Month: May 2008

New Taxi Instructions

The new FAA instruction to give full and complete taxi instructions was in full effect this evening at Montgomery Field;

Taxi to 28L via Juliet, Hotel and Bravo

instead of the usual

Taxi to 28L

In 6 years of flying I’m not sure I’d ever noticed that the tiny taxiway to 28L was called Bravo. A little more chatter on the radio but I am sure the safety implications are worth it.

Pondering Some Training

I’ve been thinking recently about whether to finish my Commercial rating or not. I have a year left on my written test so I have time to make up my mind but it feels like I should either get it done now, or abandon it for good. Ultimately the COM rating is pointless, I don’t plan on becoming a paid-to-fly pilot, part-time CFI would be nice but I doubt very much I’d ever get around to it. Now, chicks possibly dig it, but my wife wouldn’t like that much. So I wonder if it’s worth the money?

Perhaps the money would be better spent on a checkout in one of the club’s G1000-equipped 172s? The future of aviation is all-glass, we’ll increasingly see more of these kind of planes in the club so this would be something I’d probably use. Except that the rentals are crazy – $143 for the G1000 C172 compared to say $100 for the steam gauge version. Since I don’t have unlimited dollars for flying I’d rather fly 3 hs for my $300 than just 2, but do so in style. So maybe this would be a worthless checkout, too, if I would never fly the G1000. And, I bet you have to work hard to stay current in it, too.

Another option would be to go do a sea plane rating. Totally pointless but probably a lot of fun for a weekend.

Or I could just save my money for a decent cross country trip or, a tank of gas for my car?

Instrument Current Again

My 6 months lapsed at the end of April but a trip home to England got in the way of regaining my currency before today. I met my CFI at the Frasca 142 and 1.9 hours of ground trainer time later, I am current again for another 6 months.

  • MYF to the Oceanside VOR, a few turns around the hold before executing the VOR approach. Went pretty well except that simulator would not give us the Julian VOR for identifying one of the intersections en route.
  • Missed approach to Vista intersection, followed by the ILS at Carlsbad.
  • Missed approach and around to the localiser at Gillespie Field. Unfortunately we need Julian VOR to identify the timing point for the missed approach so to get around that my CFI worked out a radial from Poggy that kinda worked for us.
  • Missed approach, VOR approach into Brown Field. Not sure what went wrong but although the CFI said I was close to intercepting the radial the needle never came in and so we did an early missed approach and he brought me back around for another try. This one went much better.
  • Missed approach, LOC into Montgomery Field. It’s a fun one with many step downs and of course, they occur just as you get the plane back into level flight, makes for a lot of work.
  • Another missed approach and back around for the ILS to the usual awful landing (I don’t know why he always makes me land the thing).

So, current again until December 1st 2008.