Squawk1200

Wait, I just wrote one of these posts… yeah, that’s what I get for procrastinating, I just end up with twice the work when I do get off my butt.  Anyhoo, when we last met about five minutes ago, I’d just wrapped up a rather challenging night + instrument flight.  Luckily, the follow-up to this was another milestone for me: my long solo cross-country flight.  Originally this was going to happen the previous weekend, but weather issues kept me from venturing off to parts unknown.  And since this flight, by its very nature, requires an extended block of time, the weekend was really my only option unless I wanted to use a personal day at work.  So Sunday the 21st became my new target date, and I spent the days prior eyeing the weather while simultaneously fingering a rabbit’s foot with crossed fingers and knocking on any wood object within a five-mile radius.  Whether due to my superstitious overload or not, the weekend turned out great- blue skies, calm winds, and temperatures in the 60s. (sadly, as I write this, we’ve plunged back below freezing again… Mother Nature is such a tease)

In the meantime, I was loosely planning out my flight.  I knew one of my destinations would be Chattanooga, TN; my parents were in town and I wanted to take my father out for a birthday dinner.  I decided not to go to CHA, the big airport, instead opting for the much smaller Dallas Bay Skypark, which was just a few miles from my parents’ house and thus much more convenient for them.  I was somewhat familiar with this airport, having lived in Chattanooga for about a year myself, but I’d certainly never flown into it.  The single runway measured a mere 3000′ x 50′, a fair bit smaller than the acres of asphalt I’ve become used to.

Sunday morning, after reviewing my flight plan with Scott, I headed out to the ramp to prep the plane, an experience that’s still pretty new.  As I mentioned before, the weather was beautiful, and I was by no means the only person at PDK taking advantage of it.  After I’d started the plane and taxied to the edge of the ramp, it took a full five minutes to get a word in on the ground frequency.  I could see no less than four planes in the runup area at 20R as I waited.  Busy, busy, busy.

Finally, I got permission to taxi, and it wasn’t long before I was airborne and turning northwest.  At altitude I found that I had a bit of a tailwind, despite the forecast seeming to indicate a headwind on the way up… but you can’t really argue with that.  The flight up went quickly, and before long I was turned over to Chattanooga Approach.  I was a bit curious how they’d vector me through the airspace, since 1A0 was about ten miles north of CHA.  As it turned out, they sent me a bit to the west of the airport, but also kept me at 5000′ until I was north of the airport- only then did they approve a descent at my discretion.  First bit of difficulty- I was only about six miles from 1A0, with a good 3500′ to lose.  I elected to fly out to the north a bit to get my altitude down.

I had previously reported having 1A0 in sight and been released from Approach, but once I got down near pattern altitude, I couldn’t see the airport any more!  And there wasn’t a bit of traffic to help me get my bearings, but luckily I did have the GPS, so I knew the direction to 1A0.  I was able to head back in on a course that would allow me to join the downwind for runway 5.  Winds were calm, so I could have chosen either direction, but 23 has a 700′ displaced threshold, and given a choice, I’d rather keep that runway ahead of me for an increased stopping margin.

As I turned final, I spotted the obstacle I’d seen mentioned on Airnav: a nice big oak tree maybe 1000′ from the end of the runway.  This was fairly easy to stay clear of, I just kept to the right of the centerline until I’d cleared it, and even then, I probably had adequate altitude to get over it.  Then I was down to the ground, and it was time to flare… and here, things went awry.  My best guess is that the narrow runway threw off my height estimate; whatever the reason, I touched down before really even getting into my flare.  Boing…boing…..boing…..BOING… yeah, this isn’t going to work at all, time to go around.  As I was retracting the flaps and getting into my climb, I noticed a man beside the runway pointing what looked like a camera at me.  Undoubtedly my father.  Good to know that that hideous landing was recorded for all to see later.  Circuit #2 was much better, and this time I pulled off a nice full-stall landing.  Got on the brakes hard, then quickly surmised that I had plenty of runway to get stopped.  After parking in the wrong place- blocking the gas pump, no less- we piled into the car and went off to a nice Italian lunch.

I had hoped to be able to spend a bit of time with the family, but between getting in the air later than expected at PDK and having a long lunch, there wasn’t much to do but troop back to the airport with my parents, my brother, his wife, and my niece in tow.  We sat for a bit on the nice benches outside the FBO, and watched a nice-looking Apache and a little single I couldn’t identify take off… and then it was time for me to get ready to leave.

The flight back was uneventful as well- I made my required second stop in Dalton, GA, on what looked like about ten miles of runway after Dallas Bay.  A quick restroom stop and then it was on south to PDK.  All told, I racked up an even 3 hours in the air, putting me over my required hours of solo cross-county- another requirement off the list.  Besides the requirement, it was nice to take a flight up to visit with family, even at the expense of my dignity- nothing like having the first landing your father sees be really ugly.  He claimed he thought I was showing off and doing a touch & go, but I’m not sure I believe him.  Heh.

It’s looking like I’m only a few flights away from going for my checkride!

Continuing with my theme of ridiculously procrastinating on updating this thing, I’m now actually two flights behind.  *sigh*  I’ll start by rolling the clock back a full week, to last Thursday evening.  For this particular session, the objective was to wrap up my night requirements and at least put a dent in simulated instrument time.  As such, I arrived at PDK a bit after 5 PM, muttering quietly to myself how glad I was that that route wasn’t part of my daily commute.

Before heading out, Scott and I spent a bit of time discussing my current status with respect to training standards, along with serious talks about getting the written exam out of the way.  I still needed to study up on some areas, particularly weather services, but outside of that I felt pretty good about my knowledge.  From there, we covered fundamentals of instrument flight; primary and secondary instruments for pitch and roll, keeping a proper scan going, looking out for instruments to disagree, etc.  A few minutes of this, and then we went out and got in the air.

Scott let me get about 1000′ up before taking the airplane while I put on the dreaded Foggles.  I’d worn these evil things before, but that didn’t make matters any better.  I settled into attempting to maintain my climb and heading.  Right away, I could tell I had little to no scan at all… rather than keeping an orderly watch of things, I was glancing here and there, with the result that I was chasing my tail, a lot.  Coupled with that was my body’s insistence that a slight turn to the left was really level flight.  I thought I did OK my first time out under the hood, but this time I was all over the place… constantly stopping that pesky left turn, oh, now I’m descending, stop the descent, back to the turn, argh…  As if this wasn’t enough work, Scott would occasionally have me work with the GPS and such, which would generally lead to even-worse deviations from my desired course and altitude.  Lesson of the day was definitely that instrument flying is a brain-intensive task, and it takes very little distraction to throw everything into disarray.

Oh, and that was just basic, straight-and-level flying with the occasional turn.  It was going to get better.  First and most fun might have been compass turns.  See, generally one turns while referring to the directional gyro (DG), which is immune to the errors the magnetic compass introduces.  To put it briefly the magnetic compass only reads correctly while flying straight-and-level at a constant speed.  Accelerate, decelerate, or make a turn, and errors come into play.  This is particularly true of turning… we’d discusses back on the ground how to estimate turning error in order to better make compass turns, but I apparently failed to internalize that.  I started my first turn, with Scott covering the DG and me eyeballing the compass.  I knew the error was there, but vastly underestimated it… when I rolled out on what was supposed to be a northerly heading, I watched the compass continue on over to about 020 or so.  A rather impressive display.  The next few times, I got it much better, having learned my lesson.

Then there were climbs and descents.  These come in two flavors: constant-airspeed and constant-vertical speed.  The former are fairly easy, the latter, not so much.  The reason for this is that the VSI has a bit of a lag to it, so while one can easily attain a constant-airspeed climb by eyeing the airspeed indicator, trying to do the same with the VSI results in a vicious sort of tail-chasing game.  Instead, one must select a pitch attitude while watching the AI, let the VSI stabilize, correct the pitch attitude, check the VSI, over and over again.  Even after I worked this out, I still had to stop myself from trying to fly off the VSI… the temptation is strong indeed.

By this time, we were getting close to RMG, where I could get in my last few required night landings.  In keeping with the instrument theme, though, Scott had me fly the ILS into RMG.  This isn’t a required task for a private pilot, but is still a good thing to know in case of an emergency.  Here, Scott played the role of a controller vectoring me onto the ILS, while I played the part of a really bad instrument pilot.  Finally, though, I was able to capture the runway heading and glide slope, and followed it down for a bit until Scott told me to take off the Foggles.

This, by the way, is a surprisingly disorienting transition.  Under the hood, my entire life was contained in about 36 square inches of instrument panel.  Looking outside the airplane again almost seemed like information overload.  Landing can be a bit of a busy time anyway, but doing so while fighting that disorientation is a real challenge.  In a way, it felt like I was starting the whole evolution about ten steps behind the airplane.  Still, I got it down safely, and proceeded to take few more runs around the pattern.  Of course, about the time I was getting comfortable again, it was time to head back towards PDK… and that meant that I got to put my favorite torture device back on.

Nothing really new happened here, except that I was getting better, particularly with my climbs and descents.  Still had trouble maintaining altitude, and a few times I exceeded a 100′ margin from my desired altitude- enough to fail me on the checkride.  Definitely got to get that in order in the near future.  I also flew a few simulated holding patterns; basically a timed turn followed by a timed straight stretch, all working out a nice little racetrack pattern in the sky.

The last bit of fun was getting into PDK.  Previously, when we flew to LZU, I though it was hard to pick the airport out.  I had no idea what hard was.  PDK sits right in the middle of a well-populated area NE of Atlanta.  I picked up the airport beacon immediately after removing the Foggles, but could not for the life of me pick out the runways.  About the best I could manage was a guess based on the beacon, the runway headings, and my heading.  I still hadn’t identified them when Scott told me to turn onto my downwind.  Finally, I picked out 2L and 2R, which was fine until it came time to make my base turn.  Once again, I had trouble picking them out… I saw what I thought was 2R, but didn’t catch 2L until I was turning final.  All in all, it was a truly challenging task.

This flight satisfied my night requirements, but still left me with more required instrument time… which is just as well, as I clearly need plenty more practice at that.  For the most part, I’ve enjoyed my training so far, but I suspect that terms like “fun” and “enjoy” probably wouldn’t apply quite so readily to working on an instrument rating.  It’s something I want to do eventually, if for no other reason than safety, but my bit of hood time sure does give me a critical perspective on that bit of fun.  I wouldn’t feel at all out of line to refer to instrument flying as Hard Work.

…updating the blog, that is.  I went on a solo flight Sunday afternoon, and yeah, I’m just now getting around to writing about it.

Plan A for Sunday had been to knock out my long cross-country.  I also had a bit of an ulterior motive with this; my parents were in town in Chattanooga and my dad had just had a birthday, so I figured on making a long stop and taking him out to lunch.  Alas, but the weather did not work out for me.  Saturday saw possible rain in the forecast for Atlanta, and near-certain rain and snow in Chattanooga.  I elected to postpone the cross-country another week… but since I had the plane reserved, I figured I’d at least go out and get some maneuver practice.

Things got a bit more interesting when I heard from Scott Saturday evening… seems 546 was still over at LZU.  I volunteered half-jokingly to finish my solo flight at PDK and get the airplane repositioned, but that was actually what happened.  Bruce was going to be at PDK anyway and was willing to run me back to LZU for my car after the flight.  Sounded like a plan to me.

Sunday morning, I showed up, got the airplane, had a relatively normal preflight and takeoff, and proceeded on up to Lake Lanier to work on some of my maneuvers.  I started off with a few steep turns, and ended up a bit dismayed… my turns to the left probably would have passed, but I wasn’t at all satisfied.  I kept letting the nose drop during my roll-in, with the result that I spent the rest of the turn chasing the nose in an attempt to stay within 100′ of my starting altitude.  Oddly enough, turns to the right were spot-on every time.

Another little detail that I wanted to work on was coordinating my turns.  I was pretty well into the habit of generally forgetting that the rudder pedals existed unless I was on the ground- passable for gentle turns, not so good to more aggressive entries and exits to my steep turns.  Without rudder input, there was a noticeable yaw at the beginning and end of my rollout.  So I spent a few minutes just working on constantly changing my bank angle and adding rudder such that I got rid of adverse yaw during the transitions.  It actually turned out to be much easier than I thought, and made my steep turns much friendlier as well.

