Flying Glass (Part 2)

A grey morning, layered overcasts from about 1,000 feet up through maybe 5,000 or 6,000 feet, clear above 6,000, and a forecast for slow clearing across the region. Icing levels about 6,000', but escape routes above and below. Not a bad day to continue my education with the G1000 in N14008, one of the California Airways glass cockpit 172SP's. John arranged it with me yesterday, and although I vowed to get it together this morning, due to other commitments I'm already late and feeling under-prepared by the time I reach Hayward airport (KHWD, my main home base). And, once I get there, instead of filing, pre-flighting, studying the charts and POH, etc., I end up discussing the club with Keith (the owner) and the G1000 with Mal R. (one of Cal Air's instructors), and not noticing the time going by. Oh well.

John calls and asks if it's OK to bring another of his students, Andy K. (whom I've met before a couple of times at the Other Club) as a back-seat observer. Fine by me, and John and Andy turn up as I'm finally getting ready to pre-flight. Andy's wearing shorts, which initially horrifies me — it's California-cold and grey outside — but then I think "Well, he's from Russia..." and it all makes more sense. It is, after all, somewhere above 12C outside already, despite the winter grey.

And so for the first complication: when you fly a 172 with just two people, as long as neither of them are especially overweight and you don't have a lot of luggage, you pretty much can't bust gross weight or centre-of-gravity limits even with full fuel loads, and you basically don't spend too much time obsessing over weight and balance issues. But there are three of us this time, and although none of us is particularly large — I'm 180 cm tall and under the average weight for the FAA standard person (who apparently weighs 170lbs in Nineteenth Century measurements), and John and Andy are both taller than me and similarly proportioned — we have to do a weight and balance check. After going through the agony of trying to remember how to do one without a spreadsheet, it confirms what I suspect: we'd be 100lbs over gross and close to the aft CG limit with Andy along and with full fuel. We could dump fuel, but it seems easier to dump Andy instead :-). So we're left pondering the poor lifting capacity of the 172SP with full 56 gallon tanks — back at the Other Club we kept 2SP (the 172SP there) fueled up to the collars instead of fully-fueled for exactly this reason, as that at least allowed three full-size adults and baggage to depart legally. It seems pathetic that you can't get such a relatively-powerful plane off the ground (legally, at any rate) in such circumstance, but there it is. Something else to ponder if I want to drag this plane back to Santa Monica or up to Portland some day — get the previous pilot to refuel only up to the tabs. I'm not sure what the hell I'd do if I turned up one morning with passengers and discovered I had to drain 20 gallons of fuel to make gross….

After all this we're already late and I'm feeling even more under-prepared, and since it's likely to be IMC for a large part of our flight to and from Stockton (at least I've had the wit to get a decent DUATS briefing for the flight), I tell John we shouldn't bust a gut trying to do the G1000 IFR signoff today — I'd be happy with a quick IFR / IMC flight out to Stockton (KSCK, one of my favourite Central Valley IFR practice destinations) and a couple of approaches — whatever we do will be a good lesson, and I'm resigned to completing the G1000 IFR sign-off sometime later. After all, I already have the VFR version. This sounds like a plan, and we wander out to the apron. John does some of the pre-flight while I file for Stockton (OAK V244 ECA direct, the same whether you depart Oakland or Hayward, a very familiar route).

Once on board we follow the startup checklist and get things started — and, once again, this is a lot more work than with a conventional set of instruments. I know this is probably obvious to most people, but the G1000 is a complex system, not just a disparate collection of mechanical instruments, and unless you start thinking of it as an integrated system, and interacting with it accordingly, it'll never make sense. This time round the workload's somewhat easier, and if you concentrate on the PFD (primary flight display) and the engine gauges on the MFD (multi-function display), ignoring all the extras on the MFD (the maps, the terrain options, the XM radio, the checklists, etc.), it's all fairly comprehensible, if a little complex the first few times. When we're ready to taxi, I call Hayward Deliverance, who gives me a distracted sort of "that's nice, dear" response and tells me to contact Ground without giving me a clearance. We taxi off to the runup area, finally getting the clearance (the usual "runway heading; passing through 400' left turn heading 160; radar vectors for OAK VOR; V244 ECA direct", of which only "left turn 160" and "ECA direct" are likely to be given by NorCal once you're in the air… ) as we get to the runup. Programming a clearance into the G1000 is pretty much identical to the GPS 530 procedure, and nothing about it is surprising or difficult (just tricky at times). We spend a few minutes in the runup area going over the various ways to superimpose the three different NAV sources on the HSI, which for someone raised on separate OBS's (etc), is just magic (this magic turns out to be a significant part of the flight a little later).

