son's story of a day flight

[Dustytuu]

This is a story my son told me that happened a few years ago when he had his Cessna. He and 3 other friends who have planes had flew to the dessert. Sent me a picture of the dirt runway their planes were sitting. One of his friends lost his pilots licenses. I had ask him why and this is what happened.
Interesting, scary and a little funny.......
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"Glad you ask why he lost his license.

Well on that day the photo was taken we all flew our airplanes to the desert and had lunch and then we flew back to San Diego.

Bill was in the lead airplane and he took off first because he was the slower plane. He was headed to Fallbrook, CA to drop off his friend and then onto El Cajon where Gordon and I were going. Gordon and I decided to go to Fallbrook also so we diverted to Fallbrook after doing some low flying site seeing over the desert and Chocolate Mountains. As Bill was getting closer to Fallbrook, CA municipal airport he called back and said there was a lot of helicopters at Fallbrook. I thought helicopters???? I asked Bill does Fallbrook have a control tower??? And Bill replies yes......and a &^%$# nice one......Bill said he was lined up for the runway and had to go............I said Fallbrook does not tower.......You must be over Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base...........and he was......

That's right, Bill had made a perfect approach to Camp Pendleton only making a 5 mile mistake or less. He almost had flown over Fallbrook to get there. Camp Pendleton, found out it was Bill and that started the problems. I guess it shook him up so bad he ended up making a landing on a taxi-way at Fallbrook and that cost him his license, along with breaking Camp Pendleton's class B controlled airspace! .......They land very large cargo airplanes there that would squash his little J3 Cub.

A few years later Bill then had to fly with some of my other friends, in the back seat.......go figure.

From what I was told, this was the third severe offense he has committed and the FAA examiner office said, "I don't ever want to hear of you even sitting in an aircraft unless you paid full fare ."

[skypilot]

Easy enough to do -- used to fly while stationed at Ft Bliss, located in El Paso TX. Biggs Army Air Field is located just north and a little west (as I recall, it has been over 25yrs since last there) of the El Paso air port; both have runways mostly north/south. Had a Continental commercial jet do a 'touch-n-go' at Biggs one night -- wrong airport!!! I was on duty that night (as staff duty officer driver) and had to accompany the Staff Duty Officer over to the main airport to 'interview' the flight crew. Got to meet a lot of FAA folks that night!!!

In conjested areas, with a lot of ground lights, it is easy to do, especially if you are coming in under Visual Flight Rules (We used to use the phrase 'Severe Clear' - 60 miles visibility and clear skies'; I got out here to Kansas and thought I'd need my instrument ticket when they called for 3 miles and 2000 feet as clear.) In any case, I've flown in a J3 a couple of times -- stick and rudder flying at its coolest!!!! I imagine he misses flying as much as I do (medical reasons now ground me . )

[Dustytuu]

Son sold his Cessna a few years ago. To buy a house. He had the Cessna for about 10 years. Had something else before the Cessna, can't remember what. He was into helicopters for awhile and had a small 2 seater helicopter. He sold that and I am glad he did.

He still loves to fly and always will. I am sure he misses his Cessna.

[noneck]

Totally understand...not that I have ever done this myself...but my father has described how difficult it is to fly VFR. He has upgraded with one of these handheld GPS units we are so fond of when traveling on the highway...must be a real plus for those who fly and loose land mark progress points and have to reset flight plan, in flight! Things just don't look the same from up in there!!!

[Dave e Victoria]

I have a lot of hours behind the prop as it were. I soloed in 1964 and am a long time member of the silver wings club (you can probably figure that one out.) I am rated for both VFR and Instrument flight rules and have about a third of my hours in a little hotrod I built.

The difference between VFR and IFR is the degree of precision expected. In practice, the preperation that goes into an IFR flight is dramatically more involved. However, as far as the FAA is concerned, the preperation should be exactly the same regardless of the way the flight is to be performed. Landing at the wrong airport is probably more likely under VFR but no more acceptable.

The advent of GPS has truely been an excellent aide for aviation as well as for us terrestial bound RV'ers. And , the problems are the same. To wit: 1) we start looking inside the cockpit or cab for information when our eyes should be outside. 2) ease of informartion access gets us sloppy about doing trip planning. 3) excursions off plan and into unknown territory are all too easy.

In flying, I have learned to fall back on my traditional flight planning and execution skills and only using the GPS for confirmation. It took a while to realize that this is also the best approach for RV travel as well. Now, I get out the maps and campground guides the night before. I manually plot the route including an idea of fuel stops. site seeing stops and alternatives for the next days stop. Then everything is confirmed on the GPS. It's a good plan -- in the air and on the ground.