I tossed in a few power-off stalls and turns around a point before pointing the nose towards PDK.  This would actually be my first time soloing into PDK- all my previous flights were out of LZU.  But I’d flown in and out enough to know what to do and expect, so it was no big deal at all.  I called up the tower about 8 miles out, asked to do some pattern work, and was vectored into a straight-in to 20R.  As I was setting up, I saw a large plane over in the vicinity of Stone Mountain, and remembered that the B-17 Liberty Belle was at PDK for the weekend.  Sure enough, that was her, taking some lucky folks for a nice flight. (side note: I wish I could use “Fortress” as my type when calling ATC.  Fortress 34R sounds way cooler than Diamond 6DC)

There was a bit of confusion in the pattern, as a Cirrus was in the vicinity with a similar callsign, ending in 6DC.  The tower controller accounted for this by referring to us by our type.  I probably would have gone for full callsigns instead… but hey, it got the job done.  Soon enough, I was on short final for my first solo landing at PDK… and it was a squeaker.  Nice way to get started.  Number 2 was another good one, but things got interesting as I was climbing out again… just off the end of 20R, I observed a white balloon up ahead and below; I passed about 50 feet above it before making my crosswind turn.  I didn’t think much of it, and thought even less as I was on my downwind.  A bit earlier, I’d heard someone call in and request an initial for 20L, and as I turned downwind, I realized that the calling airplane was none other than the B-17.  She was just making her break into the pattern as I made my turn to final, and as much as I wanted to watch her, I did have an airplane of my own to land.

Remember the balloons?  Yeah, that wasn’t the end of that story.  As I climbed out from the next touch & go, I saw two more red balloons, this time right at my altitude and dead ahead.  While I didn’t have any specific scenarios in mind, it seemed prudent to avoid colliding with them, so I turned a bit to ensure a miss.  The more I thought about it, the more it seemed that the other folks flying around ought to know about the balloons.  I had no idea if it was appropriate or not, but I went ahead and called the tower and let them know about the balloons, and they promised to send someone out to stop the madness.

Two more times around the pattern, and I felt it was time to wrap the day up.  Back up at the old familiar Clairemont ramp, I wedged in between a C152 and a Piper which was infringing on my space.  Good thing the DA-20’s low wing tucks under the Cessna’s eye-level airfoil.  Inside, I turned the plane over to Bruce, notified him that I’d found a nonfunctional nav light during my preflight, and then we headed back over to Lawrenceville.

My big conclusion for the day was that I definitely needed to get up with Scott and get a second set of eyes on my air work, particularly those left steep turns.  For that matter, I need to get in more short- and soft-field practice, in addition to a few other time requirements.  Tomorrow should see me wrap up my night and simulated instrument requirements, and then we can move on to test prep and refining my maneuvers.

Seems that my night dual time came even sooner than I thought- but hey, nothing wrong with flying two days in a row.  I had originally thought I’d be busy Monday evening, and tentatively was considering Wednesday night instead, but it turned out that Monday was free after all.  I was planning n asking Scott anyway when he sent me a text that sealed the deal- we’d both forgotten that he was going to Florida Wednesday, so any night dual this week would have to be on Monday.  Since that was what I was thinking anyway, it worked out great.

I knocked off work a bit early and spent some time planning my flight.  I decided to go with the same flight I’d planned for the previous night attempt- a hop out to Anderson, SC. (AND)  Anderson is about 70 nm from LZU, plenty in excess of the 50-mile minimum for a cross-country.  Another benefit is that there’s a VOR just a few miles from the airport, making navigation a snap.  Selecting checkpoints was a bit more difficult.  I tried to pick things that I thought would be easily visible at night- busy highways, well-lit towns, etc.  Before long, I was packing up and heading out to LZU.

Out on the ramp, 546 only had about 3/4 of a tank, so we called for the fuel truck.  Luckily- well, in a manner of speaking- I’d forgotten to bring my headset out, so we had to go up to the office.  Waiting in there for the fuel was much warmer than waiting on the ramp.  Back outside, I ran the preflight and we were ready to roll.

Taxiing was a bit of a challenge, particularly while turning- the taxi light on the DA-20 only illuminates a small area directly ahead, which isn’t much good for picking out the centerline if it’s not straight ahead.  The edge light at least give a sense of boundary, but I still prefer to follow the centerline instead of trying to judge my position between the lights.  Still, aside from coming close to turning early for the runup area and going in the grass, things were uneventful.  With no traffic around but us, there was no wait at the runway, and I was in the air and turning to the east in no time.

Night flying offers a sort of quiet calm that’s not always present during the day.  With far less traffic, the radio stays pretty quiet, and you’re treated to a view far different from what you’re used to.  The slight downside is that flight by visual reference is more difficult; the horizon can be tough to pick out, and so judging pitch and bank attitude requires more instrument reference than usual.  At altitude, I called up Atlanta Approach and got flight following- not that there was really any other traffic to worry about.  The cruise seemed to go pretty quickly, and before long I was descending towards Anderson.

As I crossed the VOR and turned toward the airport, Scott keyed the mike and turned on the lights at AND, which made it a lot easier for me to judge my pattern entry.  I deduced that at my descent rate, I’d still be a bit high at the airport, so I swung out to the south a bit to get down to pattern altitude.  The only voices on the CTAF were Scott’s and mine.  I crossed the runway at pattern altitude, made my downwind turn, and set about replicating my pattern knowledge in a decidedly unfamiliar environment.

The first bit of a hiccup came as I reduced power to start my descent.  I’d already had to beat the urge early on to hold up my descent here during the day… at night, with no real visual altitude cues, it’s even tougher to let the plane go down.  I rolled out on final high, chopped the power, and focused on getting on slope and controlling my speed.  On short final, speed control became tougher, simply because the bright approach lights killed my night vision and made it difficult to glance in and see my airspeed.  The landing, however, was one of my best yet… a nice smooth touchdown.  I then taxied back to do it again.  Meanwhile, Scott demonstrated how to control the intensity of the lights via radio; for subseqeunt landings, the medium setting was far more comfortable for me.

My requirements for night training include ten takeoffs and landings to a full-stop… no touch & goes here.  But full-stop doesn’t mean taxiing back is required, even though we did it the first time.  For the rest, since AND has a nice long runway, we simply did stop & goes- land, come to a stop, reconfigure the airplane, throttle up, do it again.  All in all, I got in six landings at AND, all of which were among my best.  Scott pointed out that this was a consequence of my good airspeed control.  Perhaps the relative lack of scenery at night makes it easier to concentrate on the basics… not sure, but something was clicking.

Finally, we turned back towards LZU.  For this approach, Scott had me do something a bit different- instead of the usual pattern entry and visual landing, he had me set up on the ILS and fly the needles, or at least try to.  I’d done this, in a manner of speaking, before on FSX, but that sure ain’t real life.  For one thing, I can’t switch off the wind in the real world… a few miles out, I transitioned back to flying visually and got in another great landing.  Totals for the night: 2.4 hours and eight landings.

I still need another few tenths of an hour at night, plus two more landings, so another (albeit shorter) night session will be in order soon.  I’m getting close to the end of my private training now; I’ve crossed the 30-hour mark, and besides the aforementioned night experience, the only other requirements left to meet are a few hours’ simulated instrument time and six hours of solo time, including my long cross-country.  I anticipate taking the knowledge test in a few weeks, and probably the checkride not long after.

After a lot of waiting to get here, it’s almost within my grasp.

Today was to be an interesting day.  The plan was for me to make my first solo cross-country flight, to RMG where I went with Scott last weekend.  So I spent some time this morning working up a flight plan from LZU to RMG in my old friend 546DC.  I’d previously spoken with Scott, who’d mentioned wanting to have me do some power-off landings, so I planned on a bit of dual time prior to my solo.

The first monkey wrench in the day’s plans came after I’d finished up my flight plan- I’d neglected to even check the weather at RMG.  I suppose I was subconsciously assuming it was the same as the clear blue skies here in Atlanta-a bad assumption.  The RMG METAR showed an overcast layer at 2300′- technically low enough for me to fly under and land, but I was uncomfortable with it.  I checked the satellite, and determined that the cloud cover might be burning off, so I decided to hope that the clouds cleared up in the couple of hours between then and the start of my flight.

Over at LZU, Scott was finishing up with his previous student, so I took the opportunity to recheck the RMG weather and the satellite.  Things hadn’t improved at all- in fact, the overcast layer had come down to 2100′.  Once Scott was done, I mentioned the weather situation, including my discomfort with flying in those conditions.  That turned out to be a moot point anyway- my solo endorsement specifies, among other conditions, a 3000′ minimum ceiling, so RMG was right out.  After reviewing the area weather, we decided on Thomson-McDuffie (HQU) instead.  I worked up a quick route, then put off finishing the plan until after we’d made our dual flight.

LZU was pretty busy, so instead of working in the pattern there, we headed a few miles east to Winder.  I’d watched Scott execute a power-off landing out last time out, so I had an idea what things should look like.  I also knew that this would be a real exercise in energy management; the DA-20 is perfectly capable of gliding the distance required to make it from downwind to the runway; in fact, there’s energy to spare.  The game becomes judging when to drop flaps and start bleeding off excess energy in order to come down in the selected touchdown zone.

It was easier than I thought, really.  I entered the downwind leg, and pulled the throttle to idle abeam my touchdown point.  Having seen how Scott kept the pattern in close, I started my base turn early.  I already felt I was plenty high, and Scott confirmed by advising me to drop the first notch of flaps.  I continued to come around, ending up on a short final.  Just before completing my lineup, I dropped the last notch of flaps and came in for a nice gentle touchdown; a bit long perhaps, but otherwise lovely.  I repeated this exercise twice more, with good results- on the second, I went out a bit further than necessary on my base turn, and had to delay dropping final flaps, but I still made it back with energy to spare.

After an uneventful trip back to LZU, we checked the weather again.  HQU was showing a 3200′ ceiling; enough room to fly under for an arrival.  After some thinking, I decided the trip was good to go, and set about finalizing my flight plan.  Scott saw that I was getting everything together, then signed my logbook and departed the area for home.  As I was getting my weather briefing, he called me with a thought… since HQU was 75+ miles away, if I stopped at another airport during my trip, this could count as my long solo cross-country. (150+ miles total distance, one leg +50 miles, three stops)  Sounded like a plan to me.

Before beginning my taxi, I set up the plane for my trip; rather than flying direct to HQU, I was going to make a slight north dogleg over Athens ans take advantage of the VOR there as a waypoint.  I dutifully tuned to the proper frequency and selected the appropriate radial, or so I thought. (more on this later)  Out and airborne, I got my first blow to my plan- it was clear I wasn’t going to be cruising at my planned altitude of 5500′.  The clouds over LZU had closed up a bit, and as I approached 3500′, I felt I was getting in the neighborhood of my minimum clearance.  There were holes that I could possibly have climbed through, but that was risky for both practical and legal reasons.  As such, I elected to cruise at 3500′ instead.

I settled about navigating to Athens.  The air was a bit bumpy, and the lower-than-expected clouds made me a bit nervous, so when I kept drifting off the radial to Athens, I figured those were responsible.  But as time went on, I couldn’t seem to intercept the radial- the needle would move left, I’d make a left turn… no change… repeat… so on.  (Astute readers, probably including at least one CFI, already know what’s going on)  I was wondering about all this oddness when I saw an unexpected sight on the GPS- Lake Lanier.  Now, Lanier is almost directly north of LZU, whereas Athens is almost directly east.  Alarm bells went off, and suddenly I knew exactly what I’d done.  I’d selected the reciprocal radial from the one I was supposed to be flying, with the consequence that if I’d wanted to correct my course without adjusting the VOR, I’d need to correct opposite to the needle deflections.  Argh.

So I spun the OBS to point the way to Athens, made a nearly 180-degree turn, and continued on my way.  The good news was that I was now flying the radial that I was going to take to HQU anyway; I’d just gone about 15 miles out of my way.  The rest of the trip to Athens was uneventful, save for the continuous sense that the clouds were continuing to lower.  By the time I’d gotten south of Athens, I was down to 3000′ to make sure I had sufficient cloud clearance.  At this point, I was really starting to get concerned that the clouds would continue to come down as I approached HQU.  About halfway between Athens and HQU, my path took me near Washington-Wilkes County (IIY), which I’d planned as a possible divert location if the weather at HQU degraded.  As I got near to IIY, I dialed up the HQU AWOS to see what the weather looked like.  I was a bit far out, and the transmission was a bit garbled, but I distinctly thought I heard a reported 1000′ ceiling.  Thus, with HQU weather sounding untenable, combined with my bit of nervousness about the clouds I was flying under, I elected to divert to IIY.

The place was dead.  If not for cars on the surrounding roads, it could have been a set for an apocalyptic movie.  I heard nothing but empty air as I sent my intentions over CTAF… approaching, entering the pattern, base, final, clear of the active.  I parked in front of a locked-up FBO building and hopped out to assess the situation.  First order of business, as learned from my last flight, was to call and cancel my flight plan.  No more ominous voicemails for me, thanks very much.  I attempted to use the flight briefer app on my phone to check the HQU weather, to no avail.  I had about the weakest signal possible, and data transmission just wasn’t happening.  Without any apparent way to get weather info for HQU, and seeing as how I had no particular need to try to press on, I decided to plan my flight back to LZU.  The flight to IIY and back would still count as a cross-country.

