Terrible Cross Country

Today for my first solo cross country, I decided to fly to Beckley again. Looking back on it all, I realize that it was a terrible idea. That flight sucked. For several reasons.

First of all, except for the first thirty minutes on the flight down, the rest of that flight and the flight back consisted of nothing but terribly annoying turbulence. It was just tossing me in all different directions. I almost got sick a couple times. It sucked. Here is some video I took of Summersville Lake. Notice that the camera is bouncing around a lot. That's NOT my terrible filming skills.



Also, all the scenery was the reason I chose this flight. Unfortuenatly, it was all difficult to make out due to snow. This flight is actually much longer than what is required, so it costs a little extra overall. I figured it would be worth it for the views. It wasn't. The only good part was the New River Gorge, which I took some video of:



If I could go back, I would do this flight somewhere quicker to get it over with faster. Maybe Parkersburg, or Wheeling. My landing at Beckley sucked, I had a quartering headwind of 9 knots gusting to 17.

I feel like I wasted more money than I needed to on this flight. It was a bad choice. At least now I'm ready for my Stage 2 Check, which hopefully I will do next week sometime before Christmas Break.

Parkersburg at Night

Today I flew my night cross country from Clarksburg to Parkersburg and back. Its was fun. I'm doing really well. My instructor has so much confidence in me, at one point he just reclined his chair and relaxed for a bit while I flew.

I'm doing really well with my cross country flights, but, I do have one problem. Cockpit management. Cockpit management is basically how I keep all my logs, maps, and checklists organized while I fly.
I have papers scattered across my lap and the back of the plane and sometimes they fall between my legs and I have to fish for them. I even lost my instructors flashlight in Parkersburg- we found it though. It was under a seat.

The plane I flew in was not the best plane either. It didn't even have a stopwatch built in like the rest of the planes. I wound up using my instructors watch to keep track of my time between checkpoints. Needless to say, the cockpit was a mess. There has to be a better way.

Landing at Parkersburg wasn't very fun. Not because of the airport itself, but more because it was night and all that was around me was dark. I couldn't tell if I was over a mountain or a forest or even a body of water. Needless to say, I stayed high until I reached the threshold of the runway.

I did four more stop-and-go landings at Clarksburg to meet my 10 night landings requirement for my license. I did much better on these landings than the last time I landed at night.

Next flight is my first solo cross country. I have it scheduled for Saturday. Then I should be able to take my Stage 2 check.

Sim Time

Today the visibility was low, winds were gusty, temperatures below freezing, and very low ceilings. So, guess what? I got to fly.

Just not outside.

I stayed warm inside and flew in the simulator again. I flew a cross country from Clarksburg to Charleston. This was technically a solo flight, although you can't use the simulator without your instructor, so I still payed for dual time.

This lesson is actually stage three. I still have two lessons and a stage check left in stage two, but since the weather has been so bad lately, we skipped ahead and did my other simulator flight from stage three.

I planned my flight appropriately, received flight following, and opened a flight plan. The only error I made in communicating with ATC was not turning on the Nav frequency when opening my flight plan. Let me explain.

In Clarksburg, in order to open a flight plan,

you have to tune your radio to the FSS frequency, and listen to the VOR frequency. So I called up FSS (Flight Service Station) and announced that I wanted to open my flight plan. My instructor (playing the role of ATC) never responded. When I realized I hadn't tuned to the VOR frequency, I felt stupid.

Everything else I did succesfully without commentary from my instructor. He tried to trick me a couple times- putting another plane on a collision course with me to see if I would catch it, or making the oil pressure zero. I caught it everytime.

The landing was a little rough, but apparently its fairly difficult to land in the sim.

Hopefully sometime this week I will get to fly for real.

First Time for Everything

Today had a lot of firsts for me. First time flying at night, first time landing at night, first time flying in below freezing temperatures, and first time flying in snow.

First things first, preflighting the plane took a little longer than usual because you can barely see anything at night- and its unwise to use flashlights because you sacrifice a little night vision which is desirable for flying at night. Plus since it was so cold, we had to take a propane pre-heater to the engine to avoid any damage caused by a cold start.

Once we got the plane started, I got to learn how to use the variuos new types of lighting I've never used before. These include: The taxi light, which is a light that shines on the ground, the navigation lights, which shine green and red lights on the wing so that other aircraft can see which direction I'm moving in the air, and the strobe lights which are flashes of light every second.


We took off and flew out towards Tygart Lake. It was pretty awesome seeing everyone's Christmas lights. I was able to pick out the various towns such as Grafton and Phillipi by the clusters of lights. I practiced slow flight, stalls, and steep turns.

Then we decided to head in the general direction of Phillipi airport to the south. After a couple minutes, I spotted the flashing green and white light of the airports beacon. Once we got a little closer to the beacon, I tuned the radios to the CTAF of Phillipi airport and I clicked my mic seven times. All of the sudden, boom! Runway. By clicking my mic seven times I triggered the pilot-controlled lighting and activated the runway and other lighting systems. It was nice.

At one point, we could look out at the wing, and see the strobe lights reflecting off snow. It was actually snowing around us. It was kind of like Star Wars- with the snow flying past you really fast.

We then headed back to do some stop-and-go's at Clarksburg airport. Clarksburg's runway lighting does not consist of centerline lighting, so it looked like I was
diving into a long rectangular hole. Once I got close, the plane's landing light shined on the runway and I could tell when to flare. Unfortuneatly, I often didn't pull back far enough on touchdown which resulting in touching down on all three wheels instead of just the back two. My instructor informed me that this was because your depth perception is faulty at night.

It was a pretty awesome lesson. My next flight is another dual cross country, but at night. I might do this tomorrow night, because it looks like its going to snow all week.

I'm taking my Private Pilot Knowledge Exam tomorrow. I have studied hard for it and I definitely feel ready to take it.