Flight to the Southland
Since the plane got out of the shop, I'm been getting in a lot of flying. This past weekend, I logged over 10 hours of flight time.
Saturday, Klee, Mateo, and I headed north, to Shelter Cove. I flew over Shelter Cove some time ago on a trip up to Eureka, and it really stood out as an airport I had to land at some day. It's on the California coastline in an area where most of the coastline is cliffs, except for this patch of lang that just out and on which is a small town with an airport. According to Yahoo! Maps, if I were to drive from the Cupertino to Shelter Cover, it would take me 5 hours, 39 minutes. Don't think I would ever have made it there by road. The flight took about 2 hours. As we were eating, clouds started to form overhead, so we boogied on out of there, briefly heading towards Japan to get out from under the line clouds forming on the coastine, climbed above, then turned back to Willits for fuel, then back home to RHV.
Sunday, Payam, Mateo, and I went for a trip to the Los Angeles area. Payam's folks live near Zamperini Field in Torrence, so we dropped by for a day at their house, where we had a yummy lunch and lounged by the pool. The trip back was at night on an IFR flight plan. The trip down was hazy, and not being familiar with the airspace around L.A., being under ATC control seemed safest. That worked out well, especially since when we got to Silicon Valley, the entire valley was covered with an overcast layer. I shot the ILS 20R into SJC until we got under the cloud cover, then broke off for a VFR landing into RHV. Payam took some video footage as well as some pictures of the trip.