Trim Tab Altitude is everything!

Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first? Good? Okay, I flew my solo cross-country flight today. It couldn't have gone better; I left just a little late, but had no trouble navigating to Kingston. I landed there, refuelled, and got my logbook stamped so I could prove I got there. Twenty minutes later, I started the engine again, and left towards Carp. The wind, which had been against me on the way down, was now making me burn along at 110 knots (127 mph, or 203 kph!). Carp showed up pretty quickly, and I landed to get another stamp.

A diversion is an "event involving the diversion of the aircraft from the assigned or planned for location or destination." If weather is the cause, then the ceiling would be quite low, possibly around 1,000' above the ground. This also means that I would be flying even lower. Then, while circling a small town or other landmark, I would have to calculate the new heading, compensate for the wind, and estimate a time of arrival. Since I am flying low level, I must do all this in my head, while trying my best not to hit anything!

This post will do a few things. First off, I got the pictures of my first solo off the club's camera, so I have updated the first solo post (on April 3, 2008). Secondly, I have done everything I had listed in my last post, namely:

Sorry to everybody who's come here lately and not found any new posts. The reason is mostly studying for final exams at Carleton. Anyways, the exams are all done (they weren't too bad), and here I am...

As you can see, I made a couple of progress bars to show how much flight time I have. Just keep in mind that the 40 hours for the private license and the 200 for the commercial are minimums.

I have flown 7 times since my last post - 6 dual, 1 solo.  Here's the game plan for the next while:

Just a quick note to say that I flew a bit of dual and 1.1 hours of solo this morning. 8 knot crosswind, but nothing really happened. I only have another 0.6 hours of solo before the next stage.

Today was a lot of fun. The flight in the morning was cut short by a suspicious noise in the plane, so we landed. We would be out of time if we got another plane ready to go, so we arranged to fly again at 5:00.

I had an afternoon so use up, so I drove to Smiths Falls airport (CYSH), and was SO lucky - I got to see an aerobatic biplane fly! He did a bunch of really awesome flying, including staying inverted 15 feet above the runway the entire length of the airport! I did take some pictures and movies, but they don't really look that good, so I won't post them.

At this point, I have to build up 4 hours of solo (shouldn't take too long). At the start of each flight, I have to fly a couple dual circuits, then I go up for an hour of solo. That's what I did today - except the dual ended up taking 0.9 hours. I guess that's okay, too, since I was able to fly 0.9 by myself as well.

Finally! I went up solo today!

Unal and I spent an hour doing circuits, preparing me for the check flight at 9:30. After that flight, we went inside and met the check pilot, Derrick. Derrick and I flew a few circuits so I could show that I was ready to go solo. I was taken by suprise when he acted like a regular instructor, putting spins on what I had to do. For example, usually I only use the flaps if I am high, but Derrick got me to set up my approach to that I needed 20 or 40 degrees of flaps. Believe me, that takes good estimating skills!

I just got home from a amazing flight. The weather was reasonable - the sky was clear, which on one hand is good, but on the other bad because the air becomes turbulent below 1,500 feet. The winds were 12 knots from the north, so I had to compensate for a slight crosswind.

Since the last flight was not really useful in refreshing my skills, we flew a few circuits today. Not much happened, except that the hospital helicopter flew by in front of us at the same altitude. Unal called my last landing "beautiful", because even though I made a small mistake during the flare, I knew how to correct it, and was able to stop the plane from literally dropping a few feet onto the runway!