I don't post nearly enough about my flying adventures on my blog. I have long vowed to write more about aviation here but for some reason once the plane is tied down and paperwork done I don't do anything more about it. I have been flying on average every couple of weeks for years now and I'm getting near a thousand flight hours of experience. An old friend emailed me today asking a question about aviation and my reply turned out to be rather long so I decided I should just post it here for all to enjoy.

He wrote:

  So, I'd love to hear your opinion on this. There's a lotta comments
  from posters saying they're professional pilots etc, but I don't know
  them from Adam.

  So, your thoughts, was this great piloting, or poor judgement in the
  first place?

  http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/video-captures-near-plane-crash-in-hamburg/index.html?hp

A co-worker pointed this out to me earlier today. I'm really not sure. I don't know what the forecast conditions were, what the actual conditions were, etc. It could be that the conditions were forecast to be just fine and suddenly a microburst or gust front or something similar hit the airport just as he was landing. The article indicates something to that effect. Generally I try really hard not to second guess other pilots unless I am there in the cockpit and have all of the same information they do. Non-pilots should try twice as hard.

I try to avoid the mainstream media when it comes to aviation or computers because they inevitably get it wrong and just piss me off.

About the only thing I can say is that by calling it a "near plane crash" they almost certainly sensationalize the situation and needlessly scare people. I guess I can also say that he did the right thing by initiating a go-around as soon as he realized something wasn't right. Impossible to say if the pilot has "skills" or not though.

"Superior pilots use their superior judgment to stay out of situations where they must use their superior skills." I have always liked that motto. They do indeed train for just that situation. I train for it too.

In fact, just last night I was returning from a flight to Fullerton airport where we went for dinner with some of Trinity's old high school friends from Vietnam. It is amazing how many of her friends have made it over to the US and live around or occasionally visit the Westminster (Little Saigon) area. There was a pretty strong Santa Ana weather condition last night and the winds were quite strong as we arrived back over Montgomery Field in San Diego around 11pm. Because the wind was out of the northeast (around 050 degrees) the best runway to land on was runway 05. But that runway is unlit at night. So do I land on the runway favored by the wind which has no lights or do I land on the lighted runway and deal with the crosswind? I decided that a crosswind is something I can handle but a lack of visibility and possibly landing on the taxiway or elsewhere by mistake was not acceptable. So I had to land on the only lighted runway which is 28R/10L (normally I land on 28R due to normal winds out of the west). You can land in either direction on this runway but 10L was facing more into the wind which is always preferable as it decreases your landing distance and speed at touchdown which makes for a safer landing.

The control tower had long since closed. The airport was uncontrolled. The automated weather told me there was a strong wind out of the northeast. As I approached the runway having completed the pre-landing checks I noticed that I was having to point the nose of the airplane far left of the runway in order to keep the plane making progress towards the runway. The nose of the plane was probably (just guessing) 15 degrees to the left of the actual direction of travel over the ground. If we touched down in that attitude (wheels not aligned with direction of travel) we could damage the landing gear, blow a tire, run off the runway, or generally lose control of the aircraft.

So the procedure is to bank the airplane into the wind which turns some of the wings normally vertical lift vector into horizontal "lift" (or just call it force if you like) into the wind which pulls the plane horizontally into the wind and counters the blowing of the wind so your track across the ground is straight. However, this by itself would actually cause the airplane to start turning left into the wind so you have to put in right rudder to hold the nose of the plane aligned parallel with the runway. The amount of bank into the wind is proportional to the strength of the wind and the amount of rudder proportional to the bank. As the airplane gets slower while approaching the runway the controls become less effective due to less air moving over them so you have to steadily feed in more aileron control to maintain the same amount of bank angle until you finally touch down on just one wheel (the upwind wheel) with the controls all the way over into the direction of the wind and then the rest of the wheels come down as the plane decelerates.

If the wind is changing or gusting you have to vary the amount of aileron (and thus rudder etc) with the changing wind. All together it turns out to be quite an exercise in judgement and coordination and not a terribly easy maneuver to do well. Last night I did all of the above and was actually quite successful with it and made a very nice landing in a strong crosswind at night on a relatively unfamiliar runway on an uncontrolled airfield. And the reason why is training. We all train for this sort of thing. And if the wind had suddenly kicked up really strong and started to blow me off the runway like it did for that airliner I would have pushed the throttle full forward, kept the plane under control, and headed back up for the safety of the open sky having already pre-configured the airplane for just such an event (in my case that is propeller at high rpm, mixture rich, etc) as part of my pre-landing checks. Just like that guy did.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across http://www.airfields-freeman.com which documents the locations and current conditions of old airfields. There used to be a lot more airports around the country than there are currently. You would think that with an increasing population we would need more airports but just the opposite seems to have happened. While perusing the list of former airport sites around San Diego I happened across this write up on Hourglass Field which happens to be just a block away from my place. Built sometime during the 30's it was used for pilot training, an emergency landing strip, and for dive bombing practice. The above url gives all of the details. After the Navy was done with it during the 50's the field was used for motorcross and drag racing. An accident which injured 3 bystanders in early August 1960 caused the field to be closed to racing (the Navy dug trenches across it) which sparked an actual riot among the young motorheads here in San Diego! 3000 people battled police at the intersection of El Cajon Blvd and Cherokee street. Here is a pretty good writeup of this riot and various other riots that happened during the same period. The conspiracy theories of the officials make them really look foolish in hindsight. It makes me wonder how foolish we are going to look in the future when we look back on this terrorist thing. It is also fairly clear that the authorities were against kids having any sort of fun at all and could have easily defused the situation by officially sanctioning a safe place to race their cars such as we have today in San Diego instead of trying to ban it outright. It is also interesting to note that while white kids with cars were rioting over the lack of a place to race in San Diego the black kids in LA and the south were rioting for such trivial matters as equal rights.

Wikipedia also has a good writeup on the field.

This afternoon I took a walk over there and guided by the pics on the above websites and a satellite image and map from google maps I was able to easily find what remains of the old runway from the 1930's. The only thing remaining is the northern part of the intersection of the "X" in the crossing runways which made the hourglass shape. A new building was recently built on the north-eastern portion of the X so if you are at all interested in checking it out you should go soon because in a few more years it will be lost forever.

The remaining asphalt is actually in amazingly good shape and if most of it had not been built over and there were not weeds growing through it you could easily land airplanes on it today. Brush the loose rocks and dirt off and mow down the weeds and you've got a landing strip better than many others I have landed on.

When my gig at Telepacket ended I went straight down to the airport and met up with my friend Alex Diaz for a flight down to his villa near the village of Chamela in the state of Jalisco, Mexico where we would spend the next week. Chamela is on the coast about 40 miles south of Puerto Vallarta. His place is called Villa Vista Hermosa which means "Beautiful View Villa". Check out the pics on his website or in my photo gallery and you will see why. It sits up on a hill with a nearly 360 degree view and an excellent view of Island Bay.

We departed from Montgomery Field in San Diego in a Cessna 210 and flew south along the eastern edge of the Sea of Cortez to the mexican town of Guaymas in Sonora Mexico where we picked up fuel and had lunch in the little airport cafeteria which was serving machaca de pescado y agua de jamaica. With corn tortillas, of course. It was quite tasty. We cleared customs and immigration and then flew on down to the airstrip at Chamela. In total it was 7 hours of flying to get all the way down there. Fortunately we arrived with plenty of daylight because the runway is a bit interesting.

The airstrip at Chamela is a clearing in the jungle one kilometer long. When we arrived nobody else had landed there in months and it was somewhat overgrown with weeds. There are hills on the eastern end you have to be careful of. Some swamp and then the ocean is on the western end. The field is mostly covered in grass and weeds with hard packed clay underneath. Alex's place is just up a hill from the airstrip and you can see the whole strip from there. We did a fly-by of the house to let them know we were there and to send a car down for us. This is standard procedure for arriving at Chamela. Unfortunately it was mosquito season. Once on the ground I had to unload the plane and get into the car quick because the mosquitos are very hungry. I was bitten many times before I could even get the repellant on. Next time I will put it on at altitude before landing!

During our stay we hiked, swam in the pool, played games, ate lots of great food, and chatted. In total there were around 15 of Alex's friends there for the week so there was always something going on. I made one photo taking flight and two flights to Puerto Vallarta. Once to stay at Guillermo's (Memo's) place and visit for a day and once to ferry people back and forth from the main international airport in Puerto Vallarta to the villa.

When it was finally time to depart Alex and I loaded up and headed north with the intention of making it to Los Mochis but once we had made it as far as Culiacan we were confronted with thunderstorms. We landed in Culiacan to get better weather info, come up with a plan, have lunch, and pick up fuel. We also cleared customs out of the country. Looking at the weather radar on the ground there were thunderstorms to the north and south now but nothing to the west out over the Sea of Cortez. So I decided that we would fly west over the open water to Loreto in the Baja peninsula. This was a distance of 163 statue miles or an hours flight. It worked out quite well but added significantly to our return flight. In total it was 9 flight hours to get back home. We landed at Brown Field to clear customs back into the US and then flew on to Montgomery to put the plane to bed.

During that week I logged 22 hours of flying time and around 3500 statute miles, the longest and farthest I have ever flown!

Lots of photos from the trip can be found here.

And some short video clips are here.

It has been far too long since I updated my blog and much has happened. I had planned to accomplish many things before leaving on my great adventure in Vietnam. Unfortunately my departure date was moved up and I was not able to accomplish very many of them. One of these things was learn to fly a seaplane. Having nearly 800 hours of flight time now, I have flown many different kinds of small planes. But never a plane on floats.

The idea to fly seaplanes came to me when I was driving down Kearny Villa Road right next to Montgomery Field on my way to a flight and passed by my primary flight training school Pacific Wings. Parked out beside the building was a 1994 Maule MT-7-235 on amphibious floats. Hanging from the plane was a banner advertising seaplane lessons from Socal Seaplanes. I went inside Pacific Wings and was put in touch with Brian Humphries of Socal Seaplanes. We set up an appointment for our first flight.

