2nd Angel Flight and a stop at Van Nuys

A week ago, I had a chance to my second ever Angel Flight. This one
involved flying a cancer patient from my home airport to Santa Monica,
CA (KSMO). Seeing as it would be my first time flying in the Los
Angeles area, I asked my brother to fly along as co-pilot.

It was an early morning wakeup...yawn, 4:00 am. The weather was
forecast to be VFR with the possibility of early morning fog departing
from my home field. A check of the weather revealed that the fog was
all in the San Francisco Bay area. Unfortunately, this was exactly
where I needed to go in order to pickup my brother. Hmmm, time for
plan-B which was to pickup Steve in Livermore, slightly more than 1/2
way between where we both live. The first ATIS report at LKVK was
exactly the same as what KRHV (Reed-Hillview, San Jose, CA) was
reporting. 1/4 mile visibility and 100 ft. ceiling. Steve and I talk
and decide to try meeting at Livermore since the chances of the fog
lifting above ILS minimums there was better than in San Jose.

I launch out of Lincoln with my passenger. She has lots of flying
experience as her family once owned a C-182. She's fairly quiet most of
the trip. By the time I can see where Livermore should be, I can tell
that the fog line is right at the airport boundary. I do one half of a
circle around the field while talking to the tower to see if the
visibility has improved. I can see the numbers on 25R but where the
tower is located, it's still a 100 ft. ceiling so the tower tells me
"unable VFR arrival, remain clear of class delta airspace". No sweat, I
call up Norcal Tracon and get a pop up IFR clearance and vectors for an
ILS. By the time I get my approach clearance and am established on the
localizer, the fog has magically cleared for about a mile on three sides
of the airport. Once on the ground, it looked really weird, like a wall
of clouds a couple hundred feet high and surrounding the airport on
three sides. A quick fuel top off and bathroom stop then we're on our
way to Santa Monica.

We depart VFR and get pointed South pretty much towards my original
planned route. Calling up Norcal, I request a change in routing as I'd
filed IFR from Reed Hillview to Santa Monica. Being /G sure helped as I
was cleared direct to a VOR on my original route then as filed.

The arrival at Santa Monica was interesting. We were given the Fernando
Five Arrival and flew via the OHIGH transition. One thing I've learned
(unfortunately, the hard way) was to have the appropriate arrival and
departure procedures out of the Jepp binder and in my stack of approach
plates and charts (and to have previously reviewed everything). Another
nice thing was being able to plug the arrival procedure into the GNS-430.

Santa Monica is pretty busy. We're cleared to land #2 with a Citation
about 7-8 miles behind us. The Met Life Snoopy-2 blimp is cruising
along the beach a couple of miles from the airport. We land and get our
passenger to the terminal building. She's thankful for the flight but
not feeling well, perhaps due to some turbulence encountered on the
descent. She wanders off to find her ground transportation and I'm
grateful that I've been blessed with the resources and the time to bring
her to Southern California for her treatment.

Time to head over to Van Nuys for lunch and to see if I could hear those
words "Arrow two one zero four tango, cleared to land one six right".
Oh yeah, to get lunch too :-). A 16R or 16L arrival isn't likely due to
the winds. We depart KSMO, turn crosswind at the beach, verify we have
the Snoopy 2 blimp in sight (It was very tempting to reply with "Snoopy
two in sight, switching to guns"), climb to approx. 2500 ft. and look
for Van Nuys. KVNY is straight ahead and we're pretty much on an
extremely long final for 34L. We call up the Van Nuys tower and get
cleared to land straight in on 34L. A few minutes later, we're switched
to 34R. We're maybe 300 ft AGL and I see a very BIG and well defined
shadow of what looks like a 737 crossing left to right. No time to look
up but Steve does and says something like "Wow, that's interesting". It
was indeed a SouthWest 737 descending for somewhere close by.

We land and taxi right past the observation area that you see in the
movie One Six Right. We end up at Million Air and go have lunch at
Lulu's, a couple of blocks away. It turned out that gas was less of a
rip off than I expected, only 13 cents/gal higher than at home.

As we're taxiing to 34L for departure, we notice Clay Lacey's DC-3
sitting across the field, the row of T-6s that you see in the movie, and
what appears to be a wing from a G-IV sitting on a flat bed trailer.
Lots of helicopters as well. Speaking of a G-IV, we pull up behind one
as we're waiting for departure. It's an extremely busy place with
several departure aircraft waiting as well as a couple of arrivals
happening. After about 10 minutes, we're off and headed North.

