Evening party in Santa Barbara

As private pilots, we always welcome the opportunity to make flying more than just a hobby. Today, our opportunity came in the form of a "business" trip to Santa Barbara. A friend of ours decided to throw an engagement party on a Friday evening, and were it not for the fact that we have an airplane at our disposal, we would have to take most of the afternoon off work just to make it, considering the usually horrendous L.A. traffic from El Segundo to Thousand Oaks.

We made it a point to work until almost 5pm just to see if we could make it to the party by 7:30. After a quick preflight, we took to the skies above the gridlocked freeways. We had to spend an extra 5 minutes to climb an extra 2,000 ft because we were told at the last minute that the Mini Route was unavailable due to fog. Once cleared of LAX, we made good speed direct to Santa Barbara. The GPS cruise ground speed was shown to be a steady 115 mph all the way, and we made it to the airport with slightly over an hour of air time. The party took place in a UCSB graduate student housing complex near the campus so the airport couldn't be situated in a more convenient location.

Our flight route from Hawthorne to Santa Barbara

The thing about being a VFR-only pilot is that we run on the weather's schedule, not ours. The same could be said about IFR flying too, but the latter is more affected by icing than the marine layer, which is the prevalent kind of weather here in SoCal. We made it to the party in good time, but we knew that it didn't necessarily mean we would make it back that same night, particularly when coastal fog is involved.

The party took place outdoors and we kept an eagle eye towards the clear evening sky. Luckily, the fog did not arrive early that night and we made it to Signature Flight Support before their 10pm closing. The nighttime departure via Runway 15R was a little exhilarating as we took off straight into total darkness, with no horizon reference whatsoever in our periphery. On approach over LAX the ATC gave us clearance over LAX Class B direct to Shoreline Route, which proved to be a challenging exercise because we weren't expecting to see Santa Monica covered in fog, and didn't realize the situation until we were almost directly over it. Once we cleared south of LAX we were presented with a cloud navigation puzzle before we were allowed to land back at Hawthorne amidst patchy fog. It was a great interesting flight and we all got home before midnight.

First Passenger Flight

John and Emmy volunteered themselves to be my first non-pilot passengers in 7 years! After spending a good deal of time explaining the various parts of the airplane and taking pictures, we took off from Hawthorne in "standard" summer conditions, with moderate smog and a 10-15 mph sea breeze plus light thermal turbulence as we headed inland. I had an ice hockey league game to make later that afternoon, so instead of doing a standard "under and over LASFR" tour around the LAX Class B Surface-10,000'MSL airspace, we went over to Downtown, South Pasadena, and Alhambra instead.

View of L.A. Downtown in smog:

Biennial Flight Review

Today I had my BFR done out of Long Beach. Getting there proved quite a challenge as LGB is a complicated maze of intersecting runways and taxiways. It was confusing even with a printed airport diagram in the cockpit. We had to say stuff like, "taxi to Long Beach Flying Club via Kilo, Bravo, and Foxtrot, will hold short of Runway Three Zero" and "request taxi to Two Five Left at Delta via Foxtrot with Charlie." It was pure alphabet soup.

The flight portion proved quite useful as well as scenic, as I got to fly the LA Special Flight Rules corridor above LAX for the first time, yielding some fantastic views of numerous sailboats dotting the ocean just off of Marina del Rey, did some air work over the ultra-blue Pacific just southwest of Long Beach Harbor, low overflight over Los Alamito's airspace and Knott's Berry Farm, before a full stop landing at Fullerton.

Interestingly, Fullerton provided some challenging gusts and crosswinds, giving me some additional insights on how our plane's nose gear steering works. It turns out, the landing gear steering spring is not necessarily tuned to give the same yawing moment as the rudder for the same rudder pedal travel. As a result, in a crosswind landing, there could be a sudden increase in yawing moment when the nose gear touches down, and a similar decrease when the nose lifts off the ground. The result could be quite alarming if the nose gear chatters between these two modes. I have developed a technique to minimize this chattering for both takeoff and landing.