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. 

Lesson 59 - Zen Interrupted

I don't know that I really intended to have back-to-back solo flights, but--hey--I have the endorsement, I may as well enjoy it, right? My previous solo flight was more of a "you're finally up here by yourself" flight, so this time it was time to get to work. Today was "brush up your landings" day. 

The pattern at Centennial was full, so I flew out to Spaceport. The winds were out of the south, so I thought that would be perfect. Straight down the runway. I get out to Spaceport, call the tower, and ask for touch-and-goes. They say sure. Fly to Bennet and straight in on runway 26. Um, the winds are straight out of the south. Why not 17? No. That would make too much sense. Sorry, they're using 17 only for departing traffic. Anyone wanting to do pattern work will be using 26. Landing on 26 with winds out of the south means a crosswind, and a direct one at that. I ask for an update on the winds. 170 degrees at 8 knots. With my solo endorsement, 8 knots is the maximum crosswind I'm allowed to land in if I'm by myself. I was "legal." Unsure, untested, but legal. I figured I'd have a go at one, and if I didn't like it, I'd go around and just depart to the south. 

I have actually flown crosswind landings many times on my simulator at home. I've got different scenarios set up with varying degrees of crosswinds. I'll scroll through them as I practice so to mix things up a bit. It's good practice to build muscle memory, but the sim is never "quite" like the real thing. Fortunately like the sim, today's wind was a steady 8 knots, so there wasn't a whole lot of adjustment I needed to do to stay on centerline. The key is to crab the nose into the wind just a bit so you keep your course over the ground in line with the centerline of the runway on your approach. Once you're on short final or crossing the threshold of the runway (wherever you feel comfortable), dip your wing into the wind and apply opposite rudder. Dipping your wing into the wind creates a turning force to combat the wind, and opposite rudder points the nose of plane straight down the runway so when you touch down, you're rolling in the right direction, not headed off to the side. It's a bit of a dance and one that definitely takes practice to get right.

I'll be perfectly honest and say I surprised myself on my first landing. It was rather smooth and (mostly) on center. I figured that was good enough to build upon, so I stayed in the pattern and flew a half dozen or so more landings. None were "perfect," but all were pretty decent and I felt in control of the process the entire time. Today was definitely a confidence builder. Good solo flight getting out to Spaceport, good crosswind control on landings, I was actually reveling in the moment. 

Feeling good about things thus far, I figured I'd cap the day off by flying solo over my house. It's on the way back, so I wasn't going to be going out of my way or anything. I found the major cross street near my neighborhood and lined up to fly over it. I was thinking about quickly texting my wife to have her look out the window (voice to text in a loud cockpit would be interesting, but no worse than it butchers my usual messages). It was just me, my thoughts, and the cool notion of waving to my family as I flew over the house.

"Three Eight Eight Charlie, are you on frequency?"

Oh, crap! There's that little thing you have to do called "talking to the airport you want to land at." I was so caught up in the zen of the moment I forgot I still had real work to do. Fortunately I had not yet entered their air space; I was still a few miles out and flying a course which would have me skirt the outside of it. However, I'm in a trainer whose call numbers ATC sees multiple times per day as student after student flies the plane out and returns to the airport. They had every expectation that I was going to turn inward at any moment. 

The thoughts in the previous paragraph raced through my mind in about half a second as I was snapped out of my state of zen, and I told ATC that I was indeed listening to them. They instructed me to continue to runway 17-left to land. By this time I was nearly over my house, so I just waved quietly as I flew overhead. 

The takeaway? Never get so caught up in the fun that you forget you still have a job to do. I didn't bust any airspaces or break any rules, but I was not giving the primary task at hand the attention it needed. I'm not naive enough to say it will never happen again, but it was a glimpse into how easily it is to get into that mind space.