Second solo XC...the long one.

One of the requirements to get your Private Pilot Certificate is that you must fly 150 nautical miles, landing at three different airports or more, and your first stop has to be at least 50nm away from your departure point. They call this the long cross country. For my long cross country I decided to head back to Torrence airport, flying right up the coast through some busy class C airpsace, and near the even busier class B airspace. From Torrance I would fly east over the mountains, and land at Hemet-Ryan airport...an uncontrolled airport in the middle of nowhere.

Once I had my route planned, and had chosen my checkpoints there was nothing more I could do until the day of the flight. When I woke up the morning of the flight, I poured myself some coffee and got right to finishing up my flight plan. The first step is to call the weather briefer and get the weather information for my route of flight. With the weather in hand, I could now calculate what heading I needed to point my airplane to compensate for the wind, and also how fast I would actually be flying with the wind either speeding me up, or slowing me down. With your airplanes ground speed figured out, you can now figure out how much fuel you are going to burn up over the length of the trip.

With the flight plan finished, I was off the the airport. My instructor reviewed my flight plan, and signed off in my logbook so I could legally make this flight. Next I called the weather briefer back up, and read him my flight plan. Once you are up in the air, you call up a specific frequency and tell them to activate your flight plan. If they don't hear back from you, in the amount of time you told them it would take you to fly the trip, then they will send out search and rescue to look for you, using your flight plan to determine where they should look. After filing my flight plane with the briefer, I was finally ready to fly!

I headed outside and pre-flighted the airplane, making sure it had full fuel tanks, and nothing was broke. Finally all the prep work was over, and I was taxing to the runway for takeoff. Once in the air, I set course for Torrance and wrote down my time of departure, I would use this time to determine if I was arrive at my checkpoints in the time I estimated in my planning. Now that I was cruising along, I called up San Diego Radio and activated my flight plan. Next I called up SoCal Approach and requested flight following. Flight following is a nice little tool to have, especially when flying near busy airspace. My route of flight has my flying past John Wayne airport, Long Beach airport, and pretty close to LAX, so having someone watch me on radar and informing me of other planes nearby is very helpful, and helps ease the nerves.

I landed at Torrance airport easily enough, and taxied around back to the runway for takeoff. After takeoff, my plan was to climb to 7,500'...once I got around 7,000' however, I heard someone on the radio yelling at me that I just entered class B airspace, a big no-no unless you have permission. Turns out I screwed up my flight plan, overlooking this particular section of class B airspace, and sure enough my plan had be busting right through it. The controller on the radio cut me a break, and didn't yell at me too bad, and more importantly didn't write me up. This ordeal got me second guessing myself now...I was certain my flight plan had me avoiding class B airspace...so where the heck was I? It wasn't until later that night, that I took a closer look and discovered just what I had done.

I was now heading away from the coast, and the busy airspace that surrounded it, and headed over the mountains to the sparsely populated inland areas. Flying over the mountains had me a bit concerned. I wasn't sure what to expect exactly. The flight training videos warn of wind shear, and turbulence when flying near mountains...this had me concerned. Sure enough, the turbulence definitely picked up as I flew over, but it was nothing I couldn't handle. With the mountains behind me, my next obstacle was avoiding the parachuting, and gliding activity that goes on in the area. Luckily for me, the person at Approach giving me flight following gave me a lot of help avoiding this activity, and directing me straight towards my next stop. Not being familiar with an area, and never have flown into this particular airport is a bit of a challenge. You don't want to  start descending until you know for sure that you have the correct airport in sight. Thanks to flight following, I was certain I had the right airport. Since this airport doesn't have an operating control tower, it is up the pilots to sequence themselves for landing and departing, and not crashing into each other. This is done by announcing intentions on a common frequency that all pilots should be using when flying into or out of this particular airport. I announced my intentions on the radio at each turn I made, but it seemed that on this day I was the only airplane around.

After landing at my second airport, Hemet-Ryan, I was feeling good...the hard part was over. The only thing left to do was to fly a short trip back to my home airport. The final leg of the trip went smoothly, and I landed back at Palomar airport in Carlsbad in one piece. To meet my solo XC requirements I need to have 2.9 hours logged on this trip...when I parked the airplane and recorded my time I was relieved to see that I had indeed logged exactly 2.9 hours! Thank god, because I did not want to have to do this again...not until after I get my certificate at least.

Not my exact route of flight, but you get the idea. 

The red circle is the restricted area over Disney Land.

Lesson 20: Night Operations

Well it finally happened, after a month of cancelled flights, I finally got a night lesson in...and just by the skin of my teeth too!

The first thing I noticed during this lesson was just how dimly lit the instrument panel was. I was expecting each individual instrument to have some sort of back lighting, but to my surprise, they are all lit by a red overhead light in the airplane. It made it quite difficult to read the numbers on the airspeed indicator, instead I relied on knowing where the numbers should be on the gauge.

My instructor had me taxi most of the way without my landing light on, he wanted me to use my beacon lights to determine if I was centered on the taxi way. It is shocking just how invisible the taxiways look without a landing light on. I wasn't allowed to turn my landing light back on until we were cleared for takeoff. When we departed, we flew straight out over the ocean. Once we got away from the city lights, and were surrounded by water, it was quite obvious how different night flying can be. I had to pay attention to my instruments to make sure I was staying straight and level... similar to flying in the clouds I would imagine.

After my instructor was done trying to freak me out, we headed back to the airports traffic pattern to make our first landing. I realized that my usual visual cues I used to determine how to fly each leg of the traffic pattern were gone, and that the runway was really hard to find. Once I did find the runway though, it was easy enough to keep track of it...its finding it initially that was tricky. Trying to judge the landing flare was interesting. When I flared I felt the plane floating, I tried to keep just the right amount of back pressure on the yoke to prevent ballooning, but also preventing hitting the runway too hard. I remember feeling moments when I wasn't exactly sure just how high off the runway the plane was, and just waiting for the plane to SMACK the runway.

After the first landing my instructor upped the difficulty on me. The rest of the landings were done without the landing light on, and one landing was done without the landing light or instrument panel lights...leaving me to land with my flashlight in my mouth so I could read the instruments...uncomfortable, but totally doable. After getting eight landings in we called it a night, and just in time too, because twenty minutes later and the overcast had rolled in pretty thick.

I enjoyed the challenge of night flying. It felt a lot different than the flying I have done thus far, even though it really is the same techniques. Once I get my ticket I don't see myself doing a lot of night flying...you never know though.

So frustrated!

I need to vent. It is late September now, and I have gotten zero flying done this month. Its not like I haven't tried though, that's for damn sure! I have had two of my long solo XC flights, and one night lesson canceled on me last minute due to the plane having something wrong with it, and last night another night lesson was canceled on me due to weather. Since luck hasn't been on my side lately, I have gotten more aggressive with my scheduling. Unfortunately it looks like the other two flights I have scheduled this week have a good chance of being canceled due to weather again. I was really hoping to have my license to learn by the time my parents come out in mid October, but I am really cutting it close now. Bummer!