Hour 59

Hour 59 saw me back in 4637G, Above All's trusty four-seater C172.  I had done a portion of my flight training in 37G, but opted to take my check ride in 17L meaning that I hadn't flown it in some time.  There might be a bit of a difference in stall-performance or short-field landings, but straight-and-level flight isn't really too different and I had quite a bit of time in 37G so I wasn't at all worried about making the trip with pax onboard.

37G (Photo: Oura)

The destination: Oceano Airport (L52) in Pismo Beach.  Pismo has a small county airport with which I am rather familiar. My second cross-country was there (with Vadim: http://mrpintosadventures.blogspot.com/2012/08/fun-in-and-out-of-sun.html).  It was also my first solo cross-country flight.

The pax (passengers): Melch and Oura.  Melch is blossoming into her roll as co-pilot ("here,

hold this iPad").  Oura is a friend of ours who hadn't been up in a small plane before but was excited for the opportunity.

We had planned to go to either Santa Monica or Pismo, but the weather down south was hazy and yucky, so we chose to go north to Pismo.  We ended up getting to the airport about 45 minutes late due to the Redskins game going into overtime and me waiting for the haze to clear up at SBA to the point where I could legally take off VFR.

Oura took a shot of the pilot/co-pilot duo

The flight was pretty un-eventful.  I remembered how much more right-rudder the more powerful C172 requires on climb-out, and how much faster it can sink when all 40 degrees of flaps are used (17L has only 30 degrees available).  The latter lesson resulted in a bit of a bump on the landing in Pismo, but nothing that would stress the passengers or the airframe in any way.  The SBA departure was the first time I'd ever taken off on 25 from the end - I usually opted to use the intersection departure from taxiway M instead.  It was neat seeing all 6,000+ feet of runway stretching out ahead of me.

Lake Cachuma (photo: Oura)

Due to our late start and sluggish pre-flight, we didn't have a ton of time to enjoy Pismo once we got there.  We wanted to see the pre-sunset from the air over Gaviota rather than from the ground in Pismo, and we had to have the plane back by 5pm.

So we walked around the airport for a bit, stretched our legs, went to the bathroom, and then hopped back into the plane for SBA.  We used the ocean-facing runway 29 for both our landing and our take-off.  Like SBA, it was nice to take off over the ocean before turning for a left crosswind departure down the coast.

We were getting kind of close to sunset and I needed to have the plane back, so we took the fastest route to SBA.  Even so, I had a little time to teach Melch a bit about the GPS unit in 37G.  17L has no GPS, so the Garmin unit was new to her.  She's also learning a little bit about Foreflight, the iPad app that I use for route planning.  It's great not having to handle the flying and the paperwork at the same time!

The landing at SBA was pretty smooth on trusty old 15R.  After a quick taxi and some amusingly terrible attempts at pushing the plane back into its space, we packed up, paid our tab, and headed home for eats and some Sunday Night Football.

It was a great day that began with the Redskins winning an exciting game against the Ravens, continued through my first cross-country as a PPL, and ended with good food, beer and football.  What more could you ask for?

 Here are some sunset shots from Oura and a video of the adventure: