Windows on the Future

Air Mike Flight #65     

One of California's epic sights out the window of the plane:

Mt. Shasta, standing 14,179 ft tall.

One of the big benefits of flying airplanes is the fact that they can get you somewhere a lot quicker than cars can. In fact the main reason we pilots fly, apart from the pure fun of being up in the air, is to get something or someone somewhere. Up until recently, the fastest I could get anywhere in a plane was at the impressive speed of 110 knots, or 125 mph. That could cut the usual time it takes to travel by car in half. With my recent training in the C182TR, I now have the ability to clip along at 145 knots—165 mph. Which means its time to start going places!

Monterey was a great flight to whet my appetite for extending my forays afield. But that was with an instructor on board. My first flight as sole PIC (pilot in command) came a couple weeks after getting signed off in the new plane. Dr. Nedley, the president of Weimar Center, where I go to school, was needing a ride to Mt. Shasta, California. Himself a private pilot, he much preferred the idea of flying an hour and a half up to this mountain town rather than ride in a car for four hours. I, of course, jumped at the chance to be the pilot to fly him there. And of course, the busy college student that I am, I am constantly trying to find a way out of studying.

David catches a nap in the backseat of the 182.

 We departed Auburn in the early afternoon right at max gross weight—with books to sell and David Daum, a Nedley Clinic employee to help sell them, in the backseat. It didn’t take long for David to fall asleep as we set up for cruise to Shasta. The scenery of the Northern Sacramento valley, flanked by the Eastern Sierra foothills slowly gave way to more rugged terrain as we approached the top end of California. Straight in front, a white-capped mountain grew in size as we approached the volcano called Mt. Shasta.

Our destination was a small airstrip just outside of the town of Mt. Shasta: Dunsmuir-Mott Field. This would be the shortest runway yet for me, at 2700 feet. But this is the kind of flying that 182s are made for.

Wearing the Flyer's Grin. Both Dr. Nedley and I are private

pilots, and David recently soloed. 

The approach to the field was quite visually impressive, to say the least. Zipping over the last ridge, the small airport came in sight, situated on the east side of a valley, with the south end of its runway overlooking a dropoff. Still needing to lose quite a bit of altitude, I elected to fly up the valley, turn around and land on runway 14. With a route to lower terrain, a go-around from that direction looked a bit more forgiving if I didn’t like my approach.

So that’s what I set up for, forgetting to glance downward at the wind sock as we passed over the field. Turns out, it’s a good thing I picked that direction, as the wind was a good 10 knots and blowing straight down runway 14. Final approach was flown just above 60 knots with full flaps, and keen as I was on making a good short-field landing, I think I actually touched down on the displaced threshold. At least it was smooth pavement. Needless to say, it was a good feeling to have made a successful flight into this beautiful, somewhat more challenging mountain strip.

On the ground at Dunsmuir-Mott 0O6, with a brisk afternoon

breeze.

The local Adventist pastor came to pick up my passengers and I got ready to head down to Redding. I was not keen on navigating those mountains under a moonless, pitch-black sky for the return trip, so the plan was for Dr. Nedley and David to be dropped off at Redding after the seminar was done in the evening. The flight back to Auburn from Redding would be mainly over flatlands and foothills.

I got the plane started, waved at the couple who had been surprised to see an airplane at this small field when they showed up for a picnic, and then headed out to the runway. What I was thought was flaps 20 for short-field takeoff actually turned out to be only flaps 10, but with just me in the plane I probably didn’t need flaps at all. The plane was in the sky practically before you could "flaps 10" ten times.

I was on the way back to Redding when I realized I hadn't

yet taken a picture of Mt. Shasta. So I turned around to get

some shots.

It was my first time being solo in that plane. With over 200 hours of flight time, barely one sixth has been by myself. I like to fly with people. But I’ll admit, being up over that incredible scenery, with just me and that plane, was a pretty neat feeling.

The joy of flying was temporarily suspended once I arrived at Redding. I had brought along my A&P textbook and I needed to get at least some studying done. So I sat down in the pilot’s lounge and gave myself a headache over the next few hours, reading the miniscule descriptions in the chapter on bones. At least the chairs were comfortable.

