Summer Rain

Summer ended a few days early this year. A fierce wind came up on Friday afternoon. I caught these sea gulls huddling against the wind. On Saturday morning, I shot downtown San Diego cleansed by the first rainfall in months. Fall has arrived and the ocean water temperature has dropped about 10 degrees and there is a chill in the air.

Paddle for Clean Water

Surfer chic in OB. The guy on the left is wearing a wetsuit under his sport coat.

The line-up for the paddle.

Kids everywhere have fun at the beach.

Yesterday was the 16th Annual Paddle for Clean Water sponsored by the Surfrider Foundation. It was sunny early on and then the fog rolled in. I couldn't even see halfway down the pier.

Later I went to Gillespie. John and I flew up to El Monte, California in the LA Basin. North up through the pass that separates Riverside from San Diego County. We flew along the eastern side of the Santa Ana Mountains. There is much development going on around Lake Elsinore. We flew into the LA Basin and roughly followed I10 to the 605 where we turned downwind for El Monte. We were right up against Mt. Wilson. There was a fire in Big Bear and the smoke streamed across the basin. But other than that smoke, the air was fairly clear.

I flew home.

The Glass Cockpit

Yesterday we flew to Torrance in a new Cessna 180 with a Garmin 1000 cockpit. The photos are 1) the display of the 2 Tango Alpha; 2) the Huntington Beach Pier; and 3) short final into Torrance.

The display gives you all the information you need; you never have to look out the window. The Garmin 1000 cockpit has a traffic collision avoidance system installed that keeps the pilot apprised of "targets" within a 12-mile radius of the plane and shows their altitude in relation to ours. You can dial out to a 50 mile radius and check for weather activity. We saw an active thunderstorm cell east of the Salton Sea while returning to San Diego.

The auto-pilot is very smart. You dial up the altitude you want to reach (5500 feet) and then you indicate your rate of climb (500 feet per minute). You push arm and the plane flies you gently up to that altitude. All you need to do is monitor airspeed and engine performance.

When you hit altitude you can lean the engine by watching the cylinders and dialing down to the desired burn rate for gas (in this plane about 8 gallons per hour). At your assigned altitude you push a button called heading and the auto-pilot locks into your heading and levels the plane and navigates for you. You fold your arms and take pictures out the window.

The Garmin 1000 will also bring you in for landing using GPS or localizer approaches. John hadn't quite figured that out so he couldn't show me.

After flying that plane, would I ever go back to ded reckoning and rudder-stick flying? There is the price of course; this new plane costs $140/hour.