Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Flying

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The magic is gone.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Minot ATC is referenced as "Magic City Tower."

(I'm going to pause there because every time I hear that I start to think of the heinous results if every city used their marketing namesake/slogan as such and I come up with several humorous scenarios. Yes, I understand why it is done. It still makes me laugh.)

Like a marriage where the man sits on the couch and watches NASCAR¹ every free moment while his wife is locked on the nagging setting...I think the magic in the Magic City (at least at the airport) is gone.

At least, it was today.

I may have stumbled awkwardly through radio procedures with Minot Approach and Magic City Tower and asked them to repeat a few instructions ("what kind of equipment do you have?" -- that sounds personal -- and "squawk your altitude"), and I may have provided them with a head-shaking spectacle as I struggled to land on runway 26 amidst winds and turbulence, but at least I didn't get a long reprimand over the airwaves from tower.

Happily tooling on my way, heading on course to Dickinson after leaving that wreck of a landing behind, the proper squawk code doing its thing, I heard a pilot pop on the radio to tower and announce that he was two miles out. The conversation went something like this:

Tower: Two miles out? Are you kidding me? Two miles?! You're just announcing yourself now?

Pilot: I talked to approach, and tried talking to you but I had the wrong frequencies. Uh...I just got you now.

Tower: This is Class D airspace! You can't just fly in here and announce yourself two miles out. You're aware you broke regulations, aren't you?

Silence.

Tower: What, do you think you're the only one out there? What would you do if we had heavier traffic today? You can't just show up and expect to land on a whim! Is that what you think?

Some more silence.

Then...

Pilot: I'm sorry. Uh... It was my mistake...

I almost felt bad for the guy. Tower then proceeded to relay instructions to him regarding runway and such, and then there was silence.

Isn't he going to repeat it back? I wondered. Nothing. Hoo, boy.

Tower: (barking out the N-number of the plane) Are you there?!! Did you hear my instructions?

Pilot: Uh, uh, roger. Roger that.

It wasn't long before I was squawking VFR with Minot far behind me and I was really, really,really happy because there was no magic there today. Just south of Lake Sakakawea, I began picking up a pilot doing an almost sing-song announcement cycle of his trip around the pattern at Dickinson. It was sort of a nice pick-me-up from what I'd just heard.

This time, when landing at Dickinson, I taught that runway a lesson. No more dive-bombing the fence.

And then home.

It's always nice to see Bismarck's airport and that big, long runway.

Here are the nav logs and stuff from this round of cross-country. You can see that I made much slower time than I'd planned:

KBIS to KMOT
KMOT to KDIK
KDIK to KBIS
My other scribbled notes, both prior to and in-flight.

¹ I just don't get it. It's only interesting if a car careens out of control and a tire flies into the crowd and hits a spectator, and who wants to admit cheering for that?

Labels: cross country, solo

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It was very cool.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

Today -- with the long solo cross-country flight finished -- marks the completion of my required solo flying time. It was very cool.

I mean that.

Literally.

No, really.

It was cool. Cold, in fact. So cold that, when I landed in Bismarck, I could barely uncurl my left hand from the yoke. I know I was told to learn to fly with the one hand, and I've read that you should "be one with the machine" or some other Karate Kid-esque mantra...well, I was. Another hour and my hand would have been permanently attached. I could have made a radio announcement that started with "My name is Locutus..."

My hand was frozen in grip, my thumb barely able to click five times at Dickinson for glide slope lights.

I'm looking at my hands, now some three hours later, and my fingertips are red and oddly both hot and cold at the same time. Washing them in any water temperature makes them feel on fire. I know what that is.

Chilblains.

A mild form, of course, but that's what it is. I've had it before, except it was on my feet from when I spent a few months in Australia (oddly, since it was quite hot there) and went barefoot too much on cold floor tile.

Now, I know there is heat of some sort in the plane, and I found the knob without too much trouble shortly after takeoff from Bismarck this morning. I was hesitant to get too carried away turning knobs, lest I launch something unwittingly. I can't say that the knob provided an impressive amount of heat, however, and it wasn't long before my left hand was unmovable and my right foot like a brick of ice on the rudder.

I have to wonder if that is the only source of heat, or if I correctly turned it on. Surely, no.

And I even wore my merino extra-thick wool socks. Go figure. Leave it to sheep to let me down.

I'm telling you, it was chilly up there.

I believe I need to ask my instructor a few questions about the heat and also get my fingerless Thinsulate glove/mittens down here and out of storage back home. I'll add that to my stack of pertinent questions for the next lesson (the question, not the gloves).