I call tower from the runup area, expecting to be told we'll be waiting fifteen minutes for release, but we're told to position and hold on 28L, then almost immediately cleared for takeoff. The departure is pretty standard and I hand-fly until we get into the clouds and NorCal starts giving me the usual vectors and altitude assignments on the Hayward Runaround. Time to let George do the the work. George stays engaged pretty much the rest of the flight until the last few hundred feet at Stockton (with exceptions noted below), which suits me just fine: I like being able to use it as a command instrument, dialing in a new altitude or heading. The only criticism I'd have of the G1000 / KAP 140 combination in this setup is the total lack of altitude coupling between the two (except for the ILS glideslope coupling), which seems a real missed opportunity — it'd be nice to just dial in a new altitude and vertical speed on the G1000 when coupled and have the KAP 140 respond accordingly. Not a big deal, just one of those minor irritations (as someone who spent most of his instrument training in aircraft without GPS, let alone a glass cockpit or an autopilot, I guess I still feel astonished that I have access to any of this technology at all, let alone the ability to complain about some its imperfections…).

We enter IMC about 1000 feet and spend most of the rest of the flight out to Stockton in and out of IMC. The flight out is routine except for two things: at some point after a bunch of vectors we're given a clearance direct to Manteca VOR (ECA) and we set the GPS and autopilot accordingly, but after a few minutes it's obvious the autopilot's developing a mind of its own, and we're increasingly off course. In a classic case of getting distracted by the unimportant, I start trying to debug what the hell went wrong, rather than just turning George off and starting again with a suitable (manual) heading, and using the autopilot in heading mode doing the various corrections with the heading bug until we're back on course and I can set it up properly again. D'Oh! It's the whole (Dis)Grace Under Pressure thing all over again, but with more sophisticated equipment this time. A very useful lesson, needed several more times today as George doesn't always do what I think it will (usually because I don't get the right key sequence). The good news is that (so far) I'm always noticing the problems; the bad news is I try to debug them in real time instead of reverting to something more basic then setting things up again at my leisure.

The only other bit of real interest on the way out was the DME arc John made me do to the final course for the VOR 29R approach into Stockton (in and out of IMC). He'd explained what he'd be asking me to do when we were still in the runup area, so it wasn't a surprise, and NorCal was OK with the request. The surprise was just how much easier it turns out to be to do a DME arc with the RMI-like superimposed display using the HSI with the NAV1 pointer pointing to ECA VOR over the left wing. Sweet! And really a lot more intuitive and easy to visualise than the old OBS-twisting / DME-watching method. I don't think I was more than .2 NM off on the whole arc, a much better result than the last time I did one for real. The following VOR approach is pretty standard, breaking out at about 800 feet (I think), with a quick touch and go and return to NorCal approach on the missed.

We're getting late, so I ask NorCal for a pop-up clearance back to Hayward, which comes a minute or so later, and we head back to Hayward, this time mostly above the clouds for the enroute segments. I get to spend some time playing with the MFD and learning a bit more about how to use it effectively beyond the usual engine instruments and moving map pages (the default versions of which are useful enough in themselves anyway). The LOC/DME 28L approach back into Hayward is routine, breaking out fairly high, and in fact by the time we land the sun's shining over most of the Bay north of about Hayward. We land roughly, really quite badly — last week's landing practice doesn't seem to have had as good an effect as I'd hoped…. Hmmm.

* * *

Once again, a really enjoyable and worthwhile lesson, despite and because of my screwups. No, I still don't have the G1000 IFR signoff, but it's all coming together well, and the next time I fly with John we basically don't have to run through much more than a decent circling approach and a few holds. Cool! And, once again, I find myself actually enjoying even the bits I flew terribly — always a good sign that you're learning. And I learned a lot today, especially about keeping cool under pressure and learning to fall back to something simpler without letting things get out of hand. Yes, I already knew a lot of this, but it's something that needs to be hammered home in a realistic environment (e.g. IMC in a new plane and using new instruments) to be really effective.

Around and Around...

I used to hate pattern work when I was a raw student — all those variants on the same theme, again and again, with Dave sitting there trying to distract me, with me sitting there trying not to land too long or too short or too hard, with all those other planes in the pattern trying to kill me, and a poor overworked tower controller trying to keep the whole circus afloat (just to mix metaphors)….

Nowadays it all just seems like light relief, and I'm in the pattern at Livermore (KLVK) just going round and round watching the world go by for an hour. It's hypnotic, and I get a lot of fun out of doing endless variations of landings — full flaps, no flaps, short approaches, etc. — on Livermore's little 25L in 8SA (one of our 172SP's). It's such a change from being under the hood or from endlessly following the charts in IMC…

Yes, I should be continuing on with the whole G1000 glass cockpit thing, but a new job (and a short vacation) is making that difficult to schedule (thanks to John for his patience with this…). So I decide to take a couple of hours to try to improve my VFR flying skills, especially my landings. And the first landing is pretty rough, but after an hour in the pattern dodging Livermore's usual busy mix of Citations, Cubs, Cherokees, 172's, and experimentals, my landings seem a lot smoother again, and I depart back to Hayward (KWHD) feeling relaxed and fairly pleased with myself. A good lesson.

* * *

OK, one of my generic pet peeves: wide patterns. I used to do much of my pattern work on Oakland's 27L, where you have to keep things tight to avoid the heavies and such on the neighbouring runway 29. And at most airports around here, there are similar reasons (or terrain or noise abatement procedures) that keep you in close. So when, several times around the pattern today, I end up way inside the plane ahead of me in the pattern, I wonder what they're thinking — they're too far out laterally to return to the airport if their engine fails even abeam the numbers, and they're making downwind legs so long I (once again) contemplate facetiously asking tower if I'm cleared to TRACY or something just to be snarky. Especially since tower has already gently chided the guys ahead of me at least twice for the size of their pattern…. Oh well. All mild rants start sounding the same after a while, no? So I'll shut up now.

Chilling

As John mentioned elsewhere, a Cessna 172 recently went down a little south of here, killing all four people onboard in rugged terrain that many of us Bay Area pilots fly over regularly. The NTSB brief makes chilling reading ("The non-instrument rated private pilot and three passengers were fatally injured. The airplane was destroyed. Night instrument meteorological conditions prevailed [...]"); I remember hearing about it on the local news the next day and wondering how anyone would want to have been flying that evening (a dark and stormy night, so to speak), let alone someone intending a VFR cross-country with passengers...

Flying Glass (Part 1)

A quick early morning call from John as I'm getting coffee at Javarama, and an hour or two later I'm face to face with the Garmin G1000 in California Airways' glass cockpit C172, N14008, a few weeks earlier than I'd planned. I'm not sure what to expect -- I did my homework a few weeks ago, but with the short notice I can barely remember the various primary function display (PFD) features, let alone some of the crucial system and module failure modes. I tell John we should aim low -- the Cal Airways sign-off requirements for this plane are two hours of flying the G1000 with an instructor plus a written checkout for straight VFR use, and a full instrument proficiency checkout on top of that for IFR use -- so while I know we haven't got time to do the IFR thing today, maybe we can get most of the VFR flying done. I can fill out the four page checkout sheet (with all the usual questions about failure modes, etc., some of it common to the sheet I filled in for the SP's a few months ago) over the next week at my leisure. We'll do the IFR checkout early January, probably.

We go through the checkout sheet in the club, and I feel embarassed that I can't answer even some of the "obvious" questions about the unit and the plane -- luckily, though, these were mostly the sort of questions whose answers you typically wouldn't memorise anyway. But at least the questions about things like how to kill the autopilot, or display reversion, or soft field / short field (etc.) procedures have been burned into my brain one way or another enough that I could answer them (mostly). John shows mercy and lets me take the sheet home for filling out later -- he'll have to sign that off separately.

It's a marginal VFR day at best, so I file IFR to VFR on top, something I realise I've never actually done for myself before (which surprises me). DUATS says it's basically clear on top of a broken layer that doesn't extend much above 2,000' locally, so we'll head off towards Mt Diablo and make things up as we go. I do the pre-flight, which is essentially identical to the other SP's, but when we get in and prepare to start the thing, the information overload begins creeping up on me, and I slowly become more aware that this is a system I'm playing with, not just a bunch of disparate instruments. In particular, things like backup battery power, fall-back instrumentation, etc., have to be armed and tested in a certain order before and after engine startup. This is the classic time for an official checklist, so on John's prompting, out it comes. It's a lot more complex than the SP's, let alone something like 4AC, where startup is little more than priming a bit, yelling "clear", and turning the key.... I feel curiously like, erm, a real pilot; I start feeling maybe I should wear a uniform....

I get it all under control eventually, and we taxi off to the runup area with John asking me questions about how I'd do this or that, and giving me a few hints, etc., and somewhere along the line we pick up our clearance, the standard "cleared to San Jose VOR (SJC), runway heading until 400', then left turn to 160, radar vectors to San Jose, report reaching VFR conditions" IFR-to-VFR on top clearance. Nothing too difficult. And programming the G1000 for this -- and later escapades -- turns out to be nothing too difficult, either -- it's basically the same as programming the GPS 530, with all of the pluses and minuses that implies (I share John's frustration at the "enter" key thing). We spend the time waiting for release going over details like how to get the HSI to superimpose bearing to a station, how to set up the cramped little situation window (whatever it's called) next to the HSI, etc., and the different multi-function display (MFD) modes such as traffic, nexrad, XM, etc. This stuff's magic. And the MFD engine data displays are a model of clarity, too, laid out logically and very effectively (for me, anyway).

After the usual long wait for release we're finally cleared for takeoff on 28L. The big test here for me is how well I'll cope with the vertical tape airspeed and altitude displays -- everything else seems at least somewhat familiar, especially the HSI and huge AI (finally, an AI in a C172 that's big enough to use easily and accurately, especially for pitch information!). So we start down the runway, and ... disappointingly for some of you, I'm sure, for the rest of the flight the airspeed and altitude displays (especially the altimeter) turn out to be little or no problem. Yes, I make a few mistakes reading them a few times here and there, and yes, I miss the quick-glance mode of readout available from the analog versions, but really it's just not that hard to adapt. Half way through the flight I catch myself thinking "I'm doing 108 KIAS instead of 110 -- let's just push the throttle forward 30 RPM..." (or whatever) and think, hmmm, this three decimal place readout thing might just be a little spurious... (but it's fun).

