Flight To Santa Barbara (092902)
(sorry, I can't offer pictures yet since I accidently left my digital camera with Jinny... we took a ton of pictures but you'll have to wait until I get my camera back to see them... :-))
Today (9/29/02) Jinny and I took a trip down to Santa Barbara to celebrate our coming up 1 year anniversary... :-) And, of course, if you have been tuning in, you probably could guess that I have an interesting story to tell... :-)
As many of you might now (since we are all pilots and keep track of the weather... :-)), the last few days have been pretty cloudy... yesterday it even was raining in Santa Barbara! Last night, I checked the weather and it seemed like it might be possible to do 3500' the entire way there (more on this thought in a moment... :-)) and it seemed like it would actually be clearing up in the evening so I might do 4500' or 6500' back... (my original plan was 7500' down and 6500' up... :-))...
So, I get up early in the morning on Sunday and check the weather... it seems like things are destined to clear up a little more by mid-day and just scattered clouds around Santa Barbara in the evening and sky clear in the Bay Area... At any rate, I thought I'd just do 3500' all the way down and it wouldn't be a problem...
This time I took Jinny up in a little more style... :-) (our first flight was in a Cessna 152... :-)) I took up N9560S which is a 1998 Cessna 172SP... definitely a step up... :-) The thing is, I was also using this flight to get a lot more familiar with using the GPS and autopilot (this had single-axis autopilot) and also getting a lot more SP time (I've had most of my 172 time in 172Ns...)... Needless to say, the anxiety of making sure I made cloud clearance, playing with the GPS, playing with the autopilot, and flying down to Santa Barbara for the first time made for an interesting flight down there... :-)
I took off PAO around 11:30am... right 270 from rwy 31... On the ground, I had programmed in the entire flight down to SBA... of course, since I was originally planning to do it at 3500', I wasn't going to activate NAV autopiloting until I got down around Santa Cruz so I could avoid the recent TFR up to 5000' MSL... But I thought, okay, I'll at least engage the HDG autopiloting... So, out over Palo Alto towards the mountains, I start calling up Bay Approach for flight following... I will say that today in the day was NOT my best radio day... :-) The combined stress of dealing with the avionics for a REAL flight down to SBA had my hands full and I was stuttering all over the radio... Anyhow, it was just one of those days for radio comm for me I guess... :-)
Climbing up to 3500', I simultaneously engaged the autopilot (I discovered that that loud BEEP it kind of scare your passengers if they don't know about it... :-)) and first had it do ROL (wings level)... at this point I was headed towards the Santa Cruz mountains and saw that there were a few clouds I hadn't quite expected to be there to the west... so took the yoke and turned to the east a little... now, trying to clear clouds made me temporarily forget about the fact I had ROL on... up until the time I had to fight the airplane for control... then I just turned the silly thing off and headed out to the east a little... apparently annoying bay approach a little since this kind of put me in the approach path of SJC... :-) Whoops... I vaguely heard a call to my tail number and asked them if it was for me... and they said: "YES! Turn right 140 NOW!"... I tried my most professional "Roger, right 140, 9560S" and just let it go... oops... :-)
As I flew down towards Monterey, I started trying the NAV portion of the autopilot out but I was already pretty far off-course (all the radar vectoring and cloud avoidances) so I wasn't sure what its reaction would be (I thought it would just make a straight bee-line for the track, but apparently it is a lot more subtle...)... all the while fiddling with this and watching out for traffic and clouds, I missed a call from bay approach that terminated my flight following (apparently, either they were too busy... which is possible since I heard other people getting terminated because the sector was too busy... or the guy was stilled annoyed from the previous episode... anyways, as I said, it was not my best radio comm day... (shrug)... it happens...)...
So at this point, I had lost my flight following from Bay... eventually I called up Monterey approach, who them proceeded to tell me to try Oakland center (on 2 separate frequencies... one of which he said was probably too busy)... so I call up one of the (the less busy one) and was told to call back in a few minutes... I just kind of hang on that frequency for a while... during which I heard a United Airlines flight into SJC declaring an emergency because a baby on board was in distress (turning blue and maybe heart problems at 3 months)... Jinny and I just looked at each other and kind of gave each other the "Yikes!" expression... Anyways, I called up Oakland center a little bit later and they told me to standby... and the radio chatter kept going... so I finally decided that I'd just hang on this frequency and just listen since it was pretty obvious no one wanted today... (fake sob... :-))...
