It’s great being back in the pilot’s seat again. I’ve started flying in San Francisco, and boy-oh-boy, it’s nothing like back in Toronto.
Today’s flight started around 4pm. The weather was great, not a cloud in the sky (at least east of the Santa Cruz mountains). After a standard pre-flight briefing with the instructor, we headed out to do pattern work at Hayward Executive airport.
This is the first airport that I’ve ever landed at that:
- Has a different circuit altitude depending on which runway you’re landing on.
- Has simultaneous operations going on both parallel runways at the same time.
The different circuit (err.. uhmm.. pattern) altitudes for each runway is mainly due to the fact that you’re so close to Oakland International (KOAK) that 28L at Hayward puts you right in the approach path for 30 at Oakland.
This purpose of this flight was two fold:
- To get better local knowledge of the area
- Practice more landings and take-offs!
It was a bumpy day, at one point the ATIS was showing 310 at 13 gusting 21. So landing was fun and overall I did pretty well. However, I did have to do one overshoot because I didn’t slow down enough for an aircraft in front of me on final.
I also had to do a runway change from 28L to 28R. Something that I’ve never done before. Well, runway changes are nothing new, but changes to another parallel runway are. To make things even more interesting: another aircraft was taking off on 28L at the same time I was doing a touch and go on 28R.
Flying at this airport taught me that runway tracking after take off is extremely important, especially during simultaneous take-offs and landings on parallel runways.
Overall a great flight and I finally start feeling the rust coming off. I’m going to try to get one more flight in before I head back to Toronto for a month.
