Today's formation destination was Salinas, where we were booked ofr a tour together with the local EAA chapter to visit Art Teeter's P51 restauraton facility.

Most members of our group come from Palo Alto, so we flew the short hop from San Carlos to Palo Alto, and on arrival we were greeted not only by the tower, but by some other person on the radio calling us the dancing tiger (N626FT).

That same guy must have been present later, since we heard someone calling us a "gaggle of grummans" on departure - even though I thought our rejoin wasn't that bad.

Today I flew #4, and we did a diamond formation for the first time. It's actually quite easy to fly the slot position. Everything is working for you, you look out straight, you see #2 and #3 in your preriphery, and you don't have to worry about power changes due to the "arm" effect on turns.

We did a low pass over runway 13 at Salinas, then returned for the normal overhead break and landing. The tower complimented us for the show, and off we went to look at P51s in various states of assembly.

I got to lead on departure, and we did a short flight to Marina, where fuel was almost a dollar cheaper than in Salinas. This time, our rejoin was not as nice, as it took us almost a whole 360 to get there. My radio work was also less than stellar - speak up, man...

On our flight back to Palo Alto, the amazing radio commentator was still on, berating the tower about misunderstanding somebody's intentions.

http://www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/554-full.html

N626FT is the one on the right opposite the photo plane.

We started practicing echelon turns, boy are they hard, especially as #3. The sight picture changes utterly: it looks more line "in trail", with the additional burden that it feels like one is turning into the guy in front.

Lucky shot here -, I believe this is the correct sight picture for proper station keeping - could be a little closer, though.

Two shots of an echelon formation.

Four planes participated: Wolfgang Pollak, John Bunker, Colin Aro and myself. Our first session was:

• element take-off,
• element rejoin,
• climb to altitude,
• echelon,
• breaks and rejoins.

We were all somewhat rusty, and the first rejoin was a gaggle. As time progressed, we all found our groove and things started looking good. The best part was the appreciative radio calls from the ground as we did our initial. There may be hope that we may become presentable someday.

Me being the junior member, I was #4 all the way - there are inconveniences and advanatages to that - yes, one has to scramble to keep up, since being on the outside of turns means that the speed changes are considerable, but on the other hand I didn't need to do much thinking or planning. Following orders suited me just fine, had enough to do to keep in position.

After a hearty lunch at the blue bird diner opposite of the terminal building in Ukiah, Colin Aro and John Bunker decided to return to Reno. Wolfgang and I decided to fly back to the South Bay, and I again was wingman, no thinking required.

We tried some echelon turns, and they are bizarre. I'm not sure I like them, they seem unsafe. I'll need to go up with an instructor someday to make sure I know what they are supposed to look like.

The best part of the return flight was our transition through SFO's class B airspace along 101. We had lots of opposite direction traffic, therefore lots of knowledgeable spectators - very motivating to stick to my station like glue. It helps that I know the transition very well, so was able to anticipate all turns.

No photos, sorry. I was happy to be solo, no distraction whatsoever.

Some preparation is required for this, and, besides contacting the nice people at the Aéro Club Paris Sud, Toussus le noble, the most important thing is to obtain a validation of your FAA license.

This requires writing a formal letter to the french equivalent of the FAA and include the following:

• Photocopy of your FAA license
• Photocopy of the last filled in page in your logbook
• Photocopy of your medical certificate
• Photocopy of your passport
• Two passport photos

In the letter, you should state your request to obtain a validation, and you should indicate exactly where it should be sent to. It works best if you do it in french, but with a little bit of luck, it may work in english too. See the link below for the actual letter I sent.

Next step in the planning process is to obtain proper charts and airport directories. The European equivalent of the Jeppesens are the Bottlangs, and they're about the same price - in other words: way too expensive! Unfortunately, even VFR approaches and patterns to airports are somewhat unusual, and for noise abattement, the charted routes must be followed unless you wish to pay extra, so it is probably necessary to bite the bullet. Note that the Bottlangs need to be ordered from Europe, Jeppesen is so messed up they can't do it from here, even though their website has them listed. I chose to support the local airport shop and order it from them.

If you own a handheld GPS, make sure to take it with you and have the european database on it.

In part II, airspace and other bizarre rules of the air - coming as soon as my charts arrive.

Update:

Charts are on the way, but meanwhile I found Fly in France, a great website. It also seems that at least airport diagrams are available

On the way there, we stopped in McMinnville and visited the Spruce Goose, on display in a museum close to the airport.

Our friends had a truely charming brick house in the middle of their vineyard...

... conveniently located close to Chehalem airpark:

The autopilot saga continues. After a flight back south to Chino, the heading mode is now active, but unfortunately the gain calibration is still off: the GPSS input is way too weak, causing the autopilot to make corrections at a rate of perhaps 5 degrees per minute - barely perceptible.

Meanwhile, a new pilot may be flying N626FT. Elliot Floersch, CFII/MEI extraordinare will borrow the airplane to fly to Columbia about once a week. A welcome division of the operating costs.

Myself, I'll be starting work on my CFII rating. Let's see how that works out...

