Another Long Cross Country: HPN to PAO in 6 Days (long)

In article ,
Blair wrote:
On Sun, 4 Jun 2006 05:32:45 +0000 (UTC),
(John Clear) wrote:
Ok, one more. http://www.dr-amy.com/rich/flying/kpao.html has a
ton of local knowledge/landmarks for PAO. Like most airports, it
has its share of 'weird' local reporting points.

Rich is a CFI at my club but I'd never seen that before. Cool site.
Wish I had known about it when I was a student.

I'm at WVFC too. I came across that site after I'd figured out most
of the landmarks from experience.

Funny...in my 90 hours of flying, all of which has originated at Palo
Alto and includes lots of pattern work during primary training, I have
NEVER heard tower refer to the Old Yacht Harbor, Bird House, Spot,
Water Treatment Plant, Antenna Farm, Dump, or Cooley Landing. And I've
only heard "Duck Pond" a couple of times (usually they'll just say
"short final").

I've heard Old Yacht Harbor, Bird House, Antenna Farm, Cooley
Landing and Duck Pond. I haven't heard the Water Treatment Plant
or Dump used as landmarks. I've been flying out of PAO for ten
years, so some of them might not be in current use. I'll have to
listen for them and see which they still use.

Speaking of the yacht harbor I just read an article about someone in
the city govt wanting to initiate a study of resurrecting it. This
would require rerouting San Francisquito creek. It was the original
rerouting of the creek that spelled the end of the harbor in the first
place. Sounds crazy but it actually has merit since the creek needs
some major work (e.g. levy improvement) anyways to reduce flooding
risk. What kind of tony waterside town doesn't have a yacht club
anyways, eh?

I think it will take a lot more then rerouting San Francisquito
Creek again. At low tide, the bay really is more mud then anything
else south of the Dumbarton Bridge.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/