RiverWalk

Once again, The Pilot is cruising in Texas' sky. The more I do it, the more I get hooked, the more I know how much I need to learn, and the more confident I'm!

Yesterday, Feb. 4th, The Pilot, Mosaddiq, Bilal, and Adil went to San Antonio International Airport. We took off from Austin at 4.30. The preflight and take off parts were uneventful. Flying down to San Antonio was solely based on the visual navigation, or what is called dead reckoning. Basically, I had a map, and I was looking outside to recognize where we were. Until we get close to the San Antonio Airport, we fly direct to San Antonio VOR, and then the tower sequences planes to the rwy. We were flying into a headwind, so the airspeed was 110 knots, and ground speed was 85 knots!

Lucky us, there were not much traffic coming in to the airport. We landed and parked at Raytheon FBO (Fixed Base Operator, small private terminal). They would get a fee for parking with them, but it will be waived with purchasing fuel. We chose Raytheon because they have courtesy cars. Anyways, I asked them to fill in 8 gallons. We were surprised that the car has to be back in two hours! That is not enough!! Plans were changed. Asked for a ride to the main terminal, were we can get on a city bus to downtown. The guy dropped us at the wrong place, were we had to take another free bus to the bus stop. In this pic, we were still waiting for the first bus!



The city bus took 40 mins to get to downtown. We got there by 7 pm, walked by the river for a while, then ate at a Mexican restaurant. In this pic, The Pilot is fighting the effects of the Chimichanga!



We were a little late walking back to the bus stop. Not only that, we didn't know where it was!! We had a map, so Mosaddiq asked a cop. We kind of were given up on catching the bus. But we were really lucky. We found the bus right when the bus was coming, just in the right time!

Back to the airport, waiting for Raytheon to pick us from the bus stop. Back to Raytheon, and getting ready to fly back AT NIGHT. This was the part the the pilot was all excited about. The Pilot LOVES to fly at night. It's very smooth, clear, quite, and peaceful. However, it is more dangerous that day flying! In this pic, we were setting in Raytheon.



The Pilot having fun with those pretty girls!



On the way back to Austin, The Pilot opted to use the GPS, and enjoy the flight and the view. However, The Pilot skills with the GPS were a little rusty. Half way through over SanMarcos, The Pilot felt he is a little disoreanted, thus, he called the tower and asked for vectors. Oh, we were flying in tailwind, so our groundspeed hit 146 knots = 170 mph (knot = 1.15 mph). Anyways, we were landing at 17L. If you know flying, you would know what I'm talking about next. Coming from south, they asked us to report right downwind for 17L. But they rarely do right traffic pattern for 17L, because right traffic pattern places the plane right above the arprt, and they don't like that. And because we are flying from the south, I looked at rwys 17R/35L and had it that I'm landing at it!!!! Everything was going that I'm landing at 17R. However, last seconds while turning from Base to Final, I noticed that the scene is a bit different. I landed at 17L before, and there hwy 71 passes right by it's start with bright lights!!! I took a second to recognize that I'm landing at 17R. HOLLLYYY .... OMG ... by the time I initiated the diversion, I was 300-400 ft above the ground; I had full flapsl; and was my speed was 65 knots!! I added full power, tried to retract 10 degrees of flaps, but I notched it a bit hard, that I retracted full flaps!! Now, the tower noticed that there is something wrong. The called me, "3 Charlie Papa, you are pretty low. Do you have the rwy insight?" The Pilot, "Austin Tower, 3 Charlie Papa, Yes, 17L insight. Dont worry about, under control." The landing wasn't the best I have ever done. But I was so relieved that I caught that mistake. Otherwise, The Pilot may had lost his flying brivilges. Allhamdulillah!


More pics to come, when I get the pics from the other cameras...