2 Separate Questions: Waypoints & XC Solo Endorsement

[MAKG1]

I also suggest viewing your landmarks in Google Earth.

It's not perfect -- green grass vs. brown or snow covered, for instance, can look rather different. But it does give you an idea what it looks like.

Some airports are REALLY easy to spot, but they require very high contrast to do that. Dark paved strips in the desert, for instance (Lee Vining can be spotted nearly 50 miles off). Clearways cut into forest also stand out.

But many airports look just like their surroundings.

It can be worse at night, as airport lighting isn't generally very bright, and it can be off unless you turn it on (PCL). For instance, Reid Hillview is so brilliantly outshone by its parallel road (Capitol Expwy) that the A/FD has a caution not to line up on it.

 

[Matthew]

It doesn't actually work.

I did my night cross country to KSAC, which is a moderate maze of taxiways (there are much worse, but it's considerably more complex than the single-parallel where I trained), some of which are hard to identify in a sea of pavement. Except at night where the taxiway lights are real obvious.

So, when I went there in daytime for the first time, Ground told me to taxi to transient via A, and I went via B. They are close together and parallel, but B is used for outbound traffic. Fortunately, there wasn't any at the time, and Ground was understanding.

https://skyvector.com/files/tpp/1511/pdf/00358AD.PDF

Landings and takeoffs are almost always on 20. It's a little hard on a new pilot to get told to taxi via B M D and cross two runways, just to get to the run-up area. Even worse, C N D ('cause C is hard to identify).

Yeah, your case is way different than mine was: an uncontrolled field with one rwy, one taxiway, and three intersections (each end and middle).

On my first trip to a field like yours, I remember very quickly asking for progressive!

 

[Jaybird180]

WRONG.

If you are going to get all snarky and coy with responses like that, you could at least cite the relevant FAR (61.93 Solo cross-country flight requirements).



Also

So to answer the OP's second question, it depends on what he means by cross-country. If we are talking solo flight to another airport within 25 miles of home field, then yes, the CFI must have provided training along the route and at the destination airport. If we are talking the long solo cross-country, then no the CFI does not have to have previously flown the exact route with the student before signoff (although some CFI's do).

Wasn't being snarky, just hasty with my FAR lookuip

 

[flyingron]

Emergency landing sites?

I wouldn't count on landing on some of the X fields. The one I remember had a telephone pole planted in the middle of the runway. The Aeronautical Chart User's Guide states it is for landmark purposes or to avoid confusion with an adjacent usable landing area.

 

[Matthew]

One if the X fields near me has a lot of trucks and other equipment parked on it all the time.

Another X rwy at an open airport has speed bumps to keep teens from drag racing.

 

[fiveoboy01]

I don't see why you couldn't use a private airport for a visual checkpoint but as was said, sometimes they are hard to pick out. I would use things like towns, lakes and railroad tracks. Towns generally were the best landmarks for me, and if I was lucky there would be a water tower that was readable(I carried binoculars with me). The trick was just keeping track continuously of your position on the sectional.

My first solo XC was the same one myself and my CFI had done a couple weeks eariler. MSN to OSH. So, I was somewhat familiar with it. Of course, the planning was slightly different due to the difference in weather.

That wasn't the case with the long XC. I was on my own from beginning to end with no prior experience on the route.

I remember how scared I was. LOL.

 

[flyingron]

One thing you can practice while flying XC is to find all the airports (private, public, closed) within a few miles of your course and practice spotting them. It will help with your pilotage and you never know someday you might need to get down to the nearest available field and being good at spotting them will be a good skill.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Fly the route a week or so ahead of time and see what is easy to spot and mark it on your chart. That way you are prepared when you fly with the instructor. :wink2:

 

[MAKG1]

Fly the route a week or so ahead of time and see what is easy to spot and mark it on your chart. That way you are prepared when you fly with the instructor. :wink2:

It's legal if you "fly" the route on Google.

Don't rely on a flight sim, though. Every one of them looks wrong. Mostly, things are too easy to spot, or they just aren't there at all.