Cross-Country

Today was my first cross-country flight in IFS. By the time I got home, I was as tired as if I'd pedaled the airplane to Monroeville and back. Cross-country flying for the first time is very difficult because it combines all the skills of flying the airplane with talking to unfamiliar controllers and navigating through unfamiliar areas, usually much too high to read the road signs.

Due to some weather delays, I ended up flying with a different instructor than I briefed with yesterday. Rocky was fine with my planned route: going directly between the navigation beacons on the two airfields. Peggy (the one I actually flew with) thought that was a bit lazy and made me do most of my navigation by dead reckoning alone. So, I had some trouble finding my course, which I had planned to do simply by intersecting a beam of radiation and following it in a nice straight line. It took me a while to get back on course.

Changes in plan notwithstanding, my calculation of groundspeed based on forecast winds turned out to be right on, so I crossed all of my checkpoints at EXACTLY the time I had planned.

Lucky for me, all the rest of my cross-country flights (all two of them) will be along the exact same route as today's, so I'm sure I'll be able to do much better.

I'm back up with the dawn patrol tomorrow. My classmate Louis and I are flying the same plane on back-to-back solos first thing in the morning, and then we have a ground instruction session.

It's really sad that IFS is coming to an end. I'm really having a great time, and once this is over it will be months before I actually get to fly again. But it's been a blast, and I still have a couple of good flights left. Tomorrow is my last solo flight, so I'm gonna live it up while I can!