Stranded In The Southland

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Visiting Little Airports

I'm hoping that I'm finally entering the home stretch for this whole private pilot certificate. H. thinks I need two or three more lessons with him, and a few more hours of solo, and I'll be ready. We're looking at scheduling the checkride sometime mid-September.

As part of the preparation, H. and I flew from Chino (I decided that coyly failing to mention actual locations just made it tougher to read this; anonymity seems a bit overrated) out to San Bernadino International Airport. It turns out that KSBD features a beautiful 10,000 foot concrete runway, but it is an uncontrolled airport. There's a tower there, but it's unmanned, so you show up, broadcast on a set frequency to announce your presence, and do what you have to do.

We landed behind a Cirrus who seemed a little lost, did three short-field landings (kinda funny on a 10,000 foot field), and bopped on over to a practice area near Rialto for some S-turns over a road. Finally, we did a couple of quick short-field landings at Rialto with some ugly crosswinds, transitioned through Ontario airspace, and landed back at Chino.

I'm now signed off to fly to San Bernadino and Rialto, so I can practice this in preparation for the test. I can't wait to do this a few times by myself! Woo hoo.