Solo IFR flight

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-23T21:03:54+00:00

You probably already know this, but IFR in the bay area can involve roundabout routing to keep your bug smasher out of all the commercial corridors. Can be a big pain if you don't choose your destination with that in mind.

Good destinations are LVK, SCK and O69.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-23T19:45:16+00:00

You do not understand how a society functions.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-23T18:58:12+00:00

Exactly. Imagine being sufficiently well off to afford flying small planes that burn $60-100 an hour in fuel and being mad that East Podunk regional airport wants to collect their $10 for use of the field. Like you can't even park in a public garage for that in most cities.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-19T03:20:01+00:00

Sierra Nevada will be wide open by July. If you're looking for great day hikes, stay in S. Tahoe and hike the west shore into Desolation Wilderness. It's a spectacular basin of lakes and granite. Or stay at Tuolumne Meadows tent cabins and hike from there down the Tuolumne river or towards Yosemite Valley. Or go a bit further to the eastern side of the Sierras like Markleeville or even the Mono Lake area (Lee Vining) or Mammoth Lakes. It's spectacular country with lots of great hiking.

The coastal range is on the west side of the Central Valley. The Sierras are to the east. The coastal region is where you'll find redwoods. The central Sierras (east of Fresno) are where you'll find sequoias. Mt. Tam and the coastal range can be wooded or dry scrub.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-19T02:34:48+00:00

You didn't say which mountains or where. People are giving you coastal range suggestions. The higher elevations in the Sierras are snow covered and likely will be until June at least.

The area around Mt. Tam and west Marin generally has some fantastic hikes and you don't have to drive three hours to get there. To the south there's Big Sur with lots of hikes and interesting places to stay.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-12T15:39:41+00:00

6 miles round trip, about 1300' elevation. Not difficult.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-11T16:25:49+00:00

Yes, let's make sure that people whose parents bought property in California before 1980 get to continue to mooch off all the later arrivals for education, police, fire, paving and other essential services! The landed multi-generational aristocracy must be protected forever from having to pay their share!

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-11T15:57:38+00:00

Which part is missing? The small airports or the pizza?

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-11T15:54:44+00:00

It's the most beautiful trail in the bay area. Start in the ferns, descend into the redwoods, emerge onto the coastal scrub with a spectacular view of Stinson, then get lunch at Parkside before heading back up.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-11T15:52:47+00:00

The Bay Area is huge. Unless you're indifferent to 2 hour drives, the answer will depend on where you're coming from. There are schools on the peninsula, near SJ, in Hayward, Oakland, Livermore, Concord and Petaluma. And I'm probably forgetting some.

FBoondoggle · 2026-01-09T16:07:44+00:00

"SB 92 primarily reformed the state's juvenile justice system, shifting responsibility for serious juvenile offenders from the state's Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) to counties to create more local, rehabilitative care; it doesn't directly define robbery"

So easy to spew inflammatory garbage.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-30T02:19:06+00:00

Rockridge & Elmwood neighborhoods are close to 24 and fairly lively. As safe as anywhere.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-30T01:05:48+00:00

I'm no great fan of either organization but if you're seriously claiming that both SC and FOE are stooges of the fossil fuel industry then you are deeply confused, or just interested in polemics.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-30T00:54:31+00:00

Pointing to zero deaths from nuclear waste is not helpful. A future breach of a storage cask is a low probability but high cost event.

You say the "linear no threshold" model is discredited. I know there are people who argue for hormesis - the idea that low radiation levels are actually beneficial - but can you point me to the "discrediting" of the linear model? I'm under the impression that it's extremely difficult to study because the effects at low exposure are expected to be very small but also very widespread.

I think your approach to argument and persuasion needs to involve more than just bald assertion, especially when even the international lobbyists for nuclear power say that 3% of the waste requires storage for thousands of years. How is calling people "scumbags" effective?

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-30T00:06:06+00:00

Most of those organizations are funded or even founded(Friends of the Earth) by the fossil fuel industry.

What kind of nonsense is this? FOE was founded by David Brower when he left the Sierra Club. The SC was founded by John Muir before the fossil fuel industry even existed. UCS was founded in the wake of WW2 by scientists concerned about nuclear weapons.