So we cancel IFR at about 2,000 feet and spend the rest of the time doing maneuvers, then two times around the ILS RWY 27R into Oakland, both times under the cone of stupidity. Nothing much to report about any of this, except the information overload caused me to miss a few radio calls, to screw up a simple VOR interception, and to fly really pretty badly during some pure VFR segments. Urgh. And it was a good workout for getting on top of the KAP 140 autopilot as well -- most of the time we left it coupled -- and John was full of the usual hints and help. I've tended to use it more in vertical speed mode, dialing in a positive or negative VS to get to the altitude I want, monitoring it myself and getting it to level off by hitting the altitude set button at the right time; John's getting me more comfortable with using the dialed altitude method. Unfortunately, I keep making mistakes with this -- it seems to be way too easy to reset the VS while dialing in the altitude -- which keeps reminding me why I started using the VS method in the first place. I'll get it right every time... eventually.

The first time around the ILS at Oakland we can't get the autopilot to couple to the glideslope, so the next time around we concentrate on getting it right by intercepting it from well below; this time it works. It didn't help that the NorCal controller vectored us straight through the localiser (I saw it about to happen and called him, but he responded -- apologetically -- too late); this is a first for me -- NorCal usually vectors you nicely onto the localiser... several thousand feet too high. One embarassment for me: the first time around the ILS, somewhere outside FITKI (the notional GS intercept point), John casually asks me where the glideslope indicator is. I realise in horror that it's not where I thought it'd be -- on the HSI. He lets me sweat a little then points out the tiny moving green blob next to the altimeter that's obviously (ha!) the GS indicator. I guess it makes sense to have it there, but it's way too small to be easily visible while you're monitoring the HSI on final, and I'm unimpressed by that particular design decision. I'd prefer to have the choice of bars against the HSI as well.

After the second time around the ILS we depart VFR through the murk back to Hayward; I embarass myself further during this leg by some really bad flying -- again, it's easy to blame information overload, but this time it was also caused by having trouble finding the airport through the mist (it's still MVFR) and by my obsessing about the engine instruments. I'll learn....

So now I'm basically checked out and ready to fly VFR with the G1000 (I need to get John to sign off on the paperwork early next week to make it totally legal); I'll be making another flight with John sometime over the next few weeks to get the rest of the IFR checkoff done. This is a lot of fun, I have to admit.

* * *

All in all, a good lesson. Not so much because of the G1000 itself, but because the rough bits of the flight once again rammed home to me just how much you need to guard against the temptation to put aside the actual basics -- keeping the airspeed up, ensuring you're listening to the radio -- to get some minor detail or other figured out or completely correct just because the bloody thing's there in front of you on the PFD or whatever (and thanks to John for his patience with this).

My overall impressions of the G1000 so far? This is a very nice way to fly, even in a 172. Especially in a 172, if you're serious about flying single-pilot IFR. Basic VFR flying with it is -- with caveats about getting used to vertical tape displays and a few other fiddly bits that seem incomprehensibly-designed or laid out -- as easy as with "normal" 172 instruments, and for the limited amount of IFR flying I did under the hood, the displays and the way everything's nicely integrated becomes very addictive after a while. Yes, as always, your mileage may vary depending on how much you like integrated computer displays (I'm a nerd, so they seem utterly natural to me...), but, if nothing else, the various redundancies and fallbacks -- including the steam gauges of last resort under the main displays -- strike me as just an order of magnitude more reliable (in every way) than something like the conventional instruments in, say, 4AC. If you're looking for a detailed critique of flying with a G1000, or second thoughts on the wisdom of digital flying in a GA context, you're reading the wrong guy, unfortunately. I liked it immensely, I'm enthusiastic -- the only downsides have to be the extra costs and the training.

But it's obviously not for everyone -- and I couldn't care less about the G1000 when I'm doing aerobatics or just pottering about the Bay on the Bay Tour -- and I couldn't afford to buy an old M-series 172 with steam gauges, so if I weren't renting the damn thing for not a lot more than a conventionally-instrumented 172SP, I'd probably have a very different view of the cost vs. safety / convenience tradeoffs here....

Reading Glass

Well, reading the G1000 manuals wasn't as bad as I'd thought -- what's a few hundred badly-written tech pages to someone who's motivated? -- but, as usual, the proof's in the pudding. I haven't flown for weeks (weather, and a new project at work, mostly), and I sometimes wonder whether I'll even remember how to take off, let alone what this readout or that instrument is telling me in IMC.... I've been in touch with John a couple of times about getting checked out (or even just flying along with him as safety pilot), but there's always some excuse on my part. So it goes. It'll probably be January; the good news (on the grapevine) is that Cal Airways is getting more glass cockpit 172's. Cool!

Anyway, as an old hardware and software engineering nerd, I'm impressed and intrigued by the G1000 system architecture and implementation. For example, it warms my heart that it uses ethernet to join the components together -- the sort of thing I predicted decades ago when ethernet was still done with temperamental inflexible thick co-ax cable and vampire taps (don't ask...), and when 1Mbps was pretty optimistic. I just love this sort of thing -- and the second-guessing and mental reverse engineering I do when reading about hardware and systems architecture like this keeps me occupied when I should be doing real work.

