I have returned!
4.2 on the hobbs back from Gillespie Field via Camarillo yesterday with one semi scary weather encounter. More on that later.
The rankings this year overall
1. ERAU
2. SJSU
3. Mt. SAC
We're going to nationals baby!
I did six events and placed in five of them. I coached preflight for our team this year and all of my preflighters placed.
The margin between us and Mt. SAC was only seven points so it was a good battle for second again.
This is the 19th year in a row Riddle has taken first place. My goal for the team for next year is to not let them make 20 years. Typically we've held our own in flying events but we don't do as well in ground events. This year I took note of several improvements we can make to our practices to better cover ground events and hopefully we can do a lot better.
I placed 10th in power off landings
9th in SCAN
10th in nav (which we didn't get to fly because of weather so they ran it planning only... and the aircraft given to us was an F-16 planned at 420kts... and my E6B didn't have a high speed scale... DOH!)
5th in Aircraft ID
3rd in message drop despite having to pull power to idle in the middle of the run and almost stalled because the Air Force Academy plane in front of me slowed to 55 kts for their run and we caught up with them halfway between the targets.
My landings score would have been so much better except I got a couple of penalties, erratic pitch changes because I had to avoid a bird on upwind, and uncoordinated flight which I really can't understand. If it hadn't been for those penalties I would have been top three.
Yesterday brought beautiful weather in San Diego and beautiful weather in the bay area but isolated thunderstorms in between. Ceilings were high so we didn't see a problem with dodging them. We set out around 10am from Gillespie and went through the Los Angeles Bravo to Camarillo for fuel and lunch. When we took off from Camarillo the plan was to track V-485 to Paso Robles and then follow 101 up to Salinas and over to Reid Hillview. along the airway the ceiling started to go down and the terrain started to go up and at one point it started to snow. I saw sunshine to our left and decided the over there was way better than over here and headed for it and lower ground. Myself and the coach riding with me eventually made our way around the mountain range in much better conditions. As it turns out if we had gone a little bit further we would have been fine since the terrain dropped away after the next ridge and the one area of snow was the only one, but I have no regrets about turning when I did. We were never in a dire situation, just an uncomfortable one and if it took a little longer to get there then whatever. :)
For those of you who gave me birthday wishes, I'm sorry I wasn't around to receive them but thanks a lot :)
The rankings this year overall
1. ERAU
2. SJSU
3. Mt. SAC
We're going to nationals baby!
I did six events and placed in five of them. I coached preflight for our team this year and all of my preflighters placed.
The margin between us and Mt. SAC was only seven points so it was a good battle for second again.
This is the 19th year in a row Riddle has taken first place. My goal for the team for next year is to not let them make 20 years. Typically we've held our own in flying events but we don't do as well in ground events. This year I took note of several improvements we can make to our practices to better cover ground events and hopefully we can do a lot better.
I placed 10th in power off landings
9th in SCAN
10th in nav (which we didn't get to fly because of weather so they ran it planning only... and the aircraft given to us was an F-16 planned at 420kts... and my E6B didn't have a high speed scale... DOH!)
5th in Aircraft ID
3rd in message drop despite having to pull power to idle in the middle of the run and almost stalled because the Air Force Academy plane in front of me slowed to 55 kts for their run and we caught up with them halfway between the targets.
My landings score would have been so much better except I got a couple of penalties, erratic pitch changes because I had to avoid a bird on upwind, and uncoordinated flight which I really can't understand. If it hadn't been for those penalties I would have been top three.
Yesterday brought beautiful weather in San Diego and beautiful weather in the bay area but isolated thunderstorms in between. Ceilings were high so we didn't see a problem with dodging them. We set out around 10am from Gillespie and went through the Los Angeles Bravo to Camarillo for fuel and lunch. When we took off from Camarillo the plan was to track V-485 to Paso Robles and then follow 101 up to Salinas and over to Reid Hillview. along the airway the ceiling started to go down and the terrain started to go up and at one point it started to snow. I saw sunshine to our left and decided the over there was way better than over here and headed for it and lower ground. Myself and the coach riding with me eventually made our way around the mountain range in much better conditions. As it turns out if we had gone a little bit further we would have been fine since the terrain dropped away after the next ridge and the one area of snow was the only one, but I have no regrets about turning when I did. We were never in a dire situation, just an uncomfortable one and if it took a little longer to get there then whatever. :)
For those of you who gave me birthday wishes, I'm sorry I wasn't around to receive them but thanks a lot :)