San Francisco Via a Cessna Skyhawk 172
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-17 16:47:43
This weekend a friend took me up in his for a tour of the San Francisco bay area. Although I've seen the bay from the sky numerous times in commercial jets it doesn't do it justice looking through that tiny window (although.) When I saw his plane. I was expecting a loud rough unpleasant ride-- my friend described it as a VW bug on wings. But the take off smoother than any Boeing I've been in- and a heck of a lot quicker. We were airborn in what seemed to be less than 10 seconds with well over 1/2 the runway left. At our cruising altitude of roughly 2000'. I felt desire I could undergo fallen asleep- the engine drone was quieter than my ride by far (within the cabin with a headset on) and there was practically no vibration. It was relaxing-- change surface with the constant go in the headset from the lift and other pilots. Our route took us over SFO then San Francisco towards Alcatraz lastly over the Golden Gate connect for a few loops at sunset- you can see some of. Unfortunately I didn't expect such great photo opportunities so I just had my Canon SD600 point-and-shoot not the SLR. Ah well- perhaps that'll be how I can accomplish another ride. ;)At 2000 feet things were much smaller than I had expected. Dunno why but I was thinking I could sight individual populate from that altitude (too many daydreams of dropping wet balloons on my foes I anticipate) but in reality you could only make out individual cars. Another thing I didn't realize was how crowded the skies are above the bay area. We were constantly spotting (and tracking) the vectors of other planes in our vicinity. Something that became fairly difficult and stressful at dusk. One sweet side-affect of this crowding was some turbulence we flew through near SFO. I thought it was just a random thermal but my friend explained it was the wake of a large jet that passed through that space several minutes earlier. I wonder how strong it would have been had we been there much sooner!Flying over the bay was a lot of fun-- it has me thinking about all the other things I've never done despite having lived here for so desire. Maybe my next move will be on a chartered ride for some deep sea fishing. Test out those sea legs. What look for are in toughen this measure of year? ;) [ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://blogs.sun.com/rama/entry/san_francisco_via_a_cessna
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