Here we are, all ligned up.

The museum seems to have a dedicated staff of volunteers, who managed to grapple together an interesting collection of - hmmm - items. I won't list them here, out of fear of getting the designations wrong - next time, take notes!

On the way back, we stopped at Gustine airport in the central valley, saving almost 50 cents a gallon on fuel.

Standing on the wing is my passenger for the day, Melinda Green. She was responsible for taking those wonderful pictures a couple of months ago.

A nice day to go flying...

... comes to an end.

Anyway, congratulations!

In spite of everything I may have written about K here, I must have been extremely lucky to have had such a diligent student. The examiner complimented me on the preparation, and I had to say "what preparation?". He was diligent in the homework and always showed up well prepared for flight. Other CFIs tell me this is not normal - well, I guess I'll find out when I meet my next student, hopefully soon - it was a lot of fun.

Good luck K, and remember: License to learn!

Most of the stuff actually worked, amazingly enough. Especially the autopilot impressed with rock solid flying even in light turbulence.

Not everything worked, though. The GPS steering unit had a faulty heading mode, the fuel flow was exagerating the consumption, claiming the flight used 35.7 gallons when only 33.7 fit into the tank on arrival, and there seems to be a weird ticking noice in the background from the audio panel. Also, my additional request for a cigarette lighter (to be used only as a power source) somehow got lost.

There also remains some paperwork to be done for the IFR certification of the GNS430. I need to fly to 5 known points - VORs mainly and read off the position indicated by the GPS and compare it to the actual positions. I probably can't fly precisely enough to get within the GPS error margin, but such are the rules... and yes, the database on the unit was from last year, and the manuals are hidden someplace in the shop - at least I have all the official FAA paperwork and log stickers.

The guy in charge at Advantage Avionics promised to fly himself up with a replacement GPSS unit and some other goodies, which would really be excellent service if it happens. I sure hope so, snagging rides to SoCal isn't easy - I was very lucky to have Gal Bar Or fly me down, comforting me with his avionics shop horror stories.

Considering the cost of all this, the visible effect of the upgrade is rather deceiving. The only real eye candy is the moving map from the GNS 430. Nothing else is really apparent - yes, there are two extra switches on the left yoke, and there are some new switches on the panel, but that's it.

Now I'm looking forward to velcro-ing a CD player or an XM receiver onto the right side and feeding it into the audio panel for in flight entertainement.

I am not convinced that the standard stall demonstrations are really such useful exercises - well, actually, they are, but not for the officially intended purpose, which is to prepare the pilot to deal with stalls on approach or on takeoff.

Stalls on approach sneak up on you. The best way to demonstrate that is to cut the engine on a crosscountry, near some airport, and let the student attempt to glide it in. He's likely to misjudge it and end up short, in which case the natural impulse is to pull back on the stick, and lo and behold, they will even ignore the stall warning and continue to pull back! At this time, of course, you will add back the power and save us from a fiery end.

Another place where stalls occur all too frequently is when operating around high altitude airports. Pilots are so used to the apparent speed at which the landscape usually sweeps by that they completely forget to look at the speed indicator, and do not realize that at high density altitude, the true airspeed will be significantly higher than normal. Just last year at Burning Man, a highly experienced pilot crashed due to this exact effect.

I believe the real purpose of the stall exercises, especially the power-on stalls, is to get the student to at least approach something closer to the edge of the usual flight envelope. It is quite amazing how much you need to pull up that nose to get a stall break with full power. The trick is to very deliberatly and curtly pull back on the yoke - all - the - way. It takes a little bit of guts to do that, especially if you're already apprehensive.

In other words, a well executed power on stall will demonstrate confidence that the pilot will remain in control, even in an upset.

This is, I believe, K's only big weak point. I'll know more next weekend, when he'll be going up for a mock checkride with another instructor.

I got to be lead most of the time, and boy was that hard. Of course, I lost one wingman on the radios immediatly, found him later on the #4 frequency while I thought I signaled for #3, all the while looking for traffic and navigating the formation out of Santa Maria's Class D.

I then maneuvered the formation out over the coast, turned NW bound and switched them to a right echelon while following the slow left arc of the beach. I did several passes like that and finally switched the lead over to Colin.

We did some more passes along the beach, and I got the lead passed back to me. We then proceeded inland and tried to set up some shots with the green mountains in the background.

Finally, I had to set us up for the return to the field. We got right pattern for a left break, which of course got me utterly confused, since I started by setting up a left echelon, which would never work for the left break. Unfortunately, I also had started on the base turn, so all I could do was go back to fingertip and wait. When I was almost rolled out on initial with only one mile to go, I set up the proper right echelon, and we barely were in position for the break.

Next time: right is where the thumb is left.

I am grateful for having such patient and accomodating wingmen.

I guess I must be evil.

One thing it does demonstrate is how much aggravation we are willing to put up with just to go flying. Anyone in the software business is appalled at the lack of obvious optimizations in the system. The idea that aviation is the only place left where morse code is still being used.... At least NDBs provide musical entertainment.

Photos are a testament at my ineptitude at handling complicated electronic devices....