Solo Cross Country

The stars fell into alignment today and I finally had a chance to fly my first solo Cross Country. I honestly can not remember the last time I flew solo. I'm not even sure it was in 2010 (I just looked and it was January 2010).

Since the dual XC back at the start of April I've managed to get an hour of sim time in to do partial panel work, and two dual flights with I5.

I literally had the day off so took advantage of it. I was at the club by 1030 and after Q&A with I5 I started on the planning. The planning took a long time. A really really really long time. Either it is a LOT of work, I'm terribly slow at it, or a sad combination of both.

For a while I thought the flight gods were conspiring against me. The diamond (yes "the" - FIFA is no more and now GMTZ is out for a few weeks with a cracked canopy) was late getting out of maintenance (a 50 hour). Then when it finally did there were guys doing some sort of work to the hangar doors which couldn't be opened.

Ok - cut to the chase. I flew the XC and things went great. I knew where I was, the planning all came together, had no issues with procedures (US equivalent of Class C, Class B transition, FSS "controlled" airport, and an uncontrolled airport), had the aircraft under control and above all managed to keep everything organized. The final hit on the Hobbs time was 3.0 hours. The bastards forecast the winds aloft as 9900 but they were full of it! It was gusty up there and things were made more fun by the "summer bumps". It wasn't like the last flight where I was ready to puke, In fact I didn't feel the bumps at all - maybe I was so concerned with keeping my heading and altitude. Damn those ridiculous gyroscopes! Can't they just keep in line with the compass!

A few key highlights:

- Using only 2000 feet to land and roll out at CYQF. I came in high and fast and forgot about to anticipate the extra float with 160 lbs missing from the aircraft. (Oh - I did soft field landing procedure and just let her roll until I exited at about 2000 feet).

- Getting a bit lost on the second leg but verifying my location and proving it over and over by using a combination of water, highways, towers, and a gas plant.

- Nailing the uncontrolled field procedure (cross midfield at 1500' to check the windsock, sweet procedure turn to join midfield downwind).

- Cross wind landing at CEN3.

- Holding my own in Class B airspace with a busy departure controller speaking with heavies and me.

- Getting a super cool "direct the tower and a midfield downwind" with weird altitude and speed restrictions to help a REALLY busy tower controller get his sequencing right.

- Holding a great approach speed and angle so that I could flare where I wanted to for a somewhat controlled touchdown. Again making the taxiway 2000' down the runway with the nose wheel still somewhat off the ground for most of it.

- Parking on the ramp at CEN3 and getting out to stretch - remembering Keith Smith's blog from his first solo XC about "trying to look as cool as possible".

This was all good except there was NO ONE at the airport (tiny field). The problem with this was that I had to pee pretty badly after downing over a liter of water for the first two legs. Having been unable to figure it out and seeing no signs of life I just walked to the grass and whipped it out to drain. Of course this was immediately followed by a lady coming out of some building (which I was sure was condemned) taking a look at me from a few thousand feet away (obvious what I was doing) and then just continuing on with her business. I stopped, shook, zipped, and ran back to the safety of C-GFFC.


At this point - all I can really think about is that the flight truly was a climax of all the skills I have learned to date in my flight training. I felt comfortable making every decision that was made today - even the ones that weren't entirely obvious and required some analytical skills, risk assessment, and above all common sense.

Tomorrow night I5 and I are taking a Skyhawk out for some instrument work and "familiarity" with the 172.