Something I don't love is the likely difficulties I'll have with the vertical tape displays for airspeed and altitude. Almost everything else looks straightforward about the G1000 -- the GPS seems to be a glorified GPS 530, and the rest of it is "obvious", at least while sitting here on the ground -- but, as both John and David Megginson have pointed out (see e.g. David's article here), the transition to this style of presentation can be rough.

As my over-used catchphrase has it, we shall see.

Going Glass

I've decided to take the plunge and get checked out in California Airways' G1000-equipped 172. Why? Mostly because it's there, of course, but also because I'm curious, and because it seems like a good way to fly IFR -- if I'm serious about those trips to Klamath Falls (KLMT) or Portland (KPDX) or Santa Monica (KSMO, again) or Arcata (KACV, again...) (all of which would be done IFR, most likely with actual IMC at both ends of the trip on most suitable days), the G1000 will certainly make the trips more enjoyable and safer -- as long as I'm on top of the systems. And it's only a few bucks more per hour than the 172s with GPS and autopilots I'm already flying (yes, it's a long slippery slope, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it, or some such mixed metaphor...).

I'm in no real hurry, and will probably end up doing it with John (who's now associated with Cal Airways as well as the AAC) over the next month or two, but I think it's a good idea to start doing my homework now. Garmin has a G1000 simulator, which I'll probably get (it's dirt cheap, but may not run on my Windows box), and as always, Garmin has the full set of manuals, supporting documentation, etc., for free download on its website.

So I download the manuals. Argh! There's now nearly 30 MB of G1000 PDFs on my Mac -- literally hundreds of pages of stuff to absorb. Yes, most of it's relatively obvious if you're at all familiar with the conceptual architecture of the system and with glass cockpits in general (no problems here), but as I've said elsewhere, there's a big disconnect between mind and menu with these new systems (very little perceived affordance), and in order to feel confident-- and safe -- in using something like this in hard IFR over (say) LA while getting amended clearances from SoCal Approach on the way into Burbank or something, that disconnect's got to be bridged in ways that are burned into my brain (to bring the mixed metaphors full circle). There's something deeply discouraging or intimidating about a life-and-death system whose official quick reference card or cheat sheet is eight full pages long...

So I predict a ton(ne) of dense technical reading in my near future.

Strange Weather...

From the NWS San Francisco and Monterey website's weather discussion pages:

"UPDATED AVIATION: Discussion... the remarkably warm weather continues over the district under a very warm airmass and strong offshore flow. By 1 PM the temperature at the Monterey weather office had soared to 86 degrees making this the warmest day of 2005 here. The previous warmest day was March 11... when the high was 84. Summer is sort of a nebulous concept here on the California coast... it comes and goes without regard for the calendar. As on past days the warmest weather is from Monterey Bay S where 80s are common... 70s prevail farther north. Some inland sites are showing huge diurnal temperature ranges. At Bradley in the southern Salinas valley thursdays high was 89 but the mercury plunged to 32 this morning! It was back up to 86 by 1 PM."

Ah, what's a Northern Californian to make of it all?! Severe clear skies, very bumpy rides, and air that feels like the western Mojave's without the pollution — at a time when it's normally grey, overcast, cold(ish), and damp. Luckily, I've got too much work to do to be able to fly...

(As John has probably mentioned elsewhere, these discussion pages are often fascinating reading, with some open and revealing thoughts being posted about the various models' failings or successes, and a bit of thinking out aloud by the various meteorologists as they try to come to grips with the weather 'round here. The Weather Underground site — one of my fave general weather sites — contains links to these pages under the various local forecasts as well).

The Workout

A good sustained workout under the Cone of Stupidity in night VMC: a short IFR flight to Stockton (KSCK), a few times around the ILS 29R and VOR 29R approaches there, a bunch of holds on the associated published misseds, then IFR back to Hayward (KHWD) for the LOC/DME 28L. An attempt to keep comfortably current (as opposed to just legal), and, once again, to master the intricacies of the KAP 140 autopilot under the hood.

It starts with a short 10nm VFR hop from Hayward to Oakland's Old-T's to pick up Boyan, my safety pilot and sometime flight-share partner at the AAC clubhouse (yes, I'm still a member). Once he's on board we call Oakland clearance to see what they'll offer us in response to my filed KOAK V244 ECA KSCK (a route I've filed and flown many times in the past): "Cessna 0SP cleared Stockton airport via the Nimitz 2 departure vectors for victor 244 then as filed." Hmmm -- that Nimitz 2 has me a little surprised -- I know it exists, but I'm not familiar with it at all, and due to the endless problems over the last two or three years with OAK VOR, it's never been issued or available. Until now. I read the clearance back, thinking "no problems, I'll just grab it out of my bag...", and proceed to get Boyan to find the appropriate plate. One look at it makes me wonder what clearance is thinking: although I've put "DEPARTING OAKLAND RWY 33" in the remarks of my flight plan, and even though I actually said explictly as part of my call to clearance that I'll be departing 33, they've issued me a DP that's not applicable to runway 33. D'Oh! The DP itself is trivial -- basically a heading and a VOR radial -- but it makes no sense for departures off 33.

