Cross-country solo #4: Backwater fun

When my checkride does come, what's likely to happen is this: Steve (the checkride examiner) will tell me to plan a flight to some far-off distant land. We'll take off and I'll begin flying there; however, rather than sit on his ass for a few hours while we trundle along, he'll divert me to a nearby airport where I can show him I know how to do landings and patternwork. The airports he generally likes to take people to are Gnoss (DVO), Petaluma (O69), Healdsburg (O31), and Cloverdale (O60). I've been to the first two, but never to Healdsburg or Cloverdale, so Stephen thought it useful that I do a cross-country solo to those two airports.

One of the things I enjoy doing before a cross-country solo is firing up Microsoft Flight Simulator and "e-flying" the route to get a feel for it. Flight simulator helps you learn where small airports are in relation to major land features. I was able to figure out where to look for Healdsburg Airport when I was over Santa Rosa, it being nestled in the foothills of the Santa Rosa Valley. One thing it does not portray very accurately is the quaint beauty of the surroundings.

I departed Oakland under the watchful guise of NorCal, who kept clearing me into class-B airspace even though I repeatedly told them I was a student pilot and therefore unable to enter the class-B airspace. Using 9UL's GPS I flew a course over Scagg's Island to Santa Rosa, passing over the airport at 4,500 feet. Stephen had said I could just fly direct to Healdsburg, and I was initially intending to, but I decided it would be very unlikely that Steve The Checkride Examiner would have me fly direct, so I got the "full experience" by navigating from waypoint to waypoint.

Over Santa Rosa and 8 miles out, Oakland Center asked me if I had Healdsburg in sight yet. I said, somewhat embarassingly, that I did not. I poured over the sectional chart, comparing features on the ground and in the map, and struggled to envision the surround in Flight Simulator. Finally, a few minutes later, I picked out its tiny runway in the distance, and gleefully informed Center of my accomplishment.

Descending into Healdsburg I was greeted with the typical CTAF audio experience: A jumble of pilots talking over each other and getting stepped on. As I descended further into the valley, flanked by mountain ranges that rose above me, most of the excess noise was filtered out until about the only thing I could hear on the advisory frequency was Healdsburg and Cloverdale traffic.

Preparing to land, I immediately discovered that Healdsburg has a gorgeous final approach -- probably the most interesting I've seen. You skim the tops of rolling hills, fields of grass and wheat, cows and horses, trees, and ponds and streams. It was as if I had flown into a Calvin & Hobbes strip where they explore the backwoods on one of their treks. It was so mesmerizing that I vowed to fly it again, so that I could snap a picture:



OK, so the picture doesn't really do it justice. Healdsburg is a sleepy airport (surprise) with a rather confusing taxiway layout. I managed to get my airplane back on runway 31 for takeoff, where I did a practice go-around and then proceeded further north to Cloverdale. I snapped a picture of the field as I departed northward.



Cloverdale was just a hop, skip, and a jump away, so I merely had to climb to a thousand feet or so to clear a line of hills between to the two airports. The view along the way was more of the same gorgeous backwater northern California fields.



As I crossed over the hills, Cloverdale came into view in the distance. I was already just about lined up to its runway 32, so I figured that rather than fly the pattern, I'd just make a long straight-in approach. I wondered briefly if that sort of thing is safe at untowered airports (or if you are expected to enter the pattern normally no matter what), but I figured as long as I announced my position diligently and kept an eye out it shouldn't be a problem. It would only occur to me later that perhaps I should have practiced the pattern at Cloverdale, since there's not much point in just landing there and taking off.

The landing at Cloverdale was pretty uneventful save for a very unnerving gust of wind that hit me as I was only a few feet above the field. It lifted the plane up and almost outside the runway border. I seriously contemplated going around for a second or so, but ultimately decided the landing was salveagable. I didn't land on the centerline by any stretch of the imagination, but I got the plane down OK, and that's what matters.

I taxiied to the fuel pump, which was in plain view. I had to pee pretty badly, and was relieved to find a restroom right nearby, covered in spiders and spiderwebs. After emptying my tanks and filling my plane's, I started her back up and brought her back to runway 32 for takeoff. Next to me were a group of people walking to the airport in skydiving gear. I wondered who would come all the way out to this nowhere airport to go skydiving. Perhaps for the scenery?

As I departed Cloverdale for Oakland, I snapped a picture of the field, which in retrospect looks a lot like Healdsburg:



I checked in with Oakland Center and got my flight following back to the airport. It was a nice cruise back to the Bay Area, so I took the time to stare wistfully out the window and watch the scenery crawl by beneath me. I took a few scenic detours here and there, as I was in no rush, enjoying the North Bay. Things got busier when I checked in with NorCal and got my approach clearance. Lately I've been making my approach course directly over my own apartment. This allows me to gawk at my neighborhood from above (who doesn't love that), and the noise from flying low and slow over the area helps keep the rent down.

I landed at Oakland, and as is the case after every cross-country flight, my feet struggled to know ground for a few minutes, and my inner ear felt like it was banking and soaring for most of the day. It's all part of what makes it so exciting.

Cost so far: $8,925.82
Time so far: 162 days
Hours so far: 54.1
Flights so far: 36