As best I could calculate, we had enough fuel to make our destination, but no longer had the required 45 minute reserve for a nighttime flight. And it was "nighttime" as it gets: 10:30pm on a moonless Saturday evening.
I informed our passengers in the cabin and and LA Center on the radio that we'd be making our second diversion of the day and started my descent into Camarillo.
Knowing that we'd be flying home in the dark from LA on Saturday, I'd reserved a plane on Friday night so that I could run the pattern solo and perform my three required full-stop landings to be current in the FAA's eyes for carrying passengers at night.
I found the plane I'd reserved with no oil filler cap and a quart low. Well, the quart was still there - it was just all over the engine bay. The cap must have come off in flight, spraying oil all over everything. I took a different plane - good old 4637G and got in my landings.
Once I finally got airborne, life was great. I could see Harder stadium lit up to the south...
Gaucho Soccer!
...and the Goleta drive in playing a movie on the approach end of 25 (not pictured - I don't text while driving and I don't take photos while landing).
The ACTUAL mission on Saturday was to take my co-workers Danny and Justin down to Santa Monica airport. We'd take a cab to Venice Beach and check out Danny's friend's art and the sunset, then return home in the evening.
I'd wanted the 182 but it was unavailable, so I elected to take 7593X - the only plane that Above All had free. There were some concerns with that. First: a 172 can't take four adult passengers with full fuel. I ran the fuel requirements and the weight-and-balance and it'd be close but we could make it.
Second: I have no manner of luck with 7593X. In my previous outings with her, I had canceled for clouds, canceled for wind, had a comm issue, had a transponder failure, and had the above-listed oil cap go missing. Flying is enough of an adventure all on its own without the additions that 93X always seems to bring.
Even so, 7593X was the craft available, so 7593X was the craft we took. Forecasts were good for the 24 hours leading up to the flight, though the TAF (Terminal Aerodrome Forecast) did post a scare when on Saturday morning it called for low IFR at 8pm. By the time of the flight though the forecast was for clear air through 6am and things looked good on the ground as well. Even so, I informed our passengers that there was (and really always is) a chance that we might not be able to make SBA due to clouds and might have to fly to Santa Ynez, Camarillo, or even stay the night in LA.
Weather at take-off was superb. A little warm but not too bad, blue skies and a pretty coast. I handed the plane over to Melch just as we were exiting SBA airspace and let her fly the leg past Oxnard and Mugu and into Malibu.
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| Melch gettin' her copilot on |
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| Near Malibu |
As I took the controls from Melch and prepared to get weather and tower frequencies for VNY, the controller came back and said that they were inspecting the runways but that SMO should be open soon if we wanted to wait.
That sounded much better than being stuck in Van Nuys, so I opted to continue. We killed time by flying out over the Hollywood sign so that our passengers could snap a few quick pics. By the time we'd wrapped that circuit up and started returning to the coast, the controller let us know that it would be at least 20 more minutes but that she couldn't guarantee even that.
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| Look to my left and I see the Hollywood sign |
We had fuel for that with some to spare, but she didn't sound too convincing and we weren't packing a HUGE reserve, so I opted to divert after all. I elected to go for TOA: Zamperini Field in Torrance. Torrance was closer to Venice Beach than Van Nuys and given that we'd already made it into downtown LA it was just about as close by air.
There was however one thing between us and TOA. A little airport called LAX. LAX's airspace covers large portions of LA, but there are various pathways around, under and through it that a small craft such as mine can take in transit.
I chose to take the SFRA (Special Flight Rules Area) route. You can think of it as a small "tube" cut out of the middle of LAX airspace where you're not in the class B airspace at all and don't even have to talk to LAX tower.
I'd flown the SFRA once before, but with an instructor and it was a long time ago. I hadn't planned on taking it on this day and I hadn't really briefed the route. I had Melch pull up the instructions on the iPad and read them off to me while I set the radio, transponder and VOR equipment.
1201 in the transponder, CTAF in the radio, 132 degree radial off of the SMO VOR, we cruised at 3500 feet directly above all 4 LAX runways, watching the jumbo jets land and take off below us.
