Blimey, It's Circular!

A few hundred feet above Hayward (KHWD), immediately after departing VFR for Concord (KCCR) on an IFR (re)training flight, I look at the panel in front of me to check my altitude. We're in a Class D airspace (KHWD) under a Class C airspace (KOAK) which is itself under a Class B airspace (KSFO), and I need to keep below 1,500' for the next few miles to avoid blundering into the overlying airspaces. Par for the course, of course, if you fly out of Hayward, but when I look at the altimeter it looks so… weird. I point at it and blurt out something like "Blimey! It's circular!" to John who's in the right seat. John laughs.

This is your brain on steam, I guess. All those circular electro-mechanical steam gauges in front of me — I remember them! — and it's even got an ADF! Mesmerizing, in its own sort of way. Quite a shock to this jaded G1000-spoiled techie, but what did I expect?!  I'm in one of the club's C172's instead of the usual DA-40, and this is obviously going to be an exercise in old-school IFR flying. Flying the way it was when I got my instrument rating a decade ago. Some pilots get nostalgic for this sort of thing, but not me — I'm just a bit bemused and rather apprehensive. It's not just the old steam gauges — can I also cope with being under the hood again after all this time? Can I keep on top of the process and ahead of things on an approach?

* * *

This wasn't really supposed to be about steam gauges or Cessna 172's — it was just supposed to be a way back into IFR flying for me. Which is why I'm flying with John today — to start the long process of getting IFR current and proficient again after a two+ year break from instrument flying. But the DA-40 and John weren't available at the same time for a while, and I thought it might actually be fun to fly the old 172 — and remember or relearn how to program the KLN 94 GPS or use an old-style heading indicator (HI) or an ADF. So I arranged things for today, and — as usual — set myself some easy targets. If I can get through the flight without upsetting the plane or making too many egregious mistakes, I'll feel confident enough to start working on the formal instrument proficiency check (IPC) that I need to get IFR current again.

This is actually the first non-G1000 (i.e. non-glass) panel I've flown PIC in (I think) more than seven years. It's also the first time I've flown a C172 in more than two years, and the first attempt at IFR since around that time as well. At least I have Foreflight on my iPad with me as a safety blanket. And the panel's not quite as bare as the one I started with all those billions of years ago, even if it does still look a little, uh, Twentieth Century.

* * *

Right from the start, this flight's just one damn thing after another, in so many unexpected ways. I'm not talking about the actual flying (more of which later), but about the broken nav light I find on pre-flight (meaning we have to be back earlier than I'd like), or the paper oil funnel that I lose in the cowl necessitating some deft work by John to retrieve it, or the way my headset starts a high-pitched screeching oscillation as we taxi to the runway (meaning I have to dig out a rarely-used second pair from my flight bag), or the total pilot-side audio system failure at the start of the LDA RWY 19R approach into Concord (basically meaning John has to handle the radios from that point on as I get plugged into the rear passenger intercom without PTT), or the ADF that doesn't actually work properly, or the … well, I'll stop there, because I'm making it sound like some sort of trial or annoying chore. It wasn't — this was actually a really enjoyable flight, and although I'll probably never fly this particular aircraft IFR (except maybe to get through a thin benign summer stratus layer back into Hayward or something), it's definitely fun to sit in the left seat of a 172 again and play old-time Real IFR pilot.

Predictably, my instruments skills are rusty, my instrument flying rough. The first time around the practice LDA 19R into Concord (with full pilot nav) is an endless procession of missed cues and my looking blankly at the KLN 94 GPS wondering how the hell I should set it up for the procedure turn or the next leg, etc. And I'm not even under the Cone Of Stupidity for this first time around — and I'm using the autopilot, for at least some of the way (before I ditch it and hand-fly for the rest of the flight — much more satisfying).

And when I do go under the hood, while my actual flying isn't terrible, it's hardly going to impress anyone. What does make me feel good, though, is just how quickly I internalize what the tiny attitude indicator (AI) and other instruments are telling me when I'm under the hood — I think that was my biggest worry, steam gauges or not, but it turns out it's not much of a problem at all. I feel gratifyingly comfortable mentally integrating all the needles, planes, and numbers the entire flight in ways that are simultaneously quite different from my way of working with the G1000 in detail but fundamentally the same with the big (mental) picture. Probably the thing that most flummoxes me during the flight is the inscrutable interface on the KLN 94 (an interface I once actually knew really well); I basically have to get John to prompt me every time I reprogram it or set it up for another approach. I have a few blank moments with the simple OBS as well — mostly, though, to do with how it relates to the KLN 94 rather than what it's telling me or how it works in general. So I start feeling good about things, despite the roughness and puzzled moments.

