Lights On, Nobody Home

It's a perfect night for some VFR flying, and we're taking good advantage of it: the Bay's spread out 3,000' below us, San Francisco and Marin to our left, Berkeley and Richmond below us, Concord and Walnut Creek to the right, and Vallejo, Benecia and Napa in front of us. It's a calm night, and relatively warm for a winter's night (no scraping the ice off these planes, that's for sure…), it's a good break from preparing for my photo exhibition, and for me it's the end of the longest period without being in the left seat of an actual airplane as PIC in the decade since I got my license (I blame money and too many other damn things going on in my life at the moment). Part of the point of flying tonight is to get me back into VFR (and club) currency (I'm easily IFR current due to sim work), and to start the WINGS thing for BFR currency (I'll explain this in a later posting). We decide to head out VFR for Napa (KAPC) for general VFR practice and night landing work, something I'm looking forward to a lot, as I don't fly VFR much nowadays, and any night flight in clear weather over the Bay is just magic.

Somewhere over Richmond we can see Napa's rotating beacon in the distance, but not much else. No runway lighting, just the rather dark airport area surrounded by urban light that's in more-or-less the right place for Napa. We get the frequency change from NorCal Approach and pick up Napa's ATIS. It sounds a little odd for the still, clear, calm night, but I don't think much of it — nothing too odd, just windier on the surface than I'd have expected. It's claiming runway 24 is the main operating runway, which is plausible, but I'd have expected 18R given the time of day. Then John (sitting in the right seat as instructor this evening) notes what I'd missed: the ATIS is something like six hours old. None of the ATIS's around here are ever more than an hour old unless there's something wrong; I should have picked this up, but the weather's so benign and ATIS didn't have anything terribly interesting to say that I basically heard what I wanted to hear. Coupled with the total lack of runway lighting in what's supposed to be a towered airport with a tower open until well after we'll be finished our practice work there, things seem a little odd. I look up Napa again in my Blue Book, wondering whether they've changed tower hours. Nope. There were certainly no NOTAMs about early closing on DUATS or Forelfight when I'd checked just before startup. We switch to tower frequency — it's deathly quiet, which isn't all that unusual, I guess. John remarks that maybe they've had to leave early and forgotten to switch ATIS to the standard after-hours ASOS re-broadcast on ATIS frequencies (which usually contains a small announcement about the tower being closed until the morning).

In any case I try calling tower to see what happens. No response. I'm suspicious of the lack of runway lights — I can't help feeling I'm missing something, maybe we're heading for the wrong place — so John suggests I treat them as PCL's (pilot controlled lighting), and I dutifully click the lights on from maybe eight miles out on Napa's tower / CTAF frequency. Voila! The runways come into very clear view against the dark background. I still think it's odd that the tower's apparently out, but never mind, on with the show. I broadcast our position and intentions on tower frequency as though it were a CTAF, and continue inbound for runway 24. At maybe five miles out I try to contact Napa tower once again, mostly out of a sense of duty, and because it'll be the last chance before hitting Napa's class D airspace if indeed tower's actually open. Miraculously, this time there's a response. A very quiet, crackly response, and one that I couldn't read at all, but a response. I assume it's another aircraft on CTAF, and transmit accordingly. This time I can just pick out the response, and, mirabile dictu, it's Napa tower. Sounding like they're using a hand-held and just woke up, but never mind, it's still Napa tower. She instructs me to join a left pattern for 18R, clears me for touch and goes, and tells me to make a standard right closed pattern for further work. This all sounds more normal to me. She tells us the wind's calm. ATIS still says it's quite windy; ATIS is still hours out of date.

As we join the pattern for 18R, and still the only aircraft on frequency, John asks Tower about the ATIS and the lights. The controller doesn't comment on the PCL Thing, and claims that the ATIS isn't nearly six hours old, and that it'll be updated again in a few minutes. Hmmm, okay….

We do a bunch of practice landings, short approaches, etc., over the next twenty minutes or so, and the controller's generally on-the-ball and competent (Napa Tower usually has good controllers in it which is one reason I really enjoy doing practice work there), and except for the terrible quality of the radio she's using, we forget the earlier confusion until the bloody runway lights go off suddenly as I'm on short final. Dammit, I think, and quickly click the lights back on from the left seat as I cross the threshold. What's going on? I don't bother asking this time.

We decide to depart back to Oakland, and get routed straight out over the Bay, as usual. On the way out, a mile or two off the departure end of 18R, we monitor ATIS. It's now something like seven hours old, still claims runway 24 is in use, and still claims that it's really quite windy. And that it's early afternoon locally.

Hmmm, is all I'll say here.

* * *

Later, after a bit of fun airwork over San Pablo Bay, we head back to Oakland for some more landing practice — touch and goes, full stops, short approaches, etc. — on 27L. Nothing that I can't do without a bit of coaching from John, and overall a lot of fun; as I've said, it's a beautiful clear still night, and there are few things around here more visually interesting than a large airport at night.

So after an hour or two of flying, we put the plane back in the hangar and debrief. Just as I'm locking up, I somehow walk straight into the wing strut and nearly knock myself flat. Not unconscious, but painful, at least. I guess it's a sign of how little I've flown this plane lately that I just didn't think about the strut. Oh well; days later my head still hurts where it's bruised….

* * *

Earlier, as we're taxiing next to Oakland's 27R for runup and departure, we hear a Citation cleared for takeoff on 27R, and a few seconds after it roars past us we hear an on-air request from another pilot (in a Caravan) for the Citation's tail number. The controller gives it out with a crisp professional-sounding flourish. The back story here is that Oakland's North Field, especially runways 27, have stringent noise reduction policies due to the good burghers of Alameda settling just across the water under the departure ends of those runways, and that policy is pretty clear about not using 27R for turbine departures in these circumstances. ATC can't forbid these departures, even if they're pretty good at spelling out on-air the policy when someone asks for a "forbidden" departure, and it's basically up to the rest of us to try to bring pressure to bear so that anti-social departures don't end up closing the entire North Field. Departing 27R instead of the South Field's 29 is surely somewhat quicker if you're taxiing from Kaiser (the main FBO), but the costs to the rest of us (not to mention to Alameda…) make this a deeply unpopular act with some of us locals…. Not sure how this played out in the end, but I can't help noting that a rather well-known local who routinely did screamingly-loud departures off runway 33 straight out over San Leandro Bay and Alameda in a Citation came to a very sticky end on the other side of the country in that same Citation. Nothing to do with the departures themselves, of course, but the attitude may have had something to do with it.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

I haven't been flying much lately, in some ways because of this — a show I've got coming up next month that I've spent way too much time preparing for (if I see another mat I have to cut or frame I have to glaze I think I'll scream). If you're in the Bay Area on Friday Feb 6, you're invited to the informal opening reception 5-7pm at Kefa Coffee (a nice local coffee shop / cafe near my studio in East Oakland). Details here…. I'll probably be the only person there who doesn't look like an artist (well, I guess I don't look like a pilot, either, for that matter).

(I might actually escape to get to do some flying in the next few days; we shall see…)

On Autopilot

People sometimes describe themselves as being "on autopilot" when they mean they're figuratively sleepwalking through a situation, but after crossing Roanoke VOR (ROA) inbound for EXUNE, the initial approach fix (IAF) for Roanoke's LDA RWY 6 approach on autopilot, I can't help thinking that's a really silly usage. Whenever I fly a coupled approach with an autopilot in IMC I spend my entire time probably more awake than if I were flying the approach by hand: as John once remarked sometime during my instrument training, you really have to treat autopilots like wayward students and keep a paranoid eye on them every second of the approach. Otherwise you might sleepwalk your way into the ground. So I'm not sleepwalking, I'm concentrating intensely on the G1000 screens in front of me, with a workload that's greatly increased by my using the unfamiliar Garmin GFC700 integrated autopilot coupled to the G1000. I've really never seen this combination before, and learning on the fly probably isn't the smartest way to cope. Never mind; damn the torpedoes, I guess. I can always fly by hand if things get too complex, and I have a strictly minimalist need-to-know approach to the G1000 and associated autopilots when I fly single-pilot IFR anyway. In any case, as always with this unit, I'm curious to see how it flies the course reversal (this part — along with automated holds — always seems a miracle to me).

Of course the G1000 / GFC700 works flawlessly around the hold, and I head back to EXUNE and then RAMKE for glideslope capture. Somewhere before RAMKE as the G1000 switches to localizer mode and I'm looking for the glideslope to couple, I sense that something's wrong: I've been dead on track for the localizer according to the GPS version of the approach, but the switch to the localizer comes with a sharp deflection indicated on the CDI and a smooth right turn by the autopilot to compensate. OK, I think, maybe there's a mild alignment issue here and it'll sort itself out; in the meantime, the glideslope comes alive properly and couples. A few seconds later I'm still well to the left of course according to the G1000's CDI, but the magenta GPS course overlay is now receding to my left. Something's horribly wrong, and I know it. I don't know what's wrong, but I blurt out that the localizer seems to be broken and I'll go missed.

Well, I'd go missed in real life, anyway; in this case, John clicks the mouse and suspends the sim. We're both puzzled by what just happened: the sim seems to think the localizer's way out to the right, while the GPS has it basically correct when cross-checked with the other fixes. After a quick discussion we think it's probably because the sim doesn't understand LDA's and thinks the localizer is aligned with the runway, which, being an LDA, it isn't (never mind that this LDA has a glideslope too, which is pretty special). We abandon the attempt and set up for the Bishop KBIH RNAV (GPS) Y RWY 12 approach, starting somewhere before the RBRTS initial approach fix.

A useful lesson, if unintended: cross-check, cross-check, cross-check. Unlike with the Air New Zealand case highlighted on John's blog, the GPS makes my job easier: a graphic display of inconsistency that's much easier to interpret than the basic DME / OBS / ILS gear in the Air NZ plane; and much as I hate to admit it, I probably trust GPS (in something like the G1000 implementation, anyway) nowadays at least as much as I trust a localizer. Trust, but verify.

* * *

A few weeks ago John had mentioned that California Airways had a new FAA-certified G1000 C172 sim available for rent; it's loggable, it's cheaper than flying the Real Thing, and since I'm a member of CalAir (although not particularly active since the long(ish) freeway drive to Hayward (KHWD) is a real pain compared to the local jaunt to Oakland (KOAK)), I leap at the chance. The sim's in one of the rooms at CalAir's new premises across from the Hayward Toys-R-Us on the eastern end of the airport, and it turns out to be a full physical panel full physical controls thing with a large HDTV screen in front of it for terrain, all coupled to X-Plane and full G1000 emulation. Not bad, and, as far as the panel and instrument operation go, very realistic (even down to the operation of the wet compass and the annoying lack of approach plate clip on the yoke). Everything seems pretty familiar about it except the new autopilot buttons and the flight director software that comes with it for the G1000. The control behaviour isn't particularly realistic for a C172, but it's definitely better than with most sim controls I've experienced. The seat is realistically Cessna-GA-ish in being quite inscrutable and clumsily difficult to set up for this pilot's absolutely average physique — top marks for realism there.

The basic plan is to do a handful of varied approaches to get used to the GFC700 autopilot and to keep current on the G1000. I'm supposed to study up for the GFC700 beforehand, but I blow it and turn up with only a vague idea of how it's different from (or the same as) the autopilots I already use. Flying blind, I guess. John gives me a quick rundown on how it all works, and we start with a couple of easy approaches: the Oakland KOAK ILS RWY 27R and the KOAK RNAV RWY 27L (LPV minima) approaches. I can do both of these in my sleep, but the autopilot and flight director are novel, so I hand-fly the ILS (with a missed to REBAS, which is unrealistic in real life) and fully couple for the RNAV. No real problems here — but no sleepwalk, either — but as with any sim, it's harder to fly than a real plane, and difficult to land accurately (my sim approaches tend to end with a victory roll at decision height over the runway because that's actually easier for me to pull off as a lapsed aerobatics type than landing the damn sim nicely).

