G - Gas  - (Not Gear as you may think) – Have the tank selector on Both or the fullest tank

U – Undercarriage – This refers to gear – down and locked

M - Mixture – Set for landing

P - Prop – High RPM

S - Seatbelts – Fastened

Although I have been using the King Schools Private Pilot video course to supplement all of the reading I did with both the Airplane Flying Handbook and The Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, after my flight at Orange County Flight Center, the instructor told me about the Cessna Pilot Training which is an updated private pilot course specific to newer Cessna 162 and 172 aircraft and it also covers the Garmin G300 Glass Panel as well as the G1000. I’ll be headed up again soon, but for now I am going to stay away from complex aircraft so I can just focus on finishing my Private Pilot with the simplest requirements possible.

The preflight on this modern Cessna was a bit different, from having 5 fuel sumps on each wing, to checking and verifying the availability GPS satellites. This is also my first time in a Cessna 172 that had fuel injection and a TCAS warning system.

The day in Denver was cold, but clear with light winds up to 5 knots. We departed and climbed to 6,500′ MSL. Once we were cleared for our south departure, we turned straight south and followed Wadsworth Blvd down to the Green Mountain/Littleton area. There we practiced some steep turns and slow flight before continuing on to Centennial Airport (KAPA). In the Centennial traffic pattern, I was able to do some touch and goes to knock the dust off of my skills and keep my landings and pattern work sharp. We then turned back north and flew over Downtown Denver and Mile High Stadium.

Here is what I did know:
I knew where were were headed, from KSNA (Orange County, John Wayne) to KCMA (Camarillo – an airport north of LA near some outlet mall).
I knew that we were going to take basically the same route as our last flight which was to Santa Monica airport, except this time we would fly over Santa Monica instead of landing there.
I knew how to plot that course on the map and measure the distance to all of the important waypoints, including the transition through bravo airspace over LAX.
I knew how to convert my true headings to magnetic headings and correct for magnetic variation to find magnetic course.
I knew how to find all of the frequencies of where we were, where we needed to go, and basically who we would be talking to the whole time.

Here is what I didn’t know:
How to calculate top of climb and fuel burn
How to calculate estimated time en route (I knew I needed true airspeed, but was foggy on where to get the wind and wind triangle info)
How to correctly and manually interpolate the data from performance charts in the pilot’s operating handbook to precise figures.

The interpolation tripped me up more than I anticipated because my high school algebra is embarrassingly rusty. So because of that and the time it took for other critical info to make it’s way into my Homer Simpson-like skull, the weather changed for the worse by the time we finished the flight planning process. So it was time to check the weather again. We could look outside and see quite a bit of haze/marine layer developing from over the ocean again. John Wayne typically has marine layer issues in the AM because the airport is only about 5nm from the shoreline of Newport Beach.


Our flight planning ended around 2:45 pm, and my instructor declared the weather “barely legal”. He folded up the IFR approach charts for himself to do the IFR approach just in case our VFR weather changed and pushed us below minimums from “barely legal” to “fully illegal”.

With that, we went out to preflight the aircraft. Today we were flying N5364K which is one of my favorite training aircraft at Royal Aviation because it doesn’t have any negative quirks that bother me. One of the other 172′s has a harder left turning tendency, not only during low speeds and climb, but practically during all phases of flight, so it requires a couple notches of rudder trim correction.

Anyhow, during preflight, I called up John Wayne clearance and got a VFR clearance for a “Mesa Local” which is John Wayne speak that tells them we want to go northwest towards the coast. The controller gave us the clearance with a heading of 220 and told us to contact ground. Preflight was totally normal, so we started the engine, tested the brakes, called ground just before leaving our parking area and ground told us to taxi to the tower run-up area. We completed run-up and called Riverside flight service station to open the flight plan that we filed back in the office. The guy at the FSS opened the flight plan and told us once again just how marginal the weather was. We thanked him, contacted ground to taxi for departure. Ground told us to continue our taxi on Bravo, and to take Kilo to hold short of 19R, which we did. We then contacted the tower freq for 19R and they let us go ahead and use the “big runway” 19R for departure.

