ismael chang ghalimi

Fast Moving Clouds

When preparing for a flight, I always take a look at a real-time satellite picture of the flight area, using the excellent Weather Underground service. Today, my friend Michael and I did exactly that, and we saw that the coast was covered by low altitude clouds, making a flight to Half Moon Bay (KHAF) impossible in VFR conditions. As we cruised along 101 toward San Francisco, we realized that the cloud layer was also covering the northern part of the city, so we decided to fly back to San Carlos (KSQL) right away. This made for one of the shortest Bay tours I ever did, but also one of the busiest on the radio, with all four runways being used at San Francisco International (KSFO). We met at the airport at noon, landed back in San Carlos around 1:10PM, had a quick lunch at the Ski Kitchen restaurant, and I was back at my desk fives minutes before 2PM. Perfect!

I joined Ismael on the flight and it was my first time in a Cessna without jumping out with a parachute ;-) So I was fascinated by the focus and concentration required whilst going north from San Carlos. One enters the SFO airspace and there’s a lot to look for and dodge. It reminded me a lot of my early days of sailing — being hyper-aware af everything going on and realizing you’re always a moving fixed point. A lot of fun, really enjoyed it!