Since I have some time-off for the next few weeks before staring my new exiting job, I took advantage of today’s great weather to spend some time flying around, just for the heck of flying. I took off KEDU (UC Davis airport called University airport) using runway 17 then I made a 90 right-turn to the west and climb to 4500ft.

The climb to cruising altitude was really smooth, thanks to the temperature inversion. However the downside of a temperature inversion is bad to poor visibility of such air masses. After few minutes I was overflying Winters and decided to head north for a little while. No other aircrafts were around me and the radio was quiet. Perfect!

After some time, I headed back to Davis and started my descent while turning over Winters. I overflew KEDU at 1600ft then descended a bit to 1400ft to stay underneath SMF airspace. After few moments of flying south Davis, I overflew the city to take some photos of downtown Davis. Not easy to fly with one hand and take pictures with the other.

As usual I had a great time. I can’t get enough of that!

I finally put together a quickly made movie about some of my flights in California. As you may know by now, is that I love flying. But I love even more sharing it with friends. This video is all about the great times I had so far with my friends, flying around just for the heck of flying or for sightseeing from the sky. California is awesome (obviously), but it is even better from high above…

Heavy C-172…

A storm is upon us, clouds at 500 ft / overcast at 4000 ft and falling, visibility <3 miles, humidity at 99%, pouring rain, freezing level quit low. This sucky IFR weather should last until Monday…Damn! I was expecting having a great time this weekend with either N4624D or N4870G, but Mother Nature decided otherwise. Both 24D and 70G are old C-172 ladies but they are well maintained and still kicking. Although it is a lot of fun to fly them, it is probably better to stay on the ground and wait for the storm to pass. The good thing is that they will get a great bath and finally get clean.

It was this last sunday (11/23/08), a nice afternoon for a sweet flight to the San-Francisco bay with Miriam and Frank. Masayo was there to take great shots of the take-off.

11/23/08 C-172 N711PG Take off runway 34

California is awesome for many things. Among them, San-Francisco, the bay area, Marin County, the Pacific ocean offer great scenic views especially from the sky. California is also great for the weather which make flying a real pleasure around here. So I flew a couple of Cessna 172 skyhawk (N4624D and N411PG) over the bay area for a stunning and premium sight of San-Francisco, the Golden-Gate Bridge and Sausalito and of course the shinning pacific ocean. Flying from Davis airport (KEDU) is pretty straitforward. In order to avoid Travis AFB airspace, I flight straight over Napa airport at 4500ft and stay above the class Delta airspace, then turn south west and track the Sausalito VOR. When reaching the end of the Napa class Delta airspace, I descent to 2500ft to sneak underneath the SFO airport class Bravo airspace. I translate altitude loss into extra speed which bring the C-172 over Sausalito real fast. Then the view is daunting. I turn south over Marin County and stay north of the Golden-Gate Bridge so air-traffic controllers don’t freak out too much. In this area, the airspace is crowed with aircrafts flying pretty much everywhere at the same altitude (we all avoid SFO class B airspace). Then it’s time to head back to Davis unfortunately. At the Richmond bridge I pull up and climb to 5500ft to clear both Napa airspace and the mountains. Around Vacaville, I start a quick descent which bring extra speed and cooling to the engine. After a quick descent at 115kt, I slow down to 90kt for a left downwind entry at Davis. Flaps 10 and 80kt abeam the numbers; flaps 20 and 70 kt in base; flaps 30 and 65 Kt in final then 60kt on short final. Flare and gentle touchdown. It’s done already ? Maybe I should taxi back to runway 16 for some more fun don’t you think ?