I contemplate calling Deliverance back and querying it, but I have a better idea: I'll call ground, where I just know from past experience what's going to happen. Sure enough: "0SP taxi 33, and, uh, I've got an amended clearance for you: on departure, left turn heading 310 then vectors for V244". Oakland clearance never seems to connect the dots here with the runway 33 thing; Oakland ground always seems to be the one to stitch things back up properly again. I stifle the urge to make some sort of snarky reply, and read the new clearance and taxi instructions back. A few seconds later there's a familiar voice on frequency: "Hamish?" "John!". In the next minute or so I hear ground giving taxi instructions to John and his Caravan. Once again I blame my accent....

We get cleared direct JOTLY (the LOM at Stockton) a couple of minutes after departure, and the rest of the flight itself is a lot more fun than I'd expected, even if it didn't turn out to be the autopilot workout I'd anticipated. I'd really planned to do about half the flight continuously with GPS and the autopilot to see if my brain exploded under the hood with the effort to make all these damn things work together under a real (changing) workload, but I unexpectedly enjoyed hand-flying the plane so much that the only time I engaged the AP was on the first (vectored) ILS approach into Stockton (just to prove I could do it), and during the en-route bits when I needed to look at charts, etc., or I was getting bored. I really hadn't expected to look forward so much to donning the Cone Of Stupidity, but I caught myself several times impatient to put the hood back on after departing or the latest touch-and-go. Not quite how I felt this time last year during the whole instrument training experience :-).

Nothing much else of note in the flight itself except the long string of Southwest and United 737's heading for Oakland's 29 being vectored in front of and above us on the way back into Hayward (and my constant worries about the resulting wake turbulence), and the ghostly feel to Hayward after the tower closes at 9pm. You cancel IFR on the ground through Oakland tower at that hour (as we discovered), which isn't too hard, but in this case I decide to cancel on the change to CTAF -- I guess I just don't fly IFR into enough uncontrolled fields to make IFR cancellation on the ground a reflex thing, and don't want to cause an incident or anything.

One other thing: 0SP has a working Stormscope. It's not exactly obvious how it's supposed to work (I'll get the manual next time I take 0SP out), and not as useful around here as it might be in stormier climates (we get maybe two or three thunderstorms a year here), but a nice touch anyway. Can't help thinking 0SP started its working life in Florida or somewhere like that....

* * *

Wandering across the ramp to get to 0SP on the green ramp, I almost literally stumble into this huge old warbird just outside the Cal Airways office. It's a taildragger with a tailhook, folding wings, and a greenhouse-style cockpit; as Boyan says later when he sees it: "You could stand up in that cockpit!" -- it's much larger in real life than it looks in the photos here...

I have absolutely no idea what it is -- it's too big for any of the carrier-based WW II fighters I know about -- and there's no one around to ask. Bloody impressive -- the sort of thing you're more likely to see in Oakland, but it's pleasing to know that it happens in Hayward occasionally as well.

[Later edit -- I returned the next day and took the photos here. The plane's a TBM Avenger, "Blue Lady", and has quite a history, apparently -- HR].

The HSI

Surprisingly, I haven't actually flown a real airplane with an HSI in it until today. Or at least I can't remember one -- there may actually have been one, but nothing stands out, especially since they would have been flown VFR where it wouldn't have been of much interest. Simulators, yes, but nothing that meant my life was hanging on it, and certainly not IFR, let alone in IMC. So when I get the chance to take 0SP (2SP's near-twin at Cal Air) out for an IFR-in-VMC(ish) flight from Hayward to Sacramento and back this evening, and discover it's got an HSI, I think "Cool! New toy...".

And so it proves. Yes, an HSI is quite an improvement on using a separate OBS and HI (and a lot more intuitive, if you ask me), and if it takes you more than a few seconds to "get" it and how to use it IFR or with the autopilot, well, I guess there are web sites, books, or DVDs out there dedicated to explaining it all. I particularly like the slaved compass card -- but I still keep checking the HSI against the whisk(e)y compass every few minutes anyway. Ah, this is the way to fly...

The flight's predictably uneventful, and it doesn't take much time to adapt to 0SP's quirks, but after the flight I feel irritated and a little depressed by the evening. No, I didn't bust any altitudes or headings, and had no problems with the basics or the approaches, but I kept making little errors -- like tuning the wrong frequency, hitting "direct" on the wrong waypoint, or blowing a radio call -- that might cascade into something serious with stress under hard IMC, and I'm a little depressed that after all this time I still make errors like this. I guess I still don't fly enough to get things right as a habit or ingrained process rather than a continuous mental effort.

