My Flight Journal

Sunday, September 14, 2003 7:47pm

Made my first cross-country this weekend. Actually, two of them.

I needed to go up to St. Augustine and Jacksonville for some family stuff. My instructor suggested we fly up. Took another student in the back seat, so I flew up, they dropped me off, and the other student flew back. Of course, I was the one that had to do all the flight planning. Between me and my bags, fuel, my instructor and the other guy (both of em are pretty big guys), we were 6 pounds under max gross in the 172. Worse, the CG was too far forward. Not too much though.

We flew up to St. Aug and I did ground speed and time calcs all along the way. It's about 70 miles and I planned in 4 or 5 checkpoints. The landing was great. My first time landing there, and one of the few times I've landed anywhere but my home airport. The base and final send you out over the marsh, which is kinda freaky, but I didn't let it bother me. Put it right down where I wanted and a very gentle touchdown.

The next day for the trip back I got my first flight in a 172RG. Nice go-fast machine, and the W&B weren't an issue in it. Only problem was the prop pitch control was kinda broken. It would vibrate out to coarse pitch on its own. So we had to fly the whole flight with one of us holding it in.

Still waiting on a good weekend to solo. There just isn't enough daylight during the week after work when I've been flying. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to fly dual doing x-countries, night flights, and hood work. I may have lots of hours in all those before I make my first solo. Of course, this coming weekend might not be good either because of this:

Yikes!