It was 11:07 p.m. local when I called Oakland Center. We had just departed Runway 32 at Sonoma County Airport and were making a wide left turn to head south toward San Francisco. Center confirmed that traffic was light. It promised to be a good night for a VFR flight across San Francisco Bay to Hollister, California.
I glanced over at my young teenage passenger. She hadn’t wanted to come along on this late night flight, and now she was sound asleep. I nudged her shoulder gently and her head twisted around to peer at me, one eye opening reluctantly. We didn’t speak, but I pointed to the magnificent view out her side window. Conversation in the cockpit was next to impossible over the roar of the 275-horsepower Jacobs radial engine, so hand gestures were the most practical mode of communication with my passenger, who had refused to wear a headset.
Her initial reaction notwithstanding, flying over the San Francisco Bay Area is an exhilarating experience anytime, but especially on a clear summer night with no sign of fog. Coming up on my left was the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and I could see the soft white lights of the Oakland Bay Bridge several miles ahead. In another minute, the Sausalito waterfront appeared on my right and then the lighted orange arches of the Golden Gate Bridge. Looking west beyond the Golden Gate, there was nothing to see but the impenetrable blackness of the Pacific Ocean.
As we continued across the bay, I spotted one airplane on short final to Oakland and several more on approach to San Francisco. With the light of a full moon, it was easy to see the outline of the long-abandoned buildings below me on Alcatraz Island.
Even though it was almost midnight, commercial airliners were still landing and departing from Oakland and San Francisco. Oakland Center, in its usual fashion, was helpful in advising me of nearby traffic, but radio chatter was minimal.
When I heard United Flight 31 call Center from somewhere over the Pacific, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to fly a commercial airliner across the ocean and into San Francisco International. However, I quickly told myself that piloting a big Boeing couldn’t possibly be as much fun as sitting behind the controls of The Foxy Lady, the name I’d given to my recently acquired 1952 Cessna 195.
Suddenly, the airplane radio came alive and my thoughts snapped back to the realities of the flight.
“Oakland Center, Cessna Three Zero Zero One Bravo, do you have a transponder”?
“Oakland Center, Zero One Bravo. Affirmative. Squawking ONE TWO THREE FOUR as previously advised.”
“Zero One Bravo, Oakland Center. Squawk IDENT.”
I pushed the IDENT button and waited. Again, the air traffic controller’s voice penetrated through the engine noise.
“Zero One Bravo, Oakland Center. Please turn your transponder to STANDBY mode.” I did as I was instructed and a few seconds later the controller’s voice was back on the air.
“Zero One Bravo, Oakland Center. Please squawk ZERO ONE ZERO ONE.” There was a short pause as I dialed in the sequence of numbers.
“Now squawk SEVEN SEVEN ZERO ZERO.”
Wait a minute! What’s happening? SEVEN SEVEN ZERO ZERO is the international distress code. As my brain struggled to make sense of the directive from ATC, I asked the controller to SAY AGAIN. He repeated SEVEN SEVEN ZERO ZERO explaining that no matter what setting I squawked, my transponder was decoding on his radar screen as an airplane declaring an emergency. After ten minutes of squawking various codes, the controller instructed me to turn off my now clearly malfunctioning transponder because it was causing confusion on the radar scopes at Center. We were almost out of Class B Airspace anyway, so having an inoperable transponder was not going to be a problem.
The transponder issue had dominated my attention for a while, but soon the non-event faded from my immediate concern. I returned to enjoying the view that only aviators can experience. Too bad my young passenger was not as engaged, I thought.
But as we were passing over the city of San Jose, I looked again. She was now fully awake with her face pressed hard against the side window trying to catch the last glimmer of light from the Bay Area as we started our descent to Hollister. I had seen the glittering lights of the Bay Area from the air many times before, but this was the first time for this 14-year-old. Her posture indicated she was properly impressed.
