Flying Summers Brothers

Those are buffalo burgers out on Catalina. And there are buffalo out there on the Island. I’m not sure one is made from the other.

Update: January 2006. Adam and I have now flown to Catalina’s little Airport in the Sky over half a dozen times. There is a small herd of buffalo kept on the Island by the Catalina Conservancy. There was a larger herd from a film production many years ago, but they were over-grazing the island and destroying it. Now it is just a little roving tourist attraction. Needless to say, they do not regularly butcher and grind them up for burgers.

Before I flew up to take my check ride I looked at my logbook: I had sixty-eight hours of time in flight. That seemed rather amazing. Less than two weeks of full time work. The time away from my regular job over six months (April to October) was less than a two week vacation. Easily accomplished in weekends and in the evenings. The amount of ground school was probably less than ten hours, not including the time I spent studying for the FAA written exam (which was at home with some DVDs). Continue reading →

The weather is nearly perfect and tomorrow I am going flying. Mom and Alex are being very good sports about the new obsession. When they land from their commercial flight they are making me (and a few guests) a nice dinner then trundling off to get enough sleep to head out to Catalina for breakfast and Santa Maria for lunch. Friends have a house up in Sideways country and they will meet us at the airport and head to a vineyard with us for a picnic. I feel like a jet setter. Then next weekend I am taking them to the Grand Canyon for Saturday and Sunday. Yippeee.

I was foiled in my attempt to get a check ride in a 172 today by a need to be at work. The itch to fly was exacerbated by Colin having a flight lesson in Irvine in the Diamond DA40. When I woke up a beautiful solution popped into my head: I would go ride the back seat in the DA40 all morning while Colin did landings. This would teach me the DA40, it would let me watch the Garmin 1000 perform its miracles, and I would be up off the ground looking for new airports. A good morning followed by an afternoon of work. Continue reading →

Well here is a fine kettle of fish. I do not own a plane. I must rent other people’s airplanes. Unsurpisingly, especially if they have read a word that is posted here, these people wish to have some concrete demostration of my flying ability before they will rent me the airplane. While my brother galivants all over the sky in airplanes he might buy I am skulking around trying to find a time and a place to take a Cessna 172 for a checkout ride so I do not have to drive all the way (fifteen minutes) to Santa Monica to fly. I want to fly out of Torrance or Hawthorne. Both have FBOs with planes. Both are quite close. Both would provide me with an airtime fix in return for a few of my dollars. All I need to do is find the time. It has been a hectic week and with daylight savings I have not been home before dark. Tomorrow will be more of the same, with the added fun of rain, but Thursday I am getting checked out. I need to if my secret plans to fly my folks around are to come to fruition.

The withdrawal symptoms are bad. Apparently there is something about air breathed at altitude while hearing loud engine noises that causes endorphins to flow. In any case I am not only acutely aware that the last time I flew was Saturday, but like any good junkie I am even more aware that a fellow junkie has been shooting up more often than I have.

The flight with Colin to Big Bear and the desert was my last trip. It was exactly as much fun as I had hoped to get in the plane with just the two of us and push off. As we walked to the plane I suggested to Colin that we try the seventeen airport hop with no GPS. He looked at me, thought for a moment, and said ‘I had not even considered that.’ Of course he was as into doing it as I was. More it turned out, since I would have peeked at the GPS when we were flying around looking for the first airport and could not pick it out in the haze. I have to admit that I am singularly bad at picking out airports. On long final for Paso Robles, descending at the behest of the designated examiner, I did not have any idea where the hell I was landing.

We made it to eight of our destination airports and it would have taken another four hours to get all seventeen. The ride home was quite direct once I looked ahead and saw the contrast between the clear desert air and the haze of the coast. We had flown up in it, but with no clear air comparison it was not an issue. The idea of diving back into it for another nine airports seemed nuts. We shot the pass at Palm Springs and headed back to SMO. At one point I was asked to divert from direct flight for faster traffic. I did and a few minutes later was told to resume own navigation… also to look right if I wanted a view of a 757 on final for Ontario. A Fed Ex plane at my altitude heading in, very cool. About half an hour later LA Center again told us to avoid entering Class Bravo. The controller then asked whether we planned to drop below the bravo and head direct to SMO. I replied in the affirmative and he said, ‘Oh good, because right now you are lined up on final for LAX.’ LAX was still a good twenty miles away, but apparently the big boys were dropping in right over our radar blip and it was making him nervous. I diverted a bit north to make my intentions clear.

I have to go get checked out in a Cessna at Torrance so I can fly Mom and Alex around. I am hoping to get them up on two flights but the loft trauma may have sensitized them so much that they want to stay on solid group for the first few days.