Head over to Flig.ht Data and check it out!

UPDATE: Yeah, that didn’t go anywhere on it’s own. But stay tuned for a serious aviation player to re-launch it.

In addition, there’s now a forum where groundschool students can ask questions and one of the instructors (mostly me) will do our best to answer. Anyone can read the forum, and you can sign up for a free account to post questions.

This post lags the trip by some weeks. I was waiting to post pictures and then I completely forgot about it.

Among my favorite destinations in Northern California is Monterey Bay. The beautiful crescent along the California coast is unusual in that it contains the Monterey Canyon, among the largest underseas trenches in the world. Perhaps more interestingly, from a pilots perspective, Monterey is home to the spectacular Monterey Bay Aquarium, at the end of Cannery Row (of John Steinbeck fame). One recent California winter Saturday I loaded up a Piper PA28-201R (Piper “Arrow”), N3060M (“60M”, pronounced “six-zero-mike”) and took a trip down to lovely Monterey.

As 60M lives at Sacramento Executive Airport (KSAC), it was only after an hour drive that we got to the plane. Despite the beauty of the day, one of the passengers, my younger brother’s good friend, had nervous parents, so as a nod to them I agreed to file and fly an IFR flightplan. Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of those days where Flight Service lost my flight plan (Update: It turned out, after contacting the flight service complaint line, that the specialist just forgot to send the flight plan after the briefing.). Thus, we had to wait on the ground for about 20 minutes while the tower controller contacted NorCal and got our clearance.

Once underway it was cold (-3 C at 9,000 feet), but clear and beautiful. We encountered just a little light chop over the mountains. Arriving into KMRY was uneventful, although my right seat passenger did get some nice pictures. The people at Monterey Jet Center were as friendly and helpful as always and provided us with a car gratis. I should note that while MJC does not have the cheapest fuel, for a fill up (usually only a few gallons for me), they will provide a free car, ground service, the whole deal. If you buy 10 gallons and they charge $1 more per gallon, you have effectively paid $10 for all of this service. Not a bad deal at all.

As always seems to happen to me, it was too late to go the the Aquarium by the time we actually got to Monterey. Instead, we drove down to Cannery Row and had lunch at The Fish Hopper, a delicious seafood restaurant built out overhanging the water. Pleasantly full, we wandered around Monterey for about an hour before heading back to the airport.

The flight back was also uneventful, and, after parking and tying down the plane, we wandered happily home after a practically perfect day of flying.

A new, improved and very throughly tested 0.3 branch is out. Check out my µAudio page, or head over to µAudio at wordpress.org for a copy of your very own.

Thanks to WordPress.org user jonner for pointing out a couple of bugs.

Despite a sound recruiting effort, I was only able to find one passenger for this central valley escapade, and so it was with rather significant ballast in the back seat of the DA-40 that we departed Placerville (KPVF) at approximately 1030 local. While fueling ($4.79, full service from the pump) we chatted briefly with the instructors of a flight of two Schweizer 300 helicopters on a training flight to Reno (KRNO). <sarcasm>That’s a good plan</sarcasm>.

The trip was surprisingly enjoyable, especially given the AIRMET for moderate turbulence over the foothills, although climbing to 8,500 feet helped with this (as painfully demonstrated on the return trip). Approaching the town of Tuolumne (the GPS waypoint DUCKE, to be precise), we turned east up the Tuolumne River until the O’Shaughnessy Dam at the mouth of the Hetch Hetchy reservoir before turning south. Hetch Hetch is quite spectacular from the air, and I can only imagine that the valley — which appears wider than the Yosemite valley from the air — must have been truly stunning before it was flooded.

From Hetch Hetchy, we turned south again, directly towards Half Dome. I also climbed, and deployed the first notch of flaps, both to make the sight seeing last longer, and to assuage passenger fears about terrain height.

Yosemite National Park is beautiful this time of year, although quite snowy. Half Dome was crowned with a jaunty little snow cap. The valley appeared mostly snow free, although it is hard to see the valley floor from the air, given that you are required to remain 2,000 feet above the rim.

From Yosemite, we proceeded west to Castle, and despite the two nautical mile of available runway, I did a super short “three point” landing that would have been almost perfect, if the 2JP were a taildragger. Castle was surprisingly cool — the low 50′s — with a nice breeze, so we tied 2JP down at Gemini, who were more than happy to provide us with a lift to the museum. A note about landing at Castle. If you land on 31, land on the numbers and taxi via taxiway ‘C’ or even ‘B’ to the base of the tower. Taxi time: 3 minutes. If you land on 13, and you land on the numbers, you have a 2 mile + taxi in. Taxi time: 5-7 minutes (even at Southwest taxi speeds). The lesson? Land short on 31 and long on 13. Finally, play with the guys in the tower, they’re bored.

The castle air museum probably deserves an entry of it’s own, but in a nutshell, it is superlative. The collection includes such rarities as an SR-71, a B-29 and Avro CF-100 and CF-105. The true gem of the collection, however, is a Convair B-36. This ten engined behemoth is one of the great beasts of the sky. The nearby 707 (KC-135 to be precise) looks positively small compared to the B-36 and the B-52 while physically similar in size does not have nearly the ramp presence as the B-36. As of this writing the B-36 is being re-skinned with new aluminum panels donated by ALCOA.

We had a quick bite at the Museum shop before returning. This was one of the two disappointments of the day, as I had recalled a burger of exceptional quality from previous visits, and what I received was barely adequate. The second disappointment was that the shop no longer carries the “Merced Army Airfield — Primary Flight Training” hats, of which I am quite fond.

To get back to the ramp, have the people at the Museum gift shop call the FBO, while it is walkable, it would be a pretty long walk, and the people at Gemini are quite friendly. Furthermore, Gemini’s truck only full serve was $4.90 a gallon, which while by no means cheap, is quite reasonable compared to the truck rates charged at many other NorCal airports.

Departure climb was impressive, as a 15 knot headwind and a cold day produced an initial climb well in excess of 1,000 feet per minute. On departure, we also had the strange situation of overtaking a Twin Beech on approach to Modesto (KMOD). Given that 2JP only does *just* into the 130 knot range at max power, the Beech must have been really dragging it in for us to overtake.

Picture soon.

I recently got a Cessna 172 up to a ground speed as high as the model number while on a trip to San Luis Obispo (KSBP) and Santa Barbera (KSBA). The same winds which have been powering the Southern California wildfires proved quite a boon on the return trip. At 6000 we saw tailwinds as high as 60 knots from approximately 150 to 160 degrees.

The route of flight for this particular leg was IFR: KSBA V27 KSBP. It was about 8AM local (1500 Zulu). The aircraft was a Cessna 172N, N1920F.
Of course, the other direction, while flying into the wind was not so much fun. Pictures after the break.