Lessons 20-23 and the Cross Country Flight

Well, I have let this logbook / diary get away from me again, so this is my attempt to get all caught up at once. The last few lessons have been mainly practicing the maneuvers I had learned throughout my training, with one really fun exception, "Unusual Attitude Recovery".

The idea behind Unusual Attitude Recovery is that if you get disoriented flying through a cloud, and can't really tell which way the aircraft is pointed, you can usually trust the Attitude Indicator to help get you back to straight and level flight. As an added bonus, we did these with the IFR Training glasses on, so all I could see was the instruments, and not out the windows.

We got out to the practice area at 3500 feet, Bob took the controls and handed me the glasses. I had been instructed that in order to further disorient myself I should hold my head down and to the left with my eyes closed. Bob would fly the plane through some turns, climbs and dives, and with the plane in some random "unusual attitude" would return control to me, and I would have to get us back to straight and level flight. If the nose was pointed up, I should apply full throttle, lower the nose, then roll to wings level. If the nose was pointed down, I should pull the throttle to idle, roll wings level, pull up to level flight, and push the throttle back to cruise power.

The first one was pretty gentle, what felt like a shallow dive followed by a climb and a turn to the right, I was given the command to recover. The Attitude Indicator was showing a climb with about 20 degrees right bank, so I pulled the throttle out, quickly realized my mistake and shoved it full in, lowered the nose and rolled to wings level. The next one was a bit more maneuvering, and we ended up nose down in a left banked turn. The 3rd recovery felt like a roller coaster ride (which I really enjoy) and left us in an almost 45 degree dive rolled to the right. I was able to recover quickly and we continued to other maneuvers.

Wednesday the 8th, Bob and I got together and planned out the Cross Country trip, We would leave Tulsa, fly direct to Fayetteville Arkansas, up to Joplin Missouri and back to Tulsa. I learned how to file a flight plan through Lockheed Martin's Flight Following Service, we figured out the waypoints I would be looking for to aid in navigation, and got everything marked down on my sectional chart. When I got home I plugged it all in to the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) flight planner, which confirmed the math Bob and I had done, as well as figuring for actual wind conditions for the time of the flight. We were set to leave on Saturday the 11th around 1pm. I got a call Thursday night, Bob had a scheduled charter flight had been moved up, and was it OK to go Sunday morning instead? Sure no problem. Sunday morning rolled around, and I had a voicemail from Bob, he had come down sick overnight after getting back from his charter flight, so we would reschedule for the following weekend.

Melodie and I arrived at Riverside Airport just after noon on Saturday the 18th, I had scheduled the flight schools Cessna 170, 724PG for the whole afternoon. Melodie had bundled up warm and brought a blanket as the back seats get pretty chilly in the wintertime. I performed the pre-flight inspections and printed out the navigation logs with the latest weather information. When Bob arrived we got the fuel tanks topped all the way up, 25 gallons per side, which would put us right at maximum takeoff weight, but also give us just over 6 hours of flight time. We filed the flight plans, and at about 1:45 taxied out to runway 1 left.

I pushed in full power, and the plane started rolling down the runway, the 172 needs more right rudder to compensate for the additional power compared to the 152, so I drifted left on the runway before I got it compensated for. We climbed into the early afternoon air, got our flight plan opened and headed east at 5500 feet, under an overcast cloud layer at 7000 feet.

The air was as smooth as glass, the previous week had seen winds gusting to 25 or 30 knots, but on the 18th, it was reporting calm with a 6+ mile visibility, and light haze close to the ground.

I soon spotted my first waypoint, a small river almost perpendicular to our flight path, followed a few minutes later by my second waypoint, a lake. We had planned to tune into a VOR (Very high frequency Omni-directional Radio) and use it to plot out location for our next few waypoints, but it turned out to be too far away, and the signal too weak to be of any use. Fortunately Bob had brought a GPS, and the plane had a course tracking GPS in the instrument panel that we had set up for the flight. I still tracked our location on the map by highways and other landmarks as we flew overhead.

About 50 minutes later we were approaching Drake Field in Fayetteville, it took me a minute to locate the airport, as we had drifted south, I was expecting to see it on my right, but eventually found the runway off to my left. We had started our descent to pattern altitude (1000 feet above the ground) several miles out, and were given clearance to land. The wind was still fairly calm, so we were a bit high on the approach as it hadn't helped slow us down, but squeaked in a fairly decent landing, and taxied to the parking area, and with the engine still running Bob called the Flight Service Station to close our first flight plan, and open our second to Joplin.

We got permission to taxi out to the runway, took off, and headed North. We were flying over some very hilly terrain at 4500 feet on the way up to Joplin, it was really neat to see the patches of evergreens scattered through the forests of other trees that had already shed their leaves for winter. We arrived at Joplin Regional about 40 minutes later, and once again taxied to the parking area. We had decided that we would try to find something to eat, as it was almost 5pm. We were marshalled into a parking spot by a very chilled looking ground crewman, who suggested a local BBQ place called Woodys that was just down the street. We borrowed the FBO's courtesy car, a Scion XB, and got some dinner.

By the time we got back to the airport it was starting to get dark. We filed our flight plan back to Tulsa, figuring it would take about an hour, got the plane ready to go, and checked our course on the GPS. As it was about 100 miles to home, this would count as my night cross country requirement too, awesome! Two lessons checked out of the syllabus on one flight!

Flying cross country at night was really a lot of fun, Bob said that a lot of people will avoid night flying, but I found it easier to find the small towns and highways that were all lit up at night. As a bonus, we got to see a lot of Christmas lights from 4500 feet on the way home.

Soon after we took off out of Joplin, Bob directed our attention off to the left, as there was some light snow or rain off in the distance, which he could see as a haze around the city lights. We were soon up to altitude and headed southwest, our course paralleling Interstate 44.

Bob and I talked about the differences in emergency procedures at night, and what to do if we lost electrical power. If for some reason the alternator on the engine stopped working, we would have a few minutes of battery power for the lights and radios, but it would have been better to shut everything off except 1 radio and the engine, we could follow the highway lights all the way to Tulsa. Fortunately this conversation remained theory only, as the plane purred smoothly on through the night air.

About halfway home, Bob asked me to turn on the landing light out on the wing, we were flying through snow! I turned on the Pitot Heat, just in case, but the snow wasn't heavy, and nothing accumulated on the windshield, so it was just scenic and not worrying.

We soon arrived back in Tulsa, having seen the glow on the horizon almost all the way home. There were several helicopters running Christmas light tours, so we were asked to head out to the south a bit, then turn straight west toward Riverside airport, this worked out really well, as we were able to fly over the Rhema Bible College, and see their impressive annual display of lights.

Once we got back to Riverside airport we were given clearance to land, but were told to extend out to the south as a light tour helicopter was about to take off. The tower controller let us know when we could make the turn back to the airport. As I had to make two landings for the Night Cross Country requirements, we did a short field approach to a full stop on runway 1 Right, followed by a short field takeoff, then once around the pattern to runway 1 Left, where we landed and taxied to the parking area.

Due to the air traffic controllers assigning us courses instead of being able to take a straight route in, were were a little late closing our flight plan, but the Flight Following Service had contacted Riverside tower to see if we were in the area, so they knew we were safe. By the time we got the airplane shut down and parked it was just after 7:30PM, and I had logged 3.8 hours of flying time, with 1.6 of that at night. Bob also let me know that as I had picked up the ideas behind navigation, he felt good about letting me plan a solo cross country, which will take me to Shawnee and Stillwater in Oklahoma.

If I can get the Written Exam behind me, which I am still studying for, I might be able to get my checkride done sometime next month!