Lights, camera, action, and we started our ground roll. I pulled back on the yoke and kept my eye on the airspeed to keep us at Vx – or 76 knots. We took our 220 heading provided by clearance and flew that until we got to the shoreline south of Huntington Beach. We then turned north to head for the Emmy and Eva oil platforms.

Just over the oil platforms, we reached our cruising altitude of 4,500′ which is required for us to transition over LAX using the VFR special flight rules corridor. Right at the edge of Long Beach Harbor, we made a minor 10 degree heading change and headed for the Santa Monica VOR. Because the skies were so cloudy, we had few visual references for position reporting. After about 12 minutes, we reached the Santa Monica VOR and continued northwest to reach the 101 freeway. After we crossed over the 101 freeway and could see VNY Van Nuys airport off to our 2 o’clock position it was time to head directly to Camarillo – also known as the town of the outlet malls.

We reached the top of decent over an area called conejo grade – which is a steep downhill road through the mountains north of Thousand Oaks. Since we had a Beech Baron closing from behind at a high rate of speed, the Camarillo controller had us sidestep to allow the Baron to land first.

We landed and taxied back for takeoff. Just after we took off, the clouds moved in really cramping our VFR style. We made it back over LAX and through the special flight rules corridor with a solid layer of clouds below us. We were still ‘barely legal’ VFR and didn’t have a good visual on nearby reporting points.

Once we were inbound over Long Beach harbor, we started our descent, and contacted SoCal Approach. They handed us off to John Wayne tower who gave us a right downwind for runway 19R. After landing on the big runway we taxied back to parking. It was a great cross country, and a really good day to see what the weather limits look like both on the ground and in the air. I can’t wait to get back up again.

I told my instructor about my progress and yesterday he indorsed my logbook to go and take the Private Pilot written test – which I am going to do right after I get back from Vegas next week.

Having previously taken flying lessons in 2005, and not completing the training, I firmly believe that there are 2 things that more or less prevent people from getting all the way through their training (most of the time). I think that not getting a medical soon enough after beginning training is one of them. People who take demo flights and then a few more lessons then wash out, don’t bother to get the medical, and thus never remove that obstruction from their progress. I think the second obstacle most people who fail to complete private pilot training is taking and passing the written exam. It is an obstacle, but by comparison, I doubt that many people give up after a failed oral exam or checkride, though there are those that do. By virtue of the fact that it costs so much monetarily to reach the point of taking the checkride, most would likely just want to try again if they fail. With soloing, cross country flying, night flying, all of those are challenges that most student pilots look forward to, though perhaps with some trepidation, those challenges still seem much more sexy than taking a multiple choice test.

Pictured above is the next raffle plane, for which you can currently purchase tickets. I’ll buy another ticket again this year, and if I don’t win, I can just look at all of the aircraft for sale on Flying.com and continue to fantasize.

The photo in this post is courtesy of The 1940 Terminal Air Museum

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

Nothing will ruin a picnic quicker than some bad weather. No one knows this better than pilots. The best way to ruin a pilot’s day is by putting them in the middle of bad weather. This year’s Sun N Fun fly-in took a turn for the most unpleasant as a tornado reportedly touched down in Lakeland, Fl. Photos taken by those in attendance showed piles of damaged planes. Many single engine planes flipped over completely, wings folded, and ended in heaps tangled with other planes. Other more sturdy aircraft in some cases remained stationary only to have lighter aircraft hurled on top of them.

@jeppdirect I'm horrified to see the damage from #SNF11. I am glad to hear that no one from your group was injured.

March 31, 2011 9:20 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Planeology

Rory S.

Thankfully no one was killed, but many took shelter in a tent that ended up collapsing and reportedly had to be rescued.

