Flying Silicon Valley

This past weekend I had a lot of fun doing a local flight around Silicon Valley here in northern California. First, I rented a Cessna 172 the perfect low cost aircraft for local flights.

After checking the ATIS, METARS, TAF and preflight, we took off and the original plan was a fly in to KHAF for lunch. Unfortunately the weather was not VFR and I am not yet instrument rated so we diverted over the coast to Santa Cruz which had better conditions. Still was a lot of clouds so we stayed away from them and had a nice view of Santa Cruz harbor.

It was amazing views and I did some steep turns to let my friend take great shots.

What an amazing place to work and live! Such great flying and scenery in short reach. Driving to Santa Cruz and Monterey is at least an hour drive more with weekend traffic. But a short 15 minute hop gets you close and personal with the gorgeous coastline. On the way back we did some touch and go landings for fun at SJC airport with its big runways.

It is lots of fun landing at a big busy airport like SJC because you see the jumbo jets take off and land right by you! Anyways back up in the air after some fun landings, we headed over downtown San Jose.

I then had my buddy take some great shots of downtown San Jose.

All in all a fun relaxing day and great time flying the south bay area!

My friend Vikas also a pilot and myself then landed and had a great post flight meal at a wonderful Vietnamese pho place in Sunnyvale called House of Pho.

Mountain checkout to Lake Tahoe

Before I flew to Oregon for my big trip I had a fun mountain checkout to Lake Tahoe and Truckee with an excellent CFI from Squadron 2 in San Jose, CA. Darrall Dalberg and I flew to KTVL and KTRK airports in South Lake Tahoe and Truckee in the Cessna 182P aircraft. It was fun and only took an hour to fly the Cessna 182 there from Reid Hillview airport (KRHV) in San Jose.

First we landed at KTVL had a meal and debriefed on mountain flying basics to avoid terrain issues and be safe flying in the mountains. After we took off, I noticed that even though it was cool in Tahoe, the climb rate was a lot slower than expected in the Cessna 182 so we did a few circles to reach sufficient altitude and avoid terrain nearby. Adjusting the mixture is crucial for safe flying in high density altitude airports. We then took off and flew over gorgeous Lake Tahoe:

We flew into Truckee airport (KTRK) and landed for some practice. Then we flew back home in only an hour to KRHV!

Flying Bay Area to Mount Shasta

After shorter cross country trips, I wanted to fly a much longer trip. With scorching temperatures in New Mexico and no A/C in the Piper Arrow, I decided to head north for cooler weather to Oregon. My original plan was to head north with a flyby of Mount Shasta and then out to the Oregon coast. My Foreflight plan below was to fly north to Corvallis and then across to the coast at Astoria:

The views of Mount Shasta were spectacular!

Along the way the views of the valleys near Shasta were breathtaking as well:

Nearby peaks greeted us as we passed by as well:

Unfortunately the METARS and TAFs were reporting IFR conditions and I am not yet an instrument rated pilot so we headed to Corvallis with a fuel stop in Ashland, OR. It was HOT there over 90 degrees since OR had a heat wave so we just refueled and left to cooler weather.

The density altitude was high at Ashland S03 airport so climb out performance was anemic in the Piper Arrow and I was lucky to get 300 FPM! I flew a Piper Arrow on the trip.

I stayed the night in Corvallis with my father and enjoyed an amazing but greasy pizza at Cibelli's in Corvallis, Oregon. I was a bit worried watching the weather forecast that night with chance of thunderstorms over Mount Shasta area in the late afternoon so I left earlier than planned to safely make it to Redding, CA for a fuel stop. But first I had a power pilot breakfast next door at Elmer's restaurant and ordered the tasty Crater Lake German pancake for breakfast.

We grabbed a taxi to the Corvallis airport and refueled.

The views back from Corvallis were amazing with many wineries in the area.

On the way back, I flew over the cool looking lava beds in southern Oregon:

We even were lucky to have another flyby of Mount Shasta on the return back to California:

I was pleasantly surprised by the jet center at Redding (KRDD) airport and the controllers gave me a straight in landing for Runway 16 so it was a piece of cake landing from the direction I was headed.

Lessons learned:

1. Plan fuel stops in advance which I did.
2. Time fuel tank switches with notes and timer. I used my clock in the Piper and my iphone

3. Leave early to avoid takeoff performance issues with high density altitude.

4. Fly near major roads to find easier navigation via pilotage and emergency landing spots.

Welcome to Aviation Sailing and Scuba Journal

As a new pilot and scuba diver, I wanted to create my own blog instead of posting my work on Facebook. Learning to fly airplanes, sail a 50 foot yacht and scuba dive the world's oceans are three of the greatest challenges I've learned and most rewarding. Ben Franklin said it best that a picture is worth a thousand words.