After the rain let up this morning the skies started to clear. Toward the later part of the afternoon I couldn't take it anymore, so I headed out to the airport. It was the first non-rainy weekend day since I passed my checkride last weekend.
My plan was to head down to the southeast and just fly around a bit. So I did m preflight checks, gassed up the plane, and headed out.
Above: Looking southeast from San Jose toward Hollister and beyond.
I leveled off around 3,500 feet because there were occasional clouds lingering and took a few minutes to just look around at the scenery.
Above: Looking out over Morgan Hill and the Gilroy area.
And before I knew it I was passing over South County Airport.
Above: South County Airport.
And then the funniest thing happened. I heard a radio call that went something like this:
South County traffic... Bonanza 1234 in flight of 8 Bonanzas, 5 miles to the southeast, will be flying overhead at 1,500 in formation.
Huh?!
Sure enough, they called in again a minute or so later and said they were on final. So I spiraled down from above and shot a few pictures. Some even came out--sort of.
Above: Eight Bonanzas flying in formation over South County.
And another, with them over highway 101:
Above: Eight Bonanzas flying in formation over South County.
And one more, with them off the departure end of the runway:
Above: Eight Bonanzas flying in formation over South County.
With that unexpected surprise behind me, I continued southeast and was treated to nice clouds along the coast.
Above: Clouds along the coast.
And some nicely lit views of the city of Hollister and the hills to the southeast.
Above: The Hills southeast of Hollister
All in all, it was not a bad way to finish off the weekend. :-)
The full set of pictures is here on Flickr.
Posted by jzawodn at February 11, 2007 07:57 PM
Haha, that's great. I always love encountering enthusiast groups on my flights.
I was cycling through some bounce-and-goes a few years ago at Bremerton National when a flight of (I think) four RVs from the Blackjack squadron did a dive-bomber break to landing, probably for lunch at the airport restaurant.
Hi Jeremy
Those photos are great, as always.
You are really making me want to go to the local airport and sign up for lessons - flying has been something I've been wanting to do since I was young...
I live just northeast of there and happened to see them flying overhead. Sorry I didn't notice you at the same time.
Jeremy,
Thanks for posting these. The group in the 8 ship is the "Beech Boys" and we try to fly once a month. We were practicing our airshow routine and were on our way home to various airports in the area yesterday.
Feel free to email me (input to post this) if you want to ride along right seat sometime. Always love to have new pilots flying in formation with us.
Mark M
Those are the infamous Beech Boys! Technically 6 Bonanzas, 1 Lancair, and 1 Grumman.
Hey, Nice pictures. I was one of the guys in the Bonanza. You must be one of the planes from Amelia's.
Kregg
Hmmm, I thought that was was you ;-)
Seriously, I was the flight lead on this little outing -- notice it's a Lancair 360 leading the pack and E16 is my home airport.
As you are looking down on the flight, here are the aircraft types & pilots for this Delta formation (numbered as seen):
1
2 3
5 4 7
6 8
1 Lancair 360 (wannabe)
2 Grumman Tiger (or is it a Cheetah?, sorry wolf)
3 Bonanza F33 (turbo)
4 Bonanza A36 (felix)
5 Bonanza A36 (angel)
6 Bonanza E35 (marcos)
7 Bonanza E35 (marvin)
8 Bonanza V35 (yak)
Also, a number of these flight members have flown at Oshkosh the last 2 years and had a picture in the latest InFlight magazine.
Would really like to get this picture sources if possible, expecially if they are high resoultion.
Send us your email address and come along for a ride anytime.
thanks,
jim...
FFI flight lead
I think I recognize a compass on top of your instrument panel but what is that radar detector looking thingy next to it?
Jeremy --
You have your Zaon PCAS mounted with the antenna right next to the compass housing. Wouldn't that cause the compass housing to shield the antenna from signals coming at you from the left rear quadrant? Seems like you want to mount it so the antenna is more out in the open (I put mine to the left of the compass, about halfway to the edge of the glareshield).
-- Harry
Yeah, I don't know if that's where it will stay or not. I haven't noticed it missing signals yet, but that's pretty hard to quantify without ATC calling traffic for me.