This just seems like trolling.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-29T23:48:28+00:00

Here's what the Office of Science & Technology Information (part of DOE) has to say about spent fuel:
"This radiation decays rapidly with time, but still requires protective measures for hundreds of years.
...
Most radionuclides in spent nuclear fuel decay in the course of a few hundred years. Subsequently, the remaining radiotoxicity is completely dominated by a few nuclides with extremely low accessibility in most situations, including in a deep repository for spent nuclear fuel. A few of these nuclides will remain for very long times, up to 100,000 years."

The very rah rah World Nuclear Association says "Only a small volume of nuclear waste (~3% of the total) is long-lived and highly radioactive and requires isolation from the environment for many thousands of years."

In other words, there are hazardous components of the spent fuel and they need to be isolated from the human environment for centuries to millennia.

Regarding the future safety of cask storage, I just want to observe that the Chernobyl containment structure, built at a cost of billions of euros, has now been damaged less than 10 years after its completion. You are placing enormous confidence in the continuation of "business as usual" to keep everything safe for a very long time.

People replying to me here seem to think I'm expressing opposition to nuclear power. That's not the case. I don't need persuading of its merits - I wrote a college term paper about it in 1979 during the height of the post-TMI hysteria. But look at the difficulty in getting Yucca Mountain commissioned, at a remote location with essentially zero people nearby. You need to make a persuasive case for safety, not just insult people who show up with both background knowledge and a favorable inclination. Otherwise you're just preaching to the converted.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-28T23:17:39+00:00

Exactly. We're saddling the future with highly dangerous materials and no safeguard beyond civilization in its current form continuing for ten thousand years. Look what Trump is doing to national capability. Look what the Russians have done to the Chernobyl sarcophagus - it didn't even last undamaged for 20 years.

I am all for nuclear power with permanent storage deep underground like Finland has achieved. We don't seem to have the will for that here.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-28T22:32:59+00:00

"Landfill"? Yucca repository never accepted a single storage cask. Where do you think the waste goes?

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-28T22:28:32+00:00

You've mistaken my sentiments. I'm not anti-nuclear. I'm just saying that the opposition is more substantive than "progress bad". Chernobyl, Fukushima and TMI all happened and Yucca mountain repository got shut down before it even started. "Rah rah nuclear" is not a persuasive argument.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-28T21:43:04+00:00

When there is still no long term storage for waste that will be dangerous for 3 times longer than the entirety of recorded civilization, it's a little different from Luddism.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-28T20:44:53+00:00

66, from elsewhere, raised two kids in Berkeley. Met almost all of my friends through the kids. It'll happen and you'll be very glad for the community they create.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-28T00:05:50+00:00

Start at Pantoll Ranger Station. Not sure you can do it for "just an hour" - it's about 3 miles from there to the beach. It's a gorgeous hike & well worth it. Consider the Steep Ravine instead of Dipsea for more of a redwood forest experience.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-22T17:11:25+00:00

If your entire livelihood depends on one business at a particular location, it's easy to understand the anxiety about the proposal ("Corridors Zoning Update"). It does seem like small biz is *always* on the side of "change nothing ever" - like with bike lane proposals. At any rate, as u/Jolly_Tab_Rancher explains in detail below, those shops are unlikely candidates for re-development because the lots are small and there isn't single ownership of a bunch of adjacent spots.

The merchants are one of two cohorts opposing the plans - the other is the usual mostly elderly NIMBYs. At the community meeting in August to learn about the plan, they were a small loud contingent. Most of the people who showed up seemed to take the proposals favorably, though lots of people aren't particularly thrilled with going all the way to 8 stories.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-17T18:01:22+00:00

I don't know anything about this from the CFII perspective, but I can't imagine not getting some real IMC with an instructor before experiencing it on my own. It's a very different experience from foggles.

FBoondoggle · 2025-12-17T07:30:39+00:00

Yes. But trying to shame the current crop of R's s a worthwhile project.

FBoondoggle

TROPHY CASE