For fun, here's a random question from my own test question bank:

1. (Refer to Julie's fingertips.) If an airplane weighs 2300 pounds, at what altitude and angle of attack (except in Alaska), will Julie realize she should have worn a heavier sweater and possibly put her gloves on?

a) While removing the chocks from the front tire prior to banging her head on a strut.
b) 3,500 AGL
c) 1 quart heavy cream heated with 2 cups 55% dark chocolate.¹

¹ My new job may have infiltrated my question bank. It's so hard to properly compartmentalize these days.

Labels: cross country, fake questions, solo, stupidity

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A real Lemmon of a trip.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

On tonight's Daily Dad Call, I told him about the night cross-country trip.

"Do you have any more dual cross-country trips?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I have one long solo one, and that's it, I think."

"Too bad you couldn't go on a dual trip down to Sturgis. That would be a good exprience. I took a guy down there once. After Lemmon, South Dakota, there's not much to go by. It's pretty desolate, with a few creek beds and a ranch here and there."

I was sitting with my laptop in front of me, so I quickly got on Google for a map. I could hear paper rustling on dad's end of the line.

"I have my sectional here in front of me," he said. As he paused, I brought up the map to see the western portion of South Dakota. There was, indeed, not much between Lemmon and Sturgis. There were a few roads and towns, but it seemed even more sparse than western North Dakota as far as landmarks to use.

"I got to wondering, after a while, if it was possible that I missed the Black Hills. All I had was the compass..." He paused. "Hmm. I guess there is a road I could have followed..."

"Dad, what happened to your IFR flying?" I joked. "There was a road!"

Labels: cross country, dad

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Night cross-country flight.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

"It'll be windy, but we can deal with that," read the email from my instructor as I checked my email during my lunch break at work.

I had stayed up late the night before, getting the navigation logs prepared for the planned dual night cross-country flight on Saturday. My goal was to race straight home from work and try to get all three nav logs finished in time. They take me a while to do, though I am getting a bit faster. The plan was to fly from Bismarck to Sidney, Montana to Watford City and back.

Windy it was. As I was looking at the weather on my computer after work, hurriedly trying to get things finished, I was a bit aghast. Winds gusting to 28 knots or more. Things like that. But, he said it could be dealt with so I finished up with the nav logs, threw the necessary items in my bag, and hurried over to the airport.

It feels like I'm forgetting something, I thought while driving, mentally checking off what was in my bag. Timer, E6B, kneeboard...hmmm. All there.

Once I arrived, we went over my figures and my map and discussed possible improvements on the checkpoints I'd chosen. I filed my flight plans, and we headed out to the plane. It was then that I realized what I had forgotten.

"Oh crap. I forgot your headset," I said. My instructor has two headsets -- very nice ones that cancel the noise and are just generally a better fit than the older one that the plane has in it. My instructor has let me keep his extra headset in my possession so I can use it when I go on solo flights. I've used the older headset a few times during short flights, but this was going to be a very long flight.

As he noted.

"This is going to be a very long flight," he said, but I told him that no, I lived too far away to make a run back for the headset. We had to get going.

This was only the second time flying at night, and the first away from the airport. It was windy and I was confused and pitching up and down and way off on my headings and realizing my checkpoints weren't stellar and it was dark and my instructor probably wore out the battery in his red-light flashlight and -- AND -- the old headset wouldn't transmit on one of the radios so I used the old handheld mic for a time or two and found myself unused to not hearing myself talk in the headset.

"I'm feeling overwhelmed," I said at one point. I don't know how many times he had to point the flashlight at various instruments to subtly say that I was veering off course or losing altitude. I think he said something along the lines that I didn't have to be overwhelmed but that I was making myself overwhelmed¹.

The wind was not as forecast, so we made slower time. Once in a while my instructor would point out interesting things below, such as the gas from the oil wells being vented and burned (?), but I was too busy over-concentrating. I think I'd enjoy night flights if I were the passenger, which does little good during pilot training.

As we approached Sidney, I noticed a flash of sheet lightning in the distance. That freaked me out a bit. I have been scared of storms since that storm in 2005, which is something that annoys me to no end.

"There was lightning up there," I said. My instructor had been looking down and didn't see it.

"It's probably far away," he said. "You can see it a long distance away in the night."