I manage to blot my copybook, though, with one monumental blunder — on the start of the circle-to-32R maneuver at 700' I confuse Concord's runway 01L with the intended landing runway 32R, which is something I haven't done since my student days, I think. I'd probably have caught it fairly quickly and not caused some sort of international incident (I always check with the HI), but it was still a sobering thing to do. Thank god John caught the error early on and I could get away with a normal landing on the correct runway as though I knew what I was really doing. The landing (a touch and go) itself was also pretty rough — all that time away from the 172 is definitely showing.

The second time around the LDA 19R approach — this time entirely under the hood and hand-flown — is smoother and better-executed, but still not precise or particularly inspiring; John still has to quietly prompt me here and there. And I'm definitely helped by having John have to do the radios for me; I'd probably be flying a lot worse without that help. And I've intermittently got the old death grip again on the yoke, something I thought I'd been cured of years ago. But as I tell John, at least I haven't killed anyone (yet), and it's definitely turning into a really enjoyable flight.

We go missed again at Concord and head south for the ILS 28R into Oakland (KOAK), an approach I think I've said a million times that I could probably do in my sleep. But I'm actually wide awake right now, and I wonder how this one's going to turn out — it's one thing to be able to remember all the fixes and waypoints off the top of your head (and I can), it's another to be able to dredge up the muscle memories that let you make those small smooth adjustments on the way down the glideslope to keep you falling off the localiser. We shall see.

As we're heading towards the ILS with NorCal Approach, John makes gentle fun of my accent and then admits he can't do an Australian accent to save himself. I taunt him with the observation that my first instructor Dave Montoya (RIP) could do a wicked good imitation of my accent, especially on-air, and that in any case, I don't really have an Australian accent any more — it's actually always been some sort of weird Anglo-Australian, and really never was truly Australian (I have three nationalities, and was born in in a country that really doesn't exist any more). John tries a few phrases, but he'll need a lot of coaching before he'll pass as an Aussie; I suspect it's easier for me to get IFR current and proficient again than John learning my accent. I'll do the funny accents on this flight if he'll do the radios, I guess.

The ILS goes surprisingly well — John gets me to fly the AI so that the top of the AI plane's wings are just touching the bottom of the horizon bars, which works wonderfully — and I nail the approach, looking up at about 500' feeling pretty good at seeing the runway dead ahead. Woohoo!

We go missed (well, you don't really go missed at Oakland, you just terminate the approach) and depart for Hayward, where I (finally!) land smoothly and gracefully. Mission accomplished, I think.

* * *

So how serious am I about getting IFR-current and proficient again? Fairly serious, is probably the best answer — I definitely miss the challenges and fun of doing approaches, and the ability to get back in when the nearly omnipresent stratus layer comes in over Hayward or Oakland in the non-winter, but the cost of staying current can still be prohibitive. I'll probably book another instrument flight with John fairly soon, this time in the DA-40 (or some sort of G1000-equipped airplane), and if that also goes well, I'll try a full instrument proficiency check with him after that.

We shall see, as I always say.

Lou Fields, RIP

Lou Fields (CDR, US Navy (Retd.)) died yesterday (see John's thoughtful Memento Mori on Lou). This is sad news — Lou was a welcome, wise, drily-funny, respected, and much liked presence around Oakland's North Field and elsewhere.

Lou served in the Pacific during World War II, then stayed in the navy for a couple of decades afterwards, flying everything from Corsairs to jets off carriers, retiring as a (full) Commander in 1969. He later ran Lou Fields Aviation out of a trailer at Oakland's Old T's, where, as well as being an instructor, he was also an FAA Designated Examiner (DE, aka DPE).

Lou was one of my mentors when I was learning to fly, and for a long time afterwards, as well. He often had interesting and sometimes sharp things to say about the way instructors taught, about things like GPS (he could be surprisingly enthusiastic about — and adept with — new technology), and things like the wisdom (or lack of it) of tailwheel training. He took an interest in my learning aerobatics with Ben Freelove, and had a lot of advice on aerobatic technique and instruction (he also used to threaten to take me up in his Pitts and teach me some "real aerobatics", but that never happened, unfortunately). He let me rent his old Arrow, 29J, after a thirty minute sign-off flight to Hayward and back in appalling weather, during which he mostly just talked about Australia, while occasionally giving me terse advice on my crosswind landing technique or telling me a few tricks about descent planning in 29J, etc. Lou would have been my instrument rating DE if he hadn't got an extended bout of illness back then.

He was always joshing me good-naturedly about being both an "Aussie" (he pronounced it the Australia way) and a "Brit", and always asked about how things were going with me whenever he saw me around the airport. An all-round good guy, easy to talk with, amusing and knowledgeable about almost any subject, and one of those seasoned old warriors who'd come to believe that peace was always a wiser choice than war. He once told me he'd make a more effective fighter now than when he was younger — not so distracted by trying to stay alive nowadays, much more willing to take stupid risks now, as he put it.

Lou will be sorely and sadly missed.

