Flying Summers Brothers

Headed East

This will post automatically as we are climbing into the sky over Santa Monica and starting our eastward journey with a last pass over the Los Angeles basin.  Continue reading →

Kneeboard Page

I should have made a rule at the beginning of my flying that I had to write up the best flights within a week of landing. Now there are some memories which have faded. It’s fine to just have the experience, but now that Rudy is close to heading off for college, and Dexter is thinking about learning to fly on his own, I am very aware that time of these family flights is a closing window. And this blog is the journal of a lot of our family trips in the little plane. Continue reading →

This post is part of the five pieces that make up 2013’s How To Fly Across.

Okay, so you are generally planned (“I’ve got to fly from KSMO to KHTO…”), you know your big problem (“getting past the Rockies is my challenge”) and how fortunate you are. You have made some basic rules for your flight, have everything packed up, but how do you approach each day?

With a lot of flexibility.  Continue reading →

This post is part of the five pieces that make up 2013’s How To Fly Across.

When I did my first really long flight in the little plane (up to Friday Harbor) I made a mistake on the return flight. We flew from KFHR to KEUG and then on to KAPC and home. We had left Friday Harbor pretty early in the morning and we had really enjoyed our lunch at Napa Valley on the way up, so we were anxious to make it to Napa for a reasonable lunch time. We landed in Eugene, Oregon, had the plane fueled, used the restroom at the FBO, looked around and said, “Should we just get going?” “I guess so.”

Huge mistake. Continue reading →

This post is part of the five pieces that make up 2013’s How To Fly Across.

I read the comments on AirNav sometimes and I am shocked. Pilots complain about a thirty cent per gallon difference in price for fuel, when we are offered a crew car to drive into town to lunch, free WiFi, complimentary bottles of water, sleep rooms… such luxury.

In the United States there are only 617,128 active pilots (end of 2011, only half of them are instrument rated). Since there are 313 million people in the United States you are instantly not in the one percent, but in the two tenths of a percent that has the privilege to sail through the sky, unfettered by the contours of the earth or the traffic of other citizens who have destinations similar to yours.  Continue reading →

So Stubby from Space

This post is part of the five pieces that make up 2013’s How To Fly Across.

For us, the most daunting portion of the cross-continental journey is getting past the Rockies. It is always summer time and the combination of high altitude and high temperature makes for really high density altitudes. (If you don’t understand density altitude that is the first thing you should study up on before you try to cross the country. Ignorance on that front is an invitation to a fatal mistake.) I refuse to cross the Rockies except in the beginning of the day before winds have built up, or in the evening if things have calmed down. The latter tends to only happen flying home and we’re pretty careful about it. I think a lot of accidents are people in little planes thinking there’s a margin of performance available which just isn’t there. Continue reading →

This post is part of the five pieces that make up 2013’s How To Fly Across.

I made a very detailed post about the items we packed into the plane on the first flight across. The list has not changed that much, but I understand a few things better now. We are not going to be aloft for days at a time and packing the snack box like we are going to live out of it is unnecessary. Now that I have an electronic flight bag I no longer need to carry all of the approach plates in paper form. That was a huge relief. I used to have to ask Rudy to pass forward particular states and stow others. Now each airport is just a tap away. (As backup, we have several iPads on board and they all have the same software on them. If all iPads are out of commission I actually have ForeFlight loaded on my iPhone and I could use that to bring up an approach.) The EFB also eliminates the IFR atlases I was dragging around.  Continue reading →

As I mentioned in the previous post about having to repair the blog I was surprised to bump into one of this blog’s readers in Souix Falls, South Dakota. Apparently he was going to fly from Camarillo, California up into Michigan and when he was talking with his instructor this blog was mentioned as a resource. (He was also flying the same plane, a Diamondstar, and that might have influenced the decision to point him this way. Maybe there’s another blog that is “Crisscrossing the Country in Your Cirrus.”)

This is a sobering amount of responsibility. I do not believe that flying little planes is unsafe, but I also know, from experience, that taking on a long distance destination as your goal can put you up against a lot of constraints, weather, and variables that you probably won’t face if you are just hanging around your home airfield and heading out for the occasional hundred dollar burger when the weather is good. (I do that nearly once a week, so I certainly understand the attraction.) Continue reading →

Just a Little Over Two Miles

I am embarrassed how long it took us to find it, but there is a delightful little two mile hike around the airport out on

Andrew, Dexter and Andrea
March 2015

Catalina. Above is the Runkeeper track of the last time I hiked it, with Dexter and his friend Alex (at the right in the small photo). I try to make it out there with either the family or a visitor once a month. (Adam and I often flew out to the island soon after we had our certificates to share a lunch of buffalo burgers. But it was a while before I knew I could hike around the airport on a little trail. ) Continue reading →