On Tuesday night, Neeta and I decided to go to Las Vegas for the NAB show. Instead of driving, we decided to do a night flight from Hawthorne to Henderson. Shiva just landed after a 3 hour flight from Reed Hill View, in the San Francisco Bay area. We fueled and took off.
The flight was relatively easy. We filed and flew IFR though were in VFR all the time. It was night – IFR routing was easier to fly so that we could easily avoid the terrain around Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead etc. The ride near Apple Valley was a little choppy, but then smooth rest of the way. After Daggat we were asked to fly towards Boulder. I asked for Direct to HND and advised ATC that I would cancel IFR closer to the airport and do a visual approach. As I was being transferred to Vegas approach control, seemed like the ATC dude had issues with communication. He was not responding to my calls and to another pilot. Finally the pilot another aircraft told ATC that I was calling repeatedly checking in with him. He finally acknowledged and cleared me for a visual to Runway 17.
The touchdown was easy … there we were – in Vegas to party that night. I will post again about the flight back. That is a whole story and probably the toughest flight I have ever done.