That was reassuring, so after being off on my heading about five times in approaching Sidney and more than a little unnerved about the gusting winds as we lost altitude, I didn't give it another thought. Until I saw a bolt of lightning. I didn't say anything. I can be pretty annoying and am trying really hard to not vocalize worries so much; plus, I figured it wasn't anything to worry about since my instructor saw it, too, and didn't say anything right away. I proceeded to fly as we'd planned.

"Let's just cross and enter a right downwind instead of flying up and around like we'd planned," he said. "That last one looked a little close. Just to be safe."

Oh.

Well, this is me, and so my inner reaction was a bit less calm.

I had some help with the landing. Boy, was it windy. This way and that, like riding a kite. We touched down.

"Get the flaps up. Full throttle...let's get out of here," my instructor said.

I fully agreed with that idea, and did so. The next destination, Watford City, was one I don't think I got the heading correct on once, except, obviously, at the end since we did land there. I don't even want to write about it, since the amount of times I would have to type the following dialogue would take up several screens:

"Check your heading. We're way off course."

"OK."

I will admit to a childish sense of delight when I see the runway lights go on at an unmanned airport. It's like magic, a string of lights that seems to appear out of nowhere. However, despite that, the Watford City experience will be most memorable by the following statement, made after my instructor encouraged a faster gain in altitude after takeoff than I was doing:

"I think, if you saw some of the terrain that was in front of us during the day, you'd understand why it is very important to gain altitude. Especially at night. There is some high terrain around Watford City. Don't worry about anything else but getting to a safe altitude."

Oh.

I admit that around this point, I was done in. Tired from the day at the new job and its overwhelming learning curve, frustrated with myself and how I'd been flying, and annoyed that I get nervous and scared at storms -- I was just whipped. My instructor then pulled out the IFR hood.

#@!&%!?$!!

I pulled off my headset to put the hood on. My instructor kindly, at that point, handed me his good headset and took the one I'd been using. I really appreciated it. As I told him before we left, when he said he'd let me use his halfway through, using the old headset would be "good for me" since it was my fault for forgetting the better headset and this was the result. However, I really appreciated the nicer headset and its better fit and noise cancelling. I really was prepared to use the older headset the whole flight, but this was a nice alteration to that plan.

Oddly, once I got the hood on, I improved a bit on maintaining altitude and such². I slowly started to relax a bit, and I now understand why people put hoods over the heads of animals when transporting them; it calms them down (though I'm not saying I'm the equivalent of a pet). Hyperventilating? Breathe into a bag. Stressed or overwhelmed? Put that same bag over your head. Is Julie sitting next to you and turning into a frenetic comedy of errors? Just put the IFR hood on her and make sure she doesn't slip into a coma after too long.

The flight to Bismarck was nice. I can't think of any terrible atrocity that occurred during it. It was a bit windy, but the landing seemed to go alright. I think I may have had help, but regardless, the trip was done and the plane was none the worse for wear.

I went home and threw all the stuff from off of the top of my bed, fell across it and pretty much just crashed; mind you, this was acceptable since I was no longer involved with actual flying.

¹ I filed that away in the back of my head where I store things that I want to think about in greater depth later, and continued to overwhelm myself for the time being.

² I filed that away with a mental note to explore the philosophy on finding the better and correct path when not distracted by being able to see.

Labels: cross country, lessons

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Ready for Jamestown: First cross-country solo.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

You'll note there is no accompanying cartoon. I didn't actually have any horrific material to provide for one. Which is nice.

Today I flew from Bismarck to Jamestown and back again, on my own.

When I was a kid, a standard insult we'd throw at each other was saying someone was "ready for Jamestown." Jamestown is where the State Hospital is. It was, basically, a very un-PC way of saying someone was crazy.

I was both ready to go to Jamestown, and not to go, this morning. I'll let your deductive reasoning break that down.

I woke up at 4 am, got the weather and filled out the nav logs. At 7:30, I arrived at the Bismarck Aero Center. My instructor went over some things with me. I was nervous. That's a given. I walked out to the plane, preflighted it, and was already 30 minutes behind schedule. I took off.

"I guarantee you that there will come a moment when you will think you are lost...just fly the plan. You did all that work," my instructor had said. Of course, as he noted, between Bismarck and Jamestown is...Interstate 94.

I did feel a moment of "where am I going?!", but it was, hilariously, within the first two minutes after taking off from the airport.

Yeah. Why waste time when you can get to the panic straight-away?

The flight was fairly uneventful, for which I am grateful. I did not cheat and just fly by the interstate, but followed my plan and tried to catch my checkpoints and follow along on the sectional. I didn't mess up on the radio and closed and opened flight plans accordingly. It was a calm day, and I kept the altitude and such in fairly good check.

