A Quick Hop to Half Moon Bay

N4335K parked on the tarmac at HAF.

This past week at work has been a little nuts, yet the weather has been amazing. Thursday morning, I ran over to PAO to buy a couple of new headsets (AvComm) from one of my roommate’s coworkers. I got a great deal (2 for $50/each)…and with the amazing weather, I couldn’t wait to test them out. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to schedule a flight until Saturday but I was able to run over to San Carlos airport (SQL) during lunch on Friday to get my daily aviation fix and check out their quality. The headsets worked great and that just gave me the desire to fly even more.

After leaving work Friday late (around 6:45p), I dashed over to Half Moon Bay (HMB) to attend a Zinfandel wine tasting to which my friend Koffi had invited me. The drive over the hill was gorgeous and I arrived near the beach, just as surfers were wrapping up their daily run and the sun was setting over the ocean waves. We enjoyed a couple of hours of wine tasting at The Wine Bar in Half Moon Bay, while enjoying a fun conversation with the sounds of live spanish guitar being played in the background.

Saturday morning, I ended up driving back up to HMB to hike with my friend Noah along the hills south of HMB and near the ocean coast. The views were amazing and it was a perfect way to start the day. After the 6+ mile/2.5 hr hike, we enjoyed a quick lunch on the patio of Flying Fish Restaurant in HMB. We couldn’t have asked for a better day weather-wise…and everytime I heard the sound of a plane overhead, I made me want to fly even more.

I think the HAF airport was calling me...I kept seeing it along our morning hike.

So I headed over to SQL and began preflighting an Archer II (N4335K) for some quick pattern work. I’d thought about flying up to Napa/Sonoma for a bit…just to getaway…but I canceled that idea after thinking about the cost. I just didn’t want to spend that much to fly yesterday. Man…sometimes I wish money wasn’t part of the flying equation. But such it is and my decisions are subject to reflect that reality. Well low and behold, my roommate Brad called me on his way to meet me at the airport and asked if I could fly him over to HMB for lunch. Though I’d just eaten, I agreed just because it was only a 9nm flight over the hill.

I had scheduled to fly an Archer II because on my recent flights in the Archer III (N343MM) out of PAO, I’d noticed that my airspeeds were much lower than what I’d originally observed in my checkout flight in the Archer II. The Archer II’s have wheel fairings and weigh about 200 lbs less since they do not have all the extra bells and whistles of the Archer III. I think both of these variables give the II’s the ability to reach higher cruise speeds. I’ve been lucky if I could ever get the Archer III to reach more than 120kias in cruise flight. While in the Archer II’s, it seems I’ll hit 120-125kias in the pattern if I put the nose down.

Flying Over-the-Hill

We departed runway 30 at SQL and climbed out at nearly 1,000fpm. The Archer II’s love to climb and even after retracting my standard 10 degrees of flaps after passing through 500 ft AGL, the aircraft still wanted to climb quickly. I soon had to settle it down at 1500 ft so that I did not crack SFO Class B airspace before reaching Bay Meadows for a quick turn west towards HAF. I continued our climb to 2500 ft and decided to settle at that altitude once I reached the summit of the mountains. At that point, we were 6 miles away from HAF and needed to quickly change radio frequencies to listen to the pattern traffic and identify the landing runway.

The winds at HAF were light, so there were pilots landing and departing on both ends of the runway (12/30). Given the traffic at the time we entered the pattern, we decided to enter the 45 degree downwind for runway 12 and setup for the approach. The approach into HAF is just gorgeous on a beautiful day and yesterday was no different. After a smooth landing, we taxied over to parking, parked, and jumped out to check out the restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed and, after a 6.5 mile hike in the morning, I had no desire to walk a mile into town to check out the restaurants (hell…I was just there last night).

Beautiful approach into HAF.

So we headed back to the plane and stopped to chat briefly with a couple of guys who had just landed in Diamondstar D-40. They were on an extended IFR training run from Utah and had made stops in Southern California, Monterey, and now HAF. But with the restaurant closed, they also didn’t feel like walking into town. Well, after a short chat, we decided to head back to SQL. This time we departed runway 30 and made a quick and steady climb up to 3,500ft. It didn’t take long at all, we essentially reached cruise altitude at about 45 degrees abeam the approach end of runway 30. And as soon as I dropped the nose for cruise flight, we saw cruise speeds around 130kias.

We reached the summit again and immediately switched over to SQL to receive clearance for a quick approach in on runway 30. I was probably in cruise flight for less than 5 minutes before I began my descent down to 1200 ft to cross SQL at midfield. Unfortuantely, my first approach into SQL was a bit off and after turning final. I realized that though I’d be able to correct my approach, I didn’t have enough separation with the aircraft landing in front of me. So I requested a go-around and setup for a second try. My second approach was still not quite “square” pattern, but I did make up for it once I setup for final. And man…my landing was the best I’ve had in awhile. It felt softer than a kiss. It was so good that I didn’t want to stop flying. But alas, money is an object and I didn’t want to spend anymore yesterday.

I think I'll be flying this one again!

After my little experiment flying the Archer II, I do believe that these aircraft have better performance than N343MM. I think I’ll continue to flight the Archer III for local flights and sunset adventures, but for those longer cross-countries…I’ll take the Archer II. I’ll be able to carry more and get there faster. Now, I’m eager to plan my next cross-country…perhaps Napa/Sonoma for a weekend trip anyone?

Until next time…keep the dirty side down!