I met Brian at Pacific Wings where the plane was parked. We went over some basic preflight items which is just like any other plane. Check flight controls, check oil, check fuel, look for any parking damage, etc. Only additional items are to lower, test, and raise the water rudders to make sure they work properly, inspect all of the water rudder rigging and pontoon struts for corrosion or damage, and occasionally pump any accumulated water out of the floats. We manually turned the plane around on the ground and got it pointed towards the taxiway and climbed in. This thing sits WAY up off the ground compared to what I am used to. You climb up onto the floats and them climb a little ladder made of the float struts from the deck of the floats into the cockpit. Your butt is probably a good 8 feet off the ground when sitting in the cockpit. More than twice as high as I am accustomed to. Starting the engine is just like any other fuel injected lycoming. One oddity of this plane is that it has a vernier throttle like a Bonanza. I am still undecided on whether I prefer vernier or standard push-pull throttle. It took quite a bit of throttle to get the plane rolling initially because the castoring nosewheels were at 90 degrees from where we spun it around by hand just as if you turned a tailwheel airplane around by the tail and then jumped right in. But once it was rolling it taxi's just like any other airplane although the site picture is different from being so high up. This plane is heavy with the pontoons so it does have some inertia. But steering was simple.

Once we arrived at the end of the runway we did the usual preflight checks of engine runup, control surface check, instrument checks, etc. Then I called for clearance and moved into position. Brian had warned me that it can take some back pressure to make the nose come off and not to overcontrol it or cause the plane to porpoise when we rotated and he was right, it is a little more touchy than a non-float plane. Once the nose comes up you just have to release a little back pressure and it is fine. Once safely off the ground we put the landing gear lever in the up position and the hydraulic pumps go to work raising all four wheels. Once in the air the plane does feel heavy and you can sense the change in handling all of that additional side area and drag caused by the pontoons. You really need to use the rudder to make coordinated turns in this airplane and hold lots of right rudder on climbout in order to keep the plane coordinated and passengers comfortable.

We made a slight left turn after departing Montgomery and headed for Lindbergh's class Bravo airspace. I called up Lindbergh tower, got a clearance to enter and make the taxiway Delta transition over Lindberg. This means we fly from north to south straight over taxiway delta which crosses perpindicular to their single east-west runway. If I recall correctly we may have been at 3000 feet. This takes us right past downtown where we got an excellent up-close look at all of the big buildings and a view down into the new "Petco Park" ballpark. Soon we were past downtown and over the bay. We flew to the south end of the bay where there was a boat channel used to get from the marina to the sea marked by pylons. This was to be our runway. I made an approach 500' up and off to one side of the landing area to look for boats, surfers, or debris which could harm our pontoons and found that the are was clear. I then brought us around flying a standard pattern for a normal water landing.

Since this airplane is an amphibious airplane you have a little more to deal with than your standard complex airplane in that there are three states the landing gear can be in: Up for cruise, up for water landing, down for landing on land. The landing gear handle is accompanied by a pair of lights: One green and one blue. When the gear is up the blue light is illuminated and when it is down the greet light is illuminated. To remind ourselves of what the appropriate position for the level and landing gear to be in we say "Green light, green grass" when landing on the ground. Or we say "Blue light, blue water" when landing on the water.

Landing a seaplane on the water is actually pretty easy. When landing on land you have to time it just right so the wheels touch down smoothly but because the water has small waves and ripples it just seems to have a lot more "give" so that as soon as the pontoons touch the water it slows the plane and it just settles down very easily. We fly a normal pattern and approach to landing just as if we were going to land on concrete. Landing the seaplane on the runway is a bit of a challenge because I am sitting up so much higher than I am accustomed to which makes judging the height above runway more difficult. But once on the ground it handles very much like any other airplane.

Glassy water landings are more interesting. When there is no wind and no ripples on the surface of the water to give you some way of estimating your height you must be very careful not to crash into the surface of the water with a high speed or high descent rate. Glassy water landings are basically an instrument approach. You fly down to within a couple hundred feet of the surface using the altimeter and then descend using the vsi at around 200 feet per minute at around 75kts until you fly it onto the water.

Taxiing the airplane on the water is the most difficult part of operating a seaplane in my humble opinion. Especially if there is any sort of wind. After touchdown you lower the water rudders into the water to give the plane some directional control. Now we are essentially a boat, perhaps even a sailboat with all of the exposed side area an airplane has, and all of the boating laws apply. If there is any wind the airplane naturally wants to turn into the direction of the wind because of the pressure of the wind pushing on the airplanes rudder. Turning downwind can be very difficult or even impossible, especially if you are going slow. High speed water taxiing turned out to be difficult also and I still have not mastered it. You have to be careful not to let a pontoon dig in and flip the plane.

Takeoffs are pretty much like land takeoffs. Get pointed down the runway, raise the water rudders, visually clear the area, the go full throttle and the airplane accelerates until it is ready to lift off.

Brian turned out to be a pretty nice guy and very cool instructor. I will be sure to post more details of my seaplane flights in the future.