Length: 3.2 hours
Total Time: 37.0 hours
This lesson is the most realistic flight to-date. Meaning, in the future, I'll most likely be going from point A to point B. This was my first time going to an airport further than 10NM (Gary was the only other airport at which I've landed).
The new details:
- Due to scheduling conflicts, a different instructor
- Flight Following
- New airports: ARR (Aurora), BMI (Bloomington/Normal)
- Collision avoidance
- Dead reckoning pilotage
- VOR tracking
- Tower/ATC communications (I have worked with Gary, but that was in a limited fashion)
- General navigation
During my trip from IGQ to ARR, I had two milestones. First was a major highway cluster where I-80, I-57, & I-94 all intertwine. The second milestone was a river dogleg with a number of oil tanks. The first milestone was hard to find because it came up quickly. The second milestone was a bit more obvious & there was less occuring in the cockpit, so it was an easier find. ATC had also redirected us thereby changing our expected course.
Going into Aurora, there wasn't much traffic so things were pretty straightforward. There was some extra thinking involved to determine where all of the legs of the pattern were. I had airport diagrams on-hand so I could see how all of the runways were oriented.
After taxing back to the runway, I was number two behind an old Ford Tri-motor airplane. The airplane was in a passenger configuration showing how different air transport was back in the 30s. These planes were manufactured between 1925 - 1933. There are only eighteen (six flyable) in existance as of 2006 (acording to wikipedia). I believe this is N8407, which is the oldest flying tri-motor in existance.
The trip from ARR to BMI started uneventful until ATC told us were were on a conflicting course with another aircraft. We spotted the plane when it was approximately one NM low traveling in the opposite direction. If not using flight following, we would have had a very close call since we wouldn't have had the few minute advance notice.
The rest of the leg was pretty smooth, but I still struggled on finding my milestones. I have a hard time determining what five NM looks like at different altitudes. When something is twenty NM away, I'm looking out at the horizon. But, as it turns out, the horizon can be anywhere from twenty NM to eighty NM (could be exaggerating here). I should be looking for my milestones much sooner, then flying to them instead of trying to see if they are below me.
That was a major paradigm-shift in my navigating. Another one is determining what is a valid milestone. A highway and a rural road look quite similar if there's no major intersections or significant identifications (doglegs, etc). Railroads and power lines are almost invisable in most cases, that is, until you're directly over them. Towns can be tricky, but rivers are pretty good. Small rivers typically have trees around them, so they appear as green lines that don't appear to follow any standard path. Larger rivers are quite significent and they can be easily seen from twenty to fifty miles away (depending on altitude).
There was some ATC confusion on my way into BMI, but that didn't affect us at all. We grabbed some lunch at the BMI restraunt, CJ's. After which, we got ATIS, got taxi clearance, took the wrong taxi route, but I didn't get any type of scolding as I announced myself as a student pilot.
The biggest miscalculation occured on my way from bmi to igq. I was intending or flying a heading of 045, but instead I drifted to 050. Although I corrected often, the fact that I allowed so many deviations caused me to fly well east of my intended route. I thought it was a large course deviation, but my gps flight path showed that we still were able to get back on a good route back to igq. I wasn't able to follow my milemarkers this route, but I was able to use VORs to find my postition.
All in all, it was a good flight. Much learned.
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