iWantWings
Pre-takeoff checklist
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2011
- Messages
- 437
- Location
- Southern California
- Display Name
- wingsIwant
- Home Airfield
- Uncontrolled
Yey, I'm done with the solo cross-country training flights. I don't have any exciting stories to write about, but maybe someone will find something good out of this blurb.
Dual, daylight cross-country
This was the dual training flight and I payed careful attention to this one because I knew I would be flying the same flight on the short, solo x/c
. My instructor asked that I plan the route based on VORs (initially I planned it based on ground references). Nonetheless, I picked ground points at certain intervals to complement the dead reckoning. I kinda' had my hands full with tunning to the VOR frequncies, identifying them, listening to ATC, picking up the ground reference points, using the E6B to calculate ground speed, factor that in for the subsequent legs, getting ATIS, more radios.... etc. It made the 60 nautical mile flight to the destination seem very short. The flight back we took a route other than planned, based strictly on pilotage, from landmark to landmark. Did diversion - that was more fun.
Dual, night cross-country.
Same flight as the daylight one, but at night. I really liked this one; surreal view of what was left of the setting sun, right at takeoff. It got dark quickly. Alhtough I could not see any of the mountains tha I had seen in the daylight, i knew they were there because the rivers of night lights came to an abrupt halt - and then there was a black void. Without a doubt the best part of the flight was the moment the airport, now a desolant field, came to life, out of nowhere, with 5 clicks of the mike. It was amazing: what was a lonely rotating beacon just a few seconds ago was now lost in the surrouding multicolored lights. And the runway edge lights were right where they should be. That was just soooo cool. Landing was interesting - no doubt i could see the lights, but until a few seconds before the flare, there was no ground to be seen.
First Solo Cross Country
I wasn't too nervous, but let's just say I over-prepared. This might sound silly but I "flew" the course on X-plane. X-plane got the winds aloft and all the other weather related stuff and sure enough, the times were nearly spot on with the nav log values i had just completed for this "simulated flight". Silly as it may seem, I sure felt better after playing a game of "flying". The actual flight itself was non-eventful. Still, I was not comfortable with ATC and flight following so, to help myself, I sort of cheated by planning the flight on a weekday, when hardly anyone goes for a "hundred $ burger". It worked. At one point it was so quiet I nearly asked socal approach for a radio check. On the way back I didn't try so hard to fly the exact planned route, goofed around a little off-course and made back home safely.
Second, "long" Solo Cross Country
(this is the one that I acutally got to complete, not the one i discontinued and wrote about in another thread)
Ha! There was a different element to this. The first leg was the same that I had flown before, but then there were 2 additional legs to airports that I had not flown before. Some of the "challenges" - for me, anyways - was clearing some low mountains right after departing the pattern of one of the airports and flying over some terrain that (as it turned out in the actual fight) I would have no place to make an emergency landing. The other "challenge" was getting socal approach to allow me to descent through the class charlie of a military air base so I could enter the aiport in class delta. Charlie and delta were separated by only 3 miles. Sure enough, ATC did not clear me through Charlie and i was "stuck" at 6,500 feet and then had to descent in less than 3 nautical miles to 2000 feet for the aiport in Delta. That was actually the best part of the entire flight. I ended up doing a spiraling descent while talking to the tower in delta. And then I got to do a stop-and-go and touch-and-go on a 10,000 foot runway!!!
How cool was that? I even got to be on a King Air's TCAS display (a King air had just taken off, towered tried to make sure we saw each other and the King Air confirmed TCAS indicated i was only a measly fly somewhere behind them, and no factor). Then there was another leg from teh airport in Delta with the giant runway to another airport in another Delta just 10 miles away. Had to get ATIS quickly, contact them and got a right-base entry. Did full stop and touch and go there, and then headed home, just another 12 nautical miles away to an "airspace" where the one with the biggest balls generally rules.
All in all it was 2.5 hours of my most memorable lesson thus far It was great, really great: i was just happy i didn't get yelled at by ATC (they were in fact VERY helpful) and I didn't break the plane or bust airspace.
