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February 3, 2002- Going Somewhere
Well - today Mike surprised me by telling me to pick somewhere to go.
We looked around at the weather and decided on Watsonville, CA (WVI).
Watsonville is about 45 nautical miles from Livermore but is the better part of
100 miles by road thanks to that wonderful terrain. It's also home to the Watsonville
Fly-In - a nice little airshow on Memorial Day Weekend. We're not in a
Warrior this time - I had scheduled February with mostly Cessnas. Today
we're in possibly one of the ugliest Cessna 172s I've seen. Cessna N738HY
is pretty much what I'd call "60's Appliance Almond". Unlike the
picture on the Ahart web site the wheel
pants have been removed making it that much more the ugly duckling.
We didn't quite fly a straight line because that would have taken use through
San Jose's (SJC) Class C airspace. So we worked out a route, checked
weather and off we went. We fudged a little an flew just a tad East of
South so we could cruise comfortably at 5500 feet MSL (aviationspeak for above
Mean Sea Level). There are several peaks in the area over 4000'. In
flying there are "VFR Cruising Altitudes" - eastbound traffic (0 to
179 heading) is supposed to fly at odd-thousand feet plus 500, westbound traffic
flies at even-thousand feet plus 500 (Instrument flights get the *1000
altitudes). Technically these only apply more than 3000 feet AGL (Above
Ground Level) but the terrain on either side is only a few 100 feet and most
traffic is passing through so they are at one of these altitudes - so it's good
to try to stick to them. This is also the highest I've flown so far - it
takes a little longer to get up here, that's for sure.
I choose to fly straight south from Livermore to Mount Hamilton. Mt.
Hamilton is home to the Lick Observatory and makes a great landmark. Let's
face it - big white domes on a 4400 foot mountain in the middle of nowhere are
easy to spot:
It also brings us far enough south to clear the SJC Class
C. From there we turned west over the Santa Clara valley and started our
descent to 4500 MSL for our westbound leg to the coast and South County
Airport (Q99) as our next landmark. As we were passing over South County Michael asked me how I
knew it was South County and not another airport. I felt facetious and
commented that it was maybe the 20 foot high letters on the taxiway that said
"South County":
Note that this image is courtesy of and copyright MapQuest and
GlobeXplorer.
Anyway - from there we could already see the coast and we started to
descend. This was one of my first lessons in how hard airports are to spot
from the air. Northern California is notoriously hazy and picking out an
airport from the air - especially from a distance at a low altitude (so a very
flat angle) is hard. The only other airports I've flown over are Concord's
Buchanan Field (CCR) and Byron (C83). Their both easy to spot as they are
up against big hills with good landmarks. Watsonsville
is the "Artichoke Capital of the World" so it's all pretty flat and
green. The airport was one of those things that you knew about where it
was but it was very hard to spot:
We mostly lined up on the traffic up in the pattern. It was
surprisingly busy. Anyway - a loop out around the south to come in
"on the 45" for Runway 20 and a single touch and go and we're back in
the air. We then had to make a non-standard turn to avoid some yahoo on an
instrument approach to Runway 2. Idiot never said a thing on the radio. From
there a quick swing over Santa Cruz and then back towards San Jose. We
were running a little short on time so we got flight following from Bay Approach
and got sent right over San Jose Intl right over and then through the middle of
the Class C. Cool beans! From there it was a quick swing up over Mission Pass
and Sunol and into Livermore. A single landing and we were done. All
the way from Livermore to Watsonville and back via San Jose in about 100
minutes. We would have been driving all day to do this. This was the
sort of thing I started flying for and it was a very good enthusiasm
builder. Unfortunately, but true to the practicalities of training, it
would be another six weeks before we would make it more than 20 miles from
Livermore. But fun nonetheless and a good reminder of why I was doing
this.
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