Chicago Aviation

Solo Cross Country
Length: 2.8 hours
Total Time: 54.0 hours

The first time I attempted this trip, I spent a lot more time practicing the route on Microsoft Flight Simulator in order to make sure I can hit my waypoints as planned. This time I put more time into organizing my navigation log. I believe I made the better choice this time.

Link to weather briefing notes and navigation plan

You can see that my VOR freqs and radials are all entered in the same place on each line. This made it much easier for me to quickly look at the page and get the info without hunting for the numbers. This is opposed to having the name of the milestone as the predominant text in the box.

After completing my due diligence and weather briefing at home, I headed for Lansing to meet my instructor for my endorsement.

My instructor asked me a few questions about what I would do in certain scenarios. For example, some questions were "what would you do if your engine stopped running?" and "what would you do if you got lost?".

For the first question, I would follow the ABCDE procedure. I made a note to myself to always keep a best place to land in mind. This doesn't seem to be that difficult as most of the terrain is flat and farmland, meaning most fields appeared to be as good of a spot as any other. But, I always wanted to keep any airfields in mind whenever I thought I was in gliding distance from them. This also was a good exercise in determining how far I could see along the ground compared to the distance on the map. Meaning, I now know that I can see approximately twenty to thirty miles along the ground when I'm flying around 4,000 AGL. I'm still not great at estimating distances, but I can not at least start to understand how far off my mapped track I can select my milestones.

As for the second question, I would follow the 4Cs procedure: Climb, Conserve, Call, and Comply. I would climb to the highest allowable altitude in order to get a better vantage point. Then I would Conserve my fuel by leaning and lowering the RPMs. I would then take the time to check for a VOR triangulation. If that failed, I would ask ATC if they could locate me and give me a vector to a nearby airport (or destination airport, if I was able to complete the flight). If I couldn't raise ATC, I would try FSS on the local freq, and/or 122.2. My final option would be to use the emergency freq of 121.5 to get someone there to try and get my location.

At this point, I wanted to call for an abbreviated briefing in order to get a new view on the weather. Originally, the clouds were supposed to clear at 1800z. Now, they weren't going to clear until 2100z. I had 4,500 scattered and 5,500 - 12,000 Ceilings around my route. So, things looked acceptable. I was expecting clear skies, but the clouds were well within my tolerances.

This did give me a good idea of how the horizon appears with lower ceilings. When I was leaving Aurora, I noticed that the far horizon appeared hazy. I didn't know exactly what to think of that, but I knew that the weather didn't have any factors that should turn convective. I just kept that in mind and headed towards Bloomington. It turns out that the haze was just the regular amount of debris and/or pollution in the air. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it appears to be normal.

The trip itself was relatively uneventful. I made sure I was always checking something while primarily flying the airplane. There were a few times where I would roll the airplane about 10 degrees while jotting down times in my nav-log. I was trying to use the passenger seat as a table instead of picking up my clipboard for each notation. The other learning point was that I didn't properly trim the airplane for take off after each taxi back the the hold-short point. I was preoccupied with verifying my radios and headings. I did double check my flaps, carb heat, mix, etc.. but I missed the trim.

The mechanics of flying the plane aren't a primary issue at this point, I wanted to go over some of the new details required for a cross country trip.

Controlled Tower Landings
Length: 0.9 hours
Total Time: 51.2 hours

After today's refresher lesson, I wanted to get some solo time in. I knew that this was wasn't 100% necessary as one could get their three control tower landings during the long cross-country flight (by taking an extra landing at a towered airport, if necessary).

I took what is essentially my first real cross-country flight. For certification requirements, a cross country flight must be fifty miles away, but otherwise it's a full-stop landing at any airport that wasn't your original.

This also gave me some experience with tower communications. Entering the airspace, declaring my intentions, requesting taxi to runway for takeoff, and ready for takeoff all had to be handled correctly. Speaking to a tower isn't that complex at all once you get a good understanding of all of the information required to execute the intended procedure.

Straight & Level, S-turns, Landing practice

Length: 1.1 hours

Total Time: 50.3 hours

It's been weeks since my last flight, so I had to get out and practice the basics. Simple things like using Vy to climb to altitude, change attitude to hold altitude & increase speed, then reduce power & again change attitude to hold altitude had to be practiced to ensure I was seemless. After practice after practice of working on specific things, I realized that the very simple things had to be honed as well.

S-turns actually turned out quite well. On the gps, the path looked like a perfect S-path. Using the technique of picking a point on the ground & flying over it really helped to polish this maneuver. This has to be the best method of performing ground reference maneuvers. It allows you to feel out the controls while controlling the flight path instead of the other way around, which I consider to be more difficult.

Lastly was a number of landings to make sure that I haven't forgotten one of the most important parts of flying..