During our summer vacation in California I had the chance to rent a Cirrus SR22 G5 out of San Rafael Airport, north of San Francisco (“CA35”). Initially I planned to fly to either Tahoe Airport or Truckee (near Lake Tahoe), which is around one hour from S.F., but then the weather was not really good enough in the mountains on the planned day. The area around S.F. was flyable though, so I decided to make a short sightseeing flight around S.F. and a landing at Half Moon Bay Airport, some minutes down the coast. The weather can change rapidly in San Francisco from blue skies and 30 degrees to windy, freezing cold and 10 degrees within an hour sometimes, especially near the beaches where the so called “Marine Layer” is a typical morning phenomena. On the way way a new layer had pulled in, but San Rafael airport was clear.
Some photos ….
The San Rafale Airport (CA35). Runway 04 starts where the taxiway ends, same width.
Guess what my kids like to do best? At least they made some nice pictures …
San Quentin State prison in the center
Tiburon is a small town next to Sausalito, the island is called Angel Islan
The classic shot …
At least I flew one hour … That G5 is a great plane, especially the 5 seats, the higher MTOM and the redundancy of the Perspective avionics is better than on my own SR22. But € 400.000 more for the same performance (except payload and 45 minutes more endurance)?
The round pier is called Aquatic Park Pier, in the background you can see “Pier 39” at Fisherman’s Wharf (I like almost all other parts of S.F. better)
1500 ft under the Class B airspace of LSFO is okay over the city
Exactly overhead the intersection of Market and Pine Street, the very center of S.F. if you will
Looking west from downtown you see the Presidio (park) on the right) and Golden Gate Park (left)
Down the coast twds Half Moon Bay in 1500 ft MSL
The Sunset district on the west side of S.F.. Many Chinese people live here, which i found out driving around here the next day
Right Downwind for Half Moon Bay Airport (in the center of the picture)
Turn to Final Half Moon Bay
My daughter Amelia named after … guess!
On the ramp of HMB airport. 300 feet to a gate that opens and you’re at a great restaurant in a town called Princetown
After take off, flying along the coast back to S.F.
This nice beach is called “Gray Whale Cove”. The water was really to cold though. Some days later we went swimming in Southern California though
Very typical: Golden Gate Bridge in the fog
Two days later we did a bike tour across the bridge in these conditions. The wind was icey cold and strong … we took the ferry back from Sausalito. But its a great bike ride!
Oceanbeach in the Fog. The white building on the left side of the beach is the “Cliff House Restaurant”, great place for sunsets
Final Approach to San Rafael Airport. You can hardly see the runway in the center of the image. I had to instrument the final track by instruments, becasue I could not see the runway until one mile out
Thank you for posting. Great photos as well. Was it easy for you to get the check out ride (?) and get signed off to go yourself?
I did not have to do a check out, the guy who rented it knows I am a active member of COPA and fly the same airplane (although with a different avionics kit) here in Germany. Also a friend of mine who is a Cirrus CFI came along and told me all altitudes etc (not in the pictures because I wasn’t sure he wants that.
If you are interested in doing that or similar, I have many contacts in that area.
Half Moon Bay is where the ill-fated Jessica Dubroff flight in the mid-90s departed from (an attempted “young pilot” record breaking flight that came to grief in Wyoming in poor weather, and made the national news, and then was notorious because in a case of very obvious error by the CFI, Cessna, Lycoming, and pretty much everyone who wasn’t responsible got sued by the relatives).
@alioth
Right, interestingly I thought about that when I was on final approach to HMB. What a stupid endeavour that was anyway … unexcusable to kill a naive kid this way, at least zhat is my opinion …
@172driver
Yes, the layer had just moved away a short time before we landed. It’s really interesting how quickly it can also come back, see pictures from flight back after lunch! S.F, wearther is really crazy. Our hotel was close to the beach and in the mornings I would wear 2 jackets (in August) and still freeze! But in other parts of the City it was aready 25 C in the morning and blue skies.
