Lesson #5: Landings, and the Oakland A's

Well, it's been a few weeks, and I'm not any thinner and the ride to the Old T's is still gruesomely tiring. I want a new bike. The kind with a motor.

Today we would be taking off, heading to Livermore Airport (KLVK), doing a couple full-stop landings, followed by a couple touch-and-go's, until my landings were silky smooth. My landings in the past can be likened to the kind of landings you see a large man perform on the WWF -- the way he slams onto his opponent is similar to the way my plane slams onto the runway. Today sought to change all that.

Before heading out to the preflight, I met a man by the name of Kevin, who shares partial ownership of N612SP, my instructor's personal plane. Kevin is the CSO (what does "CSO" stand for?) of VideoEgg, the company that provides Flash-based video playing services to Ringo.com. Ringo.com is, of course, one of the websites I work on. Given that our respective companies are basically fuckbuddies, Kevin and I had a good chat. Kevin would be taking 2SP out for a spin with a girl he met (something he seems to do frequently), after which Stephen would be using it for IFR approach practice. He asked me if I wanted to go along. I said sure -- a free flight, why not?

I performed my preflight abeam another student and instructor duo, who were preflighting 4AC. (I was in 9UL again.) From the conversation I divined that this was this particular student's first preflight. It was amusing to watch them wade through the details, spending the better portion of an hour on barely the first part of the checklist. I was there once ... how far I've come.

With the plane checked out and ready to go, I got my clearance to Livermore from Ground, and brought her down 33 and into the sky. Honestly, I think 9UL has a trim problem. Every time I take off the plane, with the trim in takeoff setting, the thing shoots up into the sky. I have to push forward on the stick pretty damn hard just to keep a 75-knot climb. I figured the so-labeled "takeoff setting" is, uhh, so-labeled, because it's a good setting for takeoff. I suppose it is, if your idea of takeoff is a vertical departure into outer space, like the Space Shuttle does.

So we turned eastish and headed for Livermore, listened to ATIS again and got approach clearance from Livermore tower. I made a few notable blunders when talking to Tower, but Stephen would be handling the radios from now on while I focused on landings, so that wouldn't be a problem.

There's a saying among military pilots. A pilot's priorities are to AVIATE, NAVIGATE, then RADIATE. That means, first: Fly the plane. Don't focus on anything else unless you have a handle on the plane. Second: Know where you are. If you don't know, figure it out. And finally, third: Talk over the radio. Hence, Stephen would be doing the radiating, so I can do the aviating.

It's worth mentioning at this point that Aeolus, the Greek god of wind (tip o' the hat to Pre-Med for that one), had a death wish for me today. The ride there was bumpy enough I thought the wings would fall off. To make matters worse, a 20-knot crosswind would basically blow my airplane clear off the runway on approach. This would merely add to the challenges I must face.

Because there's a lot to think about for landing, Stephen had me memorize it all beforehand. Lots to think about, and it all happens pretty fast. Now, among the many steps I was asked to perform for a landing was to maintain a 65-knot descent on the base leg. This I was unable to do for the first few landings. Why, you ask? Because in order to do this, I basically had to shove the nose right at the ground, such that the view ahead was filled with streets and cars, all only 600 feet below me. You couldn't even see the sky. It took a couple of tries to become comfortable with the idea of having the nose so low, so close to the ground.

And how were my landings? Well, given the 20-knot crosswind, they weren't great. In such a huge crosswind your plane actually touches down tilted, so that one wheel touches before the other. It can be unsettling. I did only three landings in all -- one was a nice hard one that really rattled the plane, one was too fast and I came barelling down the runway, and my last one was alright. During the early climbouts and approaches I had trouble maintaining a specific airspeed while climbing to a specific altitude while turning to a specific heading while looking out for traffic while this and that and everything else, but towards the end, I wasn't doing half bad at juggling all these things. Most all the needles were pointing where they should be.

Anyway, after the third landing, Stephen said the wind was too damn strong to practice further, so we would head back. We took off, I took over the radio again, and we got our clearance to land at Oakland. There we refueled at Kaiser again and taxied back to the Old T's as usual.

Stephen then drove me around the airport back to Kaiser, where 2SP was parked. This time he was doing all the flying, so I just sat in the passenger's seat and tried not to get in the way while he prepared to depart. We would fly to Concord (CCR), pick up his safety pilot, then practice IFR approaches to Concord. He needs to do three IFR approaches per month to stay current, and that's what today was for. My job was to sit, enjoy the view, and allow my weight to bring the CG of the plane aft a bit.

Stephen's landing at Concord was at best questionable, and more likely hazardous. The crosswind was ridiculous by this point, and the plane nearly flipped over. When he finally did get it on the ground, it took all the strength in him to prevent it from rolling onto the grass. He would later tell me that he "should never have performed that landing, and should have gone around instead."

At Concord I met the safety pilot (Rick, maybe?), a lively fellow. Now, for those of you who don't know, when a pilot flies IFR, the cockpit magically transforms from a driver's seat into an office desk. Let me elaborate. When you fly VFR, you're looking out the window, flying by your eyes, and only glancing into your cockpit occasionally, much like you would drive a car. When you fly IFR however, you don't look out the window. You use your instruments and your GPS to fly, and in order to fly correctly, you spread a whole bunch of charts and papers on your lap. You have a pencil, and you take notes and plot courses. Stephen's plane even has an autopilot, so he doesn't have to touch the controls. He just dials the numbers into the autopilot.

So, imagine a pilot sitting in a cockpit, with a pencil, scribbling notes on a sheet of paper, with a bunch of maps on his lap, and dialing numbers into his autopilot. That's IFR flying. It's desk work. It turns the cockpit into an office.

So, with Stephen doing his approaches, I enjoyed a nice tour of Walnut Creek and Concord from the air, and kept an eye out for traffic to help out. After he was done, we dropped Rick off and headed back to Oakland. We landed at Oakland and taxied to Kaiser to park.

(And finally, here at the end of my story, we get to the Oakland A's.)

Parked at Kaiser was another large jet, a 737, with a white and purple livery. Unconvinced it was another USDoJ plane, I asked Stephen why it was there. Stephen said it was a chartered flight for the A's, returning from their away game against the Mariners. Indeed, stepping out of the plane was the entirety of the A's lineup, as well as a sizeable entourage of managers, personal trainers, and very important looking people in suits talking into Bluetooth headsets.

As I waited in front of Kaiser, I got an opportunity to wave to most of the A's players, since they walked right by me. I was on the lookout for a girl I know who works for the A's, but it crossed my mind that she probably doesn't go with them to away games. Still though.

I should have pounded on an airplane and then yelled "TEJADA!" Oh wait, nevermind. He's working for the Orioles now. Damn.

Next lesson is Tuesday at 4, where no doubt we will try more landings if the weather is better.

Cost so far: $1,930.91
Time so far: 17 days
Hours so far: 6.2