This pilot's lounge took a little customizing - I had to turn off

the football game on the TV, and plug in the lamp.

It was dark when my crew arrived. This was one reason I had made sure to get night current again when I was getting checked out in the plane. Flight time was just about an hour back to Auburn. During the trip back I got a chance to hear about the success of the afternoon’s seminar.

“There were several people who had questions about the Sabbath after I mentioned the body’s circaseptan rhythm,” Dr. Nedley told me over the intercom. “One person was talking with a church member afterward and when the member offered to give Bible studies on the topic, they accepted.” It was exciting to hear. Through his seminar, people had once again been impressed by the way that science points back to the Bible.

“That’s really the whole point of coming out and doing this, isn’t it!” I remarked. He agreed. And the neat thing was that I got to be part of it. With the plane. As a pilot. You see, this is just a taste of what the years to come have in store. Flying to places to give people the opportunity to know God and His plan for their lives is what I'm going to be doing for a living. In reality, this could have very well been my first mission as a missionary pilot. And by God’s grace, it by far won’t be the last!

More Plane, More Power

The new beast. Photo credit: Cami Martin

Time to break the six-month stretch of silence. With the roar of an airplane engine perhaps? I suppose one reason for the lack of fresh content on here would be the fact I didn’t do a whole lot of flying during the summer. Instead, I was busy working as a student literature evangelist, selling Christian books door-to-door to pay for school. That was a success, as well as serious character building work. Now I’m back at Weimar College and though it’s hard to believe, it’s my last year of college—for now. I’ll be graduating in the spring and then who knows what’s next? I guess we’ll see…

Meanwhile, what’s been happening recently has been quite the ride. I had just gotten back to flying, building time for my commercial ticket hour by hour in the 150 and 172 when a new opportunity presented itself. I’ll write more on that later, but what I will say now is that I found out it’s time to start moving up again in the aviation world. Enough toodling along in fixed-gear, fixed-pitch planes. Time to get my complex and high performance endorsements!

The timing couldn’t have been better. A week off from school was coming up, so I seized the chance to knock out the endorsements and aircraft checkout in one go. For the plane I was going to start flying—a turbocharged, retractable gear Cessna 182—I was going to need 10 hours of dual instruction in order to be able to rent it solo. So I scheduled in my lessons and got down to learning how to fly the next biggest sibling in the Cessna family.

We started off with the basics—slow flight, stalls—and then moved on to the new features. As a boy, part of what makes flying fun for me is the buttons, knobs, and levers. Getting a complex aircraft endorsement meant getting another lever to play with: the landing gear handle. As we began pounding the pattern at Lincoln, the previously-annoying GUMP check finally became relevant for me: Gas—still a pointless item when flying a Cessna that feeds fuel from both tanks simultaneously; Undercarriage—now I have gear to lower, and I’d better remember to do it too!; Mixture—still the same; Prop—yay, another knob I get to move!

I also got to try my hand at using the emergency gear extension pump. If for some reason the wheels don’t come down like they’re supposed to, perhaps because the electrical system gave up the ghost, or the gear motors croaked, a backup system gives at least a chance at getting those wheels down so you have something to land on. Practicing for such an event was quite simple. Pull the landing gear pump circuit breaker, put the gear handle in the “Down” position, slid out a red telescoping rod handle from just in front of the seats, and begin pumping. It didn’t take too many pumps before I could start feeling a lot of resistance in the handle.

“I see wheels appearing,” my instructor was saying as he looked out the side window. The resistance was building as the hydraulic pressure was pressing the gear outward and into its locked position. A moment later a green light flashed on, indicating the wheels were down and locked. Nothing to it. Provided you haven’t had a hydraulic leak.

Getting ready to go to Monterey. Photo credit: Cami Martin

As well as gear systems, I learned how to use such things as a prop control, and cowl flaps. I also learned that full throttle is not the way to go in this turbocharged plane, as overboosting is something that will happen if you push that black knob all the way in. Learning how to fly this new plane was lots of fun, but the most fun I had was on the final lesson.

Since I wanted to get instrument and night current again, and since this airplane is meant to go places, my instructor suggested we fly to Monterey for dinner and fly back at night. I was definitely down for the idea, and to meet one more objective that I had—to fly the plane fully loaded—I recruited a couple passengers to go along.