Alexis wrote:
This nice beach is called “Gray Whale Cove”. The water was really to cold though. …… and …
Oceanbeach in the Fog. The white building on the left side of the beach is the “Cliff House Restaurant”, great place for sunsets
It’s never too cold to go swimming 
This is me at Ocean Beach, 3 weeks ago. Walked to the Cliff House afterwards to warm myself up with a very large coffee… And I am especially proud of the fact that I was the only one in the water that day who wasn’t either wearing a neoprene suit or a dog’s fur. Swimming in the Pacific Ocean at least once was high on my bucket list and I simply had to grip the opportunity!
We spent the second half of August in the States in occasion of the Solar Eclipse – my forth visit to that country but the first time as tourist. I did not bother to do some flying of my own because it would have been too much hassle (getting a new validation for my current EASA license and the humiliation of having to be checked out on a C172 would have been too much). Also we had a tight schedule for those two weeks and fitting in at lest a half day for some lightplane flying would have meant to miss other things more important to me.
But a couple of observations regarding flying in the USA which I made during that holiday:
- I was at two large airports (KSFO and KDEN), each time for an arrival and a departure. One keeps reading on the internet about the “GA friendliness” of large American airports. That may be so, but they don’t attract much GA traffic. During my stay on those airports I saw one Citation Sovereign lining up in front of us at KSFO and one PC12 taxiing at KDEN. Apart from these, the smallest planes to be seen were Embraer regional airliners. Compare that to my homebase which serves agglomerations about the size of both KDEN or KSFO and which has about one GA movement for every five airliners…
- The American skies buzzing with light planes? Maybe, but not were we were (our trip brought us to the States of California, Colorado, Wyoming (where we saw the eclipse), South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Nevada and Utah). When I go in my garden and turn around 360 degrees I will typically see five contrails high up and one or two light planes in the sky. During our two weeks in the States I saw one floatplane doing pleasure flights around San Francisco and some sightseeing helicopters over and under (I thought that was forbidden everywhere in the world?) the Golden Gate Bridge and around Mount Rushmore. But that was it. During the eclipse which we saw near Torrington WY there were 2 planes circling in the sky. At the local airfield which we visited as a possible site from which to see the eclipse they told us they expected “up tp 150 planes” to fly in for the event…
- American carriers suck big time. They have completely lost their sense of how paying customers need to be treated. Luckily I had insisted that we (me, my wife and son) do all flights (Germany to San Francisco, San Francisco to Denver and Denver to Germany) with European carriers after the press reports earlier this year. For us it worked out very well, including the domestic flight with Virgin America. But other members of our group of amateur astronomers which whom we met up for the eclipse were not so lucky. Two lost a whole day of their holiday due to overbooked flights followed by a ridiculous itinerary of connecting flights taking them all over the continent. And they lost another two or three hours because they got their compensation by a check which only could be cashed in at a specific bank during their crazy opening hours. In the queue for the rental car at Denver I chatted with a Californian who had a similar odyssey behind him and who got one of the last available cars after bringing in his lawyer…
- TSA pre-check is a wonderful invention. Why can’t we have that in Europe as well. Especially for people like myself who have to go through security several times per day this would be a great relief.
From here on everything is totally off topic and not related to aviation or the thread – so don’t bother to continue reading Anyway, it is just a few observations from an occasional visitor to the States.
