at full power, climbing in the heat, and announcing our broad intentions on CTAF. Good move, I say to Evan. He gets the plane re-trimmed and pointing in the right direction, then says he just hadn't realized how fast we'd been going across the ground (ATIS was no help here), and how much quicker he'd needed to descend. Hot and high, and no way he was going to land on a small unfamiliar hilly runway with a tailwind in this heat.

We go back to NorCal for our next destination. Not for the first time, I guess, I jinxed an approach by making fun of it; but this was definitely one of the few times I've been involved in a real unplanned missed approach. Quite a lesson.

* * *

The rest of the flight's another lesson — mostly in how to cope with the heat and glare of the Central Valley and at Mather (KMHR) after a perfect approach and landing there by Evan, and in trying to decipher ATC's true intentions on the way back into Oakland. At one stage on vectors for the practice ILS approach into Oakland in the left seat I get a string of conflicting and inconsistent altitude assignments (in quick succession, something like "maintain 4,000", "descend maintain 3,000", "at or above 3,000", "at or below 3,500", etc. — all altitudes quite unusual in my experience for where we are at the time), and, inevitably, a few minutes later by "83Y, what's your assigned altitude?". I have the immediate IFR pilot's reaction to this — horror that I've busted an altitude somewhere — but for once it's not a controller hint, it's a case of (I suspect) a controller getting his wires crossed and thinking we're someone else (also, we're actually VFR in Class E airspace at that point, but still…).

Back on the ground at Oakland, the Texas Rangers 757 is parked near Kaiser next to the old Alaska hangar; I guess it's here for the North American Men's Baseball Championships (a.k.a. "The World Series"). It's looking sleek and expensive there in the sun. Later, 83Y's hangar is shady but still hot, and we struggle to clean all the million or so squashed bugs off the leading edges (an inevitable part of flying above the Central Valley) and generally tidy things up. Evan's still wondering about the missed approach (a go-around, really), but there's not a lot to wonder about: he got it right in the bigger picture, and if the tailwind was a lot stronger than forecast or as observed on the ground, well, there are an awful lot worse things to do than going around when you look up at the MDA and don't see the runway where you think you should….