Me flying past Mt. Shasta – 2003:

Anyway, I had not really thought about how much I loved that plane till I was flying down near Long Beach. I started remembering flying to Oregon with my buddy Justin, flying to Sun River to stay with Chuck and his family, flying around Mt. Shasta, altitude tests with Jeff Young, taking my parents for their first flight, flying to the Mooney PPP in Tucson and at the Mooney PPP in San Diego, numerous trips to LA for Laker games, numerous trips to Las Vegas to visit with my family, etc. etc. etc. All of a sudden, the song November rain started playing on my iPod and I really began to realize how much I am going to miss my baby

Me and my dad at Santa Monica getting ready to fly to Las Vegas – 2003:

Anyway, I got down to San Diego, parked the airplane, got everything I wanted to keep out of the plane, and closed it up in the hanger. I then went over to the FAA FSDO for my last San Diego Aviation Safety Counselor meeting. The Aviation Safety Counselors are a group of volunteers who work with the FAA to help promote aviation safety. We have monthly meetings and put on at least one big event a year–the Super Safety Seminar–which draws close to 600 local pilots for a day of safety-related seminars. I have been a member of the San Diego group for the last 2+ years and really gotten to know a lot of the other counselors well. I was elected to the board for a 2 year term, and was elected by the board to serve as treasurer. I have spent a lot of time with the group and I was very sad to say good bye. At the end of the meeting, the president and everyone present gave me a big thank you for my work over the past few years which made me feel very good. Thank you all very much as well for your efforts towards safer flying, and for being such great flying-buddies….I will miss you all.

I got a ride back to LA from another Mooney guy in San Diego who we will just refer to as Larry T. This was a great example of how NOT to fly. Larry T. started off as being very abusive to his plane. He tossed the keys onto the wing-walk, he let the tow bar slam into the cowl flap, and he was generally rough when handling the plane. This showed as his plane was not a good looking 231 at all.

Larry T’s 231:

The biggest thing I have to take issue with, however, is Larry T. being constantly behind EVERYTHING. He showed up 40 minutes late (and thus didn’t have the plane preflighted, fueled, or ready to go at all). He then stood around while waiting for the fuel truck only to do what vaguely resembled a preflight as they put fuel into the plane (no way to call it a thorough preflight at all). He then added barely enough fuel to make it to Santa Monica and back. He waited till we were both in the plane to clean the dirty windshield making us both get out. He didn’t have any of the charts out. He didn’t have any of the frequencies programmed in before he needed to change them. He didn’t have any backups setup in advance in case of a failure (I can only imagine what he would have to do if his GPS failed while IMC). He was behind the ENTIRE time.

He had a very nice panel containing a Garmin 430 GPS, an Apollo GPS (GX60 I think), a Garmin GMA-340 audio panel, storm scope, Apollo Comm/Nav 2, HSI, Autopilot, Bose headsets….the only problem being that he didn’t know how to use the equipment well. When we started up, my headset had good volume coming from the radios, but the inter-comm volume was low. When I went to adjust it on the GMA-340, he quickly snapped and said that he didn’t want me to touch anything in the plane (talk about an ego and not using all available resources….but I can live with that). The thing is that he then didn’t know how to do it himself and refused my help. We thus spent the entire flight in near silence as I couldn’t hear a word he said.

His actual flying wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good. He was very ham fisted and constantly jerked the plane around. Every time he looked right to adjust a radio, the plane banked 20 degrees right. He would then compensate by banking 20 degrees left. It was like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Larry T. also had problems in pitch. He only used the electric trim and refused to use the manual trim wheel. While this might work in other planes, it does not work at all in a Mooney. The electric trim is too sensitive so you get excessive pitch motions every time you flick the switch. Well….Larry T. did this throughout the flight making a not so smooth ride even less smooth.

Lastly, Larry T. just seemed to be overloaded by the plane. This was most pronounced during the approach phase of the flight. He didn’t comply with instructions from the tower. While level on base, I tried to tell him to turn off the runway towards the north side of the field so that we wouldn’t have to taxi back across it after we had stopped. This, however, was too much information for Larry T. to handle while flying. We then turned base and Larry T. flew through the final approach course. To compensate, he rolled into a 50 degree bank to get back to final. For those of you that don’t fly, executing sharp extreme maneuvers while close to the ground at slow airspeeds is not the safest thing to do.

The touchdown was average. Larry T. rounded out a bit high so there was a slight thumping down, but nothing too bad. The strange thing was, however, that he added power after we touched down. This caused us to take FOREVER to slow down to a speed that would allow us to turn off the runway. This was not appropriate as the tower had previously asked us not to spend much time on the runway as there was an IFR departure holding in position on the runway behind us.

For a pilot with over 2500 hours of Mooney flight time over 30+ years (I have around 700 hours), I would rate the flight a 3 out of 10. The flight made me thankful for the great training I received from my instructor Chuck McGill of Safe Flight Intl. It really makes a difference when you fly not just with someone who knows how to fly well, but who knows how to fly well while keeping their passengers comfortable. I made it back to Santa Monica, but it was not fun.

You can view all the photos in the Bye Bye Mooney gallery.

It is nice seeing my mom again. I see her only a few times a year now that she has moved to Boulder, Colorado. It is funny to see how much I am similar to her and how different I can be. We definitely do not see eye to eye on many things……while on others our we are exactly the same

Anyway….looking back I found some cool photos that should make you laugh. The first few are from when I was 18 and first moved to San Diego (My first time living away from home). I decided I wanted to do it all on my own and came down to UCSD not knowing anyone and without my parents. It was very strange the first few days and I was really worried that I had made the wrong decision…..but in no time I made some amazing friends and eventually had one of the best years of my life (if not the best).