The trip back to Livermore then home were uneventful...well, with the
exception of a fairly stiff crosswind at Livermore. By the time I put
the plane back in the hangar, I'd logged another 8.5 hours and five
takeoffs/landings as well as helped a quiet senior citizen as part of an
Angel Flight. It was a great day.

--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL-Instrument Airplane

"To become a Jedi knight, you must master a single force. To become
a private pilot you must strive to master four of them"
- Rod Machado

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:28:59 -0800, Jack Allison
wrote in
:

I've been blessed with the resources and the time to bring
her to Southern California for her treatment.

Just because I've never seen any news media exposure of Angel Flights
doesn't mean it doesn't occur, but it would seem to me that it is a
grand opportunity for GA to get some good press to bolster GA's image
in the eyes of the public and press alike. Perhaps AF pilots should
request AF personnel arrange a news interview at the airport of
departure as a condition of donating their services. It's a win-win
idea after all.

("Jack Allison" wrote)
A week ago, I had a chance to my second ever Angel Flight. This one
involved flying a cancer patient from my home airport to Santa Monica, CA
(KSMO). Seeing as it would be my first time flying in the Los Angeles
area, I asked my brother to fly along as co-pilot.

[...snip...]

The trip back to Livermore then home were uneventful...well, with the
exception of a fairly stiff crosswind at Livermore. By the time I put the
plane back in the hangar, I'd logged another 8.5 hours and five
takeoffs/landings as well as helped a quiet senior citizen as part of an
Angel Flight. It was a great day.


Nice write up, Jack.


Montblack

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Question for you, Jack.

How did you get started into Angel Flight? I've heard quite a
lot about it, and with my SO being blind and seeing her interest in
medical treatment, I figure this might be a way for me to make a
difference in someone's life.

Have a website you can plug, or want to share a story of how
you got into it?

BL.
- --
Brad Littlejohn | Email:
Unix Systems Administrator, |
Web + NewsMaster, BOFH.. Smeghead! | http://www.wizard.com/~tyketto
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Brad,

A couple of links for you:

http://www.angelflightamerica.org/
http://www.angelflight.org/ This is "Angel Flight West", which is the
portion of the organization I belong to.

I don't recall how/where I learned about the organization. I think it
was sometime after getting my PPL I looked them up via the web and
checked into their requirements. It turns out that AFW requires 300
hrs. total time so I waited about a year or so before joining. I could
have joined earlier and flown as a mission assistant but I opted to
wait. That turned out for the better since in that time, I became a
co-owner of our Arrow.

After joining, it was a simple matter of setting up an orientation with
one of their "Mission Orientation Pilots". After that I could select
and schedule missions whenever I wanted.

It is a very good organization and it is a privilege to be part of it
serving folks in need. Definitely look into it. I think you'll be glad
that you did.

--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL-Instrument Airplane

"To become a Jedi knight, you must master a single force. To become
a private pilot you must strive to master four of them"
- Rod Machado

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

A Guy Called Tyketto wrote in
t:

Question for you, Jack.

How did you get started into Angel Flight? I've heard quite a
lot about it, and with my SO being blind and seeing her interest in
medical treatment, I figure this might be a way for me to make a
difference in someone's life.

Have a website you can plug, or want to share a story of how
you got into it?

You can get to various web sites such as www.angelflightsc.org (for the
south central region). Depends on where in the country you are located.
They will all have information, but frankly we are great pilots - not
necessarily great web designers. It may not be as "inspiring" as it
should be.

You want stories... all of us who have flown with Angel Flight for long
have lots to tell. Some sad, some funny, some both. Lots of great
experiences.

I just stuck a couple of old ones up on a web site. Try:

http://s90746988.onlinehome.us/public_html/ANGELST3.doc

http://s90746988.onlinehome.us/public_html/ANGELST5.doc

for starters. [Wish I had an electronic copy of "The Seal Flight From
Hell" from one of our old newsletters. It is absolutely hilarious.]

jmk


-----------------------------------------------
James M. Knox
TriSoft ph 512-385-0316
1300 Koenig Lane West fax 512-371-5716
Suite 200
Austin, Tx 78756
-----------------------------------------------

A week ago, I had a chance to my second ever Angel Flight. This one
involved flying a cancer patient from my home airport to Santa Monica,
CA (KSMO). Seeing as it would be my first time flying in the Los
Angeles area, I asked my brother to fly along as co-pilot.

Great write-up, Jack. Wow, to be able to provide a wonderful, much-
needed service *and* fly into Van Nuys, all in the same day -- what a
great journey!

Landing on 16R has been on my list of "must-do-before-I-die" flying
things ever since the movie came out.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"