Journal entries for July, 2007

Today there was some bad weather down at New Orleans moving north, so we stayed close to the airport and just worked on improving my landings. We practiced short-field and soft-field and combination short/soft-field landings, and I definitely felt myself getting more comfortable with them. One maneuver which gave me trouble was the soft-field touch-and-go.

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Today N5356F was back from its 100-hour inspection, and the weather was decent, so I finally managed to go on my long cross-country flight. I flew to Baton Rouge, then on to Lafayette, and then direct back to Hammond. The whole flight was actually quite unremarkable. No airliners chased me down, I didn't get lost — nothing worth recounting happened at all, really. Which I guess is a good thing.

Just about the only mistake I did make was due to the fact that I seldom fly N5356F. Most of my training has been in the other Warrior, N1288H. And so, out of force of habit, when I filed my flight plan and made my initial call to Baton Rouge Approach, I reported that I was flying N1288H. It was only about 20 minutes into the flight, when I requested Flight Following from Baton Rouge Approach, that I realized I had given them the wrong callsign, and had to correct it. But it was no big deal, and after that everything went smashingly. Now I'm up to about 32 hours. That 40-hour mark is getting pretty close.

As I described yesterday, it turned out that both of the FBO's Piper Warriors were down for maintenance today, which meant that I couldn't go flying. Mike suggested that a good way to use the time would be to take the practice written exam instead.

One of the requirements you have to meet before getting a pilot's license is to score a 75% or better on the official FAA written knowledge exam. However, the FAA doesn't even let you take the written exam until a flight instructor has signed an endorsement in your logbook saying you're ready. At Fly By Knight, they give you a practice exam, and if you score 85% or better on it, then they endorse your logbook and you can make an appointment to take the official one.

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Today I got two exercises in pilot decision-making, for free!

I was scheduled to do my long solo cross-country flight, flying from Hammond to Baton Rouge, then to Lafayette, then back to Hammond; about 170 miles in all. We had to cancel on Friday because the weather has continued to be crap as it has been for the past few weeks, but as I awoke this morning I found that there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. It was like a magical little window had been opened up in the never-ending series of summer thunderstorms, just for me. It looked like I'd actually get to go up to my planned altitude (4500 feet westbound and 5500 feet eastbound), where the air is nice and cool, rather than sweating it out at 2000 feet to stay under the clouds, like I had to do on my first solo cross-country flight to Gulfport.

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Yesterday before doing some solo flying, Mike and I flew up to Sycamore (the flight school's mechanic's grass strip) to deliver an airplane part they needed. I got to try another soft/short field landing, and we delivered the part. He's got a nice setup out there. I wouldn't mind living somewhere like that — in a house out away from town, on a field bordered by forest, with a grass strip and a few hangars attached to your house.

I taxied out to the end of the strip and prepared to take off again. As I was running through my checklist, a butterfly floated up out of the taller grass bordering the airstrip. I thought to myself what a pleasant setting this was, and just sat and watching the buttefly for a bit, enjoying the peaceful moment.

And then the butterfly fluttered straight into my propeller and disappeared in a puff of yellow. :(

Today the weather between here and Gulfport, MS was finally clear enough for me to go on my first solo cross-country flight, from Hammond to Gulfport and back, a round-trip distance of 142 nautical miles. And look at that! I managed to stay alive. That was my primary objective for the day, and I'm glad I managed to achieve it.

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My aviation headset arrived today, just as I was about to head to Hammond for a solo flight. This headset, unlike the basic units the FBO provides with their planes, has active noise cancellation, which is a feature I've never had before in a set of headphones. I tried it out in my apartmente before leaving, and it's incredible. A flick of the button, and my annoyingly loud air conditioning unit just disappears. Needless to say, it works great for a droning airplane engine as well (yet retains enough of the sound for you to clearly hear what the engine is doing). I could actually hear the wind whooshing past the plane.

This headset also has an input for a cell phone or MP3 player (automatically muted when anyone talks on the radio, of course). I don't know if there's anything more wonderful than lifting off the ground with Sigur Rós playing gently in the background as the sun starts to set.

Today we flew back out to Baton Rouge to give me some more practice interacting with ATC during the day, when things are more busy. Mike told me to act like he wasn't there — a few times when I forgot what ATC had told me, I asked him what they had said, and he shrugged and made me deal with it as if I was alone in the plane. Which meant I had to get back on the radio and ask ATC to tell me again because I'd forgotten it, in front of everyone (metaphorically speaking). Hehe, that's pretty good incentive to help remember to write it down next time.

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I had mentioned to Mike that I'd like to get some more practice handling emergency procedures, so we devoted today's lesson primarily to that. The flight school's mechanic has a small private grass runway on his land that the school has permission to use for soft-field and short-field landing practice, so Mike had me fly out in that general direction, and then when we got close, he cut my engine back to idle at 2500' and had me go through the engine out checklist and set up for an emergency landing. Man, things happen a lot faster when your engine is "off."

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Last week I discovered a pretty sizeable aviation messageboard called Pilots Of America, and made a few posts introducing myself and contributing to conversations. They're a very knowledgeable and friendly bunch of people.

Last night I got a message from a girl on the board named Danielle who lives in New Orleans and just got her private pilot's license a few months ago. She invited me onto this web-based chat hosted by the messageboard, and it turned out there was another pilot there, Steve, who is also in the general area — about 100 miles north of here (which isn't all that much in an airplane).

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