By lex, on April 25th, 2009
Three flights today, and it had been a little while. There was some cool kit laying on the flight line, including a Cessna Centurion II, a Mooney Ovation and a Cirrus SR-22GTS.
Your correspondent fairly drooled, which – for a man who in his youth tossed stripped down Hornets and Vipers through the burning blue – is saying something about somebody.
Yeah, I know. Go not gently, and that.
But what about going gracefully?
The first couple were good sports, hizzoner a generalist who had five (!) motorcycles, one of which he raced on weekends. All smiles and confidence as we briefed and manned up. But it was a bumpy ride on the transition north across the dormant Miramar Class C, and seeing the world slantwise, like, upset his innards non-trivially. He said that he regretted the banana he’d had before going flying. I told him it had been a good choice. Bananas tasting much the same coming up as they do going down.
The second pair were on a 30 minute side-by-side learn to fly. We toodled off to La Jolla, before descending down to 500 feet southbound beyond Crystal Pier, and then into San Diego bay itself. Being careful to talk to the tower controllers at San Diego International and Naval Air Station North Island. The latter of which sternly abjured us from flying over any naval warships moored there, including the USS Nimitz and Ronald Reagan.
It’s sort of strange to look upon a carrier deck, knowing that you’ll never land upon one again.
Down to the Coronado Bay Bridge and then back through the VFR transition corridor through KSAN. Talking to the tower controller like any other man in his 757. The weather was very nearly perfect.
Experimentally, I wore my newest acquisition, a Lightspeed 20XLc * Automatic Nose Noise Reducing headset. Which is not a Bose X headset *, but neither is it a thousand dollars, nor even a significant fraction thereof. When you’ve spent as many hours as I have with a jet engine roaring at you behind the bulkhead, you treasure what hearing you have left. While counting the pennies as they go out.
ANR technology seeks to sample the ambient noise signal and generate a dampening wave signal. It works. I turned the radio up on deck to a level that allowed me to (barely) follow what was going on, then remembered myself and activated the battery-powered ANR switch. Suddenly the radio seemed painfully loud. The radio volume hadn’t changed, the background noise did.
Color me a believer.
The third hack of the day belonged to an occasional reader and his lovely lady, old friends who we have met once before, and who availed themselves of the opportunity to tear the skies asunder in 1200 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. A good time was had by all, your correspondent received a generous tip, and after a beer (or two) and happy conversation it was back to kith and kin.
A trio of squeaker landings, and I could live like this forever.
* 09-04-2018 Links Gone; no replacements found (headsets were discontinued) – Ed.
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