172 Crash in Gilroy

This is an email I just sent to my family, in regards to the Cessna 172 that crashed outside of Gilroy yesterday. I sent it just to them, but I rely on EVERYONE in my life to understand this message.

This accident is a very sad example of a completely preventable accident. Two children died when a plane crashed that should never have been in the air.

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Here's an article on the recent plane crash in Gilroy. It's the same model of plane that I'm training in. According to the article, this guy got a weather briefing and was told "VFR flight not recommended." And decided to go ahead anyway. He got his private pilot's license 2 months ago, which means he probably had about 60-70 hours of flying, total, under his belt, probably 15 of those as the PIC (pilot in command), and incredibly, he saw it fit to override the advice of a weather briefer.

This guy's judgment was clearly faulty, and he and his family have suffered because of it. As a soon-to-be private pilot, I rely on all of you to ALWAYS be vocal in questioning my judgment if you feel there is any doubt. I would certainly like to think I'm WAY more conservative than the pilot in this article, but still.

Flying is not inherently unsafe, but without the proper judgment, and the willingness to NOT fly at any given point, it is not hard to put oneself in an unsafe situation. Any time I fly anywhere, with you or not, I absolutely must be flexible in my leave/return dates and times.

This is a really frightening incident, and it's important to understand why it happened. Almost every private pilot incident is caused by pilot error -- mechanical failure is incredibly rare! He decided to go when he shouldn't have, and his family didn't stop him. Knowing that, we know that we have the power to prevent this from ever happening to us, as long as we're always alert and conservative with our judgment.

Many cancellations

Real quick entry -- I haven't flown in a long time. Between the weather and my schedule, it's been hard to get a flight in. But hopefully next Tuesday will happen!

Also -- I know that there has been a problem with your comments not appearing. I've contacted blogger.com about this; hopefully they'll have some sort of answer.

VORcraft

I was supposed to fly with Chris out of San Carlos last Tuesday morning at 8:30. When I got out to the car, the windshield was covered with ice. Not good, but no problem, right? So I tried to start her up. Cranks, but nothing else. And the cranks got slower. And slower. What the...? I still had battery, I could turn on the headlights and listen to the radio...

Then I noticed, the (digital) trip odometer had reset itself to 0.0 and I'd lost all my presets. Yes, it was the battery, not run down by carelessness, but just naturally weak after over 6 years of starting up my diesel VW. So I called Chris, told him I'd be taking a bike to the train and I'd be there at 9:15.

I rode as fast as I could to get to the train station at 8:53. Actually, I rode faster than I could and wound up feeling really nauseous. I'd have caught the train (only because it was 3 minutes late) but I cancelled the lesson.

This morning, by contrast, was great! The VW started right up on its new battery, and after a lengthy ground session discussing VORs and more acronyms (TITT = Tune, Identify, Twist, Turn; CCCCCC = Circle, Climb, Conserve, Communicate, Confess, Comply), we went flying out over the Woodside VOR.

First of all, SQL is a really nice airport. Everything seems so much more friendly than PAO for some reason. We took off on 12, made a 20 degree turn to the left for noise abatement, then followed Woodside Road up to the hills. This is known as a "Woodside Departure." The plane was 4849D, which is really a nice plane! It's weird, my memory of it was as being old and creaky. Maybe I've just been flying older and creakier planes at PAO so it seems really nice now. It is actually older than '76 (I think?) because it has 40 degrees flap deflection.

Anyway, so we flew out to the Woodside VOR, and practiced tracking to and from the VOR. We also tracked to SJC, and then we flew a course along "Victor airways" (pre-established routes that track to and from VORs) from the coast, over Woodside, and toward SFO (which we naturally cut off well before hitting the Class B boundary). We practiced triangulating a position using 2 VORs. In terms of the actual flying, I found that directional control was really easy, and I had a pretty easy time maintaining altitude, which was a first.

This was such a beautiful flight. The weather was sunny and clear. The coast was amazing. I did not want to go back, but we had to for multiple reasons involving the plane being rented later in the day, Chris having other students, and my pocketbook having limits. So we headed back. This was a little bit of an adventure thanks to a not-very-competent ATC (I hate saying that, but it was really true). We were told to overfly the runway at 1300'. 90 seconds later, a TWIN just behind us was given the same instructions! We were looking all over for the twin when it suddenly appeared off the right side, and close. It probably looked a lot closer than it was because it was big.

So we spent the rest of the ride sitting in its wake turbulence. Chris tightened up the pattern for me, and let me do the landing. Interestingly, SQL has a 3-degree glide slope VASI installed (like just about every other airport out there), whereas PAO has a 4-degree VASI. So the VASI was telling me my approach was right on, but I was feeling very nervous about it. Anyway, I stuck with it and the landing was actually quite good. I got it right on the center line, which has been a problem lately -- I think it's just a matter of concentrating on it.

Next lesson is Monday morning, but as I'm in the recording studio, I'm not sure it's going to happen. And Kevin's back in town, so this lesson will be with him!

First Cross Country!

I realize that there have been lots of exclamation points after my subject lines. I think after I got past the solo hurdle, things just seem so much more exciting, more like fun and less like work. It's incredible to think that I know how to fly one of these things, and that I can take a plane out any time conditions are good enough, and toodle around up at 3500'.