* * *

At one point on the localiser back into Hayward NorCal vectors a Southwest 737 for the visual into Oakland close in front of me and at my altitude, then calls traffic for me on it. It's a beautiful sight, all flashing lights and slow graceful movement, but I'm worried about wake turbulence. I stay high until past where I judge it's safe to descend, then drop like a rock back to my desired segment altitude. It's not really clear what I would have done if I'd been lower than the 737 at that point (I was higher because I'd been cleared very late for the approach by a grumpy NorCal controller who clearly lost me in the shuffle and vectored me towards the LOC/DME FAF 1,500 feet above the FAF crossing altitude, and who got irritated when I subtly reminded him he hadn't cleared me for the approach even though I was rapidly approaching the FAF...).

Vectors, Vectors, Vectors...

Departing Oakland (KOAK) IFR is usually pretty straightforward. There's a bunch of published DP's, and a useful set of airways converging on the on-field OAK VOR, and in reality you'll just get an initial vector or two then you're on your way on the published DP or as-filed route. I'm used to all this, and it's one of the advantages to being based at Oakland in Oakland's Class C airspace (under San Francisco's Class B).

So on my first IFR departure out of Hayward (KHWD, my other home base) today, I'm not sure what to expect. Hayward sits between the KOAK ILS RWY 29 approach and the KOAK ILS 27R approach, only about 5 nautical miles from either threshold. Both are busy and in continuous simultaneous use. And there's San Francisco traffic to contend with just a few miles further west. So you can't just depart -- your path is going to cross one or the other of those two ILS's or the KSFO east-bound departures, and your release is intimately dependent on the traffic into Oakland (which used to -- and probably will continue to -- include me at times). And Hayward has no published DP's. So I'm unclear on what my final clearance is going to look like, and I have the impression I'll be waiting for release next to Hayward's 28L for a long time....

In the end I file KHWD OAK V6 SAC KSAC with DUATS, and a few hours later sitting there on the ramp, Hayward clearance gives me "runway heading until 400', then left turn 160, then vectors to OAK, V6, SAC, direct". Not too hard, I think, and since it's basically VMC today (there's only a broken coastal layer at about 1500'), I'll engage the autopilot early on departure and just sit back and watch for traffic and have fun.

And that's basically what happens for the departure and the rest of the flight (after the obligatory ten minute wait for release), but I've underestimated the amount of juggling and vectoring NorCal Approach needs to cope with my departure. From memory, not only do I never get close to OAK VOR (not that I really expected that...), I receive something like nine or ten vectors and several altitude adjustments from the moment tower hands me off to NorCal to the time I get "direct PITTS" some fifteen or more minutes later. It's like a partial-IMC Bay Tour without the time to enjoy the view. Almost all of the vectors are for traffic into Oakland or San Francisco; at one point as I seem to be well on my way to San Jose VOR (SJC) climbing to 5,000' (i.e. on a heading nearly opposite my intended heading to Sacramento), I'm given yet another vector to avoid an incoming A320 that I can't see, and I start wondering what this is going be like in real IMC when NorCal's running the Southeast flow. Can't wait to find out -- especially on the approaches back in to Hayward that fly straight into the traffic departing Oakland only a few miles away.

Still, I enjoy the flight a lot, and I think I'm becoming fairly good at working with the two-axis KAP 140. With the exception of a last-minute screwup into Sacramento (below), and the initial few hundred feet of departure at each airport, I manage to fly the entire time to and from Sacramento IFR with the KAP 140 fully-coupled. I still have a few rough edges, but the thing's magic, no doubt about it -- as long as you treat it, as John says, like a student (i.e. with eternal vigilance). The only time I screw up significantly is, ironically, just before the ILS glideslope capture at Sacramento -- part of the whole point of the flight today. I manage to disengage the autopilot at just the wrong time (it's way too easy to try to talk to the autopilot when you're really trying to talk to tower -- those two buttons are far too close to each other on the yoke...), and at that point it's easier just to hand-fly the ILS rather than reset the bloody thing and see what happens. Especially since NorCal has handed me off to tower with a Falcon behind me ready for the ILS. No problem -- I'll leave automatic glideslope coupling for another flight.

* * *

In the Cal Air office as I'm filling out the paperwork before the flight I hear a strong Scots accent, and can't help introducing myself. Mark P. is over for a while from Scotland, visiting some friends, and thinking of doing his commercial here. In the meantime he's just flying around in Cal Air's 172s -- Reno today, Vegas a few days ago, etc. We start talking about GA in Scotland -- basically, there isn't much -- and I make a joke about the three days of each year it's safe to fly VFR at his home base somewhere in Fife (an area I vaguely remember from my early childhood in visits from not-so-nearby Tighnabruaich on the other coast of Scotland). GA's hideously expensive there -- a 172 might rent for UKL 120 (about $200) per hour dry, with much higher fuel costs, and it's incredibly restricted -- not to mention ruled by capricous and mostly bad weather (I once saw a dog get blown over while walking in the nearby Grampians as a kid; the locals I was with just muttered something about the breeze and kept on walking). A different world, for sure.

I'm Such A Wimp (The Perils Of Renting)

I book 8TA for 10am - 2pm this morning for some IFR practice and to get more familiar with the KAP 140 two axis AP vertical guidance (specifically, coupling to a glideslope). I file KHWD OAK V6 SAC KSAC, a route that's new to me only because of the Hayward rather than Oakland departure; the route back (V344 to SUNOL then the LOC/DME back into Hayward) is something I have flown before already. What could go wrong?

