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…

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 ?