On Sep 16, 10:42 pm, "Dave Dougherty" wrote:
With all the gloomy posts about GA, I thought I'd post about a great day I
had flying with my Dad and my 6 year old son. We flew from RHV in San Jose,
out to Castle AFB (KMER) to see the museum and get lunch. Everything went
smoothly. I helped the briefer identify useful airports to get the weather
reports I already knew, and he was very nice. I had just gotten checked out
in a Piper Warrior this week, so that was a change from 172's and
Citabria's. Its a good plane and fun to fly. I definitely fly more
rectangular patterns when I can see the runway on base. I also remebered to
switch tanks. Twice even.

At Castle (which has a tower and is class D now) the guys from Gemini were
great. They gave us a ride to the museum, and told us to call when we were
done to get a ride back. That was really nice. I felt bad we had only burned
about 8 gallons off our full tanks and didn't need fuel. They did even ask,
and seemed just happy to help.

We got lunch at the museum snack bar, which my son enjoyed. Then we walked
around the planes outside. My Dad grew up fascinated with aviation. When he
was a kid, a neighbor, who had been a 19year old captain on a B-17 and flew
20 missions over Germany, used to take him up in a piper cub. He was
interested in aerospace engineering, but with the collapse of Apollo, turned
to another industry for his career. He never pursued getting a pilot
license, being busy raising a family. Seeing the B-47's and the B-36, which
were the cutting edge of technology when he was a kid, brought back memories
I'm sure. My son was kind of bored with the big jets. He liked the SR-71
parked there, so he got a blackbird T-shirt to wear to school tomorrow.

We flew back to Livermore (LVK) to drop off my son since I knew he would be
falling asleep soon. My Dad did the flying while I remebered how to set the
radios to open a flight plan with flight service while receiving on the VOR.
My Dad picked up on how the VOR's worked and kept us on course to get back
to the Altamont pass where I took over again. Another Cherokee was coming in
behind us and the tower wanted my to keep my speed up to make some space. At
three miles he let me slow up from my 126 kt descent and I made a nice 63 kt
landing on the centerline just at the right spot where I could turn off for
the transient parking by the termnal.

After my wife picked up my son, we took off for a left 45 departure and got
to fly over my house. Then we headed back to RHV. I flew because my Dad got
interested in the traffic system on the Garmin GPS. We parked the plane and
checked it in with 2.8 hours on the Hobbs.

Not the biggest flying adventure, I know. I'm just an average pilot, and I
don't get to fly as much as I'd like. I love GA though, and all the little
things are still a lot of fun to me. Taking my Dad up, and watching him
teach my son about airplanes, reminds me that I did the right thing
getting my license, now, rather than waiting for someday.

Ha funny. Is your plane white with brown/orange stripes? I think I saw
you either getting in your plane, or getting out when I was walking
out to start my flight (this would have been 1:30ish).

I've lived in A****er for the past 9 months and have not yet been to
the museum. It's probably a 10 minute walk from where I live...