Once out of the SFRA, I got on the line with Torrance tower and they cleared me for 29L. Parallel traffic was a banner plane landing, so we got to see him drop his banner and then land. Pretty neat.
So there we were (see, it's a cliché!), on the ground at Torrance. We needed gas and transport to Venice Beach. I was pretty happy to be on the ground as the flight was a bit stressful.
Even a simple diversion is a bit stressful. When landing at an airport, you want to know how long the runway is, what the field elevation is, what the pattern altitude is, what the frequencies are for approach, tower, weather and ground, what obstacles or other concerns there might be, etc.
Figuring that stuff out on the ground with a chart or a computer is easy. Figuring it out while flying is a bit more taxing. Sometimes you'll have a diversion airport in mind, but I actually had to scope out two diversions through the course of this flight - VNY and TOA.
The SFRA route added some more stuff to look up and then there was the matter of tight fuel reserves. 7593X continued to be my lucky plane! So yeah, I was happy to be on the ground.
We called around for rental cars but all the places were closed. We checked and a cab would be about 30-45 minutes and ~$50-100 each way. TOA had a curfew of 10pm and we still needed gas. That wouldn't leave a lot of time to enjoy Venice Beach.
So we decided to change plans and head out to Redondo. Danny had always been interested in seeing it and we figured we could find some good eats. So into the cab we got and off to the beach we went. Joe's Crab Shack was happy to have us and a bunch of yummy grease and salt later, I was sitting outside talking with a flight briefer about the weather for the night flight back.
Despite the offshore clouds that were making me nervous, the weather was reported to be great along our route and was predicted to remain that way throughout the proposed time of the flight. I filed a flight plan (always a good idea, especially at night), thanked the briefer and told my passengers that we were good to go provided that I find someplace to purchase a caffeinated beverage.
We walked across the street and I bought a Dr. Pepper in a hotel lobby and we hailed a cab back to the airport.
Pre-flight was a bit slower than usual due to dark, but we were in the air over Torrance well before the noise abatement curfew.
We were full of people and as much gas as I computed that we could get airborne with, so our climb rate sucked. The SFRA back was at 4500 feet and it's a pretty hard requirement. I couldn't start heading west until I'd climbed to that altitude. There was no way we'd make it in time, so I circled the city of Torrance while climbing. Four times. On the fourth we were close enough that I figured we'd make 4500 by the time we got to the base of the SFRA route, so we turned for home.
We picked up LA center on the other side of the SFRA and got flight following to SBA. The slow climbout combined with unfavorable winds on the return flight left me unhappy with our fuel situation. SBA was reporting clear, but if we got out there and found it fogged in we would have very little fuel to attempt a flight over the Santa Ynez mountains and into the valley for a diversion to Santa Ynez airport.
So to Camarillo we went. They have a 24/7 fuel depot and it was a cool opportunity to demonstrate pilot-operated lighting. Many airports don't leave the lights on at night - you turn them on by clicking your mic either 5 or 7 times on a specified frequency. This saves energy and impresses passengers. 7 clicks and the whole airport lights up like a christmas tree - runways, taxiways, glide slope indicators, everything. Pretty neat.
We landed, used the facilities (that Dr. Pepper...), picked up some fuel, updated our flight plan, and got back in the air for SBA. By the time we got there SBA's tower was closed as well, so it was just me and two SkyWest pilots chatting on the communal frequency. I followed them both in and we called it a day.
As adventures go, this was a good one. My skills as a pilot were tested in so many ways: pre-flight decision making, weight-and-balance, endurance calculations, in-flight diversions, in-flight endurance calculations, night flight, traveling to new airports. Heck - it was the first time I'd even refueled at another airport and I did it twice in one day!
All told, I feel that I fared well. In retrospect it does seem like I might have been doing too many things at once, but at every decision point I believe that I applied my training properly and erred on the side of caution and safety.