Today, however, was a reminder that I have a LOT more to learn. It was a lot of fun, but very humbling at the same time. Today Chris and I flew the route that we'd planned on Thursday! We flew from Palo Alto to Oakdale, landed, took off, and back. I re-did the navigation log for the trip out and back this morning -- I gave in and called 1-800-WXBRIEF to get the weather briefing, and then used the numbers I got off of the computer! He didn't give me the winds aloft info for the marker altitudes (3000 and 6000 feet); he interpolated for my altitude and I wanted more info.

The amazing thing is, the flight times were incredibly close! On the way back, I'd estimated the flight would take 41 minutes, and when we looked at the clock just after taxiing off the runway at Palo Alto, there it was -- 41 minutes!! That was kind of a rush, actually.

Today was quite windy -- 12 knot winds on the ground and 20 at cruising altitude. It made for a pretty bumpy ride, but the good thing was I didn't get worried. I think I'm finally getting acclimated. We took off from PAO, flew a right Dumbarton departure, and out to the first check point: Sunol Golf Course. So I flew my numbers, and wound up having to correct just a touch to the north. But we overflew it right on time! Then to the next point, abeam Tracy. Here, I had to use intermediate checkpoints to stay on course -- I was tending to the north, so I must have overcorrected for the wind just a touch. But we passed Tracy, right on time! The third checkpoint we arrived at one minute early. Then came Oakdale. The winds were pretty strong and we were getting blown around quite a bit on descent, but they were right down the runway so I didn't figure it'd be a problem. I figured wrong; as I finally came down and went into my flare, I just didn't have good control of the craft so I said to Chris, "I'm gonna go around." He actually just took the plane at that point and set it down -- he explained later that my judgment was perfect, but he knew he could do it and we were running late to get the plane back to PAO. No problem with me!

The way back was completely uneventful until Sunol -- the first and second checkpoints passed within a minute either way of predicted. Then over Sunol, our flight following person started announcing traffic all over the place. We were so busy that I did not mark my time there. In any case, we made a smooth approach into PAO, and actually a pretty decent landing except for being off the center line.

There is just so much to think about; I felt like there were maybe 2 minutes during the whole ~90 minute flight that I could relax and enjoy it. And there was plenty to enjoy -- this was my first time anywhere near clouds (we were well outside of the VFR limits; it's just usually the sky is completely clear here!), and they were really beautiful. It was my first time "out on the open road" -- what a cool feeling! You can fly these things ANYWHERE! They go anywhere there's AIR! Awesome.

So I have a lot to learn AND a lot to appreciate.

Navigation and Planning

Today Chris and I had a long ground lesson at San Carlos (SQL) while a foolish (IMO) pilot tried to land in a 20 knot direct crosswind. Amazing; what's more amazing is that they actually got it down on the 4th try. Heck, I've had to take four tries in 3 knots of crosswind!

The weather was terrible today: Wind, rain, lightning, you name it. But it made for a good opportunity to learn how to plan flights. There's SO much material here, I can't even write about it all. Basically, it's this:

To get from point A to point B, where do I point the plane, and how long will it take?

We started with the charts, where to my horror we took a pen and drew lines along our intended course from Palo Alto to Oakdale, which I swear was the setting of one of the soap operas my mom used to watch when I was a kid. I'm not big on marking paper with ink; it's an engrained instinct that comes from years of singing in choirs using borrowed music and marking it ONLY with a pencil. Not only did we draw our lines in pen, we then used a highlighter to make them show up better. Blasphemy! Good thing charts expire pretty quickly (is it 6 months? or 4? That'd be good to know..).

So for each leg of the course, we have to calculate the wind correction using the forecast winds and the E6B flight computer that I learned to use over the weekend, and then correct for the fact that the charts are oriented toward true north whereas the compass is oriented to magnetic north. Then there's built-in error in the plane's compass, so that has to be corrected for. The keys are: The difference between a course and a heading is wind. Course is a line on the map, heading is where you point the plane.

The navigation log form actually guides you through this process pretty handily, from check point to check point. Selecting check points seems to be a bit of an art, but they should be "can't miss" from the air. Airports are supposed to be good. Now, I'm a little worried given my fairly poor track record of finding airports, but hopefully I'll get over it. So, for each leg of the trip, you have to know what your airspeed will be (which is a bit of a black art, seems like, for legs on which your airspeed will vary, like the first one, since you're climbing) and your intended course. Then you can calculate your heading and your groundspeed, from which you can get time and therefore fuel burn. It's clearly important to compare actual times to expected times during the flight, since if it's taking a lot longer than expected, you'll run out of fuel unless you recalculate and come up with another plan.

I made more purchases today too. A plotter, to plot courses (what's with the completely non-intuitive names?) and the Pilot's Guide To California Airports, which I'm very excited about -- it's just a guide with all kinds of info about every airport in CA. Light reading for the train!

I also discovered another guy's blog, who started training at exactly the same time as me, but in a Diamond DA40-180. I think we have the same number of hours, too, but his instructor seems quite a bit more conservative than Kevin. I'm glad of Kevin's approach, even though I've been a big chicken about going up when things are anything less than perfect. Better to be conservative, right? Anyway, his blog is here:
http://anotherstudentpilot.davidandamy.org/

Hopefully we'll fly the plan we made on Saturday!