A Theme

Long-term YAFB readers might just sense a theme in some of the photos here, but I'm not saying :-). In any case, this one celebrates a really enjoyable VFR Bay Tour done a day or two ago with a friend of mine — Atanu, one of the few people I've known in Sydney, London, and here — and G., his teenage niece who currently lives in Cairo, mostly to show G. the local sights (the Golden Gate, San Francisco, the Bay, Alcatraz, Napa, the Bay Bridge, Berkeley, the Hills, Mt Diablo, etc.) from the air. A perfect day for it, marred only by being stuck in traffic for an hour on a mile-long stretch of Interstate 880 on the way to the airport due to a combination of construction activity and a bad accident on the other side of the freeway. But we got there, and the ensuing flight was deeply enjoyable for all three of us, with G. getting her first taste of flying in a small plane — including probably 30 minutes of actually controlling the thing (under my hawk-like supervision).

A classic California Flying day, in every way….

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….

Hand Made

Just as I'm turning to a new heading for the vector NorCal Approach has given us for the Livermore KLVK ILS 25R approach, the 172's autopilot gives up the ghost with a distinct lack of drama. Just a little blink, the usual autopilot disconnect sound, and then a blank panel display. Dammit, I think, this flight is supposed to be at least as much about keeping on top of the G1000 and autopilot combination while under the hood as anything else, and now half of it's lost its tiny mind and isn't quite all there…. John's sitting in the right seat as safety pilot and without missing a beat says "just hand fly it". Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? Well, I would have said the same thing if I wasn't under the Cone Of Stupidity and thinking at the speed of molasses, and if my engineer brain wouldn't keep trying to debug things like this on the fly, but I know the deal, and we plod off towards the approach under my control in the cool clear darkness of the Bay Area night.

Predictably, closer in to the runway my flying gets agricultural (as we would say where I come from), and while I don't break PTS standards, neither do I set any records for accuracy and stability. I over-control the whole way down, and decide to look up 100' above the decision altitude before I make total hash of the approach. I salvage things a little bit (and over the next few landings) by absolutely nailing the landing, but still, I feel mortified — I usually do better than that on hand-flown approaches, and it's not like it's a difficult approach or the weather's getting in the way or anything. The only other saving grace is that — so far, at least — my radio work's not terrible: it's usually the first thing that goes to pieces after a long break from flying.

We do a bunch of stop-and-goes in the darkness at Livermore, then depart VFR back to Oakland (KOAK), but we already know we'll need a real IFR clearance to get home due to the coastal stratus layer that's moved in over the inner Bay area, and we gird ourselves for a stretch of ad hoc holding or circling out here in the clear skies above the Diablo Valley before we're allowed home. It doesn't sound promising when I call NorCal and ask for a clearance back from over Dublin (the one in Northern California, not the one I used to visit occasionally for my job when I lived in London…) — the controller effectively asks if we're OK with at least a ten minute delay in getting the clearance. I reply with a resigned "affirmative", but almost as soon as I've loaded the G1000 for the RNAV Y 27L approach back to Oakland, we're given a heading that looks suspiciously like a vector towards the approach just outside JUPAP, the initial fix. Sure enough, a few nautical miles closer in we're cleared for the approach, with a request for best forward speed (we're already doing that, but it's the thought that counts, I guess). I hand fly down towards the stratus layer, and in a few minutes, after a small amount of actual IMC and yet another smooth landing, we're on the ground. It's deserted down here, and we taxi off towards Landmark, unable to raise them on Unicom for fuel. At least I flew this approach with some sort of accuracy and stability, and it's all starting to come back to me. And as we wander in to Landmark to find out why they're not talking to us (we never find out in this case, but the Landmark staff are as pleasant and friendly to us as they always are), I feel pleased that I'm current again: IFR-current, night / day landing-current, and club-current. Every little bit helps….

* * *

This was supposed to be a simple short club- and landings-currency VFR flight caused by my having started a new job and losing the flying thread for way too many weeks, but the coastal stratus closed in on us earlier than predicted, and by the time we were at the airport preflighting the plane, it was obvious we'd need to depart and return IFR, even though (as usual) it was clear less than ten nautical miles to the east and / or 2,000' above us all the way east to (I'd guess) Nevada. I wasn't too upset — if I could get two approaches in I'd extend my IFR currency enough to be useful, and if John was up for a longer flight (we weren't going to depart much before 9PM), I was keen. And so it went — the only other interesting thing about the flight being that it was the first time I was using my new iPad with Foreflight for serious in-plane navigation. It's not like I haven't used John's iPad before (YAFB passim), and I'm an early Foreflight booster, so it's all fairly familiar, but actually doing it on-the-fly (as it were) while under the hood and on a real clearance is novel, and I occasionally have to ask John for advice on the best way to do things. On the other hand, I can't imagine flying IFR or even VFR in the future without the iPad (or something similar); I think the only really irritating thing was being unable to get the clearance down on the iPad — I had to scrawl it down with my left hand on my real (paper) pad. Yes, I'm vaguely ambidextrous, but still, I'll have to get a better way of copying the clearance on my iPad only. The other thing I need to get set up is the Foreflight checklist app, but that was just me being too busy over the last few weeks to get that together. Maybe next week (there's always next week).

