ismael chang ghalimi

First Independent Mission

Today, I flew to Apple Valley Airport (KAPV) with my friend John to pick up a puppy that should make the delight of his three kids. This was my very first mission conducted for an independent third party. Of course, not running a Part 135 operation, all I could do was to share the cost of the flight fifty-fifty with John. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool to finally put all this training to good use. Another nice thing about this flight was the fact that it allowed me to log my 250th hours, a requirement for the commercial pilot license that I expect to get later this year. I logged a total of 4.7 hours of cross country flying on N53224. I’m loving it…

I was going to ask if you went there IFR, but I guess you did.

Actually, I did not. I just asked for flight following.

-Ismael

Interesting… I didn’t know these guys tracked VFR flights…

How high did you climb to pass over the mountains?

-Matt

Matt,

We flew at 9,500 feet on the way there, and 10,500 feet on the way back. We got moderate turbulence at 9,500 feet on the downwind side, hence started our climb to 10,500 on the way back early. Nevertheless, it wasn’t early enough and the plane had a hard time getting any positive rate of climb as we got closer to the terrain. I reduced pitch while staying at full power, and the plane eventually managed to get us up there, without any noticeable turbulence, even though we had a 35 knot headwind.

-Ismael