The flight got off to a less-than-routine start when I noticed oil droplets rapidly puddling up on my windscreen during departure. “Did you put the oil cap back on?” John, my instructor asked. Oh duh. After landing and taking care of the greasy problem, we were on our way to the coast. I was quite excited because from the weather reports, we were going to be getting in a real instrument approach!

We began with a localizer approach to Monterey Regional Airport. The entire approach path was clear, so I had to create my own “clouds” by wearing the Foggles. But when we set up for the localizer at Watsonville, it was clear we were going to get the real thing. Turning onto final, I remembered to take my Foggles off. “That would have been a shame, to have flown the whole approach with those on,” John laughed.

The sight was gorgeous. The late afternoon sun was diffusing its light across a flat sea of fluffy white cloud. Our craft descended to meet the cotton below and I couldn’t help but exclaim at the spectacular scene as we dipped lower and lower into the fleecy pond. It’s times like these that stand apart from the rest of flying, with all its procedures, rules, and regulations. You almost forget about the gauges and the course you’re flying. For a short moment you’re simply lost in the beauty.

A moment later we were “in the soup,” descending along an electronically defined path toward an airport we could not yet see. Several hundred feet more and then the blank outside turned to a dark shade of gray before a landscape materialized. We broke out of the overcast with the runway in sight, right where it was supposed to be. Needless to say, the feeling was exhilarating.

After dinner, during which I remembered that we forgot to cancel IFR upon arrival (oops), it was time to head home. Departure was in the dark under IFR until we climbed out over the cloud deck where we went VFR. Then it was straight back to Auburn for my three night full-stop landings. When we finally pulled in, everyone was pretty much done for the day. 3.4 hours on the Hobbs meter. But I was now instrument current, night current, and most importantly…qualified to fly the C182TR solo!

Stay tuned to see where this new aircraft takes Air Mike!

All Before a Day's Work

Air Mike Flight #54

Early morning over beautiful Lake Tahoe.

Life of a busy Weimar College student: clean the house Friday morning, almost forget to go to Revelation class at 11:20, practice with music group all afternoon, go to vespers, hang out with Erwin till 10:30 after vespers, choir performance at church on Sabbath morning, hang out with friends Sabbath afternoon, try unsuccessfully to study all day Sunday, go to bed at 8:30, wake up super early and…go flying?!

Yup, that’s the way it rolls when you live the double life of a student and a pilot. Sometimes you just fly when the opportunity arises, even if it’s right at the beginning of a busy day of classes and work. At least you can temporarily push all the deadlines and homework to the side and forget about the woes of school life for a couple hours.



A potential candidate for the proposed

Weimar Flight School.

 The reason for the early morning flight was the destination, one of California’s great sights that I’ve recently started taking my friends up to see: world-famous Lake Tahoe. Since flying in the mountains is done in the morning, that translates to sometime around sunrise for a guy like me who has classes at 9:00. Not a problem, as long as the passengers are up for it!

 I met my crew bright and early at 6:00 and we headed for the airport. Brandon, my media intern friend, had his sister Tiffani visiting and he wanted her to see Tahoe from the air before she went home. Ben, a fellow bass in the choir, completed the crew and got to ride shotgun. He’d brought breakfast along and was intending on finishing eating after we got airborne; of course that didn't happen. We took off and soon as we were airborne I gave him control of the airplane. He didn’t get another chance to touch his food—he flew us there and back.





Sister and brother.

Because the flight direction faces east, the rising sun low on the horizon is somewhat annoying as it’s in your eyes for almost the whole flight out to the lake. But once you arrive at the lake and turn south to follow the shoreline, suddenly everything comes into vivid, stunning color. The wide blue expanse of water is so perfectly situated among the snowcapped peaks of the surrounding Sierras. I can only imagine what it must have been like for the first explorer who came across this spectacular mountain sea. No doubt he would have been extremely jealous had he known someday people would be flying over it.





Emerald Bay gets its name from the deep shade of green the

water has when seen from the ground. The water is simply

reflecting the surrounding mountainsides which are covered

with evergreen trees.