I'm now much more confident about long cross country flights, night flights and I'm cautiously optimistic about my aeronautical decision making. Speaking of decision-making, I think I might decide to avoid future long-distance flights with four people in a 172. It obviously can be made to work, but the limits it imposes are pretty significant. Never say never though - 7593X and I have been through a lot together - how could I say 'no' to another adventure?
More pictures can be found on Flickr.
Once out of the SFRA, I got on the line with Torrance tower and they cleared me for 29L. Parallel traffic was a banner plane landing, so we got to see him drop his banner and then land. Pretty neat.
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| First time at Zamperini Field |
Even a simple diversion is a bit stressful. When landing at an airport, you want to know how long the runway is, what the field elevation is, what the pattern altitude is, what the frequencies are for approach, tower, weather and ground, what obstacles or other concerns there might be, etc.
Figuring that stuff out on the ground with a chart or a computer is easy. Figuring it out while flying is a bit more taxing. Sometimes you'll have a diversion airport in mind, but I actually had to scope out two diversions through the course of this flight - VNY and TOA.
The SFRA route added some more stuff to look up and then there was the matter of tight fuel reserves. 7593X continued to be my lucky plane! So yeah, I was happy to be on the ground.
We called around for rental cars but all the places were closed. We checked and a cab would be about 30-45 minutes and ~$50-100 each way. TOA had a curfew of 10pm and we still needed gas. That wouldn't leave a lot of time to enjoy Venice Beach.
So we decided to change plans and head out to Redondo. Danny had always been interested in seeing it and we figured we could find some good eats. So into the cab we got and off to the beach we went. Joe's Crab Shack was happy to have us and a bunch of yummy grease and salt later, I was sitting outside talking with a flight briefer about the weather for the night flight back.
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| Redondo Beach Marina |
We walked across the street and I bought a Dr. Pepper in a hotel lobby and we hailed a cab back to the airport.
Pre-flight was a bit slower than usual due to dark, but we were in the air over Torrance well before the noise abatement curfew.
We were full of people and as much gas as I computed that we could get airborne with, so our climb rate sucked. The SFRA back was at 4500 feet and it's a pretty hard requirement. I couldn't start heading west until I'd climbed to that altitude. There was no way we'd make it in time, so I circled the city of Torrance while climbing. Four times. On the fourth we were close enough that I figured we'd make 4500 by the time we got to the base of the SFRA route, so we turned for home.
We picked up LA center on the other side of the SFRA and got flight following to SBA. The slow climbout combined with unfavorable winds on the return flight left me unhappy with our fuel situation. SBA was reporting clear, but if we got out there and found it fogged in we would have very little fuel to attempt a flight over the Santa Ynez mountains and into the valley for a diversion to Santa Ynez airport.
So to Camarillo we went. They have a 24/7 fuel depot and it was a cool opportunity to demonstrate pilot-operated lighting. Many airports don't leave the lights on at night - you turn them on by clicking your mic either 5 or 7 times on a specified frequency. This saves energy and impresses passengers. 7 clicks and the whole airport lights up like a christmas tree - runways, taxiways, glide slope indicators, everything. Pretty neat.
We landed, used the facilities (that Dr. Pepper...), picked up some fuel, updated our flight plan, and got back in the air for SBA. By the time we got there SBA's tower was closed as well, so it was just me and two SkyWest pilots chatting on the communal frequency. I followed them both in and we called it a day.
As adventures go, this was a good one. My skills as a pilot were tested in so many ways: pre-flight decision making, weight-and-balance, endurance calculations, in-flight diversions, in-flight endurance calculations, night flight, traveling to new airports. Heck - it was the first time I'd even refueled at another airport and I did it twice in one day!
All told, I feel that I fared well. In retrospect it does seem like I might have been doing too many things at once, but at every decision point I believe that I applied my training properly and erred on the side of caution and safety.
I'm now much more confident about long cross country flights, night flights and I'm cautiously optimistic about my aeronautical decision making. Speaking of decision-making, I think I might decide to avoid future long-distance flights with four people in a 172. It obviously can be made to work, but the limits it imposes are pretty significant. Never say never though - 7593X and I have been through a lot together - how could I say 'no' to another adventure?
More pictures can be found on Flickr.
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