There were a few blunders, one specific one which I will not make detailed mention of nor reference again. A minor blunder, for those feeling that they need some sort of blunder-details, was that I completely forgot to use the E6B to figure out how I was doing for fuel according to my plan. For this short trip, it's not as if there was a question. The point is that I didn't do it and I don't want to get into that bad habit.

Back at Bismarck Aero, the ramp was packed and there were balloons and inflatable games and loud music and food and general fun. They were having their open house. I walked into the building just as a large crowd of people were making their way out the door. I slid off to the side to let them pass.

My fear of large groups of people has not been vanquished yet.

Before leaving to meet my instructor at a different building, I had the chance to talk to another pilot. He'd left with the Cirrus for Fargo shortly before I had (and of course, beat me back quite handily). I was able to pry out some comparative information..."I have X number of landings -- is that 'normal'?"

"Yeah, I had about that many, too," he said. He told a few stories about some bounced landings on his solo flight. "When you get to your 100th hour of flight, you'll be less nervous about things."

"Good. Because today I was very nervous."

Apparently, as I discovered, I've also got a reputation for worrying. I'm worried about it.

We talked some more and I felt better about things and then I went and battered my instructor with incessant questions in preparation for the written test for over an hour.

Then, at about 2:30, I got new, full-time job and it looks like I'll live in Bismarck after I'm done with my lessons.

Not kidding.

But that doesn't have anything to do with flying so I won't elaborate here.

It's been quite a day.

I'm going to take a nap.

Labels: cross country, lessons, solo

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IFR flying.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Click image.

I was talking to dad on the phone yesterday, telling him it looked like I'd be doing my first cross-country solo soon, possibly even on Sunday. We talked briefly about it, and then he made a joke about how he flew IFR.

"IFR?" I asked. Dad isn't instrument rated.

"I follow roads," he joked.

I guess that's a pretty old joke in the flying community, from what he said after that, but it got me to thinking. Which, of course, led to debasement by cartooning.

And so, there you have it. The latest cartoon.

-----------------------------------------------

Buy the original ink and marker drawing. I need the money. Flying lessons are expensive.
Materials: Pigment and permanent inks on 8.5x11 super slick 80 lb. UV protected (archival) paper. Unframed
Cost: $20 (plus S&H)

*This cartoon is also featured on the ProPilotWorld.com forums.

Labels: cartoons, cross country, flying stuff, humor

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Beulah is hard to pronounce.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

The guy at Grand Forks FSS had a tough time pronouncing "Beulah" -- I can't even phonetically imitate it here for you, the way he mangled it. Repeatedly..So, I will blame him for the awful job I did in going completely off course once we started flying across Lake Sakakawea.

I have a tremendous fear of drowning, which is only topped by a fear of being eaten (either wild animals or cannibals). I think I'll blame that drowning fear for my questionable pilotage skills, too.

For I went greatly off course. Right past Beulah.

My instructor just let me make the mistakes, which is good, since I learn very well from that.

Bummer.

My landings were OK, though. The winds were favorable, so that was nice.

Here are my nav logs and flight plan sheet from the cross-country trip today:

KBIS to KMOT
KMOT to 95D
95D to KBIS
Flight Plan sheet (I made this form to help me in talking to the person on the other end of the phone, making sure I say everything I need to. You can get that form here.)

My instructor organized a handy list of things to do when nearing a destination airport, since the Beulah incident failed to incorporate any of them. I've typed that list up for you here (PDF). He also helped with suggestions on what to do immediately after taking off from an airport on the next leg of the trip, which you can get here (PDF).

He also made a cross-country radio script for me, though it didn't stop me from muffing up the first call to Grand Forks Radio. Anyway, here's the script (PDF). The customizable items (your N-number, for example) are in gray.

And of course, there are the five C's if I should get lost doing a cross country:

Climb
Circle
Conserve (lean mixture, reduce power)
Confess (Mnpls. Center, GF Radio)
Comply

"If you talk to some of the old-timers they'll tell you they'd find a town and get down low enough to read the name on the water tower," he said.

Oddly, I've already heard three such stories of a few friends who did that.

Labels: cross country, downloads, lessons, stupidity

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Confidence.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

My instructor is constantly telling me to have confidence.

I'm not sure a person can get confidence by being told to get it -- that tends to come from experience and near-misses and practice -- but I know he's right.

For example, I speak too softly into the radio.

"Speak up," he said. "You sound like a little mouse."

