Cross-Country

Cross-Country Day
2009-08-20 09:30

I won't bother writing anything about the short flight we took the other day. We really didn't do much new stuff, except land on the short runway. Ok, I will write about it because that was pretty fun.

Most of the flight was just flying blind stuff again, using some of the radio navigation tools.

However, after that Jory decided it was time to try a short-field landing on an actual short field. The airport that I fly out of uses one primary runway that is about 8,300 feet long and 100 feet wide. The runway we landed on this time is 2,300 feet long and 40 feet wide. It actually went surprisingly well, but I still am not satisfied with my landing ability.

Anyway, yesterday was cross-country day. To be adventurous, we flew to Colorado Springs via the western side of Denver. I got up and filed the flightplan with the flight service people, then went to the airport and figured out our route and weather with Jory.

We started out just flying south (which is the first time I've ever flown more than a mile south of the airport). It was a little choppier than it looked like it should be, but it wasn't too bad. I got my first experiences with air traffic control, talking to Denver approach most of the way down there. Once we got closer to the Springs, we got handed off to Colorado Springs approach, who gave me my first straight-in approach (rather than flying the pattern). It actually is a little difficult the first time because you don't have any of your visual references to know when to slow down or when to put the flaps out or anything like that.

The runway at COS is 11,000 feet long and 150 feet wide. In other words, it's a full-sized commercial airline runway. In fact, not long after we landed, an MD-80 came in behind us. The landing was slightly off-center (which is what I'm determined to fix now, more on that later). But since the runway is crazy wide, it still stayed on the pavement. Still, perfection is what I'm going for.

We had some lunch at a restaurant near the airport (http://www.solosrestaurant.com), then walked back over. We made another flight plan, but forgot to activate it, which we didn't realize until we got back to Fort Collins and tried to close it, only to be informed by the guy on the radio that no flight plan existed.

On the way back, we stopped for a touch and go at Metro airport in Broomfield because it's on the way. That landing also did not go very well. Came in way too fast and Jory had to handle a bit of the lining up portion of the landing.

So tomorrow, I'm going to the airport and I'm taking the plane up by myself for a while and just doing a ton of landings until I can do this perfectly nearly every time. I'm hoping for a slight crosswind so I can get some practice.

Probably won't write much about that because I'll literally just be flying in rectangles. Perfect rectangles with sharp corners.