The other thing that got our attention was a small underwing-engined RJ of some sort in Finnair livery parked at Landmark. As we taxi past we wonder what it is; I can't help noting mordantly that it looks a bit like the pictures I've seen of the Sukhoi that crashed in Indonesia last week, but Finnair (to my knowledge, at least) doesn't have Sukhois, and neither of us is sure what it really is. Later, I look it up on Wikipedia — it's an Embraer E-190, but what it's doing here in Oakland I don't know. I'm surely one of the tiny handful of Oaklanders who's not only actually flown Finnair, but who's been to Finland, so it doesn't seem likely they're scouting out a new Oakland direct Helsinki flight or have suddenly decided that Oakland's their new US hub, and it's unlikely to be a sports team charter (which usually accounts for some of the larger jets parked in front of Landmark). Just one of those Oakland mysteries, I guess.

Just Another Boring Bay Area Sunset... (Part 37)

 
I know I joke about it a lot, but here it is again — Just Another Boring Bay Area Sunset, except this time it's a little different: instead of being under the hood training or trying to keep IFR proficient, I'm looking outside, and M., a local friend of mine, is sitting in the right seat taking photos and just generally taking it all in. And she's not even screaming "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" :-). Sometimes it's hard for me not to get a little jaded about the weather, the sights (Those Bridges! That City! The Hills! The Bay! The Pacific!), and the fun of just flying around doing nothing much at all… but it's M's first time over the Bay in a little Cessna like this, so I don't feel so blasé. I give her the controls as we head off past Alcatraz towards the Golden Gate. She gets to fly for a while — the first time ever, apparently. She gives me back the controls after a few miles so she can take pix and just look out.



 
We circle the Golden Gate, watching the container ship head out towards China or wherever, then wander back slowly past San Quentin towards San Pablo Bay, where I do a bunch of steep turns and lazy eights because… well, because I can, and because M. enjoys it. She flies some more, but mostly I get to fly while she looks out and watches the world go by in the twilight over the Diablo Valley and the East Bay hills. We get to do some creative work on final for Oakland (KOAK) in response to vectors from Tower for a Falcon jet coming in quickly behind us for runway 27R, a pleasant detour over and around bits of Oakland I guess most people don't see (or particularly want to see). Not sure why we didn't get the quick sidestep to 27L, but never mind. By the time we're back on track, it's dark, and the video game effect comes into play on final (airports at night are definitely one of my fave places). Luckily I can't see those seagulls lurking below me….



 
A really pleasant relaxing flight, despite the official forecast for at least moderate turbulence all day. Earlier, in the clubhouse, we'd run into John and the forecast was one of the things that came up (with a bunch of people chipping in…), but in the end we didn't get a bump the entire trip. Not bad, not bad.

Who Knew?

 The Bay Bridge Under Construction (from 2,500' MSL).

On the ramp at Oakland (KOAK) it's a classic California winter's day — sunny, cloudless, windless, 19C (no, I don't know what that is in Nineteenth Century measurements — look it up!) Yes, it means yet another drought's on its way, but it's pleasant outside right now, and that's all that matters, right? Standing in front of 051's hangar I junk my original plan for a disciplined IFR run down to Monterey (KMRY) and back, and instead prepare for a leisurely VFR trip down over the Golden Gate and past Devil's Slide, Maverick's, Half Moon Bay, Pigeon Point, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Moss Landing, and other assorted local Pacific Coast landmarks to, well, Monterey. Why Monterey? Why not? I used to do this trip a lot, and this morning I just feel like flying down the coast and back up the inland route after a snack and coffee at one of my fave California airports. The hundred dollar coffee, I guess.




 


So thirty minutes or so later I'm climbing over the Golden Gate and San Francisco on an ad hoc clearance into the San Francisco Class Bravo at 3,500' along the coastline. It's beautiful — I can see for miles and miles — and even being vectored well out of my way for a United 747 departing KSFO right into my original path is fun (especially since the vectors take me just behind and over the 747 close in to KSFO itself; knowing a few tech crews myself (mostly Qantas and BA), I imagine the cockpit crew rolling their eyes as they hear that they're being altitude-limited so that my mighty Cessna 172 can roll on by on a glorified sightseeing trip). I resist making the obvious joke on-air about "caution wake turbulence from the Cessna crossing above you". I head slowly back to the coastline and potter on southwards, climbing to 5,500' to help keep me visible to ATC — radar coverage is patchy to non-existent for a stretch of the coast there below about 5,000' due to the Coast Range. From 5,500' the view's amazing — I can even see the Sierras some 150NM off to my left in the distance; ahead, I can see at least as far as Point Sur.

