Day trip to Grass Valley
My currency was about up, so we decided to make it a day trip to Grass Valley to visit some friends of ours. We took off from Rancho Murieta to head to Nevada County airport.
The plane we were in, 5587R, was old. I mean design wise, it flew fine. But the yokes were different, the instrument panel was different, the master switch was different... It took me a few minutes to get oriented in there enough to even do the preflight. It was an interesting plane.
Nevada County airport is used by the CDF whenever there's a fire in the area, the tankers and whatever else fly out of there. So if something happens, the airport can get very busy with very little notice. Also, the runway slopes down slightly, so it's not recommended for student pilots. This all served to make me extra alert when we got up there.
The flight was kind of nice, except it got a little bumpy the closer we got to Grass Valley. Not sure why, must have been the hills. Anyway, we flew up by Folsom Lake and Auburn airport, which I need to go to someday :-), and then on to Nevada County. It was only about half an hour or so flight, so it was nice.
We got there, and I had to descend to 4100 feet to get in the pattern. Seemed kind of low, so it may have been that my altimeter was set wrong, but it worked out. I came in nice and fast (which really means "way too fast") and used most of the runway to land and slow down. Our friends were watching and figured it was me because I was the only plane they saw that used that much of the runway. Thanks, guys. ;-)
We had a nice stay, and then piled back in to come home. I wanted to get landed way before the sun set, which was just before 5:00, so we left Nevada County about a quarter to 4. Uneventful trip back, except a tailwind that got us there quicker, and we landed at about a quarter after 4, and I did an extra landing to get my 3 in. It was getting dusky while we drove home, so we timed it about right.
Next time we're going to get a plane for the weekend, and have time to fly our friends around a little bit, too. They both wanted to go, but we just didn't have time today. We could have, but I'd have been in a rush to get it in around the other things we were doing, so made the blanket decision that we'd have to do it next time.
Which gives us another good reason to go back! :-)
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