First Solo....well, kinda, sorta...

Lachlan said:
Unless your last name rhymes with Dump. ;).

This kid will probably be made into an example of maximum punishment available. Maybe life in prison, no parole. ‘Merica.
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Or Blinton
 
[QUOTE="Lachlan, post: 2541962, member: 26506

This kid will probably be made into an example of maximum punishment available. Maybe life in prison, no parole. ‘Merica.[/QUOTE]

Nah. He f'd up no doubt, but being a new SP and lack of supervision at that club I doubt any judge would put the kid in the slammer.

FWIW, Air Force Aero Clubs I belong to over the years had strict control, actually had to go thru the Sup of Flying to clear the flight and get the keys.
 
His CFI was extremely good. So good, the pilot thought that landing must be a piece of cake.
 
That tower is no joke.

When I fly out of there I'm thinking out loud, rotate, positive climb, tower in sight. And I don't mean the control tower. :)

[I lived near there and was in that club for about 8 months. Now I rent from the guy next door to them a couple times a year when I go back to visit family]
 
He must know pilots, or be into aviation somehow... or he's just very confident. I lacked the nads to solo after hour two for sure.

I feel bad for the fella. He made some bad choices, but it seems like it was from an abundance of passion for aviation. He was already part of a club, dude went all-in. I think he might have wanted to fast-forward the process a bit, we all did, I'm sure. It's not like the barefoot bandit, where he was taking planes he had zero business being inside, crashing them, and walking away...

Now he's neck deep in poop stew, and his dream is crashing down around him. He's famous for the wrong reasons, and him flying in the future is going to be way more difficult.

Tough life lesson, but at least he's OK, and so is everybody else.
 
Ravioli said:
That tower is no joke.
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It was hit by a Cessna 182 that knocked it down and killed the pilot in December of 2004. It had another fatal collision and collapse prior to that by a Piper PA-28 on January 28, 1970. Two fatals. Both day VFR/VMC.

FCC standards forced the tower to be placed back at the original location if KFI wanted to keep their 50,000W power level.

The replacement tower was fought by pilots.

FAA said it met the current obstacle standards and wouldn’t weigh in further.

The Fullerton Airport Manager at the time went along with the FAA story and embellished it to make it sound “safe”.

Same airport manager was in contact with the tower owner in 2001 asking for strobe lights. Tower isn’t 1000’ high so none are required. Owner refused.

So his adamant safe claims were probably a CYA into why he didn’t push harder for lighting. The only reason the tower owner didn’t do it, per their own words, was cost.

The Fullerton *City* Manager, of all people involved in the thing to be negative about the tower, was one of the only government workers to say the tower was known to be a hazard, saying, “The antenna is widely regarded as a dangerous presence.”

At least the new one was forced to be lighted. Not sure it really helps all that much in the daytime, because I don’t think it was required to use daytime visible strobes, but I might have a bad memory on that part.

The pilots were completely outnumbered by the bureaucrats saying it was safe. The alphabet membership groups were nowhere to be seen.

The NTSB report has a hilarious description of a “survey” done of one flight school’s pilots by the investigator. “the investigator compiled the data systematically into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet”...

Well...

I guess that’s better than non-systematically? :) :) :)

Also funny when asked if it was dangerous, lost said yes. When asked if they’d ever come close to hitting it, only 10% did. But who’s going to admit it? Hahaha.

Less than a third of the flight club members sent the letter asking for input bothered to respond anyway.

Maybe the opposing viewpoints of the Airport Manager and the City Manager were really showing that the City wanted to close the airport and the Airport manager had to defend the tower on “safety” grounds because he knew if it was deemed unsafe the City guy would close it. Don’t know. Seems like maybe there was a touch of this in the pilot population that was interviewed by USPS mail.
 
Ravioli said:
That tower is no joke.

When I fly out of there I'm thinking out loud, rotate, positive climb, tower in sight. And I don't mean the control tower. :)
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I grew up a mile north of the KFI tower in the 1950s and '60s. We could hear KFI's signal over the dial tone on our phone. My mother said she could hear it in the fillings in her teeth.

The KFI tower is 1.5 nm northwest of Fullerton, close to where one would expect a 45 degree entry to the right-hand pattern for runway 24. When I was learning to fly there, the tower was 760' AGL and Fullerton's traffic pattern was 800' AGL. The rebuilt tower is 682' AGL, and KFUL's TPA is now 1,000' AGL.

On those smoggy afternoons -- it was worse then than it is now -- climbing slowly westbound in a loaded Cessna 150 from runway 24 and about to turn right crosswind at something less than pattern altitude, that tower was a concern.
 
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Pilawt said:
I grew up a mile north of the KFI tower in the 1950s and '60s. We could hear KFI's signal over the dial tone on our phone. My mother said she could hear it in the fillings in her teeth.
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50KW nearby has a tendency to do interesting things in anything that’s a diode. Diode becomes an RF mixer.

I drive past one of the sister “clear channel” AM stations of KFI every day, KOA. It’s also fairly close to KAPA but not nearly as close as KFI is to Fullerton.

KOA also does “interesting” things to radios who’s designs traded selectivity for more sensitivity. Or just cheapness. Most aviation radios are a lot more deaf than other types and aren’t bothered by AM broadcast for the most part.

KOA is charted and used as a VFR reporting point for KAPA.

The history of all of these stations is fascinating, considering they were once how the nation synchronized all of our clocks. They did it on broadcasts and the railroads did time sync via Telegraph. In the days of wind up clocks. No satellites from coast to coast; each station was strategically placed both physically and via “clear channels” so it could hear the next.

But the pirate Mexican AM broadcast history is much cooler. :) LOTS more power. Famous DJs. American broadcast networks cheating by placing them on the other side of the border and paying the Mexican government. Well worth a Google if you’re into history.
 
I unlocked and started a CAP 172P with a gov't filing cabinet key. Doesn't negate all the good suggestions above, of course, as no method is proof against determined bad intent. It can help some to just make bad actions a bit more difficult. Our small club gives each pilot a key, though we don't do training for student pilots.
 
I thought some people on this site solo’d at around 2 hours?!?!

This falls into the category of “it’s not as easy as it looks!”
 
denverpilot said:
50KW nearby has a tendency to do interesting things in anything that’s a diode. Diode becomes an RF mixer.

I drive past one of the sister “clear channel” AM stations of KFI every day, KOA. It’s also fairly close to KAPA but not nearly as close as KFI is to Fullerton.

KOA also does “interesting” things to radios who’s designs traded selectivity for more sensitivity. Or just cheapness. Most aviation radios are a lot more deaf than other types and aren’t bothered by AM broadcast for the most part.

KOA is charted and used as a VFR reporting point for KAPA.

The history of all of these stations is fascinating, considering they were once how the nation synchronized all of our clocks. They did it on broadcasts and the railroads did time sync via Telegraph. In the days of wind up clocks. No satellites from coast to coast; each station was strategically placed both physically and via “clear channels” so it could hear the next.

But the pirate Mexican AM broadcast history is much cooler. :) LOTS more power. Famous DJs. American broadcast networks cheating by placing them on the other side of the border and paying the Mexican government. Well worth a Google if you’re into history.
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WOLFMAN!!!!!!!!!!
 
KFI carried the Dodger baseball broadcasts until 1973 or so, which was nice. And if you had an ADF, navigating back home to Fullerton from far away was a no-brainer. You could home in on that sucker from Mars.
 
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