We move on to Aspen (KASE) for the LOC/DME-E approach, mostly because it's justly famous as a difficult and occasionally lethal mountain approach with a backcourse established solely for the missed, and a long visual segment that's a source of trouble. Plus, of course, I've always wanted to fly this in real life; I can't ever afford that, so a certified sim will have to do. In any event, the approach goes fairly smoothly except for the final segment where I have trouble lining up to land (again, I'm going to blame the sim's unreal control feel for this…) and we have to reset things so I can do the missed smoothly. The backcourse is easy to intercept by hand, and after a short run along it, we stop the sim and set up for the next approach, the Roanoke (KROA) LDA RWY 6. Which is where things go wrong…

By now I've sort of got the G1000 / GFC700 combination under control, but as John notes, I'm having trouble estimating the sink rate needed to get down to appropriate segment altitudes or for the ILS glideslope capture, and I tend to be too gentle with the descents, meaning I miss the target altitudes or join them a little later than I should. This seems odd to me — in real life I don't have much trouble with this — so it may just be an artefact of the unfamiliar autopilot controls and coupling: in all my previous coupled flying with the G1000, the autopilot (usually the King KAP 140) has to be told what to do separately, and things seem simpler to keep on top of; here, I suspect, I'm still a little too unsure of how to command the autopilot to do what I need it to do, and I'm reluctant to force the plane down as fast as I should with the unfamiliar gear. It's all good practice, anyway, and the associated flight director on the G1000 is great for hand-flying the plane (as long as you're on top of setting it up, which is much the same as setting up the autopilot) — we don't have this setup on the G1000 C172's I fly, but maybe one day it'll all come in handy in Real Life. The flight director is to an HSI as the HSI is to one of the old HI's: magic!

The final approach is the RNAV approach into Bishop, my fave Owens Valley town (I've been visiting there at least annually for twenty years). The approach goes well with John emulating an imagined Bob Channel-like CTAF at Bishop; I actually land the sim this time in the teeth of typical Owens Valley wind without breaking anything, and without departing the runway in search of elk or tumbleweed or (this being Bishop) LADWP trucks.

* * *

So I get to log a handful of approaches and learn a lot about what can go wrong and what can go right with them and the associated equipment, and to do it all in the safety and comfort of CalAir's upstairs aerie (plus, of course, it's cheaper, by some way, than actually flying). I really like the G1000, and I think I really like the G1000 + GFC700 combo, but I probably need to do a little more reading of the associated literature before I do this in real life. In fact, I probably need to start reading the literature — flying the combo blind was a challenge, but my head didn't explode, and with a great deal of prodding from John, I didn't fly things too badly; I still feel good about recognizing early on that the LDA wasn't right at Roanoke, but that's the beauty of simulation: I'm sure in real life I'd have been a little slower on the uptake, but it's given me one more real-life(ish) item for the mental checklist.

Catching Up

It's not so much that I haven't been flying, it's that I haven't been blogging (well, not here, at any rate). Too much work and not enough money or time to sustain the habit the way I'd like, unfortunately. But I did get to do an enjoyable IFR currency flight with Evan to Sacramento (KSAC) and Rio Vista (O88) and back a month or so ago, with me under the hood for a little under one and a half hours, and Evan for a little less. There was really quite a lot to blog about from that flight, including an occurrence of the sort of botched hand-off and ATC miscommunication we're seeing more of in NorCal as more trainees seem to be coming on line, and a truly classic GPS Moment on my part just past the initial approach fix on one of the KSAC approaches (I'm actually getting pretty good at doing the "damn the torpedoes" thing nowadays); but otherwise, all I have to show here are some pix taken during the flight (the top one's of Mt Diablo from the northeast; the other's of the wind farm to the south of Rio Vista in the Delta; click on an image to see a larger version). More next time, for sure…

Real World

We're 4,000' over the cold, cold, Pacific on an IFR flight into Monterey (KMRY) from Oakland (KOAK), about fifteen or twenty miles out from the airport itself, cleared direct MUNSO, the ILS 10R approach outer marker / LOM. As a result of an earlier ATC-initiated descent for traffic, we're a few thousand feet lower than I'm used to at this stage, but nothing truly out of the ordinary. There's a pretty solid coastal stratus layer below us; I'm estimating tops are about 2,000', but I'm not sure; Monterey ATIS is saying the ceiling is something like 800' overcast (I don't remember the details, but whatever it is it's pretty typical for a late summer / early autumn morning 'round here). The scene is beautiful — we're in bright sunshine, the various rugged mountain ranges around the Bay Area and Monterey are clearly visible poking through the stratus or further off across the landscape, and the stratus layer itself is one of those classic benign-looking fluffy-topped layers that's probably only a thousand feet thick.

Just as I'm admiring the view and reviewing the ILS 10R approach I've set up on the G1000, the NorCal Approach controller tells me to descend and maintain two thousand feet. Hmmm, I say to my safety pilot Evan, this is a new one on me. Two thousand feet this far out… way out over the ocean? And it's likely to leave us in the murk almost the entire way to the final approach fix (not that I'm complaining about that). My (by-the-book) response to the controller apparently comes across as so skeptical that he responds again with "83Y, two thousand feet, correct" (or maybe it was my accent). So I start us down by programming in a slowish 600 feet per minute descent on the autopilot, and look over at Evan. Hey, how well can you swim? I ask him with a grin. There's sharks down there. And it's bloody cold. If one doesn't get you before you swim the ten miles to Santa Cruz or Moss Landing, the other one will.

I watch the top of the stratus layer rise up towards us until, just as we're about to hit it, we level off at 2,000 feet. I'm about to put on the cone of stupidity when I think "bugger that! This looks so cool…" and put the hood aside. And the next five minutes or so are just magic — one of the most visually enjoyable vectors-to-the-localizer I've done in years. We dip in and out of the layer as it rises in soft-looking waves up and over us and back down, the tops being roughly our altitude, and the alternation of sunshine, blue sky, almost unlimited horizontal visibility, and blinding white waves around us is really cool. The controller asks us for best forward speed to the final approach fix as he has faster traffic behind us. I briefly wonder whether having us this low that far out was an attempt to let the faster traffic overtake us a few thousand feet above us, but I let the thought go as I get preoccupied with actually approaching the approach. Due to the coastal stratus and fog, this is one of the few airports I regularly fly to where you may have to go missed at ILS minimums on days when it's benign clear weather even ten miles inland (or a thousand feet above you), and I have the missed approach procedure burned into my brain. Nonetheless, I look over it several times again just to be sure; there's a lot of terrain around here you just don't want to hit….

As we get closer to the ILS, the layer rises up completely around us, and we intercept the localizer and turn in towards the outer marker deep in the now dark grey murk. This I like, of course, and the air's fairly still and the plane predictable, making for an easy approach. We intercept the glideslope a little early and start on down, still in the murk. I predict we'll break out somewhere just past the outer marker, and it'll be one of those weirdo abrupt Monterey break outs that's more horizontal than vertical due to the cloud layer sometimes ending suddenly around the coastline. I slow us down at MUNSO, the outer marker, and start mentally preparing for the landing itself. There's a mild quartering tailwind, and I don't want to blow the landing in front of Evan or any observers on the ground.

