In Flight

Learning to fly: August 2001 - ?

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Learning, learning...it never ends!

I had the chance to fly to Pleasanton today to pick up 4 Millenium cylinders for 124. JMR was planning to go, but he spent all afternoon yesterday flying with Eric, so he cancelled.

Eric (the grad student!) was free, as usual and took John's spot. The plan was to leave CLL, climb to 8500 through scattered cumulus and fly VFR on top for about 1:40 to PEZ. But, just as I've read, sometimes the cumulus climb faster than 00J. We spent 20-30 minutes trying to get on top, and gave up when we reached 8500' and still had to look up. 00J was not climbing too well, so we gave up and took it down to 4500' direct.



Got flight following, which guided us through about 4 handoffs 'til PEZ was in sight. Found the airport right where AnywhereMap said it would be, and gave it one of my best stabilized approaches and landing.



It took a few minutes for J&J Air Parts to truck the cylinders over, so we enjoyed a few cokes. We loaded the parts (three in the back seat, one in the luggage hold), refueled (it took about 18 gal to get there) and took off.



Totally forgot pictures, so I circled the field to the right so Eric could snap a few good ones. Then climbed out, rejoined flight following, and made tracks for CFD to drop them off. This time the wind was behind us about 45 degrees, so our groundspeed was about 110 (vs 95 on the way there) and we never even tried to climb above 3500'.

Made a nice approach to CFD after overflying midfield and took it in pretty good. Dropped off our ballast and we're off one more time, this time to home to CLL. Uneventful 2mile left base and landed fast on 16.

Total time: 3.8 hours. Shipping would have been $60, so I should get that deducted from my bill of $209 = $149.

It was great to feel the air again!