Dual, daylight cross-country
This was the dual training flight and I payed careful attention to this one because I knew I would be flying the same flight on the short, solo x/c
. My instructor asked that I plan the route based on VORs (initially I planned it based on ground references). Nonetheless, I picked ground points at certain intervals to complement the dead reckoning. I kinda' had my hands full with tunning to the VOR frequncies, identifying them, listening to ATC, picking up the ground reference points, using the E6B to calculate ground speed, factor that in for the subsequent legs, getting ATIS, more radios.... etc. It made the 60 nautical mile flight to the destination seem very short. The flight back we took a route other than planned, based strictly on pilotage, from landmark to landmark. Did diversion - that was more fun.Dual, night cross-country.
Same flight as the daylight one, but at night. I really liked this one; surreal view of what was left of the setting sun, right at takeoff. It got dark quickly. Alhtough I could not see any of the mountains tha I had seen in the daylight, i knew they were there because the rivers of night lights came to an abrupt halt - and then there was a black void. Without a doubt the best part of the flight was the moment the airport, now a desolant field, came to life, out of nowhere, with 5 clicks of the mike. It was amazing: what was a lonely rotating beacon just a few seconds ago was now lost in the surrouding multicolored lights. And the runway edge lights were right where they should be. That was just soooo cool. Landing was interesting - no doubt i could see the lights, but until a few seconds before the flare, there was no ground to be seen.
First Solo Cross Country
I wasn't too nervous, but let's just say I over-prepared. This might sound silly but I "flew" the course on X-plane. X-plane got the winds aloft and all the other weather related stuff and sure enough, the times were nearly spot on with the nav log values i had just completed for this "simulated flight". Silly as it may seem, I sure felt better after playing a game of "flying". The actual flight itself was non-eventful. Still, I was not comfortable with ATC and flight following so, to help myself, I sort of cheated by planning the flight on a weekday, when hardly anyone goes for a "hundred $ burger". It worked. At one point it was so quiet I nearly asked socal approach for a radio check. On the way back I didn't try so hard to fly the exact planned route, goofed around a little off-course and made back home safely.
Second, "long" Solo Cross Country
(this is the one that I acutally got to complete, not the one i discontinued and wrote about in another thread)
Ha! There was a different element to this. The first leg was the same that I had flown before, but then there were 2 additional legs to airports that I had not flown before. Some of the "challenges" - for me, anyways - was clearing some low mountains right after departing the pattern of one of the airports and flying over some terrain that (as it turned out in the actual fight) I would have no place to make an emergency landing. The other "challenge" was getting socal approach to allow me to descent through the class charlie of a military air base so I could enter the aiport in class delta. Charlie and delta were separated by only 3 miles. Sure enough, ATC did not clear me through Charlie and i was "stuck" at 6,500 feet and then had to descent in less than 3 nautical miles to 2000 feet for the aiport in Delta. That was actually the best part of the entire flight. I ended up doing a spiraling descent while talking to the tower in delta. And then I got to do a stop-and-go and touch-and-go on a 10,000 foot runway!!!
How cool was that? I even got to be on a King Air's TCAS display (a King air had just taken off, towered tried to make sure we saw each other and the King Air confirmed TCAS indicated i was only a measly fly somewhere behind them, and no factor). Then there was another leg from teh airport in Delta with the giant runway to another airport in another Delta just 10 miles away. Had to get ATIS quickly, contact them and got a right-base entry. Did full stop and touch and go there, and then headed home, just another 12 nautical miles away to an "airspace" where the one with the biggest balls generally rules.All in all it was 2.5 hours of my most memorable lesson thus far
It was great, really great: i was just happy i didn't get yelled at by ATC (they were in fact VERY helpful) and I didn't break the plane or bust airspace.
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I'm amazed at how we all learned back in the Pre Internet &GPS days... Y'all know that you can "Pre fly" the trip equally well on a sectional right?