Tower clears us to land, and the approach and runway lighting slowly become visible through the windshield as the stratus starts clearing patchily around us. We break out fully well past the coastline, quite a bit further past the outer marker than I'd predicted, and softly rather than abruptly. So much for predictions, I guess. But it's always really cool to watch the runway lights slowly appear in the right place in front of you at times like this, I have to admit. The landing's pretty routine, and since I have this nagging mental image of a Citation or Gulfstream or something like that barreling down the ILS just behind us in the greyness, I turn off 10R at the first taxiway, trying not to rip the tires off or brake too hard.

And now for the next Big Challenge: where to park. Evan and I have been pondering this the entire way down, as we want to get both fuel and coffee, and I haven't actually used an FBO here for years (despite all the approaches and landings I've done here) — and Evan's apparently never actually done a full stop landing here at all. There used to be a transient parking area on the south side ramp near the tower, and what my Blue Book tells me is a Chevron self-serve pump in the same area, so we decide that's where we'll go — we can get coffee in the main airline terminal building (there's a security gate you can usually get through). But when I tell ground we're going left to to transient, he tells me there's no transient parking at Monterey any more — we can either go right to Del Monte Aviation or past Del Monte to Monterey Jet Center. Hmmm, I think, that doesn't sound so good — the last time I was at Del Monte (building complex hours years ago in the Arrow) it was an expensive place full of jet drivers with stripy epaulets. And the Jet Center's likely to be even worse…. But what the hell else can we do? It's still IFR, we need fuel, and I could really do with some coffee (and bagels if there's any such thing down here). Oh well. I tell ground we'll do Del Monte, and turn right on taxiway alpha. Just as I'm reaching for the Blue Book to see what UNICOM frequency is here, a Del Monte guy strides out on to the ramp and starts waving us into the corner parking lot, and a few seconds later I've signed up for twenty gallons of Avgas. As we wander into the rather nice-looking old Del Monte building to do the paperwork, we can see what looks like a King Air breaking out on the ILS over towards the coastline. I'm still not sure what the rush was, if that was our traffic. But who cares? It's coffee time….

* * *



The view along KMRY runway 10R on departure (note the terrain in the middle distance, itself hiding much higher peaks a little further along and to the right…).

This is actually Evan's first IFR flight as a certified instrument pilot. The original plan is to do a day trip much further down the coast to San Luis Obispo (KSBP) for lunch, maybe getting a few approaches and holds and whatnots in wherever, and just generally admire the view (if you do the coast route past Big Sur, the view's spectacular). But that plan falls through late in the day when Cessna 051 is delayed coming back off a 100 hour inspection, and instead we're only able to take Cessna 83Y (the club's other G1000-equipped C172) for a morning trip IFR to Monterey and back. The weather at both ends is light IMC, so we're going to need real clearances and some real-world IFR flying. It's clearing quickly here now at Monterey (within a few minutes of landing it's basically clear to the east and marginal VFR in the other directions), and we sort of expect Oakland to be VMC by the time we get there, but my ForeFlight iPhone app is reporting that Oakland is still IMC. In any case, Evan decides he's going to file a real IFR flight plan, and starts using his own iPhone to file.

I wander off to find the coffee, which turns out to be not too bad for machine-made stuff, but I can't see any bagels or cookies or anything. The counter staff are too busy handling the King Air's passengers (a family of four or five) and fuel to ask, so I walk back outside to the entrance area. The King Air's right outside, and the pilot's hanging around talking to another passenger. He looks over at me and nods, so I introduce myself and tell him I was flying the tiny slow Cessna in front of him on the ILS — hope I didn't cause any problems…. We spend the next five minutes or so talking — he's a friendly guy about my age, based in Palo Alto doing charters and private flying, and we spend a few minutes bemoaning fuel costs and the dearth of flying opportunities for potential pilots these days. He says he had to slow down to 140 knots before the approach because of us; we both laugh — 140 knots is about what our little 172 could do in a dive at full throttle. But then I didn't use forty-something gallons of Jet A just to cross the Santa Cruz range, did I?! He grins and says something like if he wasn't being paid he'd probably do it in a tiny 150.

I go back in (it's still quite cold out there on the ramp) and find Evan. He's filed his flight plan and got some coffee, and we lounge around the lounge for a while. According to several flyers and posters around us, the Thunderbirds are in town next week (or rather, the airshow's at nearby Salinas (KSNS), but they're normally actually based at Monterey for the duration). A few years ago I once landed at Monterey on 28R (the smaller runway) while various massed Thunderbirds did the overhead break and formation landing on the left. Way cool. Especially when the leader ironically saluted us as he taxied past in a cloud of dust, burnt jet fuel, and fumes (dammit, that's what I want to do when I grow up!). Pity I won't be in town for the Thunderbirds this time — I always seem to miss them… (as a kid my parents took us to airshows at RAAF Richmond (I think it was) several times, and I always really enjoyed that). At least I get to see (and hear) the Blue Angels locally during Fleet Week.

Our plane's been refueled, so I go back to the front desk to sign the bill. The staff there are friendly, efficient, and funny, and one of them does a dead-on "oh mahvelous!" in imitation of my Anglo-Australian accent as she takes the signed bill. This sort of thing always makes my day.

We wander back out on to the ramp and preflight the plane. What follows — pretty much the entire flight back to Oakland — is a real world flight, for sure, but not what either of us planned for or really expected, and not (I'm sure) quite what Evan would have wanted as a first Real World IFR experience :-).

* * *



Evan Pre-Flighting Cessna 83Y On The Ramp At Monterey.

Back in 83Y Evan starts up and calls combined clearance and ground for our clearance. The controller sounds confused and not entirely on top of things, and issues us a standard VFR clearance out of Monterey's Class C airspace ("proceed on course…") rather than the expected IFR clearance back to Oakland. Evan questions the guy; he swears there's no clearance for our aircraft in the system. We swear. Now what?! We can certainly depart VFR towards the east at this particular time (ATIS is reporting marginal VFR, but there are no clouds at all past the departure end of 10R all the way to at least Nevada), but half the point of this flight is a real world IFR workout. We decide against pushing the issue with the Monterey controller — Evan's starting to suspect he put the wrong departure time in when he filed the flight plan, but I can't help wondering whether the controller's a trainee and just missing something — and plan on departing VFR to the east with flight following. We'll pick up a clearance from NorCal further along, probably somewhere near South County (E16). Oakland ATIS is still reporting IMC at Oakland, so we're going to need a real IFR clearance for the approach anyway unless it clears soon.