Okay, so at this point, let me reflect on a few lessons learned thus far (I'm not done yet... :-)):
1) if you don't have an instrument rating, flying with autopilot on where there are more than just a few wisps of clouds anywhere near your altitude is a BAD IDEA! at least I believe that, if you are departing from under a busy airspace, I'd leave that autopilot off until I was kind of clear of traffic and at a good cloud clearance level...
2) try not to fly into other people's approach path... it annoys the controllers... :-)
3) on a busy day along the coast, it is very easy to lose flight following if the controllers don't feel like you are at your peak... which I certainly wasn't when I had avionics fiddling to do and cloud avoidance to do...
Anyways, back to our story (I promise a few more lessons still... :-))...
Heading out towards Paso Robles and SARDO intersection and on to Santa Maria, I called up Flight Watch (by the way, I was at 7500' now... since originally I discovered the 3500' was quite bumpy and it wasn't doing us too good)... and I discovered some stuff... 7500' is not necessarily guaranteed coverage for flight watch... (even though they say 5000'...)... Anyways, I did get Flight Watch once (then from there until just nearing Monterey, I called them another 3-5 times with no avail... up until I got near Monterey when I got flight watch again... more on the later... :-))... and they said it was kind of overcast at 4000-5000' but scattered near Santa Maria and Santa Barbara was starting to clear up... my first thought was to try to drop to 3500'... but going down there added plenty of unpleasant turbulence... so I went back up and planned to go through a clearning layer of scattered clouds when I got near Monterey...
So there I was at 7500'... nearing Monterey, I started looking down and saw that it was pretty overcast still... along the way I called up Flight Watch again (finally they answered... it certainly doesn't look good to passengers to have your radio calls go unanswered!) and told me that it was 7000' overcast at Santa Barbara but clear over the water... so I climbed to 9000' (I was aiming for 9500' but by the time I got to a point to descend I only got to 9000'), called up Santa Barbara approach, and was told to follow the freeway for right base 15R (I was still have a little bit of a bumbling problem on the radio since I was kind of nervous from the overcast layer... tried to keep a confident face for Jinny though... it does no one any good to have the passengers freaking out... yet...)...
I told Santa Barbara Approach that I was at 9000' and was planning to go out over the water to drop below the overcast... I later heard approach suggest that to another guy (I think me trying to do that must have clued them in to the cloud positions...)... so I head over to the water, which is totally free of clouds and do a circling descent down to 2000-3000' at which point, approach, probably seeing me going in circles, tells me to let them know when I am going inbound... I fly in bound for right base 15R (was told to report 2 miles right base following a Cherokee)... ah, another interesting thing was that approach, for some odd reason though I was a twin Cessna... I had to set the tower straight on that... anyways, pretty uneventful landing (not the best but good enough), and a hold for 15L and 25... and I was at Signature's transient parking... the guy came up and helped put the airplane into its spot... at this time, I called up ground to have them close up my flight plan (since I wasn't sure FSS could receive me plus the phone-in FSS had been kind of on the fritz all day)... they had me try clearance delivery... I was just squeaking in under my 30min mark (all the extra diversions cost me time and I hadn't had a chance to extend my time yet)... clearance delivery said they had just been called so it was all taken care of... doh! :-) Anyhow... at this point, it was 2:15pm and both Jinny and I was starving and I was kind of exhausted from the workload... so we got our rental car, went into town, ate at a pasta place she knew and then toured the area a little...
We headed back to SBA around 6:30pm... they had gassed up the plane, and we returned the car... getting back into the plane, I prepped everything and called up clearance delivery (which is something that I am not used to doing...)... got the sqwauk code, clearance (maintain runway heading up to 3000' and then expect higher after 3min), departure frequency, etc... called up ground, and away I went to rwy 25 for a straight out departure... during runup, I tested the mags and much to my horror, one mag gave a TOTALLY ROUGH engine with 300-500RPM drop! I did it twice to be sure and the other mag had no drop at all... I was thinking, shoot would we have to stay in SBA tonight?? Or rent a car to go back?? I decided to give burning the crud off the spark plugs a try (leaning down and running the engine high)... luckily they came out clean... :-) I also think I discovered that that plane needs to have its full rich mixture setting looked at for sea-level since it idles a LOT BETTER with a slightly lean mixture than full rich... I decided that I liked that smoother idle and left it a tincture leaned...
