Chicago Aviation

Attempted Cross Country

Length: 1.6 hours

Total Time: 46.3 hours

This was my first attempt at a cross-country solo flight. I prepared for hours, including a full review of the route on google earth.I had all of my numbers checked and re-checked. I knew I was ready for this to happen. My flight from Lansing (KIGQ) --> Aurora (KARR) --> Bloomington (KBMI) --> Lansing (KIGQ) was imminent.

I took off from IGQ and the weather appeared good. I dialed in 118.4 to request flight following with Chicago Approach. That went uneventfully. I switched com2 to FSS so I could open my flight plan. I was listening on both frequencies, but transmitting on FSS. What I thought was going to be a quick call turned into an entire briefing. I didn't have any way to write everything down, nor did I think I needed to since I just got a briefing not 30 minutes ago. But, this extra briefing did two things... it made me miss some calls from Chicago Approach & it made me think that a distant front was closer than I initially thought.

So, after being mildly reamed by Chicago Approach, I continued to Aurora. I saw the Aurora river & knew I had to get my ATIS before calling the tower. Did it, no problems.

I approached as instructed by the tower & again, no problems. My pattern was more or less fine but there was some concern about a building on the final leg. This being one of my first times (and my very first time solo) landing at a different airport, it was a bit different than usual. I ended up bouncing the landing a bit and decided to go around. Due to the bounce, I accidentally went to 0 flaps instead of 20. While the flaps were retracting, I was able to bring the plane back into the air. But, once the flaps kept retracting, the lift was lost and the plane wanted to settle back down, so I quickly replaced 20 deg of flaps. That all happened within about five seconds, so it's a lesson learned... Things happen quickly and can escalate even quicker.

Not to let this frazzle me, after notifying the tower that I'm going around, I asked permission to land (again). Permission given and I continue around the pattern. Landing was uneventful this time around.

After changing up my maps and radios, I prepare to depart to Bloomington. After leaving Aurora, I look the 80+ miles towards KBMI and see, what I know now to be, a thick layer of haze. After the long debriefing from Flight Services, I was concerned that the thick air ahead of me was actually a front. I'm not about to turn my first solo XC into my first weather close-call, so I returned to Lansing.

The issue with this is that I wasn't prepared for this leg of the flight. It was easy enough to find the reciprocal course back to Lansing, but there is a lot of airspace of which to be aware. Also, I didn't have the control frequency for this location. This had me calling 118.4 when I was out of range and too low. I wasn't about to climb and risk breaking airspace just to get flight following. There was some midway traffic (Southwest 737s) above me (probably around 6,000 or 7,000) but no close calls by any means.

Landing back at Lansing was, again, uneventful.

Next time, I'll ensure that I have a better understanding of how far ahead of the plane is visible. Since I typically am just practicing, I'm either looking for close traffic or ground reference markers. It just now dawned on me that I never really look 5-10 miles ahead of the plane to find checkpoints. Blurred sky 20-30 miles ahead doesn't appear to be abnormal at all, but I found that out once I was on the ground.