So we depart VFR with Evan in the left seat; I'm just along for the ride until Evan dons the cone of stupidity nearer Oakland. On departure I look out over to the right at the old transient parking area — it's still physically there, but there are no aircraft parked there at all. The place looks dead; I don't know what the story is.

The view's excellent, the air's smooth, I take a bunch of photos of all the interesting and bizarre sights on the ground, and things go pretty well until somewhere near Hollister. On NorCal's frequency we can hear a string of planes asking for pop-up clearances back into various Bay Area airports due to the long-lingering stratus, and a good proportion of them are being denied by NorCal with a simple "unable at this time". This doesn't sound promising, even if we're already in the system due to flight following, and especially since we have to have the plane back by 13.00. Evan wisely decides to put in an early request for the Oakland ILS 27R, well before South County.

The good news is we're not immediately rejected (no "unable"); the bad news is we're not given any sort of clearance, either, just a variant of the usual "request on file" response. Better than nothing, I guess, and we press on. We can always land at Livermore (KLVK) if we can't get in to Oakland, and wait for the stratus to clear (which it clearly will, and soon), but that would mean blowing the return time. Oh well. At every hand-off Evan reminds NorCal of our request, and in each case we get pretty much the same response — either remind them again in a few minutes (which we do), or they're still working on it. At one point on air someone asks for "the approach" back into Hayward (KHWD, a little southeast of Oakland, at that time reporting the same sort of mild IMC). The pilot sounds confused and doesn't seem to know what he's asking for, but he also doesn't sound like a student; the controller keeps prompting him until it's clear he wants (or will take) the VOR approach. Sometimes I wonder why controllers put up with this sort of thing….

We can still hear pop-up requests being refused for other aircraft and airport combinations, so we feel pretty lucky that we haven't been completely rejected, but I start feeling edgy as we approach Reid Hillview (KRHV), the traditional decision point for East Bay airports when approaching from the south. The most annoying thing, though, is that although we can almost see the individual runways at Oakland from where we are (some thirty miles out at 4,500'), Oakland ATIS is still reporting IMC at the airport itself. We still need that bloody clearance, even though I'm betting we'll never see even a second of IMC on the way in, and we'll probably land in bright cloudless sunshine. But I was wrong about Monterey earlier, so I don't complain too loudly.

Then out of the blue the NorCal controller asks us to "navigate towards SUNOL" (using that exact phrase). I like this sort of thing: an informal instruction that's basically saying something like "I can't give you a clearance right now or even vector you, but if you head off towards SUNOL [the traditional initial approach fix for many of Oakland's approaches] it'll probably make things much easier for both of us if I can suddenly slot you in". It's what we were going to do anyway, but it's a sign that things are progressing. Even so, I still feel edgy and worried that we might miss the boat or get lost in the rush.

In the end although we don't get an actual clearance until we're turning onto the localizer, we're formally vectored for the approach well outside SUNOL, and Evan (of course!) flies the ILS 27R approach flawlessly back into Oakland under the hood. We didn't even get the NorCal slam onto GROVE several thousand feet above where we should be. In any event, we land dead on time for the next renters. And as predicted, while it's still supposedly IMC at Oakland, we never come close to even the smallest of clouds (because there aren't any, dammit), and we land in bright cloudless sunshine.

Back in the office, as we're doing the club paperwork, we can hear Oakland ATIS still now reporting marginal VMC, on what's essentially a cloudless early-autumn day right across the Bay Area. Oh well. Welcome to the real world, I guess.

Big Bird, Part Two

Sometime a week or two ago I managed to get my high performance endorsement (and log a bit of actual IFR, a couple of approaches, and an ad hoc hold) from John in the club's G1000-equipped Cessna 182 that I've flown a couple of times now (thanks John!).

I think the only thing that struck me as unfamiliar was the use of flaps 10 (degrees) at the beginning of a cruise or approach descent, i.e. miles from anywhere, and at a relatively high speed and altitude. In all the planes I've flown so far (well, those that had flaps, anyway), flaps typically didn't get used until well into the final approach or even only once you'd joined the pattern — mostly, in the case of the older planes, because the flaps could only be used at relatively low airspeeds (from memory, the Arrow allowed you to lower flaps at a fairly high airspeed, but I seem to remember lowering gear first before the flaps in that plane). The cowl flaps were also novel, but hardly complex or conceptually difficult; and the increased attention to leaning was predictable and fairly easily done with the G1000's engine analyzer display.

Landing was initially a little odd — the plane felt predictably nose-heavy — but it didn't take more than a handful of landings to get a feeling for the stabilized final approach and the various sight lines and to round out and flare at the right altitude for some nice smooth landings.

In any case, the club's 182 is a joy to fly: very stable, very predictable, and the engine has that same smooth powerful operation I remember from the Cirrus SR22; the G1000 and associated autopilot also make things more manageable. But hell it's expensive to rent and refuel, and it's difficult to believe it'll stay on-line at the club much longer unless more members see it as a way to do longer trips fairly economically with passengers. I'm unlikely to fly it much if at all myself unless it's to Santa Monica or Corvalis or somewhere like distant like that, with The Artists or someone who's willing to help defray the costs.

* * *

Oh, and I know I mentioned this in a comment elsewhere, but sometime safety pilot and instrument student Evan H. got his instrument rating first try with Rich Batchelder, DPE. Congratulations to Evan (and of course John, his instructor).

Captain Dan

I was roughly nine or ten when I first flew in the front seat of an aeroplane (it was Australia, so it was spelt that way), a Cherokee piloted by a friend of my father's. We flew out of Belmont airport (usually known as Aeropelican by the locals in those days), and I spent about half the flight in the right seat propped up on top of a cushion manipulating the yoke as we flew down and around my then home-town of Woy Woy and back around the lower Hunter Valley. I loved it, but then my parents and my father's friend knew I would.

So when Stephen, a long-time friend of mine from Australia, and his seven-year-old kid Dan visited me for the day we just had to go flying. I wasn't sure, but I sort of suspected Dan would enjoy it a lot, and if nothing else, Stephen would get to see a lot of the Bay Area from a perspective most people never get to see it from. I'd informally planned the flight a week or so in advance as an extended Bay Tour, but unfortunately the weather didn't quite cooperate, and rather than circling the Golden Gate, Alcatraz, and the City, and doing the 101 transition south (east) to Palo Alto, we had to step over a coastal stratus layer and concentrate on Napa (KAPC), the Delta, Mount Diablo, the Diablo Valley (landing at Livermore, KLVK), and just generally pottering around VFR under the benign oversight of various bits of NorCal approach and sundry towers. Dan, of course, spent about half the flight in the right seat, propped up on a couple of cushions, flying the plane along with me or on his own. Cool!

