Lesson 60 - The Long Cross Country

 With the initial solo stage now behind me, it is now time to focus on the last significant part of this journey, the long cross country flight. I've written before that "cross country" is kind of a misnomer. For training purposes, a "cross country" flight is a flight to any airport more than 50 nautical miles away. The "long" cross country is a flight of longer than 150 nautical miles, with at least three airports, and a distance of at least 50 nautical miles between two of those stops. 

My instructor and I planned on flying east to Fort Morgan, then continuing to Akron, then return to Centennial. Flying the plane is only part of the process, arguably the smallest part of the process. The long cross country is all about planning. Weight, waypoints, navigation, fuel, plane performance, etc. It's the "make sure you can make it safely" part of flying that we don't often think about as passengers. In the digital age, this kind of planning is easily done using software like ForeFlight, but--naturally--instructors have a mean streak and want you to learn the old fashioned way with charts, plotters, and paper. (Okay, it's old school, but you really do need to understand how to do that so you understand why ForeFlight gives you the numbers it gives you. That, and there's a geeky quality to showing up with a bunch of paper for each leg with all the info written out for you.)

I arrived at the airport plan in hand. Well, you know what happens with plans. The first thing my instructor and I do is look at the weather. Fort Morgan is fogged in. "Primary target covered by fog. The decision to proceed is yours." (I told you there would be frequent "Airplane!" references throughout this blog.) After a bit of deliberation, we figured the fog would burn off in an hour or so. Let's just fly to Akron first, that way when we leave for Fort Morgan, the fog will likely have lifted. It made sense, so we rolled with it.

Only one minor little hitch. In the digital world, to reverse the direction of my flight, all I have to do is hit the "reverse direction of flight" button. Presto, change-o, I have all new numbers for headings, times, etc. I didn't do this plan digitally. It's all on paper. As a result, I spent the time waiting for the fuel truck to arrive frantically re-calculating my route. Because of wind speed and direction, it's not just a matter of turning your heading 180 degrees. 

We took off, and navigation by the waypoints I had chosen went fairly easily. I was worried the large radio tower I picked would be difficult to find, but the fresh snowfall allowed me to easily see the antenna against the snowy ground. I'm not sure it would be quite as easy in the summer, but it worked today and that's all it needed to do. 

Arriving at Akron, we discovered that the runway had not yet been plowed. Planes had been taking off and landing, but it was packed snow on the surface. My instructor and I decided that a "full stop and taxi back" landing was off the table. We weren't gonna stop. We weren't even gonna slow down. Touch (very lightly) and go. Neither of us had any desire to slide off the side of the runway today. 

Leaving Akron, I turned towards Fort Morgan, which isn't really all that far away. Fort Morgan sits beside the South Platte River, which was what was causing the fog. There was still a healthy amount of fog right in the river valley, but--as my instructor predicted--the fog had lifted from the airport. What's more the runway had been plowed. We did a stop-and-go so we could say we actually stopped, then raised flaps, applied power, and off again for home.

The flight back home was routine. I again used that same tall radio antenna as a landmark to get me back and found it without issue. With this flight, I was able to knock out the required long cross country requirement with an instructor. There would still be 5 hours solo cross country, but that will come later.