Flying the Bay Tour

Flew the bay tour today. My friend Mike, my son and one of the instructors at Tradewinds as a last minute addition to fill out the plane. What a fantastic flight it was. We were wheels up at 10:15 am on 31L. As luck would have it the same scenario I had written about in my last post. Sure enough the tower forgot to hand us off in time so we flew cross wind and into the downwind leg before we got in touch with San Jose, then broke right and back towards San Jose. Across KSJC at or above 1500 and soon we were with Norcal restricted to 3500 heading up along the Bayshore 101 freeway. To me 3500 feet was a very comfortable altitude. You could make out the terrain very nicely to navigate. Turns out that when we checked in that morning, somebody had taken the other Archer so we flew in N4313G which has a very nice KLN94 GPS.

I throughly studied its manual several weeks before and so with familiar landmarks and the KLN94 navigation to show airspace boundaries it turned out to be a snap. You have to be up on your radio game because calls do come in rapid fire and you're expected to respond in kind, but I had listened to my scanner for months and knew what was coming and to my surprise my responses came a lot faster than even I had anticipated. The marine layer was visible all along the coast, but right at the Golden Gate bridge it opened up with scattered clouds. Two other planes were on the tour, but were leaving the Bay just as we arrived. We crossed the bridge at a right angle and entered a theater of phenomenal views and scenery. Now at our own discretion, clear of class Bravo and North of the Bay Bridge we were clear to descend and went down to 2800 feet and circled Alcatraz, went around Angel Island, enjoyed views of Sausalito, watched a yacht race, flew along the San Francisco piers, saw a huge freighter pulling a tiny tug boat...wait a minute...shouldn't that be the other way around.. and all along enjoyed the fantastic skyline of San Francisco. Below are a few camera shots we picked up along the way. Click on the pictures to get enlarged views.

After about 30 minutes we headed back towards the East Bay, called Norcal to request a class Bravo transition along the East Bay to Reid Hillview. Norcal advised us to stay north of the Toll Plaza (which is where the Bay bridge meets land) and north of the bridge. We stayed to the left of 880 and received a few fectors for traffic, but were allowed to a ssume navigation quite soon. Eventually our radar services were terminated and we squaked VFR. At Embassy suites (little...or not so little pink building right along the freeway and maybe a few miles after the big auto plant) we made our call up to Reid Hillview and landed after 1:30 hours back where we started richer by an experience that few ever get to have and thankful for it all.

I was especially thankful to be able to share that experience with my son who was bright eyed about every little thing we saw along the way, did a great job at pointing out various lakes along the way and was very mindful of my radio work. He fell asleep the last 20 minutes on the way back.

Mike and I spent several hours this evening reliving the experience and we'll talk about it for a while to come. It was fantastic to have an interesting friend like Mike along. Thanks Shawn for joining us on short notice. It made the flight a lot more relaxing. You're an absolute delight to fly with.