The weather this morning turns out to be low overcast, 600' ceilings, 1600' reported tops, visibility 10NM, the usual thin coastal stratus; icing levels well above 10,000'. Cool! I think, I'll get some actual in this as well. I wander down to Cal Airways and get the keys and paperwork for 8TA from Linda, then slouch out through the grey to the ramp. I open up 8TA -- and there's this bloody great hole in the panel where the KLN 94 GPS ought to be. The whole unit's just ... missing. Hmmm, I think, did someone steal the damn thing? No, too clean -- no forced entry or anything -- but then why didn't someone tell me, as now I have no DME as well as no GPS? I'm not a /G any more, but a lowly /U. And, as I quickly realise, without that damn unit I can't do the LOC/DME back (with its very reasonable 400' MDA), or the fairly decent GPS / VOR/DME approaches -- only the VOR or GPS A with a circling-only MDA of 800' (750' AGL). Which means under my own self-imposed rules I can't depart, because I can't actually return to Hayward legally if anything goes wrong. Yes, I could do the ILS back into Oakland as it's only a few miles away (and I'll always have that plate on my clipboard when I depart Hayward, IFR or not), and there's plenty of space under the layer to return visually without hitting anything, and if I can make it over the Berkeley / Oakland Hills it's hard VFR. But I just won't do that; I decide to wait maybe an hour or so to see if the ceiling lifts.

I'm also nowadays very reluctant to fly in IMC without GPS -- panel mount or just my old Garmin 195. But I've left the 195 at home this time because it should have been just a short flight to clear skies, and because, well, 8TA has a decent panel-mount GPS, no? Urgh. OK, the lack of GPS in this case is only a convenience thing given the thin coastal layer, and I actually start looking forward to just using the VORs again without the GPS. But there I am, sitting on the benches on the ramp outside Cal Air, talking to a couple of instructors waiting for students, watching a few IFR departures (all of whom disappear into the marine layer at about 800' or so by my estimation), thinking, "it'll lift a bit soon -- it always does...". Two hours later, just before noon, I give up and cancel the flight with ATIS reporting an unchanged ceiling. Thirty minutes later as I'm getting lunch in Oakland the sun starts streaming through a scattered layer, and within an hour planes are no doubt departing Hayward VFR.

As for the GPS in 8TA -- it appears to have been removed to fix a connector problem; no one's entirely sure why I wasn't told about it. To their credit, everyone who I talked to at Cal Airways thought I was doing the right thing by not departing when the ceilings were lower than the relevant approach minima (some people expressed this in even stronger terms...) and that someone should have been a bit more on the ball about the unit.

Frustrating, but just another lesson in reality, I guess.

Making The World Safe (Again)

Like John in Death By PowerPoint (sounds like an exciting movie, no?!), I need to renew my Oakland (KOAK) ramp pass / badge sometime October (unlike John, though, I don't need driving privileges, so I miss the fun of the driving class). So I drive to the airport this morning to sort it out.

In contrast to the initial badge applications -- which involve full background and employment checks, fingerprinting, a three hour security class (whose contents you're not supposed to divulge, but which had some really hokey videos and a lot of Powerpoint presentations when I did it six years ago), a huge amount of paperwork, etc. -- unlike all this, a renewal is relatively easy (they even do all the paperwork for you themselves). As long as your old badge is still current, you just wander up to the badge place, hand your old one in, get a new photo taken, and wait. And wait... and wait... and wait. It took 90 minutes to get my new badge. Ninety minutes of watching the TSA staff taking breaks in the little break area next to us, using the microwave to reheat coffee (urgh) or melt frozen burritos; ninety minutes of watching the TSA people do their thing downstairs in the security check line (why they let us stand there upstairs looking down at the process and machines is beyond me, but never mind). Ninety minutes of wondering just what it is that takes so long.

And ninety minutes of fitful conversations among the two dozen or so people also waiting around for badges. In line, the woman in front of me -- "E." -- turns around and asks me a few questions about the process. I say it's easy, last time it only took fifteen minutes, but she's still there when I leave (E. turns out to be a Berkeley grad student moonlighting with one of the catering firms, a crappy way to get through grad school if ever I've heard one). The baggage handler next to me standing around watching the security check line below keeps talking to someone I presume is his (United) supervisor on his cell phone, getting more and more frustrated by the minute. A bunch of construction workers stand around talking among themselves, periodically sending one their number off to get some snacks from downstairs.

Finally my name's called, and the woman behind the counter apologises profusely for taking so long (I have to say the badging staff were always friendly, helpful, and fairly obviously competent -- it's just the process that seems a little glacial). And I'm surprised that nowadays the fact that I'm a foreigner makes no difference at all to the process. I guess what really counts is that I'm a certified (certifiable?) Oaklander....

So now I have a shiny new badge again (with an awful smug smirk on the photo), and the world -- or at least Oakland International Airport -- is a safer place because of it, I'm sure. Hayward -- my other home airport now -- has no such badging at all. I just have to remember the various lock combos...