We had the day off Friday, and I’d finally gotten my medical renewed (it was delayed by a combination of a loss of a flight surgeon and a lot of travel), so I decided to get up and shake some rust off.<\/p>\n
I’d originally planned to go out to California City<\/a>, a favorite desert spot, but I realized that Mojave’s tower would be open today, and the idea of adding a new airport to my list was attractive. Mojave Air and Space Port<\/a> is famous for being the home of Scaled Composites<\/a>, Dick Rutan’s company that built SpaceShip One and the Rutan Voyager. It’s also a facility for mothballing (and cannibalizing) airliners that aren’t in use. Importantly, there’s also a restaurant there – specifically one run by the same folks who run the restaurant at William J. Fox<\/a> field (and California City).<\/p>\n Santa Monica<\/a> was reporting a scattered layer at 800 feet, which at Santa Monica usually means that there’s a marine layer on the south end of the field, which was the case when I got there. I departed runway 3 (with a significant tailwind, but it’s a long runway by Archer standards) and had to kind of thread my way past a couple aircraft getting out. There was a combination of the layer, some close airspace, a burst of traffic, and a new controller in the tower than made it more cramped than I would have liked, but no big deal.<\/p>\n The actual flight out to Mojave was pretty uneventful. Fairly smooth air and little traffic. The air was clear, but not crystal.<\/p>\n On the way in, I heard another aircraft heading for Mojave, one calling “heavy” after its callsign. That’s an indication of not only an airliner, but a big one. Sure enough, when I got there the mothball facility was taking in a brand new Boeing (looked to me like a 767, but I’m lousy at this). I’m sure that was fun to land in a 20kt crosswind without an ILS<\/a>.<\/p>\n Um, yeah, there was some wind. And some heat. When I got there they were reporting 12kts, with gusts to 21, and 34 degrees Celsius. As a result I landed on the narrow, short (relative standards – the runway was nearly as long as the one at SMO) runway 22. With all the gusts and the high density altitude, the landing a good challenge, but uneventful. I taxied up to the restaurant and took some pictures<\/a>.<\/p>\n The food was good, as expected, and it was nice to be out of the hot, dry wind. As an airport restaurant, they’re required to have a bunch of airplane stuff on the wall, but the local boys do particularly well here. My menu was signed by Dick Rutan (and I suspect that most were) and there were plenty of pictures of him and his crew around. It had the vibe of supporting the airport family and was a nice one to pick up.<\/p>\n Getting ready to leave, it was time to address density altitude and gusts again. After leaning out for altitude, I took the longer, more convenient runway 26 for departure. The takeoff was a pretty good crosswind takeoff, but you could definitely feel the wind as you got off the ground. There was some turbulence, even at a low level, and work to do to keep everything straight and safe. It worked out well, though and I began putt-putting for home. And the putt-putting indicated that there was a pretty good headwind going back. I was seeing speeds in the low 90’s when I was indicating 110 or so, meaning 20 kts of headwind.<\/p>\n On the way back I got to relay a message for ATC to an aircraft that wasn’t hearing the transmitter. It’s just a little thing, but I always feel helpful doing it.<\/p>\n As I closed in on SMO, the field went IFR<\/a> – the marine layer had walked back over the airport. While I had other choices, I figured the easiest thing to do was to get an IFR clearance. I’d gotten the weather before the controller, but he set me right up with the clearance.<\/p>\n The approach itself was one I’m used to being based at SMO. I wasn’t ever in the clouds, had the field in sight the whole way, but the regulations say no VFR (though special VFR<\/a> was a choice). Still there are nuances. As I contacted SMO tower the same new voice from earlier was on the frequency. He asked me to report the field in sight, and I did immediately. He started to clear me for a visual approach<\/a>, but I heard a familiar voice in the background say “<bzzzt> Wrong. Continue approach,” which he instructed me to do. I’m assuming that because I couldn’t go around in VFR conditions that they couldn’t issue me a visual approach clearance. And by “assuming” I mean that I’ll be looking it up…<\/p>\n I caught a little gust low, which made my landing less than beautiful, but it was still a good day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We had the day off Friday, and I’d finally gotten my medical renewed (it was delayed by a combination of a loss of a flight surgeon and a lot of travel), so I decided to get up and shake some rust off. I’d originally planned to go out to California City, a favorite desert spot, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aviation","category-blogbook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}