Closer to Monterey I'm handed off to NorCal's Monterey sector and slowly notice that there seems to be a bit more traffic than normal on air. This is usually a pretty sleepy sort of sector, but the controller seems to be handling a bunch of business jets and private planes heading mostly to or from Monterey. More intriguingly, I can see what looks like a blimp (or maybe it's the local Zeppelin) way off over the ocean abeam Monterey. What the hell's it doing there, I wonder — a sightseeing excursion for paying customers? A naval exercise? The ghost of the USS Macon?

The View Outside From The KMRY RNAV 28L Approach…

I put it out of my mind as I request the practice RNAV Y 28L approach with full pilot nav including the course reversal (just for fun — it's not loggable, but it sure helps with procedural currency) and head across the coast towards HIXIE, an initial fix for the approach. I've commented before on this and the similar localiser 28L approach, so I'll just repeat what I always say about it: this is a scarier approach in VMC than in IMC. When you can actually see outside the cockpit, you can't help noticing that after the course reversal you turn onto an approach segment heading straight at a range that rises abruptly out of the Salinas Valley in a set of peaks and ridges that are noticeably higher than you (and that rise close abeam you as you start the descent), and that the ground below you slopes off towards the airport at the same angle as the glideslope for a while, seemingly just below you much of the way (as I descend on the approach I can easily see individual people in the back yard of one of the isolated houses on the ridge below me). Luckily, Monterey tends to use the ILS 10R approach when the weather's really bad — at least with that you only have to deal with the ocean, not the rolling peaks and low-level turbulence in the other direction.





 


After landing I taxi to Del Monte Aviation, a place that over the years has become one of my favourite corporate jet GA FBO's (and no, I'm not being paid to say this — they don't even know I exist). The first thing I notice is that the guy waving me in to Del Monte's parking area has to step through several business jets to do it, and I gingerly edge my way through the gaps between the tens of millions of dollars worth of shiny gear all around me to park (I have this special admiration for the ramp guys — standing in front of even a small Cessna with its prop whirling dangerously a few metres away from you as you signal to some unknown guy in dark glasses lurching straight at you in it takes a lot of guts). The ramp guys chock me and get my fuel order and I wander in to the reception area, looking kinda scruffy in my usual black jeans, t-shirt (it's winter in California, remember), earrings, and bad shoes. Outside on the ramp right next to the reception there's a shiny new Embraer Phenom 100, looking gorgeous in the sun; inside it's busy. There's a four-stripe pilot at the desk trying to second guess his passengers with a catering menu, there's a bunch of suited guys in the corner watching some sort of golf game on the big screen TV, there are uniformed pilots and support staff purposefully walking around here and there, and behind the desk the staff is handling a bunch of phone calls and requests. What the hell?! Usually I'm either the only pilot in reception or there's only one or two other people hanging around. Once I get my fuel order in with the desk staff there I wander off and find some coffee and some rather nice chocolate chip cookies. Not bad, I think, and I find an empty chair in the main lounge, feeling smug about being the only person not in uniform or a suit, and still getting treated with friendliness, efficiency, and, above all, humour by the Del Monte staff. In the background the TV golf thing seems to be grabbing the attention of more people, but what would I know about golf? (What would I care about golf?) I'm semi-famous amongst friends for unwittingly referring to golf clubs as "golf bats", and the planes out on the ramp are much more interesting.





 


Over on the other side of the ramp there are several rows of neatly parked Gulfstreams and the like. As I'm sitting there with the coffee and cookies, several business jets arrive either for Del Monte or the other corporate business jet center up the ramp. There's a Pilatus PC12 that arrives while I'm watching and is parked right next to my little Cessna. Two helicopters land, one of them some sort of media thing. My plane gets refueled in between some other fuel requests. Something's up, but what? I would have asked the staff but they're kinda busy with catering and ground transport requests. Instead I somehow manage to get drawn into a funny animated discussion about Twilight going on behind the desk (can I be the only person in America who hasn't seen it?)

I sign the fuel receipts and wander out to the plane again. I start up and talk to Clearance for the VFR departure towards Hollister (KCHV); while I'm sitting there idling away on the ramp it occurs to me that the Del Monte folks might not like me blowing crud all over their besuited customers walking to and from the reception, but never mind — no one complains, and in a few minutes I'm way up taxiway alpha doing the runup.

On departure I can see a banner tow out over the point near the blimp — what is going on, I wonder? Monterey mid-week isn't exactly banner tow or blimp territory. A helicopter departs behind me for Carmel. Finally, I hear the magic words "Pebble Beach" from the banner tow as he requests a transition from tower. D'Oh! It's the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, apparently. I'm just not the sharpest tool in the toolshed, am I? It's in all the media, now that I look — there's a lot of expensive golf bats being wielded professionally down there today apparently. Who knew?! Everybody but me, I guess.