 We did our all-too-brief tour of the lake, flying past the famous Emerald Bay. Then it was time to head back to the field. Instead of following the freeway back, we took the more direct route, to avoid some cloud layers that were pushing in from the northwest. A couple circles around the Weimar College campus to top off the flight, and then we were touching down at Auburn. Half an hour later it was nothing but a recent memory, almost like a dream. Enough borrowing from time I didn't have; back to school!



Up We Go!

Air Mike Flight #53

What a blast! I must say that was one of the most fun flights I have had in a while, and what a great way to get back into the air after a month and half of being too busy to fly. After getting back from a mission trip to Zimbabwe (that is not flying—it’s just wrong for a pilot to be stuffed back in economy for hours on end) the flying withdrawals were really starting to get to me and I was itching to get airborne again. With my birthday coming up, I decided a good way to celebrate would be to get back in the sky for some aerial rejuvenation.

I considered taking the 2-seat Cessna 150 up by myself, but then thought better of it. Flying solo is great—but it’s way more fun when you have someone else along. And besides, it was my 21st birthday. So, after I managed to convince my classmates Daniel, Erwin, and David that they wanted to go flying with me, we all headed out for the airport. With that crew, all I can say is that there was never a dull moment during the flight!

Already while we were taxiing out to the runway, the guys were making good use of the headset intercom and yabbering away. Then as soon as we were airborne the plane erupted with whoops and hollers and wild cheers. This is going to be a very audible flight, I mused.


The flight crew: the author and Daniel.

 One of the fun things I get to do when taking friends up is let them try their hand at the flight controls. There’s a dual set of controls, so whoever sits up front with me has the ability to take control and actually get to do some flying. After getting to a safe altitude I turned to Daniel who was in the right seat and gave him an announcement that made his eyes widen: “You have the plane.” He gingerly grasped the controls and immediately started yelling. “Oh myyyy goooodnesss!!! Aaaaahhh!” I couldn’t keep from laughing; he was barely making the plane do anything.

Now the peanut gallery (a must-have on an airline, right?) was really starting to bump up the running commentary as I tried to give Daniel his “flying lesson”. “Hey Daniel, are you really flying the plane? I sure hope you fly better than you drive, whaaahahahaa!!!” Everyone was having quite the uproarious time, but with all the laughter and wisecracks filling our headsets it was all but impossible for Daniel to understand the directions I was trying to give him. I glanced at the audio panel and spied a switch I hadn’t noticed before. The settings I saw were suddenly very interesting to me: Isol, Crew, All. Aha! I flipped the switch to “Crew” and the intercom fell silent. I glanced over at Daniel with a wry grin. “Can you hear me now?”

A moment later I heard muffled shouts from the back. Glancing back I burst out laughing as I saw Erwin and David, hands thrown up in the air in protest. “What did you do—why can’t we hear you anymore?!” they were hollering. I grinned widely. “You guys are too noisy!” I yelled back. The rest of the flight was a bit more tranquil as the backseaters talked away to each other while I “instructed” the friend in the right front seat. We made a couple landings at the Lincoln airport to switch seats amongst the passengers and everyone got a chance to fly the plane.


David and Erwin, our enthusiastic backseat duo.

 After about an hour of letting each guy try the basics of flying—turning, straight and level, climbing, descending—there was one more thing on the plan. I pointed the plane northeast and headed past Auburn. Moments later some familiar, sickly-green roofs appeared on the ground ahead. Weimar Center of Health and Education. It was about six thirty in the evening and there were quite a few people outside walking around on the campus as we came over, and we could see some look up and start waving. We circled, then made a pass with an enthusiastic rocking of the wings—the pilot’s way of waving to people on the ground—then circled a few more times before we leveling out to keep from turning any more green. Finally it was back to Auburn to put things away and say goodbye to the sky. It was quite gratifying to squeak in my third greaser landing of the day to the applause of the guys I was bringing back to the ground (it's not always that smooth after a long break from flying). Another Air Mike flight completed.

Like I said, fun things are funnest (if I can use that word) when you share them with others. It was definitely a highlight for me to be able to celebrate my 21st birthday in the sky with friends. I’m glad God feels the same way about sharing amazing experiences, because that’s why He’s offering us all a ticket to the greatest experience ever—heaven! So…you wanna go flying?

Photo credits: Daniel Jeon