Ack.

In checking the weather for today's cross-country flight, I made several notes on paper about whether or not it would be a day that would work. I noted the low cloud cover. My uneducated guess was that they were too low to do a cross-country flight in. There were other weather issues as well. My initial take on the whole pile of information was that today would not work. But I just wasn't sure. I mean, maybe I don't quite grasp it. I know that if I were at home looking at the day, I would say "nope." But see, I'm overly cautious by nature and a complete chicken in general. I wasn't sure if it was just me being me, or if, indeed, the weather was not suitable for a VFR cross-country flight.

So my instructor calls and we review the weather and he asks what I think about the weather and I mumble around a bit. Then he mentions the low-cloud factor and I blurted out "I was thinking that!"

"Well you should have said something," he commented. "Confidence!"

For some reason, the old Sure deodorant jingle keeps running through my head.

My hand is not raised.

Labels: cross country, lessons

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Balance.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I remember enjoying balancing equations in chemistry in high school. There's a whole post there about my social life in high school, but I think it could be summed in saying that while the rest of my class danced to Cheap Trick and White Snake at the prom, I thrilled myself with 4Al+3O2=2Al2O3. The moment of balance or canceling out is a beautiful thing.

As we were flying during the cross country trip, one of the towns I'd picked as a checkpoint was less a town and more a disturbance of rocks and asphalt.

"That's it?" I asked into the headset, checking my sectional in slight disbelief. I'm no stranger to small towns, but I just expected so much more along the interstate.

"Yes," my instructor replied. "There's probably a church and a bar and little else."

"Well, that's a nice equilibrium," I said.

Labels: cross country, humor, lessons

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Cross country and some rain.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

You know, I don't have much to say about today's cross country flight.

I didn't do anything horrific.

I kept my sectional chart from taking over the cockpit and eating the occupants alive. I managed to hit a good share of my checkpoints (due to picking better checkpoints than, say, "large rock behind the hay bale near the yield sign").

Tip: Towns are easy to see from the air.

The morning started out at 5 a.m., which was completely unnecessary except for the fact that the house I'm temporarily living in seems infested with crickets, and the neighborhood had a rash of garage sales that led to overzealous old women wanting a first peak and chance to buy dusty crap for 25 cents.

I got up, grumped a bit, and set out marking the sectional with the plotter, filling in the nav logs up to the point of weather. I figured I'd wait a few hours before getting the weather, so I went back to bed in time to hear some moron a block away repeatedly glorying in his truck's glass pack mufflers.

@#%!@*@!

I woke up, tried to get the weather on the, uh, "borrowed" wifi connection from the school across the street. I wish I could complain about the non-signal, but since it's "free" I just can't. So, I drove to Bismarck Aero where I figured I could make use of the internet and find a table to finish the rest of the nav logs in the few hours before we were to fly.

I arrived to find the facility crowded with Civil Air Patrol members in the middle of some kind of practice. I didn't find this comforting, especially when my instructor cheerfully said later that they were the people who would "look for us if we go down."

Um...

I got the weather, and then went back to the Noisiest Neighborhood In The World With Crickets to finish the nav logs. I wasn't quite finished when the time rolled around to get back to meet with my instructor and get going on the flight. In the middle of traffic, he called my cell phone.

"Just so you know, there are a lot of people here. I'm in a back office," he said.

I've informed him many times that lots of people make me nervous.

In the end, I finished the nav logs, my instructor looked at the figures and deemed them correct, and we were soon airborne.

My landings were OK, though I really wanted to pull off a few stellar efforts to show my regular instructor, Mark, that I could do it. He hasn't really been privy to the more decent ones that led to Bob having me solo. Today wasn't the day for a Julie parade, though. I had one that, as my instructor said, probably should have just been a go-around.

"The only landing I didn't really like was the last one at Jamestown. You ended up on the back side of the power curve," he said as we talked about the finished flight. "When the nose is up and the power is dropping..."

Nose down. Add power.

We flew from Bismarck to Jamestown to Carrington and back to Bismarck. The flight from Carrington to Bismarck was a good lesson in weather. We eventually canceled the flight plan and deviated from the route to avoid thundershowers.

I could make up all kinds of exciting stories, but mainly, we saw a little rainbow.

That's nice.

Here are my nav logs:

UPDATE: I made a chart to help me when I call to file a flight plan. (I get nervous talking to people. This is silly, I know.) It's fairly basic, but I think it'll help me a bit. Click here to get the flight plan chart (PDF).