* * *


On final back into Oakland's 27R, tower calls out a primary target at 12 o'clock, unknown altitude, less than a mile, "probably birds". I keep a sharp look out and, sure enough, a few seconds later there are two large eagles or hawks soaring up at me straight ahead; I swerve a little and then immediately after that there's a bunch of (I think) seagulls wheeling around between me and the threshold. I take evasive action, but there's not much you can really do except avoid the obvious targets and hope that you don't get hit. Down below me there are literally hundreds of seagulls congregated in some sort of small lake or pond in the golf course. This can't bode well….

Back on the ground, compared to Monterey, Oakland seems even sleepier than usual. But then our golf courses can't quite boast the views (or greens fees) of Pebble Beach, I guess.

Two For One

Or Two For Four — I'm not really sure…. Anyway, my sister and her three teenage kids visited me over the new years holiday from Australia (their first ever visit to the US and California), and (of course) we had to go flying. That probably makes it sound like a chore, but it definitely wasn't: two really enjoyable 1.5 hour flights through beautiful clear blue skies over the Bay on the Bay Tour out of Oakland (KOAK, my home base), with stops at Napa (KAPC) and Livermore (KLVK). Everyone got to fly for at least a few minutes, and the more adventurous ended up doing a lot more than just flying straight and level; everyone seemed to enjoy it a lot. The G1000 screens probably helped — as one of my earlier passengers noted, it adds to the video game effect on final in the dark, and at least one of my passengers was happily mesmerized by the experience.

Uncharacteristically, I don't have any photos of the event — we certainly took a bunch, but they've accidentally gone with my sister and the kids to Mexico for vacation; maybe when they get back (or just within wifi range) I'll retrieve the images and have something to show for the day….

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….

May Showers

I live in a part of the world — Northern California — where you can confidently make plans for late May and know it won't rain. There might be a bit of coastal stratus or fog, and it might be a lot cooler (or hotter) than you'd hoped for, but it won't rain. It just doesn't rain around here — at all — from late April to early November in a typical year (and when it does, it's literally front page news, with breathless live reports on the evening TV news shows). So a few weeks ago when I booked a flight for this evening, I didn't give it much thought: a nice VFR run down to Monterey (KMRY) or up to Santa Rosa (KSTS), with a passenger or two who'd enjoy the view.

But when I check the forecast a day or two ahead, it's for rain. I've lived here long enough to not really take that forecast seriously — the weather guys get it wrong, a lot, when they forecast rain at this time of the year. But we've had a record year for rain (and snow up in the Sierras), and earlier today it's obvious: this isn't going to be a VFR sight-seeing flight, if it happens at all. I tell my passengers that the flight's off, but I keep the reservation, thinking I might get some nice IFR in (actual) IMC experience if things turn out OK — it's relatively warm, the airmass is fairly stable and predictable (at least on the large scale), and if I don't stray too far from home, I might safely spend a significant proportion of the flight peering out into that bright white or grey enveloping the windshield. Not the sort of thing a typical passenger would probably enjoy, but definitely my kind of fun.

And so it goes: by the time I'm at Oakland (KOAK) in the early evening, it's raining, and the field's IFR — the ceiling's low (but not too low to get back in safely if something goes wrong on departure), and the visibility's down to maybe 1.5 miles (officially; unofficially I'd have said it wasn't more than a mile in some directions). I've filed a couple of suitable IFR flight plans, and I've checked and checked (and rechecked) DUATS and Foreflight, so I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to fly. The weather at my chosen destination (Napa, KAPC) is better than at Oakland (but still pretty mixed), and the en route freezing levels are fairly high (a few thousand feet higher than the highest altitude I'm likely to get assigned going there or getting back). Nexrad shows nothing serious, and there are no reported thunderstorms or anything especially worrisome in the area. And it's a short flight, combining a fair IFR procedural and communications workout with several outs in case of problems. So what am I waiting for?!

Not much, really, and after a careful pre-flight, I'm sitting at the run up area off 27R with rain streaming down around me, programming my clearance to Napa (basically vectors for SABLO intersection, Scaggs Island VOR (SGD), direct, a route I've been given many times, IMC or not). From experience I predict it'll actually be flown with a couple of initial vectors, then REBAS intersection direct, then straight onto the localiser for runway 36L. Which is basically exactly what happens — after being cleared for departure I enter the clouds at maybe 1,000', and spend the next fifteen or so minutes in and out of (mostly in) IMC as a rather benign set of stratus and cumulus passes around me at 4,000'. I monitor the outside air temperature (OAT) every few minutes; it doesn't go below about 4C the entire time; each time I break out I look around for thunderheads or anything malicious, but really, it's all looking rather nice; it's not even turbulent except for some very minor stuff here and there. There's not much traffic on-frequency, and I don't (quite) get the usual Napa slam on to the localiser — this time I'm basically left to my own devices from fairly early on and can get down early rather than attempting a 1500 fpm descent in actual.

