My instructor told me that we would schedule our dual cross country trip to Salisbury airport. He changed his mind and told me we would fly to Wilmington Delaware instead. I was told to plan a route along with all the navigation data, including checkpoints, fuel burn calculations, and weight and balance. It's a little like "making the calculations for the jump to lightspeed" in Star Wars.
Once all that was done I had to wait for the day of the flight to include the forecast wind calculations and check the weather. I also had to gather up the things I needed for the flight. That falls under the category of CRM (Cockpit Resource Management.) I needed to have a chart, timer, navigation route sheet, pen, and be able to fly the airplane and talk on the radio. I picked up a kneeboard to try and make life a little easier.
When I got to the airport I wasn't too sure if we would by flying or not. The weather was overcast with 5000Ft. ceilings and a bit of a breeze. There were showers forecast and the visibility was forecast at 10SM. I talked to my instructor and showed him my planning. Once that checked out we went on to discuss the weather. After showing him the forecast he decided that we could make the flight despite the cloud cover. After preflight, runup and takeoff we headed on course for the Bay Bridge. Now I had to fly the plane, look at a chart, run the timer and calculate my route times. I was only really able to do a little of it. The whole thing was a little much to try and do alone, but it's what is required. I think that for future cross country flights to a new area I would bring along someone to assist with the navigation. Nevertheless we continued on and made our left turn up the right side of the Chesapeake Bay. As we headed up the coastline I noticed that the visibility, to me at least, did not seem anywhere near 10SM. I was having a hard time seeing very far in front of us and I realized that I hadn't put enough visible navigation checkpoints between here and New Castle to navigate by. I wasn't lost, yet, but I understood that the visibility was poor and I would have to navigate by pilotage. Since my instructor was familiar with area we looked at the chart and he tried to point out landmarks for me to navigate by. We also tuned in some VOR's, radio navigation aids, to try and get a fix on our position. As we continued on and climbed higher I noticed that the forecast winds aloft were not correct and the cloud deck appeared to be getting lower. We were also flying in poor visibility, perhaps 5SM of less. All of this concerned me because I knew that I wouldn't be able to do this without my instructor and this was supposed to be preparation for my solo cross country. I knew that I would had to do this again in better weather to get it right. As we approached Wilmington I began a slow descent in order to get to the pattern altitude. The weather had cleared up a bit as I contacted the tower with my request to land. I was told to make right traffic for runway 19 and advise on the downwind. Now it was time to find the airport and runway 19. It was back to the chart and with a little help from my instructor I located the field off of our left wing. I made a turn and found the three runways that made up the airport. Now I had to find the correct one to land on. As we got closer I could see runway 1 which is the opposite side of 19, runway numbers are magnetic courses, 1 is 10 degrees , and 19 is 190 degrees. I could see that the tower controller was doing me a favor because runway 1 was almost directly ahead of us. That would mean that we could fly parallel to it on its left side and we would be in the downwind leg for runway 19. Once we got into position I called the tower and advised them that I was downwind for runway 19. Then I got me first tower clearance, "Cessna Five One Eight Six Romeo, Cleared to Land Runway One Nine."
I acknowledged the tower and voiced my hopes for a good landing. On my descent I lost sight of the field briefly but got it back as I made my turn to final. After we crossed the runway threshold I had the misfortune to drift right as I made the runway. The landing itself wasn't hard but not pillow soft either. It was acceptable as far as the airframe was concerned. The tower guided us out to taxiway Charlie and onto a ramp area were we could secure our airplane and get a bite to eat. It was weird to realize that from startup to shutdown was an hour and we were now in Delaware. We walked about 200 yards out of the airport area over to a Damon's Restaurant and had a bite to eat. During that time we chit chatted about how the flight had gone up to now. After our meal, which took longer than I had expected we returned to the airplane and I conducted an abbreviated preflight.
Once we got the engine turning and contacted ground control we got taxi clearance back to runway 19 via taxiway Charlie for an intersection takeoff. We taxied over to the threshold and after our runup we contacted tower for departure clearance. As we conducted our takeoff run and rotated I noticed that we still had over 3000ft of runway in front of us. 19 is 7012Ft long. That's about 5000Ft more than I really need for the Cessna 172S. After continuing our climb out and changing course to the southwest, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I never wrote down the return route courses on the navigation log. After admitting this to my instructor we worked on using the GPS to get us home. The weather still wasn't great as we made our way back. What was more was that it was starting to get dark. I hadn't really prepared for a night flight and I was getting a little apprehensive about the visibility.
As we continued back there was an overcast cloud deck above us and the air was getting misty. We headed back toward the Bay Bridge using the GPS to guide us. It was night time now and as we got closer I strained to see the bridge out of the window. I could see neither the Bay Bridge airport or the Bay Bridge below us. We should have been close enough to see it. My instructor commented that the bridge had not been as well lit since the 9/11 attacks. I considered the bridge a major landmark to navigation but I just couldn't find it in the mist. We continued on and flew over Annapolis. My instructor pointed out the two tall television towers along I-97 that we regularly use to navigate by. They looked different at night but at least I had a good idea of where I was. As we turned Northwest toward Tipton my instructor got on the radio with flightwatch and inquired about the weather forecast. The Temperature and Dewpoint were close to each other which accounted for the mist. After that we tuned in Tipton weather and found that the winds were calm. We contacted Potomac Approach and received a frequency change for Tipton CTAF. We used the radio to activate the runway lights. We entered the left downwind for Runway 28 and while I activated the landing light.
Then something unexpected happened. Up until now I hadn't flown at night and I knew that I would be making my first night landing. This was something my instructor forgot about. He assumed I had flown at night before. The unexpected event was...it started to rain. My stress level shot up as the raindrops impacted the windshield. We turned final and I realized that I was too high and a little too fast. My instructor told me to make shallow S-Turns to increase our travelling distance and decrease our altitude. Once we were lined up on the centerline I could see that we were still too high and too fast. I told my instructor that we were going around and he told me that was a good choice. We proceeded around the pattern and had another go at the landing. I turned final late and had to make an S-Turn to get back into runway alignment. It was still raining as we descended and I began to roundout. I noticed that even though the landing light and taxi light were on it still seemed awfully dark as we got closer to the runway. Since this was my first night landing it looked to me like only the taxi light was working. We were faster than we should have been and had a little float down the runway. I was lucky that we had no wind to cause any further problems. I began my flare and as the speed decayed my instructor said, "Don't touch, don't touch." Before I had time to understand what he was saying the main gear touched down on the runway followed quickly be the nosewheel. I was closer to the ground than I thought due to the lack of visual cues at night. My instructor was trying to warn me that I needed to increase my flare. All in all the landing was OK. We approached the end of the runway and I was almost positive that the landing light wasn't working, or was it the rain. We taxied back and I was told to abort the refueling because of the rain. The airport looked different at night but I was happy to be down. As we taxied back my instructor was informed that that was my first night landing, and in the rain no less. My shut down the airplane and gathered our paperwork. It was a one hour cross country with 0.3 hours at night and 1 night landing. Woo Hoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment