Second solo cross country
For many student pilots 185 mile course means no less than 3h of flight and that usually means the longest solo cross country during their training. For me, thanks to the fact that I fly Cherokee 180, it’s quite a short one. In fact if I just did touch and goes at the route points I could be back home in less than 1h 40 minutes. But as I did some taxing, changing charts and navigation logs it took me total 2.1h from engine start to engine shut down. And by this flight I knocked down last but one requirement for my PPL checkride. All is left is 1h of simulated instrument training which Terry sets for the last during those one or two last lesson when I’m supposed to hone my skills before the test.
The flight. Hard to say anything actually. This part of Iowa is so populated that there is hardly ever time when there is no big time in your sight. I had completely no problem finding destination airports without actually using any navigation aid, not even a VOR. That’s probably why the track ain’t so straight as one might want to, but I’m quite pleased anyway.
I also use all three stops at route points to train soft field landing and takeoffs. I got much, much better with takeoffs. I can feel the moment when wheels leave the ground and I have much less problem keeping the plane within ground effect before it reaches Vy. Landings still aren’t as good as they could but I also made a lot of improvement here, I even got two nice touchdowns just a second after stall light came on. I’m getting there. One or two more lessons on it and I’ll be confident with them.
Here is a short video showing couple of landings and takeoffs:
Ant the track:
2.1h/0.0h inst : 4 to/ldg logged
55.3h/2.0h inst : 289 to/ldg total
