Pilots need a mission.
I'm Jason Miller, a full-time professional flight instructor.
On the Finer Points channel you can join me as I bring you tips and tricks that I've learned
from 20 years on the flight line.
Hello aviators, I'm here at Palo Alto airport this evening, getting ready to fly a mission.
I'm going to bring you guys along and I'm going to show you a few tips about cross-country
flying.
But I also want to show you this very very cool thing that ForeFlight's doing where they
actually have adventures that you can go fly.
You can download this trip kit to your ForeFlight – this adventure planning kit and you can
go out and retrieve ForeFlight swag at various destinations, check out those local destinations,
and win prizes in the process.
When I was a kid, you guys hear me talk a lot about riding horses, and when I was a
kid we used to do this thing called the "hunter pacer".
Has anyone ever heard of a hunter pacer?
Anyone?
Anyway, look it up.
It was one of the coolest things where you get on your horse and you ride all over town,
ride through the forest and collect sort of flags to let everybody know that you actually
made it to each destination, and this is a little bit like that for pilots.
One truth is, pilots love an adventure, we love to fly a mission, and I hear from so
many pilots that they go through all this effort to get their pilot certificate and
then they don't really know what to do with it.
You know they take friends up on bay tours, they grab a $100 hamburger, they don't know
what to do.
So I'm really proud of ForeFlight for coming up with this thing that they've come up with.
If you just go to foreflight.com/fly-out, URL below, you'll see what they're up to,
and tonight we're going to fly up to Santa Rosa airport through complicated bay area
airspace on a mission to go collect some ForeFlight swag.
Let's do it.
Check this out it's really easy to do you just go to the website I just mentioned, you
scroll down until you see the content package, you download that and once you have it on
your iPad you then share it to the ForeFlight app and boom, you can go in and see all the
different PDFs for the different destinations that are possible in that region.
And you can see that it's not just, you know, basic information about the area and the runway,
but it's also cool stuff to do when you get there.
So this is really fun, this is just like a little game that pilots can play, and in the
process maybe go win something, so we're gonna fly up to Santa Rosa this evening, let's go
ahead and get a weather briefing, file a flight plan and hit the air.
Make sure you file this flight plan because filing the plan makes it super easy for ForeFlight
to follow along with your journey, and you'll be automatically entered to possibly win prizes.
Palo Alto tower Skyhawk 784SP ready to take off from runway three one.
784SP Palo Alto tower right forty five is aproved, runway three one cleared for take-off
wind three two zero at one three and were you looking just to fly through Oakland to
Santa Rosa?
Yeah, that's affirmative, just over Oakland airport and then pretty much direct Santa Rosa
All right you guys one thing to remember is to get your time off, right, so a lot of us
use the lights-camera-action sort of mnemonic to sort of remember everything there is to do
Lights are where we want them, camera is set the way we want it, action is mixture rich
you should add lights-camera-action-time-off and start practicing that now, because if
you forget to record that time on a check ride you won't know, you'll be all messed
up, you won't know what your time was from liftoff to your first checkpoint, and if you
don't practice it that way you won't do it, and then in the real world it's just a great
aeronautical habit – good airmanship ... to know what time you take off.
Power set. Engine guages look good, airspeed alive, we have our abort speed, there's rotation,
no runway
All right you guys, another cross-country tip that I'm going to give you here are your checkpoints
Here we are, I'm making landfall by the mouth of the Petaluma river over to my right, I've
got Napa over to my left, I've got these lakes and these mountains, so remember everything
is a hypothesis until you prove it's true.
We have the scientific method in flying and for that reason when you pick checkpoints
don't pick the third tower on the high tension lines below us.
Circle a big area, see what you can see on the VFR chart, not just the one little thing
that you're right over, but I should have the town of Novato off to my left, I should
have a raceway off to my right, so pick multiple things, prove to yourself that you are in
fact where you think you are.
The last cross-country tip I'm going to give you is to have some sort of arrival briefing,
this is something that I teach instrument students and have just started adopting it
for VFR as well, because it's equally appropriate, but I use the five A's.
