Leonard's Airport Cafe in Apple Valley

I almost forgot to mention that last week I got to add a new airport to my list of 45+ airports I've flown to. Apple Valley is in the SoCal desert and it's a pretty sweet airport with multiple runways. We went there because we heard the food was good at Leonard's Airport Cafe. It was. Ron got a burger and I got a tuna melt. Very happy with the food. But the service was a kick. Leonard is a bit of a wry comedian and his cook goes back and forth with him endlessly. We were entertained and part of the entertainment as the subjects ranged from which airport cafe had the best burgers to world events. We'll be back.

Here's our landing at Riverside for our Saturday breakfast. Ron came in a little fast so it bounced j u s t a little bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxpqsHhMVA0&eurl=http://uk.youtube.com/my_videos_edit2&feature=player_embedded

Flabob Movie Night

Last Friday night I went to Flabob airport in Riverside for their Flabob Fabulous Friendly First Friday Film Festival monthly movie night put on by their EAA chapter one. It was a fun night with a bunch of aviators looking for a good time. First they showed an episode of "Sky King", which I had never seen so that was cool. And then some footage from the 1929 air races. The movie, Angel Flight (or something like that) was your typical '50s B-movie, but it was fun to see it with a bunch of airplane nuts. They are planning to have another movie night on October 17 in conjunction with the aircraft display day and car show on the 18th (don't hold me to this, call them before leaving for the field. I can't find any mention of an additional movie on their web site, www.eaach1.org).

More Barry Schiff Wisdom...

Another great piece of advice from Barry Schiff's seminar I attended. As most people know, when you fly into a high altitude airport everyone is thinking about the takeoff that you will be making when you leave. Will the plane have enough power, is the runway long enough, etc., etc.

But one thing they don't think about is....what if my landing attempt is messed up in some way and I need to make a missed approach (or a go-around for VFR pilots)? You will be in much worse shape for your missed approach because you have not leaned the engine for max power and you have your flaps down. It is all to easy to try a missed approach by shoving the throttle forward, dumping the flaps and then sinking into the runway.

So Barry offers 2 pieces of advice. Number 1 is to practice a missed approach on the downwind leg. Yep. Throttle back to landing power, set your flaps, and then pretend like you're going to do a go-around. Note if the airplane sinks, or mushes, or climbs just fine.

Tip Number 2 was: Maybe you shouldn't use all three notches of flaps. Now this entrigued me because my flying buddy likes to land with 2 notches of flaps and a little faster than me. I've always fretted and worried about this because I didn't know how much this would affect the stall speed. The book only tells you a stall speed for no flaps and full flaps. But Barry explained that the flaps achieve almost all of their affect after you go to the first notch. The next notch only improves the stall speed about 10 percent. The added flaps do contribute to drag and slow the airplane though. The third notch of flaps basically don't help your stall speed, they just add more drag.

So, Barry says why not use one notch of flaps until you are almost to the runway (I forget the term he used...something like "on the property") and then pull the 2nd notch of flaps. So, if your landing is screwy before you get too close to the airport you can do your go-around starting with only one notch of flaps down. And if it goes bad near the runway you're still better off with only two notches instead of all three.

Father's Day Spin

After a nice BBQ at pilot buddy Ron's house, the inevitable words finally were spoken, "Wanna take a spin around the patch?" There is only one answer to that question and so we headed down to El Monte Airport at 6:15 p.m. and pulled N6794J out of hangar Tango 4. Wait, that IS a tongue-twister, isn't it? Sometimes we accidentally say Hango Tanger 4 and the other day the ATC ground guy make the same mistake. We all had a good laugh about it. We asked if in the future could we just say "taxi to Tango" and he affirmed that it would be just fine by him. Anyway, I digress. So, we fired up Juliet and headed toward the Paradise VOR at 2500 feet. Called Chino tower to transition through their airspace and they oblighed. Once out of Chino airspace and pretty much over the VOR we contacted Riverside tower and asked to transition through their airspace. With the affirmative answer we turned North/Northeast and headed for Rialto airport. Just read an article in GA news about the "Art Scholl Airport" and how it's going to be closing down so we thought we'd take a visit. It was a beautiful day to fly with the sun low on the horizon. Everything had a special glow to it and and the fact that two fathers were out flying on Father's Day made it more special. We ended each final call to the various airports with a "Happy Father's Day to all" and were acknowledged with a double click on the mic.