{"id":4035,"date":"2016-04-08T22:25:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T05:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=4035"},"modified":"2016-04-08T22:25:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T05:25:14","slug":"first-flight-with-a-passenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/?p=4035","title":{"rendered":"First flight with a passenger!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I took my first passenger for a ride in a plane!  Manuel picked <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/General_William_J._Fox_Airfield\">KWJF (General William J. Fox Field)<\/a> as our destination, which is near Lancaster.  In the desert.  On the other side of the mountains.  I had never been there.<\/p>\n<p>I did my flight planning and research, and I was all ready to go with my nav log and GPS flight plan.  The flight there and back went well, but it featured several new challenges for me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>My highest altitude yet &#8211; 8500&#8242;.  I&#8217;ve flown higher, but never as the pilot.  Because KEMT and KWJF aren&#8217;t that far apart in straight-line distance, this meant we spent most of the time climbing and then descending.  In a long climb, you have to think about &#8220;cruise climb&#8221; (lowering the nose to increase air cooling of the engine).  In a long descent, you have to think about power and mixture settings to avoid fouling the spark plugs.\n<li>Picking altitudes was challenging.  In addition to clearing terrain, I needed to follow VFR conventions.  This flight zig-zagged northwest, northeast, northwest, creating three different regimes (west trajectories use even thousands + 500&#8242;; east trajectories use odd thousands + 500&#8242;).\n<li>As always for a new destination, I had to visually locate the airport :)  Luckily KWJF is not too challenging to spot, unlike KEMT which is buried inside urbanity!\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cruising over the mountains yields some delightful views (photos taken by Manuel, not me :) ).<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4422.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4422-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"San Gabriel mountains\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4040\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4422-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4422-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4422-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>We approached KWJF from the south.  Runway 24 has a right pattern by default (north side), but the tower kindly directed me to a left downwind approach from the south (instead of crossing over midfield).  I still struggle with figuring out how to pace my approaches.  I&#8217;ve been instructed to be at pattern altitude well before I enter the pattern, and I&#8217;ve read in several places that descending into the pattern is very dangerous (you could descend into another plane, since you can&#8217;t see below and they can&#8217;t see above).  So I was at pattern altitude before entering downwind.  But pattern altitude can feel rather low, especially at KWJF where it is only 800&#8242; AGL! (More typical is 1000&#8242;.)<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4426.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4426-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"KWJF\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-4038\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4426-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4426-150x113.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/IMG_4426-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<i>Final approach to runway 24 at KWJF.<\/i><\/center><\/p>\n<p>On the return to KEMT, I got an instruction that was new to me: &#8220;maintain maximum forward speed.&#8221;  I understood that the tower was trying to increase spacing between me and the plane behind me.  But the importance of a controlled, stabilized approach has been drilled in to me, and I was already doing my usual process of gradually adding flaps and decreasing speed.  (The plane is certainly capable of flying faster, but it won&#8217;t stop flying (i.e., land) until you get it going slow enough.) I acknowledged and continued, adding a tiny bit of speed.  Maybe I should have said &#8220;unable&#8221; or &#8220;I am already going max speed&#8221;.  Happily, I landed just fine and got off the runway before the other airplane needed it.<\/p>\n<p>Back on land, I found this discussion of how to interpret <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aviationchatter.com\/2009\/03\/cleared-to-land-maintain-best-forward-airspeed\/\">&#8220;maintain best forward airspeed&#8221;<\/a>.  This procedure would have me flying > 100 mph until just 1 mile from the runway (!!), then slowing down and deploying flaps.  Normal is 80 mph approaching, then slowing to 70 mph on final approach.  I&#8217;ve landed at 80 mph (to practice a no-flap landing), but I wouldn&#8217;t do it by choice.  I definitely would need to practice any kind of faster approach to get comfortable with it, and (as noted in the article), it would likely require more landing distance (runway).  It&#8217;s useful right now, however, just to have the increased understanding of what ATC is asking for with that particular phrase.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m looking forward to more exploratory flights and more learning opportunities!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I took my first passenger for a ride in a plane! Manuel picked KWJF (General William J. Fox Field) as our destination, which is near Lancaster. In the desert. On the other side of the mountains. I had never been there. I did my flight planning and research, and I was all ready to go [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[66],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4035"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4043,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4035\/revisions\/4043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wkiri.com\/today\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}