As far as I can tell they both enjoyed it; Dan said several times later that he really wanted to fly again and (maybe) be a pilot. Stephen — who has a lot of experience being flown around in GA planes taking photos over Sydney — while probably not wanting to be a pilot quite as much as me or Dan, at least got to see the sights from an unusual perspective. All in all, a lot of fun, and a really welcome break from the rush of the rest of my life at the moment.

Oh, and since Stephen's also a photographer, there's some great snapshots from the flight done with his little point-and-shoot; here's a tiny handful from the back seat….

Catching Up

I know I'm not the only blogger in the neighbourhood playing catchup, but sometimes in comparison to the usual suspects like Cockpit Conversation, Blogging at FL250, or Flight Level 390 (just to pick some obvious examples from my daily reading list of blogs that have been going roughly the same length of time as this one), I feel positively lazy. It's not that I haven't flown lately, it's that I haven't been able to sit down at my leisure and edit up anything compelling (or otherwise) about my flying, so the blog stays bare. So, instead, a few telegraphic lines before I have to run out and do something else….

First news is that John's student Evan and I went flying together again a few weeks ago, alternating PIC / safety pilot duties for a really enjoyable long flight to and around Napa (KAPC), Sacramento (KSAC), Rio Vista (O88), and Oakland (KOAK, home base). Lots of real-world IFR work under the hood (and just enough actual IMC for me to have to do the flying in and out of Oakland to get through the unexpectedly-persistent stratus), including being slammed onto Napa's localizer some two thousand feet too high and way too close-in, being vectored around and around (and back again) while being sent to Oakland's ILS 27R for an IMC approach (I don't think I've done that approach straightforwardly now for several years — it's always one damn thing or another nowadays, usually the result of traffic spacing issues by the sound of things), my forgetting to cancel IFR on the missed at Napa and unintentionally tying up the airspace for billions of nautical miles around us (or so the Oakland Center controller rather testily implied when he finally got around to asking whether we really intended to stay IFR; usually I cancel on the missed and tell the controller we'll do the rest as practice approaches, which is essential at Napa but not so essential at Sacramento or Stockton or places directly under NorCal's control rather than Oakland Center's), and landing straight into the teeth of a steady 30 knot headwind at Rio Vista (Evan did the landing after a perfect VOR approach from Sacramento VOR under the hood; I remember looking out and thinking we could as well be walking at that speed). Evan's booked for his instrument checkride sometime soon, and unless he makes a silly mistake, he'll pass it with better flying and instrument work than I'm capable of.

Second news is that the other E, "E." (another of John's students and an occasional safety pilot for me), got her instrument rating last week on her first attempt. Cool! Congratulations...

Big Bird

Not much time to blog here at the moment, so I'll keep this short and … well, short, anyway. I'm sure I'll have more to say later, but I've started working with John on getting my high performance endorsement in the club's G1000-equipped Cessna 182. So far so good — it's all about power management, better attention to detail and landings, cowl flaps, endlessly trimming, trimming, trimming (this is a heavy-feeling airplane that lets your shoulder and leg muscles know when it's even slightly out of trim), and ginormous fuel bills — but then the fundamentals are pretty familiar to me (I've had a complex endorsement for many years now), and I enjoy a challenge (even if it's not quite the same sort of challenge as getting an instrument rating or learning aerobatics). More on all this later, for sure.

Otherwise, not much to say except to revel a bit in the joys of being on the North Field ramp at Oakland late evenings — the shiny private 757 parked at Kaiser looming over the Citations, Gulfstreams, Learjets and such (the ramp fees for the 757 must be enormous, especially since it's been there for weeks), the Airbus ACJ A320-derivative business jet further down the ramp looking small by comparison, the little fleet of Piaggios looking sleekly futuristic in a very retro way (especially so close-up), the Abex 767 creeping along taxiway Charlie in the dusk, the omnipresent Amflight twins arriving one after the other in the dark, the tart pink lemonade in the (very pleasant) Business Jet Center FBO, the cool Oakland night….

Flying To A T…

The approach starts going a little awry just as it always does returning to Oakland at rush hour: after having successfully requested the practice ILS 27R back into Oakland (KOAK) from way out over the Central Valley with NorCal approach, with me under the Cone Of Stupidity and E. in the right seat as safety pilot, the closer we get to Oakland the more irritated and stressed the controllers sound, the more overloaded the frequencies are. Approaching GROVE intersection on the localiser at best forward speed and on vectors for the localiser, and several thousand feet above that leg's minimum altitude, a new voice on NorCal's frequency suddenly barks out "83Y! Right 360 for traffic; break; XYZ! heading 180, vectors for traffic, traffic is a Cessna at 2 o'clock, 5,000; break; ... ", and for hardly the first time I get to do a loping 360 right next to the extended ILS while under the hood, without a clue what's about to happen next. I can hear a series of re-adjustments going on for traffic on the ILS, and start wondering whether I'm about to be sent back out past SUNOL (the initial fix for the approach) for twenty minutes holding while NorCal sorts out what sounds like a few close calls with spacing.

As with the last time (that I can remember, at least), although I was implicitly asked to do only one orbit, I'm not sure whether to rejoin the vector onto the localiser or keep doing a 360. E. can see conflicting traffic barreling down the localiser about a mile away slightly below us; the frequency is absolutely jammed with traffic being vectored, cleared, acknowledged, and generally shepherded, and I haven't a hope in hell of getting through to the controller before the 360's complete. So I head back towards the localiser after the 360, after making damn sure E. can't see any conflicting traffic (I also take off the hood for a short time to do my own checking), and a few seconds later, just as I'm about to turn onto the localiser, I get cleared for the approach. Someone else (a Citation, if I remember correctly), is cleared for the same approach a few seconds later behind me. Too bad I'm nearly two thousand feet too high for the leg I joined, and that that leg ends in a mile or two with the glideslope intersection point coming up way too quickly….