- I have always had a love-hate relationship with the United States. But I must say that this country has some breathtakingly beautiful spots (of course our voyage has taken us to a fine selection of those on purpose…) and about the nicest people one can imagine. And driving in the USA is a true revelation. Wide roads, everybody is going at the same speed in every lane – trucks and sports cars included, the traffic lights are behind the crossroads where they belong – not like here where you get a stiff neck looking up at them, one can turn right with red lights (but not in every state, I just did what everybody else was doing). Other drivers tolerate mistakes and patiently wait for slower ones and pedestrians. Every German driver should be sent there for one week before getting his license… The distances to drive can be enormous but it doesn’t really matter. Five hours driving in the States, city traffic included, are about as tiresome as 30 minutes on a German or Italian road. And the best: Colorado State Law: Move your crash out of the way! Why can’t that be everywhere? 90% of time lost in traffic jams are due to people standing around their wrecks in the middle of the road and waiting for the police or some road service to come. Just push the junk out of the way and let everybody else use the road.
- There is hope. Of 17 nights at maybe 12 or 13 different hotels where we had breakfast, at least 4 had proper porcelain dishes and metal knives and spoons. For a European – apart from the environmental issue – it is a total no-go to eat breakfast from a cardboard plate with plastic cutlery and drink coffee and juice from paper cups. I hope that on my next visit these will be gone altogether. And they start recycling plastic and paper in some places. Some hotel rooms even had a recycling box next to the dust bin. Airports and other public spots are encouraging people to refill their bottles with their “filtered and treated” water instead of throwing them away and buying new ones. Something they could introduce around Europe as well – same as the omnipresent drinking fountains that they removed from our towns 30 years ago.
- The States are expensive. I looked up some places where we stayed in Wikipedia and saw family incomes quoted between 25 and 30k$. I have no idea how a family can survive there with that kind of money. Food prices at supermarkets are almost double of what they are here, same as eating at a restaurant. Fuel may still cost only half of what it costs in Europe, but the distance one has to travel in everyday life is so much bigger (I put 3003 miles on the rental car in 14 days) that in the end Americans pay more for their fuel than we do. Also their cars get twice the mileage of course.
- They now have proper beer in the States On my first visit in 1992 (an incredible 1/4 century ago) there was either Budweiser (which is not something a European would call “beer”) or nothing. Now there are local breweries everywhere and almost every restaurant has their products on tap. All of them good… but like everything else at twice the price of where I live.
Since my return I have been quite busy at work and could only process a few pictures I took during my stay. Especially those from the eclipse still await further processing… so just a few from under the Golden Gate Bridge (walking the full lengths both ways had also been on my bucket list) which Alexis showed us from above:
A brave kitesurfer (I would be scared of the large ships that pass in close vicinity):
A sea animal:
And a sea animal surfacing right in front of the kitesurfer (must have been quite a surprise for him as he jumped off his board right away):
And one from the eclipse which needs some more processing really (the little dot is planet Mercury – I think – which briefly became visible):
Answer to off-topic USA post
The States are expensive. I looked up some places where we stayed in Wikipedia and saw family incomes quoted between 25 and 30k$. I have no idea how a family can survive there with that kind of money. Food prices at supermarkets are almost double of what they are here, same as eating at a restaurant. Fuel may still cost only half of what it costs in Europe
That’s not my impression. Food prices in supermarkets are about tthe same as in Munich – and we went to supermarkets every day. Fruits were cheaper than in Germany. With restaurants it really depends where you are – and to which restaurant you go. A small Indian place in L.A. (Hollywood) was alsmost exactly the same price as a very similar place in our neighborhood in Munich. More fancy places are more expensive than in Germany, I agree – and many times the “more fancy” (“best italian restaurant in S.F.”) is just is not worth the money.
This summer was my 36th (or so … lost track) stay in the US, and despited the horrific (my POV) political situation I liked it a lot, again. I even went looking at some houses in L.A. – and I was shocked how much of a house you can get for what a Munich appartment is worth. And the market is enourmous… thousands of houses for sale in every place.
The nature and ocean are great, and for a big city person like myself L.A. is a great place to discover. The only thing that can really kill you is the traffic in Southern Calfornia. I tried to avoid the big freeways in L.A. but every now and then there’s no alternative .. and you’re stuck in an endless traffic jam.