@Planeology Thank you - it was a very tense afternoon for the entire team.

March 31, 2011 10:42 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@JeppDirect

JeppDirect

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

I am guessing that starting Thursday afternoon, the tent city swelled with the ranks of insurance adjusters trying to count up the damage in the tangled mess. 70 planes were damaged, a dozen were totaled.

That was Thursday. By Friday, many damaged planes were hauled away on trailers. According to Mark Horne, of Flying.com 90% of the damage was cleaned up by Friday mid-morning and the weather was absolutely clear. Organizers of Sun N Fun were concerned that the reports of damage and poor weather earlier in the week would effect attendance, but there will still lines to get into the airshow on Friday, so it sounds as if the weekend will go much easier. The Blue Angels were already doing their scheduled practice and shows on Friday, so all is well.

@planeology We're ok. Some of our new friends lost everything.

March 31, 2011 10:24 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@NFlightcam

NFlight Technologies

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

It appears as if the people who are showing up on Friday and expect a great airshow throughout the weekend will not be disappointed. Though there were some injuries during the storm, it seems that both the Sun and the Fun are going to be in full force during the weekend.

To prove that people are having fun, we found people smiling on Friday. Here are some aviation celebrities. Our friend, Laura found John and Martha, and they have smiles all the way around!

Provided by Mark Horne, Flying.com

On taxi to run up, the controller gave us our choice of what runway to use. We picked runway 17 because we were closer to that end of the field. During run up, a UPS 767 cargo flight departed just ahead of us. This was cool because my dad retired from UPS as a cargo pilot and it was an ironic father-son experience to see something represent the last of his flying career appear as I am just getting mine off of the ground.

From: KOA, PHKO, Runway 17 Opted for left downwind. There was a Blue Hawaiian helicopter departing parallel to the right.

Precious Cargo: My wife, who said swore she would never fly with me in a small plane came. She also shot all of the awesome videos that we uploaded to YouTube, and all of the still photos. She juggled 3 cameras while coping with her white knuckle fear of flying. So I really have to hand it to her.

My dad who is a retired UPS cargo pilot also rode along.

We flew a shortcut over the south point of Kona – The Southernmost Point in the United States, and then turned north towards Hilo.

While we were doing run-up, a UPS 767 took off right before us. The instructor keyed the mic and asked them to be gentle because our run up area was almost directly behind the departing jet blast. We were finished with run-up and cleared for takeoff at 6:45, at which point dawn had just broken over the island.

On departure, we flew south toward Kailua town and the beachfront hotels there.

Coming soon: Flying over the Volcano and getting to the other side of the Island…

At least I brought my private pilot books to study. I also happened to bring my logbook.

As it turns out, I found a flight instructor based in Kona, flying out of Kona Airport. I scheduled a flight with him this coming Friday. It looks like we’ll be flying the 172P with Aspen Glass cockpit and GPS.

You will definitely be getting an update on how that flight goes. Since it isn’t really practical for me to solo in Kona, we’ll be doing a cross country trip from Kona to Hilo and back.

What would be the barrier of entry for a law enforcement individual using drones. UAVs can fly as high as passenger jets, so it seems logical that they would have to be controlled by ATC. Unlike toys or R/C aircraft, UAVs/drones performance parameters will most definitely require clearances, flight plans, and controlled vectors to their destination airspace. Perhaps at this point they could fly similarly to how news helicopters currently fly with respect to maintaining a specific heading, altitude, and speed in order to observe a given target. That seems fine.

BUT, and this is a very big BUT, is it really a good idea to have unmanned drones flying around with General Aviation traffic. Even if the flight profiles of these drones are strictly monitored by air traffic controllers, the person piloting the vehicle is still on the ground. This means that the pilot has no skin in the game. If a drone pilot causes an accident by a missed call, or missed instruction, they can still go have lunch later in the day, whereas any potential victims in other aircraft involved in such an accident may not and most probably will not be that lucky.