Risky flight

It was one day in January 2000. Rainy season gave us a short break and I took off to have a steak lunch at Napa Valley airport (APC). General aviation pilots say short recreation flight to have a lunch as a "$100 hamburger". This time we should call "$200 steak lunch".

First I went Sonoma airport (Petaluma: STS) to have a short break.

I reset and started handheld GPS trace route function.

Above map shows the GPS stored route returning to Palo Alto (PAO) from STS.

After looking down from the sky Napa downtown, I landed on Napa Valley airport (APC) and had a lunch.

Looked over the returning route, I saw low ceiling could to the south. I departed shortly after the lunch. After airborne, I could see through over the San Francisco to Palo Alto.  Then my plan was to go back via Livermore Airport (at East), the clouds were too below to go over the ridge.  I changed my plan again.

Giving up to trip over Oakland, I decided to come back via San Francisco City to Half Moon Bay, avoiding Class B Air Space of San Francisco Airport.

I had an option to land at Halfmoon Airport (HAF) and drive back to home. But it was just before the destination, Palo Alto. I decided to go across the ridge.

Soon after I found the familiar highway 101, the buildings of Oracle headquarters jumped into my left sight. I noticed that this meant I am already violating the San Carlos Airport (KSQL) class D airspace （violation means flying within a radius of 5 miles of airport below 2,5000 feet AGL without ATC permission）. But I was too busy to care about that, as was very busy maintaining the plane flying. (Heights, direction, and air speed).

After flying a couple of miles along the highway, I contacted to Palo Alto Airport. They soon replied and indicated my violence reported from San Carlos at the same time.

Anyway I needed to go home safe, and I got the permission to land. At last I managed to land by the pattern. At this time, visibility was below 3 (the minimum for VFR), and the clouds were below 1,000 feet.

I learned a great lesson from this. We have to be well prepared for weather change. It changes in thirty minutes. It is extremely important to be courageous enough to change plans and to land while safe (In my case, I had a chance to land at Half Moon Airport.). I got the actual feeling of the saying, “Take off is optional, and landing is mandatory”.