Well it’s time to start re-populating my blog with some posts.  I know many of you enjoyed reading about my flying adventures, so I’ll start with a post about a fun instrument flight I did today.

For the non-pilots, there are essentially two different sets of flight rules one can fly under.  Visual Flight Rules (VFR) are what you learn first when you get your private pilot license.  The premise is ’see and avoid’ other traffic, and hence there are certain minimum visibility and weather requirements – you can’t fly in clouds for example.  I’m currently working on my instrument rating, which will let me fly under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR).  An IFR flight requires a flight plan to be filed (as opposed to VFR where you can fly wherever you like, as long as you don’t enter restricted airspace), and constant communication with Air Traffic Control (ATC).  The controllers provide headings and altitudes for the pilots to fly, and are responsible for keeping airplanes separated.  This means it’s possible to fly in low visibility conditions (e.g. inside clouds), purely by reference to cockpit instruments.

Today’s weather wasn’t great for VFR, so I filed an IFR flight plan to Stockton (about 50NM to the east of Palo Alto).  I was with my instructor because I still haven’t earned my instrument rating (hopefully in the next few weeks!).  We departed from Palo Alto and were vectored towards Stockton and assigned an altitude of 5000 feet.  This happened to put us right at the level where a bunch of cumulus clouds were hanging out (a thousand feet lower or higher would have avoided them).  Since I’m training for IFR this was perfect – we were in and out of the clouds most of the way to stockton.  It can get quite disorienting because you have zero visibility inside the clouds, and they can be bumpy.  I just kept my head down and focused on the instruments.  Interestingly the outside air temperature at 5000 feet was 0 degrees celcius, which mean icing was a risk as we entered the clouds.  We kept a very close watch on the wing struts for ice formation, and were ready to climb or descend out of the clouds if we detected any.  Fortunately we didn’t have any icing issues.

Our actual flight path according to ATC radar

We flew the ILS (Instrument Landing System) into Stockton.  This is one of many different instrument approaches available, and basically consists of some highly directional radio equipment situated on the airport, sending out a signal that the cockpit instruments interpret to figure out if you are on the centerline, and following the appropriate glideslope to the runway.  Andy had me fly the ILS all the way down to minimums (a little under 250 feet) before looking up and spotting the runway.  We were in clear skies at that point, but it’s good practice for when the clouds are really low and you only pop-out at the last minute (or execute a missed approach procedure if you can’t see the runway after reaching the approved minimum altitude).  Landing was uneventful – it’s a very long runway.  We did a touch and go then picked up an IFR clearance to Tracy.

Cockpit Instruments (G1000)

We were vectored to the VOR approach for Tracy airport (a different type of instrument approach, less accurate than the ILS).  To make things more ‘interesting’ Andy decided to make me fly this one ‘partial panel’ – basically simulating failure of some of the cockpit instruments (in this case achieved by sticking a post-it note over my PFD screen).  My available instruments were basically the standby airspeed indicator, attitude indicator and altimeter (the steam gauges), as well as the compas, and GPS moving map on the MFD.  Tracy is un-towered, so once established on final approach we switched over to the CTAF (a shared frequency that pilots landing and departing the airport use).  We announced our intentions and landed uneventfully on runway 26.  Another touch and go, back to ATC and we picked up an IFR clearance to Livermore.

We were vectored to the ILS approach at Livermore, and I tried using the autopilot to fly it in.  For some reason we had trouble getting the autopilot to capture the glide slope, so I was madly telling it to increase our descent rate until it finally caught on.  For some reason the approved minimums at Livermore when using the autopilot are 1700 feet, but when flying manually you can go down to 600 feet.  So I disengaged the autopilot and flew to minimums, looked up and was nicely positioned for another smooth touch and go.

We departed Livermore VFR to the south, but then picked up an IFR clearance into Oakland.  This was the first time I’d flown into Oakland.  We shot the VOR approach to runway 27L (the big jet traffic uses runway 29).  Smooth approach, touch and go, and VFR departure to Palo Alto.

We flew back to Palo Alto over the bay and under the cloud deck.  Palo Alto had some gnarly crosswinds that were swirling around and constantly changing direction.  Runway 13 was active so I had a nice straight-in landing.

We decided to do some pattern work from the right-seat, which was especially fun because of the gnarly crosswinds, and because runway 13 was active instead of the usual 31.  Pilots usually fly from the left seat, but because I’ll eventually work towards my instructor rating I’m starting to learn how to fly from the right seat (your student sits in the pilot seat on the left).  Right-seat flying is challenging because all the controls and instruments are positioned assuming the pilot is on the left, and the outside visual perspective looks different.  We taxied to the run-up area and swapped seats.  Andy suggested we try swapping without getting out of the plane (just for fun, and to practice in case we ever needed to swap seats for an in-flight emergency).  If you’ve never been inside a Cessna Skyhawk, lets just say in order to swap seats you need to be prepared to get very up close and personal with your copilot :)

Once comfortably positioned in the right seat I got clearance for takeoff and started flying a left closed pattern.  I did about 4 or 5 landings, and lets just say they weren’t anything to be proud of.  A combination of strong gusty crosswinds and windshear, as well as my right-seat perspective meant that we landed far from smoothly (although never bad enough for Andy to grab the controls and takeover, so I was happy about that :)

We practiced one simulated engine failure which wasn’t too bad.  I could have landed but ended up aborting because we wouldn’t have had enough runway remaining to takeoff again and we wanted to do a couple more laps around the pattern.

Eventually we taxied back and parked.  After 2.6 hours of flying which included 4 instrument approaches (very mentally exhausting) followed by some challenging crosswing landings, my brain was pretty frazzled and I was glad to be out of the cockpit.

Next up I’ll be flying to Tahoe in a Cessna 182 on Sunday – a more powerful and complex plane that I want to learn to fly.  There’s always so much more to learn in aviation.