I was finally cleared for 25 straight out departure, and away I went... a few turns here and there to avoid a cloud or 2, and away I was to GVO! :-) (well, okay one extra hitch... since I am not used to clearance delivery, I wrote down and read back my sqwauk 7272 but forgot to set it on my transponder and was given a "tap on the shoulder" by tower on climb out...) At 4500' I decided that I wanted give myself some more clearance from the clouds and asked for and got 6500'... at this point, I decided to give good old autopilot another go at it... this time and for the rest of the trip, it worked beautifully... :-) you just sit back and monitor... :-) it actually gives you more opportunity to grab your map and peer out the window to make sure you really are going where you think you are going since you don't have to worry as much that the plane is going to start heading out some other direction... If I was going longer distances at night, I would definitely try to get a GPS/autopilot equipped plane again... :-)
This time up to PAO, it was pretty smooth... minor turbulence at 6500'... according to the GPS it said we'd get into PAO at 9:24pm (we lifted off at 7:15pm)... so, given the smoother ride I'd had (if only my flight down to SBA had worked out as well... :-)) I arranged to call up FSS around Monterey (having been dumped from flight following once today, I decided I didn't want to risk being a pest again when I wasn't near Monterey just in case they cut me loose in the middle of nowhere...). Heading into the bay area, I knew I had to drop out of 6500' eventually but a stupid puff of cloud was obscuring SJC... plus I am not willing to go down towards too much blackness without know if there is nothing there or if there are clouds... eventually approach let's me know I should probably go on down (in retrospect I should have used the second VOR to get the radial boundary... oh well... you live and learn...) to stay clear of bravo... so down I go, always mindful to keep city lights in my descent slope... I eventually get handed off to Moffett, and then into PAO...
Going over the airport, I hear Noelle (at least I think that was her... :-) Noelle did you take DM out for a night-time flight?) announcing she is taxiing from West Valley... I did a circle around PAO, then head out for a 45 entry to right traffic 31... landed on 31, taxiied back to WVFC, and shut down around 9:40pm...
What a flight! :-)
So, further lessons...
1) Flight watch is not receivable clearly everywhere, even if you are above 5000' MSL.
2) When choosing an altitude, 7500' is can immensly smoother than 3500' for passengers... especially if 3500' is below the clouds and 7500' is above the clouds...
3) However, on another note, trying to press your luck for an opening in the clouds later on is probably not a good idea... I got lucky, but in the future I will try to make sure I can dip below the clouds later on guaranteed before I take a jaunt above them... the past few times I did VFR-over-the-top, I knew for certain it was sky clear at the other end... I was just lucky that the coastal waters were there to forgive me...
4) Try not to have TOO MANY new things happen on a flight... :-) it is easy to get bogged down with new details and forget something... I mean, I think I learned a lot on today's flight (I am pretty comfortable with GPS and autopilot now... plus I have a lot of practical time in a 172SP now... :-) and better ideas of cloud avoidance, turbulence avoidance and expectations... and night time cross-country flying over pretty unpopulated areas...)... but it definitely contributed to a few of my mistakes in flight today...
5) Don't forget to do ALL of the things you read back on clearance delivery in class charlie or bravo... I think I want to visit a few more class charlie airports (and eventually a bravo airport when I feel like I have nothing else better to do just to say I have done it once... :-)) for practice in their procedures...
6) Be careful with GPS and autopilot... DON'T FORGET TO MONITOR THE AIRPLANE! :-) I found it disturbingly easy to fall in to a sense of comfort with those devices... I had to force myself to check the instruments more often... at least it was a single-axis autopilot so I still knew I had to check on the altitude myself...
7) On the same note, I would almost certainly fly with GPS and autopilot (at least single-axis) in a night-cross-country... first, because when you can hardly see anything, it is a little bit of insurance that you are going to wander off aimlessly if there aren't some kind of ground references... second, because if you, god forbid, accidently run into a cloud that you are not supposed to, the plane at least can keep itself out of unusual attitudes while you try to get yourself out (I didn't have this happen to me... but it did occur to me that autopilot had that added safety advantage...).
8) If your plane doesn't have DME (the DME function was being played by the GPS which was busy getting me to PAO), but do have a second VOR, and there are some obscurations due to clouds, try using the second VOR to point out where you should step down to avoid going into bravo... :-) Although it also occured to me that I could have just asked approach if they would clear me into bravo temporarily since I didn't want to get anywhere near those clouds... (shrug)... as I said... learned it for next time! :-)
Last updated: 093002