Addendum: I asked my instructor if he'd seen my "simplified" nav log. "It helps you get from point A to point B."

"No."

Pity.

Labels: cross country, downloads, landings, lessons

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This is a test.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

I'm highly suspicious that everything my instructor does is a test to see if I do things correctly.

Granted, I learn extremely well from mistakes (since I can't allow it to happen again), so by letting me make mistakes I get a little better understanding than I would if I wasn't allowed to.

However.

Yesterday, before my first cross country flight, I arrived at the Bismarck BP building at 8 a.m., got the current weather, and sat down to fill in the navigation logs. It takes me a while. My instructor came a little after 9, and said he would pre-flight the airplane to save us some time. This was so we could get going at 10 a.m.

I nodded, and went back to what I was doing.

When it came time to start the cross country flight, I walked out the door and immediately was suspicious.

Is this a test to see if I'll still do my own pre-flight? I thought. Is he trying to trip me up so I'll get all buckled into the plane and then turn to me and say 'you should always do your own pre-flight no matter what anyone says they did!' and then I'll shamefully say 'you're right.'?

"Is this a kind of trick test to see if I'll still do my own pre-flight?" I asked.

"No. It was just to save time."

I swear I still didn't believe him until we were bouncing in the hot, turbulent air several minutes later.

That turbulent air, by the way, was another lesson regarding choosing altitude.

"Why did you choose these altitudes?" he asked as he reviewed my navigation logs. I mumbled my explanation, which was heavy on the mumble and low on explanation. He went on to explain his question, "Lower altitudes are more turbulent on hot days like this."

As I now understand.

Labels: cross country, lessons

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Sunday (sundae).

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 1 comments link this post

My landings were pretty freaky during today's cross country trip; there was a serious crosswind.

"I don't feel good about any of the landings today," I said. To be honest, they all scared me a bit. My instructor was on the controls pretty heavily and he said, after the flight was finished and we were in side, that they were probably more than my skill level.

I have several witty comebacks to that particular comment, but at the request of those thinking I beat myself up too much, I'll save them.

I'm a little annoyed with myself; I haven't, by any means, nailed landings, but I was feeling better about them. Then today.

Let's see....Dickinson. Almost took out a fence. And then, "Is there enough runway for us to take off?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know," my instructor said. (Yes, he's just along for the ride he keeps reminding me. Dang it.)

Since I don't have any sense, yet, of what is too short, I figured...well, I didn't figure anything. I just took off.

Then there was Hazen. Oh. My. Gusts. No guts.

And then Bismarck, with the windsock fully perpendicular to the pole.

But I don't like taking the easy way out there -- you know, just sitting back and saying "my skill wasn't up to it" -- even if it is the truth. I'm always afraid I'll get too used to finding an excuse to not learn or get better at something. I don't want to get in the habit of handy excuses, even true ones.

I won't even talk about the radio stuff. I just hope that Grand Forks FSS enjoyed being made aware of my downwind pattern at Hazen. I don't know; I was flustered enough from the cross country exercise that the landings were just sort of the rotten cherry on this Sundae.

Plenty of cartoon material, though. And really, not a bad day. Just new and challenging.

Here are the nav logs from today; you can see I only managed to locate (in time) four checkpoints:

Labels: cross country, landings, lessons

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Cartoon: The dry run.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 3 comments link this post

Click image to see cartoon.

Today is the day we do the actual cross country flight, but on Friday, we did a dry run. We flew a little west of Bismarck and, using the navigation log I had filled out, practiced finding the checkpoints I'd located on the sectional and using a timer to see if the numbers I'd calculated worked out or not.

Or something like that.

It sounds so much neater than the actual process.

"Most of my students have the plane going all over the place when we do this the first time," my instructor said.

Boy, do they.

Up and down, and veering this way and that, as I tried to both look down to find the checkpoints and maintain altitude and course and and and...

I always thought I had plenty of lap, but I sure had a hard time finding a place to put all the stuff (papers, map, flight computer...). Talk about trying to divert your attention in many places.

I do have to say that the instructor in this cartoon seems a little brutal. It wasn't really like that, though there was a lot of "watch your altitude" and throwing out of questions to keep me on my toes and learn to fly while many things were going on at once.

As we were back at Bismarck and in the traffic pattern getting ready to land, my instructor asked me a question which, while trying to think of the answer, I climbed 200 feet above traffic pattern altitude.

"Watch your altitude," he said. "That was a diversion."

Curses.

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Labels: cartoons, cross country, humor, lessons