Me on my first day moving into my dorm room at UCSD (September 2000):

Me and my buddies freshman year raising hell like usual. It is scary how different almost everyone in this picture is now (Me, Meg, Tyler, Drew, Krista, big Mike, and Justin) (Still late 2000):

Some of the crew from E House – John Muir College, UCSD, 200(Tyler, Pauline, Me, Po-Kang, Gitish, and Krista’s hand):

Me and my dad (who has changed a TON) at a laker game in 2002 (When they were still good):

Anyway…..hope I amused you all….back to getting settled here in LA….I leave for Vegas early domani mattina

I did a practice LSAT this morning and have been packing up my apartment all afternoon. My Mom gets here tomorrow and then I head up to LA Thursday, Vegas Friday

Just after lift-off:

Me geeking the camera on take-off:

Coming in for a fly-by:

Going around:

Coming in for a fly-by:

Up close and personal:

Going around:

On every trip around the pattern, Kevin would let me know how much time he needed to change lenses, change filters, reposition, etc. and I would adjust my pattern to give him sufficient time. Then on the 4th trip around the pattern, I don’t hear his usual radio call, just “Andy, I have to go.” I think to myself “Huh!?!?!” We flew in together….and you have the whole afternoon off….what do you mean “I have to go?”

Well….I look down and there is a police truck with the lights flashing and Kevin is being dragged away in the back. I start to get very worried and try to decide what to do. I don’t want to get in trouble by landing and possible having them take down my tail number or start hassling me about how I was flying. But there is now way I can leave Kevin there alone….so I land and try to figure out what is going on. I see the truck pull up to a bungalow up on the top of the hill on the east side of the runway. The guy gets out of the truck and starts talking to Kevin outside. Luckily it was just some rent-a-cop security guard and he let Kevin go after a stern talking to.

Needless to say, we left immediately and decided to head home. We hadn’t satisfied our photo craving yet though, so we were scheming on where we could take some more photos. Usually, an airplane would be a great photo platform as you get great views of the ground below. My Mooney, however, isn’t the best for taking pictures. The problem is that you really need an open window to take the pictures out of so that you don’t get reflections off the glass and the camera doesn’t have focusing problems. In the Mooney, there is only a tiny pilot’s side window. When we saw some hot air balloons, however, we decided to try and shoot of the little thing:

It worked decently and before we knew it, we were photographing everything. Here is Del Mar race track:

Geisel Library and UCSD:

Muir college / my dorm from first year / my apartment from second year:

Marigold area / my hanger at KMYF:

We finally landed at KMYF and stopped at the gas pump to fill up. The sun was just setting and it seemed like another great opportunity to take some artsy photos of my plane and some photos of me in front of it

Setting sun and the Mooney:

The Mooney on a golden ramp:

Me and my baby:

I love my baby….we get along soooo well:

Mooney and me:

You can see all the photos we took in the gallery below. I have high resolution versions of all the pictures so just email me if you want one.
Low-res gallery

After we got done putting the plane away, cleaning it, downloading the pictures, burning them to CD, and closing up the hanger, I got a quick bite to eat at CPK. My buddy Marco from Potenza, Italy called me and invited me to go bar hopping in the gaslamp (downtown San Diego) as it was his girlfriend’s last night here in the states before returning to Italy. We spent a while drinking, socializing, and dancing…….I spoke almost exclusively in Italian and convinced two Sicilian girls that I was an Italian, and then came home wayyyyyy too late. Good times

August 30th – My mom comes to San Diego
September 1st – Move from San Diego to Los Angeles
September 2nd – Vegas with my Dad, step mom, and Sister (Flying in my Mooney from Santa Monica to North Las Vegas)
September 5th – Fly back to Santa Monica in the Mooney (possibly fly back on the 4th)
***Every hour until the 1st – Studying for the LSAT
October 1st – LSAT (law school entrance exam)
***Every hour until the 17th – Studying for the GMAT
October 17th – GMAT (business school entrance exam)
October 18th – Crazy packing / tying up loose ends
October 19th – Leave for China

Lots to do ….little time ….China soon

While studying at UCSD, I decided to study abroad. In June 2004, I moved to Siena, Italy for 6 months to learn Italian. I became fluent in Italian and had the time of my life. I had never thought that I would be able to learn another language, but I did and was blown away by it. Being able to listen to Italian music, watch Italian movies, order off menus in Italian, and understand perfectly when other Italians speak is AMAZING.

In June 2005, I graduated from UCSD (Summa cum laude, phi beta kappa, tau beta pi, gold key… ). I decided to go to graduate school and get a JD/MBA (business and law degrees), but due to the great experience I had in Italy, I wanted to take a year off and learn another language first. I decided on Chinese (Mandarin) because:

1. It is the most spoken language in the world
2. China is becoming (if it isn’t already) the most powerful economic force in the world
3. It is the farthest language from English and now would be the best time to try and learn it since I don’t have a job or a family and can just move to China
4. I find the culture to be interesting and exciting
5. I really like Chinese food

Thus I will be leaving for China October 19th, 2005 and staying until graduate school starts in late 2006. I will be studying mandarin in a city called Shijiazhuang (I don’t even know how to correctly pronounce that name) that is about 200 miles south of Beijing. The program I will be in is the Konall school. My only goal is to get decent at Chinese by the time I return to the US. Until then…..

Chinese Chinese Chinese!!!!!

Here is a picture Kevin Lovell and I took over San Diego of Reinaldo’s Pitts S2C (N977R) while we flew in a Cessna 172SP (N622CM).

We took the picturse using my new digital camera (Canon Digital Rebel XT). I have uploaded two galleries:
Low Res Gallery
High Res Gallery (Note – These pictures are HUGE. They will take a long time to download and may be difficult to view in you browser. I suggest you browse the low-res gallery to find what first)