Yesterday I got to fly in “Fifi” from Camarillo to Palm Springs. (If you don’t know what “Fifi” is – welcome to “We Love The Stars Too Fondly”! Just scan back over the last dozen or so posts, ogle the pictures, then come back. We’ll wait…) We’ve loaded, seen “Fifi”s innards for the first time, and taken off to head east out over Simi Valley.
Looking toward the south out the (still open!) flight engineer’s window you can see my neighborhood. I’m still surprised that we weren’t exposed to a 200 knot hurricane from the open window, but I guess that’s aerodynamics for you! (Or black magic, I could go either way on this one.)
For reference, we’re looking south from a spot over the 118 Freeway, just east of the Santa Suzanna Pass. The big white group of buildings just barely seen above the bottom of the window sill is Fallbrook Mall, the white horizontal line is Ventura Boulevard, and you can see the mini-skyscrapers of Warner Center just to the right of the left window edge.
Dead center out the nose is Van Nuys Airport, the place where I first started to fly and the busiest general aviation airport in the world. By the way, if you missed “Fifi” in Camarillo and you can’t see her this week in Palm Springs, she’ll be at Van Nuys Airport for a week starting next Monday.
Also, I’ve recommended it before, but I’ll recommend again the short documentary “One-Six Right.” It’s a great short film about general aviation, beautifully filmed, and it focuses on the history of VNY and the love of flying shown by those who fly there. A beautiful film.
It might be tough to see due to the contrast, but if you lighten up the image you can look over pilot Tom Travis’s shoulder to see that (from top left) we’re at 220 knots, in a very shallow right bank, at 5,500 feet, (second row) on a heading of 95°, straight and level but a little nose-up, and our manifold pressures on engines Two and Four are at 30 inches.
Those last two gauges aren’t on a Cessna 172, mainly because we don’t have an engine Two, Three, or Four…
Crossing over Van Nuys Airport, looking out to the south, the 405 Freeway crosses Ventura Boulevard and goes up over the Sepulveda Pass into Santa Monica. I worked for a whole lot of years in a couple of those office buildings and did a lot of marathon training at lunch time in those side streets.
Looking out the left side past the Number Four engine, you can see Whiteman Airport, my “home” airport when I’m flying and current. Its single runway is just to the right of the propeller blade. Below that you see the gravel quarry that would be a very bad place to land if you lost an engine on takeoff on Runway 12, the spreading ponds which would be a much better choice in an emergency, and the “Four Stacks”, the red and white striped power station exhaust towers that mark the airspace boundery between Whiteman’s airspace and Burbank’s. Don’t cross without talking to Burbank Tower or the FAA will be asking some pointed questions!
Flying over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, you can see the Jet Propulsion Laboratory campus in the hills just to the east of the 210 Freeway.
Up above the Los Angeles Basin on Mount Wilson are a ton of television and radio antennas, as well as the Mount Wilson Observatory and the 100″ Hooker telescope.
Don Thurston was our Flight Engineer, in charge of all of the engines and mechanical systems on the plane. Out of that (still open!) window is the 57 Freeway near Raging Waters.
The Flight Engineer station is a dazzling array of dials, levers, and switches. As someone who got excited at a very early age by flashing lights, flipping switches, and pushing buttons to see what would happen (“Don’t push that big, red button!!”) this was a pretty cool spot. I love to fly, but on “Fifi”, the pilots are only allowed to steer and fly, the real work is done by the Flight Engineer. At least, that’s what Don told us before the pilots got onboard.
Tomorrow, we get company and make it to Palm Springs.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 