Ah, home! I've grown to love this sort of thing. It's a challenge. And it's a nice VMC day, so I disengage the autopilot and decide to try to hand fly the plane the rest of the way, or at least until I can get the plane below the glideslope so the autopilot can couple properly (it won't couple to the glideslope from above). That's a shame, though, since part of the whole point of this approach for me was about keeping current with keeping on top of the G1000 and autopilot. Oh well — maybe next time. I get handed off very early to Oakland tower, and maintain best forward speed and a huge sink rate while trying to avoid ripping the wings off or exceeding any recommended airspeeds. In the ensuing rush I deliberately delay checking in with tower while I set the plane and instruments up a little more to my liking. Tower calls me after a short time sounding concerned — I hadn't checked out of NorCal's frequency and hadn't checked in to tower. Well, I had checked out from NorCal, but the frequency was so busy I was probably stepped on. Tower sounds a little short with me, but it's me that's flying, not him, and his frequency is a lot less crowded than NorCal's, so I just apologise and tell him we're fine. We get cleared to land number three a long way out from the runway.

I really never make it down to the glideslope until only about a mile out from the threshold, and have to hand-fly the plane the entire way to the ground. Good practice at real world IFR flying, of course, but if it had been IMC, I'd probably have gone missed a short time after joining the localiser: I really don't like the idea of plummeting like a rock in IMC with the terrain and traffic around Oakland. In any case I look up at about 400' (I'm worried about the traffic around us in the pattern); we're more-or-less right on the centreline and at the right altitude, if a little fast, and the landing's fine. We exit 27R at golf and breath again.

* * *



After having whined about barely flying in the past few months, I get to make a second flight in several days. Woohoo! This time it's another flight with E., one of John's students, and this time there's really no set agenda or purpose.

Since E.'s still working on the last stages of her instrument rating, I mentally plan a few alternatives: an IFR training flight to somewhere like Stockton or Sacramento with E. flying a bunch of approaches under the hood, a quick seat swap and me flying back and doing an approach into Oakland; or maybe a longer IFR flight to somewhere scenic like Monterey or Ukiah, with E. flying the outbound leg and approach under the hood, and me returning. Or something else — I don't know. The weather's clear Northern California VMC almost anywhere we're likely to fly, so that (for once) won't be a factor; even the evening stratus isn't forecast to return until around midnight. In any case I do a bunch of work with DUATS and such and am prepared for almost anything (except a trip to LA or Reno or Vegas :-)). We have 83Y, one of the club's G1000-equipped Cessna 172's, out for the afternoon.

So when E. gets to the hangar after I've preflighted 83Y (I got there early), my mind's fairly blank, and I let her chose what we'll do. The result turns out to be one of the more enjoyable flights I've done for a while: a nice VFR cross country to Pine Mountain Lake (Groveland, E45) and back, with my under-the-hood approach the only even vaguely IFR bit. E. flies out; I fly back, which suits me just fine: Pine Mountain Lake airport's a fun fly-in location with a slightly-challenging location, pattern, and runway, and it's nice to watch someone else discover the joys of heading out over the Tuolumne river canyon and back in the pattern towards the little scar on the ridge that's the runway….

At the airport itself we get out and wander around for a while. I particularly want to visit the wind T that's sitting up on the little hill next to the runway, a particularly nice spot for a picnic or planespotting. I'm also motivated by Aviatrix's posting from a while ago about the rarity of wind T's (amongst other things) — that post had reminded me of the airport and made me want to see it again sometime — and it turns out that E.'s never seen one before, from the air or up close like this. So we clamber around in the warm sunshine for a while exploring the place, and also meeting some locals, who seem uniformly friendly and approachable. Pine Mountain Lake's like that — small and friendly, and the airport's an integral part of the town (it's also one of those airports where houses with hangars are next to the runway). They're having an air show on 21 June; pity I can't attend. We get to see a couple of aerobatic Extra EZ's taxiing and taking off in formation (one of them German-registered); apparently the pilot in the orange Extra is someone famous in the aerobatics world, but I missed who it was. There was some excitement as what looked like a powered glider approached, engine off, and landed; this turned out to be the first Pipistrel Sinus (what a name — its sibling is the Virus) I — and everyone else standing around — had ever seen. An interesting looking plane, very much a long thin rather bendy glider wing attached to a light sports body, and very quiet even with the engine on. Quite a contrast to the Extras….

Review: ForeFlight for iPhone

[2008/7 Update: the new iPhone native app version of ForeFlight, ForeFlight Mobile 2.0, is now out and available through iTunes. I have the new version, and I'll probably review it in more detail later, but in summary, I like it a lot for pretty much all the same reasons I like the earlier version, and it has the added bonus of being a native iPhone app with an improved interface and interesting potential for off-line storage and working in the longer-term. Bear all that in mind when you read this review, but, basically, everything written below still stands…].

Yes, I have an iPhone. How sad is that? Well, my hand was forced last year when I came back from my Australian vacation and discovered that both my five-year-old mobile phone and my seven-year-old Palm Pilot no longer worked properly (I guess I was surprised they still worked at all, but never mind). So far, no regrets.

But it's not the iPhone that's the subject of this posting, it's ForeFlight for the iPhone, a great little flight planning application from fellow bloggers Vectors To Final. I've actually had the app for quite a while now and have been meaning to review (or at least mention) it here for ages, so my apologies to the ForeFlight crew for leaving it so late (and no, no one from ForeFlight has vetted this article or probably even knows I exist, in case you were wondering). And note: all screenshots shown here were stolen shamelessly from the ForeFlight web site, and do not necessarily represent the latest version of the software, etc.

In short, I like ForeFlight a lot, and would recommend it quite strongly if, like me, you have an iPhone, you fly VFR or IFR in the US (I do both), and you're realistic about some of the inherent limitations of any current iPhone app (think: you must be in range of WiFi or AT&T's Edge network in the US). It basically does most of what I want a flight planning app to do on my iPhone, and does it well; it doesn't entirely replace DUATS access (which I also have on my iPhone), but it's certainly complemented DUATS with a bunch of nice features (approach plates, airport information, etc.), and made DUATS feel clunky and graceless by comparison; it's also entirely replaced the A/FD for me. No, it doesn't do NOTAMS, but it can file flight plans.

Anyway, I'll let the extensive ForeFlight web site speak for itself about features, pricing, etc. (take a good look at the screen shots for an idea of what it can do), and simply discuss what I think are the good and bad sides of the app, and illustrate how I use it to give you some idea of why it's useful.

