I learned a ton flying over to Tracy. It always seemed so far away/unknown before... but 12 miles is really not that far! With Tracy so close it seems like a great opportunity for people to get their feet wet for XC.
I did a bunch of prep for the flight that included looking at the AF/D, sectional, Google Earth and asking other pilots with experience about the airport. I had safe glide circles set up and Tracy loaded into my flight computer.
I called the Tracy AWOS on the phone and the winds were favouring 30. I went over the plan with the tow pilot. We would tow straight out towards Tracy then he'd land ahead of me. Looking at the airport in the AF/D and Google Earth there are turnouts at each side at midfield on runway 30. Talking to Buzz revealed that you can turn out on the median between the runway and taxiway as long as you watch out for the runway lights.
We towed out towards Tracy and by the time we reached about 3,500' we were about halfway there and with a tailwind had Tracy in easy glide. At the halfway point you can actually see both airports. We arrived at Tracy with plenty of altitude and had a chance to overfly the field and get a good look at the airport before landing (this seems like a good idea when landing at a new place!) It was quiet at Tracy... all we heard on the CTAF was good old 16Y and some traffic at other airports.
The plan was to stop as soon as possible after touchdown to minimize the distance Buzz and I would have to push back the glider. My landing was ok but what with focusing on making a good approach I more or less forgot to get it stopped quickly and ended up taking the midfield turnoff (rather than trying to go into the median between the lights).
So I got to learn a new trick! With just two people it's easiest to push the G103 backwards, with each person on the wing inside of halfway or one person on the nose and another on a strong part of the leading edge. That way both people can push and you're positioned to push down on the nose to turn.
We did another pattern, this time opting to land downwind. It was a little different landing downwind on a foreign runway... definitely need to watch those angles rather than looking for familiar landmarks.
We did another tow back towards Byron, this time getting off around 3,900' about halfway to Byron. We found a little lift and scratched around for about an hour before finally landing back at home!
Great learning experience and it will be great to get checked out for XC and start reaching into the hills around Tracy (the clouds there often look good!)
Here's the trace of the flight back. You can see we got off tow about halfway and the initial glide back to Byron was basically a piece of cake:
Thanks to Buzz for entertaining the idea and for all the pushing.... next time I'll land closer to where we want to be ;)
- mang
Here's an annotated image I made using an app called Skitch on the Mac (available in the app store). It lets you easily do a screen capture and annotate i
Here's an annotated image I made using an app called Skitch on the Mac (available in the app store). It lets you easily do a screen capture and annotate i
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