Lost!
Yup, I got lost. I assume you can’t say fully lost if there is an instructor on board and he knows where you are. Having working GPS in the panel also helps. Nevertheless I got lost.
But lets start from the beginning. As one of PPL requirements I’m supposed to do some night flying. Whole 3 hours of it. There are also additional requirements that I have to make at least 10 full stop landings at towered airport and one dual cross country flight longer than 50nm. The first part is easy – thanks to having Cedar Rapids (KCID) airport just around the corner (literally). The second part not so, but it isn’t that hard two – we have another class C airport (Quad City Intl – KMLI) less than 60nm away from ‘home’.
Preparation went as well as the one for long cross country last Saturday. I had figured out winds aloft, courses and filed two separate flight plans for both legs. I went to the airport a little bit earlier than last time and I had everything prepared before it got dark. We had to wait about 15 minutes before it officially became night so we could take off. This time we were using runway 15 which is a little bit tricky because of the trees just to the right of it. I remembered that I have to turn slightly left just after take off to clear them safely during the night and everything went ok. As usually the hardest part was finding where I am and where I want to go. The fact that there is no VOR on the field in KMLI was an additional challenge. But it went OK. The visibility was solid 10 miles so I had no problems finding where I am. Everything looked a little bit different than during the day, but thanks to distinct light patterns (relatively big cities) I got to Moline quickly and easily.
After practicing landings at Cedar Rapids I had 1.4h of night time logged. Usually at this point it’s enough to just go to Moline and back in one of ours Cessnas but the Cherokee is so fast that just going back home would put me about 0.4h short of the limit, so we decided with Terry to practice full stop landings at Moline. I did 5 of them including one without landing light and one just after Cessna Citation that allowed me to ‘train’ wake turbulence avoidance.
After that we headed back to Green Castle. And here is where things start to get interesting. After few minutes of flying I wasn’t really sure if I’m truly on the course. There was one tower blinking at me that was clearly not in right place (way to early), but I couldn’t remember if there was second one like that on our way to Moline. And trying to figure out where I am I stopped closely monitoring heading. Our Cherokee is a training plane which means that times when it flew straight and level with hands off are long gone. It has a little heavy left wing, and it immediately used my lack of attention to turn slightly left putting me way off the course. And I got lost. For a minute or so. Everything looked completely different outside the window and I couldn’t figure out for a second where I am. Thanks to having two nav radios in the plane I quickly triangulated my position between Iowa City and Cedar Rapids VORs and it turned out that I’m about 3 miles south of my intended course. At this point everything clicked back and I knew where I was. But Terry had a chance to make fun of me, how easily I got lost when I stopped paying attention to everything around.
Finding the way home from there was easy. Finding the airport not so. Green Castle is very, very hard to spot from the air if you don’t know where it is. Thankfully I started to descent soon enough that When I saw the lights I was practically at pattern altitude. And that was good, because I was practically in the pattern when I saw the lights. I was about 100 feet too high and about 20 knots too fast abeam the numbers which turned our landing in simulated power off one. Even with engine at idle and full flaps I barely went down fast enough to get to the numbers and make decent landing without floating.
Summing up – I had a lot of fun (even if it wasn’t so funny at times) and I fulfilled all the requirements for night time training needed for my PPL checkride. I’m getting closer and closer.
1.8h/0.0h inst : 6 to/ldg logged
48.9h/2.0h inst : 273 to/ldg total
