Monday, October 29, 2007

Flying in a Circle

Joahnna and I tried to fly to Paso Robles yesterday, but it turned out to be yet another aborted attempt. Our first try was a few weeks ago, when we fired up a Piper Archer and started taxiing to run-up, but aborted the flight because the HSI wasn't working properly. There weren't any other planes available, so we aborted the flight.

Yesterday I saw one of the planes was open from 8am to noon (tough to get a plane for a whole day on short/medium notice), so I figured I'd try it again. It was somewhat iffy, as the weather was forecast to be fog at 9am, clearing up by 10am. I figured if we arrived at around 9:30 we'd have a reasonable chance at landing.

Weather out of Reid-Hillview was clear, but as we got to King city, the ground was covered by a very pretty (but un-landable) blanket of clouds. Paso Robles was still reporting fog, so I knew it didn't get any better, so we tried diverting over to Harris Ranch. When we got there, we found the edge of another cloud deck just over Harris, so I turned back north and headed back to the airport.

I wasn't terribly disappointed -- the whole idea was to get out of the house, not really to get somewhere in particular. But it would be nice if I wasn't staring at the clock for the flight to make sure I got the plane back in time.

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