Alas, but here my phone betrayed me again.  I picked a direct track back to LZU, picked out a few visual waypoints, worked out the flight plan, then attempted to file the plan and get a weather brief.  Neither the briefer or I could understand the other.  I wandered all over the ramp looking for some kind of sweet spot, to no avail.  Well, I knew the winds aloft forecast from earlier was still good, and so I could use those numbers to work out the headings I needed to fly.  One more try for the briefer, no joy… well, no flight plan for the return trip then.  I took off from the still-dead airport and pointed the nose to the west.

For the return trip, I decided to take advantage of the GPS.  So far, for my cross-country flights, I’d intentionally avoided referring to the GPS in favor of learning to navigate by pilotage or radio aids, but given the number of kinks in the flight so far, it seemed wise to use all available resources.  Of course, first I had to remember how to enter a direct track in the thing.  A few minutes of fumbling and I had a nice purple line pointing the way to LZU.

The flight back was uneventful; the air seemed to have smoothed out, and holes were appearing in the clouds.  The sporadic shafts of sunlight peeking through made for a great view, and I found that as great as they looked on the ground, flying through them was even better.  I picked up all my waypoints and held the direct course with no fanfare.  Back at LZU, I shot a few touch & goes before making my full stop just ahead of the school’s other DA-20, wrapping the day up with 2.3 hours of solo cross-country time.  I also checked the AWOS history for HQU, and discovered that I’d apparently misheard the weather- at no time during my flight was the ceiling reported below 3200′.  Well, better safe than sorry, I suppose.

As I look back at the flight, I could have done some things differently.  Flight Watch is available for checking weather while in the air- instead of diverting to IIY based on a garbled radio transmission, I probably would have been better served calling them up and asking about the weather.  I should also really get myself an AFD;if I’d had one on hand, I might have been able to check the HQU weather from the ground at IIY via phone and determined that I could have pressed on.

All told, the flight went off OK, I learned some lessons, got to see some new scenery, and had a real-world experience diversion experience.  Since I didn’t get my long distance cross-country, I’ll keep with my original plan to make my long solo cross-country next weekend, weather permitting.  My parents are going to be in Chattanooga, and it’s my dad’s birthday, so it seems like a good opportunity to make it up north and take him out to dinner Sunday afternoon.  Hopefully Scott and I can get in some night flying this week as well.

Wow, only five days since my last flight… maybe the sporadic January days are truly behind me now.  Overall, I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m on the home stretch here… I’ve gone and soloed both in and out of the pattern, and after today, I’m all set to go do  a solo cross-country and work on getting that requirement knocked out. (”That requirement” being five hours of solo cross-country time)

For today’s flight, Scott instructed me to plan a flight to an airport of my choosing, at least 50 miles from PDK.  In a sense, this was a pleasant change; earlier portions of training were necessarily regimented to a certain degree; fly here, do pattern work, fly home, go to the practice area, perform three steep turns, etc.  Suddenly it was all up to me.  I decided that one additional self-imposed requirement would be that my destination be an uncontrolled field.  We’d performed a fair amount of pattern work earlier at small fields, but that was mostly before I got over my radio stage fright.  Since then, nearly all of my pattern work had been done at towered fields, and as a result, I felt it best that I go somewhere where I’d have to learn to talk in the blind.

I settled on KRMG in Rome, GA, slightly over 50 miles from PDK.  My flight path up there was made a bit more interesting thanks to Dobbins ARB in Marietta- flying straight from PDK to RMG would have run me through their airspace, and while that’s not a problem if one gains permission, I elected to challenge myself a bit by throwing in a dogleg around the airspace.  I’d previously flown to Chattanooga, but that was a simple direct-follow-the-VOR-needle flight.  This time, I was going to fly to RMG without the benefit of any fancy stuff- no VOR, no GPS.  I selected several checkpoints to check my progress, and even scouted the area on Google Earth to get an idea of what I’d be looking at.

Over at PDK, Scott and I reviewed my flight plan and the route I’d chosen, a conversation liberally sprinkled with questions about airspace rules, information found on the sectional, and other little tidbits that I’ll need to know.  My planning passed muster, and then I had my first experience filing a flight plan and getting a weather briefing. (that guy talked fast, even after I told him I was an idiot student)  Today’s weather could hardly have been better- clear skies all around, light winds, great visibility.

