Flying to Catalina Island

Yesterday I flew to Catalina Island and landed at the airport in the sky KAVX.

It was a beautiful day leaving Gillespie field, KSEE with a straight out departure and climbed high enough to remain under the nearby Miramar class Bravo airspace. The altitudes were 2500-3500' based on the airspace in KAVX and lower around San Diego.

I attempted the long hike across the trans Catalina trail and made it about 4 miles there and decided to head back due to the incredible high heat and humidity. A nice view on the trail.

Before that, we flew over the town of Avalon before landing at KAVX.

While on the trail, we saw deer and wild buffalo!

The cool hangar greeted us after we landed.

Flying there and leaving we saw the large armada of sailboats.

The reward for surviving the hike on the trans-Catalina trail:

View of the back side hill of airport

It was super busy with lots of cool airplanes coming and going on the field!

The airport KAVX is like a carrier deck terrain and water on all sides. It is similar to flying into Shelter Cove airport.

Back to the airport lots of unique planes like this Maule:

Cessna 182 Skylane

Entrance to the trail:

 

It took us about 45 minutes to arrive from KSEE due to headwinds in the Piper Archer we cruised at 95-100 kts and amazing tailwinds on the return flight we had 142 knots!

Sailing to Coronado from San Diego

I finally got back into sailing after learning to sail in the lovely BVI.

Yesterday late afternoon, went for a nice four hour cruise from Shelter Island to Coronado Island with a fun jolly group of sailors.


Some photos.

I met lovely Maya Dudanova through the cruise and enjoyed sailing with her and captain Burt!
My sailing came back to me in terms of how to work the main and jib sheets and man the helm.

Coming out from the point in San Diego.

Navy Seals were training nearby and it was cool seeing these guys jump off boats. 

The amazing views of downtown San Diego and Coronado were spectacular!

Instrument flying

Last year, I started learning how to fly on instruments a while back in San Diego and it has been very challenging! First you have to learn the book knowledge and pass an FAA written exam. Then you need at least 50 hours of cross country PIC time after you passed your private pilot rating. I flew to Oregon and back with my dad to build time after completing my private pilot training. Some tips:

Learn to master the trim wheel! Learn how to quickly trim and retrim in climbs, descents, turns and straight and level. You need that without a good auto pilot to quickly handle approaches, holds and other maneuvers without blowing your heading and altitude talking with ATC.

Train in the plane you eventually will fly the most. Each aircraft is different in terms of ideal cruise and approach speeds. Fixed gear versus complex retract aircraft handle things different in the cruise, climb, approach, descent, and pre landing (GUMPS) procedures.

Find a good instructor who will get you actual time in IMC. Sad to say that many instrument rating students never get their experience ever flying in real clouds during training. Fortunately, I've been getting real actual IMC experience in my training. I realized wear sunglasses as the inside of clouds are BRIGHT and can easily disorient you.

So far flying instruments on IFR is like juggle balls, chew bubble gum and jump rope at same time.

Scuba BVI part 3

Go Pro Hero 3+ camera is amazing quality! Light and easy to use. Better than heavy massive dive gear camera rig I have used before.

These are the plane wreck dive I went on in 2013 vacation  in the lovely BVI in Caribbean

I also have many videos on my youtube channel of the trip below:

BVI Scuba Diving Video

BVI Scuba and Sailing Photos from 2013

Used GoPro Hero 3+ Camera

Now here lion fish

Last but not least some awesome videos I took with Go Pro Hero 3+

Diving in the BVI

Scuba BVI

Some photos of BVI sailing and scuba diving trip from 2013

Crusty sea dog instructor I had from Offshore Sailing in BVI. Wrote a book on sailing jokes.

 Diving wrecks in the BVI