On the localiser into Napa I break out very early, then realise that, while Napa airport itself is actually VFR, I'm about to follow the localiser back into some extensive cloud — the localiser seems to be boring its way through the only large cloud formation in the area. If I were VFR at the moment, I'd just go a mile or two left or right (it wouldn't matter much which), and I'd be safely and legally VFR all the way to the runway. But I head on regardless, straight down the localiser, straight back into the clouds, and break out again well inside LYLLY (the IAF) at maybe 1,000' — and a mile or two to either side the ceiling's at least 5,000'. Yes, the clouds seem to have deliberately formed a long tunnel around the localiser, which makes me smile as I break out. Following Napa tower's instructions, I circle south for runway 24, and land on a wet runway in what seems to be a very dead time for KAPC; the place sounds and feels deserted (all those Northern Californians afraid of the unseasonal rain, I suspect). I taxi back to runway 24's runup area and wait for my next clearance, which comes after a minute or two's delay. The clearance is exactly what I expect, and after another minute or two of programming and double-checking, I'm cleared for departure.

A minute or so later, I'm back in IMC, heading for Scaggs Island VOR (SGD), then REBAS intersection. Just past SGD I'm given "Oakland direct, expect the ILS 27R", and that's what happens, with the inevitable stream of vectors for the ILS and traffic closer in to Oakland. The cloud bottoms and tops are all over the place now, and I'm in IMC pretty much continuously until I break out on the ILS back into Oakland. Every now and then I break out between clouds or layers; at one point I see the Southwest 737 I've been hearing on the radio paralleling me 1,000' higher and off to my 2 o'clock as we both break into one of those cloud canyons; then it's gone again (I can see it on the G1000's traffic display, as well; remarkably, it doesn't seem to be going much quicker than me, which can't be true). A few minutes later ATC calls traffic at my one o'clock, heading north, type and altitude unknown; I respond that I'm in IMC but I'll keep a look out if I get clear of the clouds. A few seconds later I break out into another cloud canyon, and there a few thousand feet below me, very (very) close to the ground flying up a valley in the hills, scud running below a broken layer, is a yellow Husky or Cub (or similar — it's a bit difficult to tell from this distance). He disappears below the layer as I tell the controller what I'm seeing and tell him if that's the traffic, I have it in sight — or not, as by then I'm already back in IMC.

I get vectored onto the ILS back into Oakland, and break out at about 900'. Landing's pretty routine, and I taxi to Kaiser for fuel. It starts raining again just as I start refueling (of course!); but it's definitely clearing on the larger scale, if a little raggedly. Just as I finish refueling, I slip badly and manage to scratch the paint on the leading edge of the wing — a small scratch, maybe 3cm long, and not really visible unless you're looking for it, at least in the semi-light during refueling and hangaring — but things like this always end up costing an arm and a leg, and later I squawk the scratch with a small mea culpa. We shall see what this ends up costing me….

Back in the hangar, the evening sun breaks out weakly as I'm closing up, and the Port-A-Ports where I am become a lovely mess of puddles, sunshine, structure, and the odd sodden business jet. Hence the photos above and below, taken from the hangar. Not quite what this Anglo-Australian Californian expected to see at this time of year, but never mind.

A good flight — quite a lot of benign actual IMC, and, as always with a short IFR flight to Napa, quite a navigational and procedural workout. It's a shame about the paint scratch (and the pulled shoulder from the same slip), but it's all flying — in some way or another….

Taking A Four-Year-Old Flying

Well, he's actually not quite four, but he's been slightly mad about airplanes since I took him and his mother with me to Oakland airport's Old-Ts tiedowns to sort out a flying club issue a couple of years ago (we were actually on our way to the Berkeley kite festival, but never mind), and he got to sit in the front seat of a Cessna 172 while a long-suffering student pre-flighted it (we disabled all the dangerous bits while he enthusiastically played with the yoke and all the switches), then watched one of the local banner tow planes do the low fast swooping pickup right in front of us…

So here we are couple of years later at the run-up area off Oakland's runway 27R, and he's strapped into a child's car seat in the back of another 172 at Oakland. This time we're going flying. I've spent much of the past year or so wondering about the logistics of taking a small child flying (I flew a seven-year-old around a few years ago, but he was big enough to look after himself), and I've done my research; but the really worrying thing for me is whether he's going to enjoy it or not, and whether his mother (who's been flying with me before, but turns green at anything other than a slow turn) will cope with sitting here with us.

I needn't have worried, of course…








(Formation flying after the flight, on the ramp in front of Kaiser Air…).

Tree Of Life

We're pottering along in Cessna 051, 2,000' above the darkness of a quiet Central Valley night, on a wide downwind vector for the ILS back into Stockton (KSCK). A few minutes earlier we'd gone missed as planned on the KSCK RNAV 29R approach after a nice stop-and-go, the first of a projected four or five approaches to get me IFR current (and proficient) again. We're discussing John's new bluetooth GPS for his iPad (which he's brought along and is showing me how it works in real-world use), waiting for another vector back towards the localiser. We're also (of course) idly listening with one ear to NorCal Approach's frequency, when — out of nowhere — a voice we connect with a certain semi-local bizjet we'd heard earlier on-frequency pipes up and asks in a rather faux innocent tone something like "so when did you guys [ATC] start saying 'tree' and 'fife' for 'three' and 'five'? It sounds really funny to me" (yes, our controller's been saying 'tree' and 'fife' quite by the book all the while).

