Preparation Day
Today is a beautiful day in San Diego, the usual mid-70's and sunny, as opposed to the 90's-100's like last week. My co-pilot and friend, Bob Lima, and I arrived at N3SK's hangar at Montgomery Field to do one last "test" flight and to do 
another practice instrument approach to make me legal to fly IFR in case we need to fly through clouds sometime during the trip. We chose the MYF GPS RWY 28R approach as opposed the usual ILS RWY 28R because the ILS system is offline right now. Turns out this is an LNAV+V approach, so I was treated to a computer generated glideslope (using a WAAS-enabled Garmin GNS430W GPS nav/comm) as we headed toward the runway. After a short, but good flight, we filled up the fuel tanks and taxied
back to the hangar to discuss some last minute details such as important stuff like the flight plan and desert survival food/water, and even more important stuff like who's iPod we'll use in flight and what snacks to bring. After applying Rejex to the airplane's leading edges to help keep the bugs off, I headed to Marv's for another chart (in addition to the other 23 VFR and IFR charts, four A/FDs, and 13 approach plate books I bought already), and headed home to pack, pay bills, and do some other last-minute chores and errands. We plan to depart 
tomorrow morning at 6am (ugh... neither of us are morning people) to beat the isolated thunderstorms that lately have been forming in the late morning or early afternoon in Arizona and New Mexico. The plane is all washed, waxed, gassed up and ready to go. By the way, I apologize in advance to all you land-lubbers reading this blog for all the aviation-ese in this and future posts. Maybe this blog will spark your interest in learning to fly (and learning what all those terms and acronyms mean)... anyone can do it!
another practice instrument approach to make me legal to fly IFR in case we need to fly through clouds sometime during the trip. We chose the MYF GPS RWY 28R approach as opposed the usual ILS RWY 28R because the ILS system is offline right now. Turns out this is an LNAV+V approach, so I was treated to a computer generated glideslope (using a WAAS-enabled Garmin GNS430W GPS nav/comm) as we headed toward the runway. After a short, but good flight, we filled up the fuel tanks and taxied
back to the hangar to discuss some last minute details such as important stuff like the flight plan and desert survival food/water, and even more important stuff like who's iPod we'll use in flight and what snacks to bring. After applying Rejex to the airplane's leading edges to help keep the bugs off, I headed to Marv's for another chart (in addition to the other 23 VFR and IFR charts, four A/FDs, and 13 approach plate books I bought already), and headed home to pack, pay bills, and do some other last-minute chores and errands. We plan to depart 
tomorrow morning at 6am (ugh... neither of us are morning people) to beat the isolated thunderstorms that lately have been forming in the late morning or early afternoon in Arizona and New Mexico. The plane is all washed, waxed, gassed up and ready to go. By the way, I apologize in advance to all you land-lubbers reading this blog for all the aviation-ese in this and future posts. Maybe this blog will spark your interest in learning to fly (and learning what all those terms and acronyms mean)... anyone can do it!
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