This flight was considered my long solo cross country. However, I made it shorter than my first solo cross country. I flew from Clarksburg to Parkersburg, then to Buckhannon and back to Clarksburg. All in all, I flew 1.6 hours. That's a lot less than the 2.5 hours on my first solo cross country to Beckley.
The flight started out nice and easy, I made it to Parkersburg fairly quickly and easily. Then I had to go find Buckhannon. I had flight following through ATC and was talking to Clarksburg Approach and they told me to announce when I had the airport in sight. I saw a nice runway in the distance and told ATC that I had the airport in sight, and they terminated my radar services and advised for me to change frequencies. I announced on Buckhannon's traffic frequency that I was coming in for a landing.
As I got closer and closer, I realized that wasn't a runway. It was a road. I started looking around, no runway in sight. Ugh. Just so you know, it had been getting kind of dark.
So I got out my sectional map, tuned to the Elkins VOR frequency and turned the OBS to the radial the airport is on. My navigation instruments told me to turn left, so I did. All of the sudden, I saw it. I then applied full power to speed up and get there faster and continued my landing without any more problems.
I then returned to Clarksburg and landed fine. It was a good flight.
No comments:
Post a Comment