I haven't been blogging much because I have been busy with school,
work, life and everything else. No matter how much time I try to spend
relaxing it is not enough, I always seem behind on my school work and regular
work wants me to work all the time.
The
cross country flight is near the end of your flight training and
brings all the skills and knowledge learned into one long flight. Radio
communications, flight planning, dead reckoning, cockpit resource
management are just a few of the things needed to complete the flight.
My most recent
flight was my first cross country flight. Cross country flying is
technically when you fly more than 25 Nautical Miles (straight line) distance
to another airport. We had 6 airports on the plan to visit before returning
to KTLH. We made it to 4 of them before my instructor directed us back
home. The flight was very taxing. I wasn't allowed to use the GPS
and had to fly based on a heading and time I calculated before the flight and
get to the next check point and have a good idea when looking at the
aeronautical chart where I was. I had a hard time maintaining my airspeed
and heading, which changed the times I calculated, which got me
"lost" a couple of times.
We departed KTLH
for Quincy (2J9) and then headed to Bainbridge, GA (KBGE). I ended up
about 10 miles west of the airport because of my
piloting failures listed above. After climbing, looking for and
finding the airport, I flew a traffic pattern and headed on the next airport. Doesn't
sounds so bad, remember that while all this is going on my flight instructor is
doing his best to frustrate and stress me out. He did a good job, I was
pretty stressed but I know that when I am flying cross country by myself, he
won't be there to give advice or tell me what I am doing wrong. As we
traveled by my poor dead reckoning skills (using landmarks to identify where
you are and where you are supposed to be), I missed the airports by several
miles each time. Since I wasn't doing very well, my instructor had me plot
a course back to KTLH. We flew the 35 miles back discussing what I needed
to improve on and what I should be checking when I fly by myself.
I was pretty upset
with how poorly I flew, until I was filling out my log book and realized that
the last time I flew was on the 30th of September. I felt a little better
about the flight but not really. I discussed the next steps with my
instructor about when I should be ready for my check ride. I wanted to
use the time between the two school semesters over Christmas to have
my check ride, but that would require flying twice a week and I don't quite
have that ability. We discussed where I am at, what I need to work on and
set a goal of 30 January 2013 for me to have my check ride completed. So
shortly after the New Year I will have my private pilot license (rotorcraft)
and will start working on my commercial license and instrument rating.
My next flight
will be another dual cross country with my instructor with a shorter route so
that I will have the required hours and then I will be making solo cross
country flights until I have the 10 solo hours required for my license.
One part of the
flight that was interesting was flying between
three broadcast antennas about 30 miles north east of
Tallahassee. I was flying at 1000 feet and they still appeared very tall
to me. The towers are about 2000 feet tall, I tried to find a good
picture of them, but I couldn't. I am still saving to get a camera
similar to the GoPro Hero camera. Something I can position and have it
take pictures or video while I fly so I can share some of the images.
R48