So the first thing we're going to do is get the ATIS at Santa Rosa, let's do that.
Santa Rosa tower, information Charlie zero one five three Zulu observation altimeter 2999
All right we've got information Charlie and it shows we're landing runway 14, so the first
A is get the ATIS, the second A is write down the altimeter setting, the third A is going
to be brief the arrival or the approach, so we're going to go ahead and look at Santa
Rosa, we're going to look at the airport diagram, make sure that we understand, so 14 is going
to be a left downwind entry, so we can expect that when we contact Santa Rosa, they'll tell
us to enter left downwind runway 14.
All right you guys, so the next A is avionics, let's make sure we have Santa Rosa tower in
the radio, Santa Rosa's on one one eight five, We'll go ahead and get the ground frequency
as well, why not right?
One two one nine, we can put that in the backup, because we're not talking to anybody else,
just get ahead that way, so avionics and the last one is Airplane which is like a GUMPS
check, we're not quite ready for that yet but that would be the last A. Santa Rosa tower,
Skyhawk 784SP approximately seven miles southeast with Charlie, landing.
Skyhawk 784SP Santa Rosa tower, make left traffic runway 14 report midfield.
Left traffic 14 report midfield 784SP.
And 784SP is midfield left downwind, runway 14.
Skyhawk 4SP number two, follow Cirrus in a one-mile final, runway 14 clear to land.
Number two, looking for traffic, clear to land 14 784SP.
All right guys the last A, do it twice before you get there, you read the written checklist
when you're 10 miles out, it's the only time you do the checklist before the flow check
but then in the pattern ... 784SP clear to land runway 14.
Clear to land 14 784SP.
All right then you say carb heat, if there is any, there is none, gas is on both, undercarriage
down, welded, I see a wheel, mixture's full rich, power, props, pumps wherever you need it,
seatbelt, security, switches.
That's your GUMPS check.
Final approach path is clear.
You should really do GUMPS twice in the pattern, so you know that was once on the base leg,
let's run it one more time, carb heat, gas, undercarriage, mixture, power, props, pump,
seatbelt, security, switches.
So the way that last A works is, when you're VFR, it's the only time you're going to read
a list before you do the acronym or the mnemonic, or the flow check, but then you know, so read
the list 10 miles out, I don't want you reading paper anywhere near an airport, and then once
you've read it then it's just a GUMPS check at least two times in the pattern.
That was a little tight right there where I did it on base and then final, so maybe
downwind or on the 45 and then again on final just before you land, all right.
If you do that you can defy that silly old aviation legend that there are two kinds of
pilots: those that have had gear-up landings and those that will.
Ha, not you my friends, because you watch this channel.
Look at this, beautiful evening here in Santa Rosa as we approach runway 14.
That was a super fun flight up here and we have a reason to be here – it's a little
cross-windy, I'm gonna do a crosswind landing here – but we have absolutely a good reason
to be here at Santa Rosa this evening, we are on a mission from ForeFlight, so let's
taxi over to Kaiser Air and pick up some swag.
Alright you guys, we made it here to Santa Rosa.
Wow, look at that.
This is perfect because I forgot my mask, so this is perfect I can just do this, then
they won't look at me funny here.
Boom, there it is, look at all that fun stuff.
OK you guys, that is the end of our epic adventure.
Hopefully you picked up a few tips that you can apply to your cross-country flying.
And remember that if you just file a flight plan ForeFlight knows exactly where you're
going on these adventures, so that's easy for them to keep track of that, plus it's
the safest way to fly, and they make it so darn easy, so go ahead and do that.
Huge thanks for flying along with me today and to the sponsors for their support of this show.
Remember that there is tons of bonus content up on Patreon if you haven't seen that, it's
coming all the time, also there's a free gift video at learnthefinerpoints.com.
Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel leave a comment below, share far and wide
with your friends, but most importantly, until next time, be safe and fly your best.