Argh, I think. Not this again — they've been saying it that way for years now, especially the newer controllers (and it's even in the AIM) — where's this guy been all that time? Or is he just trying to be funny? The controller responds with a fairly non-committal answer along the lines of "that's the way we're supposed to say it now", and the other guy persists with several lines about how silly it sounds; and, several times, we can hear the controller's increasingly "I-don't-really-want-to-be-having-this-conversation" responses coming back between the calls to other planes for real stuff.

Just as I'm snidely remarking to John that hell, that's the way we in large parts of UnAmerica have been saying it for a while now, and what's with all the Good Ole Boys in America coming out of the woodwork and complaining about it, a new voice pipes up on frequency — a (much) older no-nonsense voice (I'd almost swear it's Lou except the voice isn't quite his) that simply points out that 'tree' has been the way it's been for a long time, and what's to complain about? (and, implicitly, "get with the program!"). So much for stereotypes. I'm tempted to add my own accented voice to the conversation (something along the lines of "bloody whingeing yanks!" :-)), but, as I've complained about in the past, my accent really marks me out on air, and I'd never get away with it ("Cessna 051! That was you, wasn't it?! Expect to hold at JOTLY for 35 minutes!"). And, in any case, as John reminds me, "American" is actually now one of my (several) nationalities, so who am I to complain?! Humph. The controller tries to end it all by handing the original complainer off to the next sector, but the pilot on the other end can't help getting in a parting shot that (I guess) was intended to be humorous, but just comes off as lamely missing the point (again). We plod on in the darkness over the Central Valley, marveling at the state of radiophonic discourse and aviation standards-keeping, waiting for that vector….

A few seconds later it comes, and we head off towards the localiser, my brain back in approach mode. I hand fly the ILS (under the hood) steadily down to 150' with John watching like a hawk in the right seat — not bad for a flight that started out with me feeling very rusty indeed. It surely helps that the wind's fairly constant (a quartering tailwind right down to the ground) and the traffic's nonexistent.

We go missed again, and back with NorCal we ask for and get full pilot nav for the Tracy (KTCY) RNAV 26 approach, starting at our current position with OMWAP as the IAF, and including the course reversal hold. This goes well (with the G1000 steering us around the hold), and John gets to do the landing after I look up at the MDA. About the only interesting thing about this approach is the use of waypoint names like "OMWAP" or "IVABE"; John and I argue about how the latter should be pronounced, and the controller avoids using it at all. Back with NorCal on the missed we head back to Oakland for the ILS 27R.

Somewhere close to GROVE for the localiser we start hearing a non-stop string of approach clearances, vectors for traffic, and ATC instructions on air, and just as I'm remarking to John about how it's suddenly a zoo out there, we get a square 360 for traffic on the ILS — traffic we can see on the G1000's TIS as several white diamonds converging on the localiser in an interesting-looking cluster. Par for the course for Oakland, I guess, but I enjoy this sort of thing, and I'm usually happy to go a long way out of my way for faster traffic and to make the controller's life easier (it's all flying, dammit, and it's always good IFR flying exercise). By the time we're back on vectors for the localiser and cleared for the ILS, there's only one plane competing with us for the approach, an Amflight Navajo bearing down on us from a dozen miles behind us Out There somewhere beyond our TIS display.

The ILS is an approach I know like the back of my hand — an approach I nearly botch in the last few moments as I'm hand-flying under the cone of stupidity and John casually suggests setting the flaps in a specific way that combines a momentary throttling back with flap deployment (nothing tricky, just done in a way I don't normally do). I make the mistake of thinking about it and then doing it, which puts me dot or two to the left and a dot low on the ILS before I recover — I should have just ignored John or done it by instinct, I guess. Still, no one dies as a result of my over-thinking, and the landing is a success.

We taxi to the Business Jet Center for fuel, and discover it's a bit of a zoo as well — a CHP helicopter, a King Air, and an anonymous and expensive Gulfstream, or Challenger or whatever are all departing from in front of Business Jets simultaneously, and we make damn sure Cessna 051's out of the way and has its control locks in. I stand outside on the ramp for a minute in the thick of things watching the CHP helicopter depart sideways to avoid hitting 051 and the business jet, and the noise of all three aircraft in the night is astonishing — the sort of thing you usually either love or hate (you can probably guess which applies to me).

After hangaring 051 John signs my logbook, and I'm IFR current again. What matters at least as much, of course, is whether I'm proficient as well, but after a bunch of hand-flown approaches and similar exercises, I don't feel too bad.