So what do I like about ForeFlight? Firstly, it fits into my planning workflow really well: I usually do the initial heavy lifting on my laptop, including filing a flight plan if I'm flying IFR, and then check again on the tarmac just before engine startup. Foreflight works really well for this last stage, where you can do a last-minute spot check or sanity check without lugging a laptop around or calling flight services. It's also great for informally checking weather, airport information, etc., for an intended flight whenever and wherever you are (a cafe, a hangar, a wireless-free (as opposed to a free wireless) FBO, an office…), and for prepping approaches informally before flying when you don't have the plates handy. And it'll let you file that last-minute flight plan, as long as you have a DUATS account.

Secondly, it's a good combination of information sources: a really convenient and well-presented subset of DUATS and the full AF/D. It's the presentation that makes all the difference to me: yes, I can read raw METARs and TAFs, and even the AF/D, but it's nice to see it in legible and nicely-formatted plain language, and in a package and layout that's intuitively easy to use and navigate. The information presented for each airport typically includes weather information, airport information (runway lengths, airport diagram if there is one, frequencies, etc.), chart abstracts, and full approach plates, at least.

Thirdly, it's nicely integrated into the iPhone. As described below, you can display the airport on Google Maps or call an ATIS or AWOS number with a single touch of the screen, and, being an iPhone app, it's just easy to use — the full power of the iPhone's gestural interface works nicely with ForeFlight (OK, I'm starting to sound like an iPhone Bore, so I'll just keep that part suppressed).

There's really nothing I don't like about ForeFlight, but you do need to be aware of some inherent limitations. Firstly, it's not an official briefing source: it's no substitute for DUATS or other official sources; in particular, it can't show NOTAMS. That just doesn't bother me, but it might be a problem for some. Secondly, of course, you have to be within range of a suitable data network (WiFi or AT&T's Edge network) to access ForeFlight — like all current iPhone apps it's actually a set of web pages with embedded Javascript, and can't access or show anything much when you can't get in touch with the main Foreflight servers. This hasn't been much of a limitation for me, but then I'm rarely out of range of a mobile phone tower at the airports I visit, and if I will be, I'll plan ahead accordingly.

Here's a typical example of how I use it, drawn from real life:

I'm at Oakland airport (KOAK), next to Cessna 83Y, doing final work for an informal VFR fun flight. We've done the pre-flight, we've agreed on where we're going (Groveland / Pine Mountain Lake, E45), and it's time to do a final weather check (it's been an hour or two since I did a full DUATS check). Firstly, what's the current weather at E45? I pull out the iPhone, access the quasi-public WiFi mysteriously available at the hangars, fire up ForeFlight on my browser, log in if I haven't logged in lately, and enter E45 for the airport. A few seconds later ForeFlight's got a nice screen with airport details (runways, altitude, location, frequencies, etc.) for Pine Mountain airport. I show the page to my copilot so she's familiar with the details (it's a tiny place, so there's not a lot to see :-)). I touch the link that says "View with Google Maps" to bring up a separate Google Maps page that I use to show my copilot the general vicinity of the airport. I also touch the "Charts" button to bring up a page showing the VFR and IFR chart extracts for the immediately surrounding area. I also touch the "Approaches" button to see the available approaches; I touch the one I want, and, voila, the relevant NACO plate is displayed, scalable and browsable like any other page on the iPhone (using the iPhone's excellent gestural interface). Very nice... and basically a convenient hand-held web-based combination of the old paper Blue Book, the AF/D, and some useful bits of DUATS.

ForeFlight reports that there's no weather available for the airport, which is expected, but there's also no ASOS or AWOS available (which is less expected, given the presence of what's always looked like an automated weather station near the wind T there). So I scroll down a bit and find the "Nearest airports" section; it lists a useful selection of airports, one of which is Columbia (O22), about 15 miles to the northwest, and in similar terrain and with similar weather patterns. I touch that link to bring up Columbia's page; it also says there's no weather reports, but it lists an AWOS frequency and phone number. I touch that phone number and the iPhone calls the Columbia AWOS; I listen in, hear that the weather's excellent, if a little cooler than I'd have expected for this time of year, and then exit the call back into ForeFlight. Time to go….

At Pine Mountain, we want to check whether Oakland's still VMC (it's an almost perfect day, but you never know at this distance…). Luckily, although there's no public WiFi at the airport (well, none that I'm going to hack into, anyway :-)), the iPhone's AT&T Edge network's available, and while it's quite a lot slower than WiFi, I'm able to use ForeFlight in the iPhone browser pretty much as described above. This time, though, since it's Oakland, there's copious weather details available on a separate linked ForeFlight page, including weather radar, plain English METARs, TAFs for the next day or so, etc. — i.e. pretty much what you'd see in DUATS, and really just what you need to make a decision at this distance on a day and flight like this.

Again, note that none of this replaces full DUATS briefings, or having real charts or approach plates available, but if you're hanging around an airport or somewhere where you want to get a spot check on the weather or your destination's runways, airport diagram, etc., and you've got an iPhone, and there's public WiFi or the Edge network available, it's a great resource.

Weather Whine

I've barely flown lately: the weather's been weird and uncooperative (at least by Northern California coastal standards); my work schedule hasn't exactly given me much free time; and the cost of fuel and aircraft rentals keep increasing much quicker than my income… but none of this should really excuse me. And this time I have no excuse: the weather's OK (not great, but not malicious either), I have a few hours to spare, I have an enthusiastic passenger, and I can afford another hour or so in the air.

So I meet my passenger, J., a friend and colleague from San Jose, at my place, and we drive to the airport (Oakland, my home base, a short ten minute drive from my studio). J's never flown in anything as small as a C172 before, but she's keen, and the plan is to do a leisurely Bay Tour out over the Golden Gate, The City, Angel Island, etc., for maybe 45 minutes. I don't like the typical summer's-evening low-hanging stratus coming in from the Pacific, but that's what an instrument rating's for, no? But I don't really want to subject J. to the ILS back into Oakland in IMC on her first flight in a Cessna, so I'll keep a good look out and stay close to home.

And that's what happens — a nice low-key Bay Tour through the twilight as planned, and a quick run back as the clouds push in through the Golden Gate and over The City. We get back just as it goes marginal VFR or even IMC across much of the inner Bay Area; it's blustery and cold back on the ground (typical Bay Area coastal summer weather :-)). Not much else to say about the evening really except (once again) it's fun to fly VFR like this, and it's really fun having someone along who's new to flying and who ends up liking it so much she's already talking about the next flight. J. wants to fly again on a longer trip, maybe up the coast; I kinda like the idea, but I don't know when I'll get the chance. We shall see….