After an uneventful taxi (save for me trying to get taxi instructions on the tower freq), we were airborne and headed northwest.  By the time I reached my planned altitude of 6500′, I was already nearing my first checkpoint, a small private strip north of town.  I was unable to get it in sight- probably hiding under the nose- but I knew that I could expect to pass overhead when RYY was off my left wing, and my proximity and heading to Lake Alatoona confirmed this, so I made my turn towards RMG.  The rest of the flight was uneventful; I hit my checkpoints as expected, though a little late, as my cruising airspeed was lower than I’d planned.  Given the fact that I was navigating only by ground references, I was a bit surprised when RMG materialized almost directly off my nose- I was far more accurate than I’d expected.

The plan at RMG was to fly around in the pattern a bit and practice short- and soft-field landings, but first I had to get past an inexplicable return of radio stage fright.  Come on, just key the mike and talk already… eventually, I did get to the point where I made calls maybe about half as often as I should have… I need to do this more and get it ingrained.  Meanwhile, my first time around was ugly.  I got in too tight on downwind, and the resulting tight pattern had me end up way high turning final.  Despite pulling the power out, as I approached the runway it was clear that this one wasn’t going to work… time to go around.  This time I flew a bit further out, and though I again came in high, I was able to save it for a touch & go.  Next time around was high again, and as I powered up to go around, I realized that I hadn’t ever put in full flaps… ok, get it together.  Next time around was far better; I was on slope as I turned final, got a little low on short final, but ended up with a nice touchdown.  In a valiant attempt to pretend I was doing a soft-field, I flew down the runway with the nose in the air a bit before climbing out again.

Thereafter, things were much better.  I still wasn’t talking on the radio as much as I should have, but I quit coming in ridiculously high and was looking like I had some idea what I was doing again.  After a few more circuits, I headed for home.  I’d only gone a few miles before Scott sprung the (expected) surprise.. ye gods, PDK was closed and I needed to divert to Cherokee County!  I got a pretty good position cut from the Rome VOR, and from that I got a rough heading to 47A.  I did some quick mental calculations for estimated time and fuel to 47A, then set about fine-tuning my location and flight path using the sectional.  It was easier than I thought; I was able to identify landmarks every few minutes to monitor my progress, and I only faltered as I got close to 47A.  I got a little too sure of my heading and was carefully scouring the area ahead at the expense of either side.  As I continued squinting over the nose, Scott made a few nudging remarks until I noted that the airport was at about my 1:00 position.  There’s a good chance I would have flown past it had I been alone.

Satisfied with my ability to find my way around, Scott let me turn south for PDK.  As we approached the airport, he raised the idea of me going out for a few solo circuits at PDK; this sounded good to me, but given my subpar performance earlier, I decided to try a few times around with Scott before taking that leap.  Landing #1 was great, and things were looking good… but then, at about 600′ on the climbout, the engine seemed to cough a bit… uhh, yeah, let’s go for a full-stop on this one.  This time, Scott took over on the downwind so he could demonstrate a simulated engine-out landing.  It was really just as well… by the time I would have finished a few touch & gos, it would have been getting dark anyway.

Back in the office, Scott added a few endorsements for me to fly solo at PDK and FTY, and we discussed getting me on a solo cross-country maybe next weekend.  I may do my long cross-country the following weekend, most likely to Chattanooga and back.  I still feel I need to spend some more time at untowered fields to get in the groove of making my calls.  In the meantime, there’s the question of what ramifications that engine stumble might have… 546 will be getting checked out this week, and I hope she’s OK, because 393’s schedule is invariably crowded, especially on the weekends.  And I’ve got lots of work to do!

Oh, one final bit of information… as I was about to head home, I observed that I had a voicemail.  Upon listening to said voicemail, I heard the voice of a man with FSS, informing me that we were overdue and S&R procedures were about to be started.  We had indeed forgotten to close our flight plan, at least initially; Scott remembered as were were in the pattern at RMG and called up to cancel it, but presumably we were already overdue at that point.  I went ahead and called up just to make sure everything was kosher… I don’t want to get any fuel bills from the CAP in my mailbox.  So I guess that was my first experience with forgetting to close a flight plan.  Live and learn…