Flight Lesson: 02-12-10 - XC

The weather was quite scuzzy, but it was good enough to allow us to make a XC Flight to VCT. It was a fun flight.

I got to the airport early only to find my CFI already there. So we went in to his office and did some Dead Reckoning. My Flight Planing skills were quite rusty as I had not done a Flight Plan since October with my first CFI. After getting both Flight Plans together we headed out to the plane to Preflight. Once that was complete we taxied down to Runway Three One. After Take Off, we established Cruse and called the FSS to activate the Flight Plan. On our Flight Plan we had the Cruse Altitude at 1,500ft because the AWOS at BYY was reporting 1,600ft Overcast. We quickly found out that 1,500ft was just barely in the Clouds so we had to go down to 1,400ft to get below them. The Cloud Layer kept coming down as we flew farther and I stayed at 1,200ft for most of the Flight. As we flew on, my CFI turned on the LORAN to show me how to use it. After playing with it for a a little while it would not Display the info, so we just flew on using VOR and Pilotage to Navigate (Remember this part). I had some trouble staying on course, but found the Airport just fine.

This is where it got interesting, as VCT is Tower Controlled, and I had never talked to ATC before. I feel sorry for the poor guy sitting in the tower having to talk to me. I botched up the Calls pretty good till I got the hang of it. lol

About 5nm out from VCT I found out that I had forgot to finish up getting the headings for the return trip. So we got what we needed by navigating from VCT to the PSX VOR, then from the PSX VOR to BYY (This is where the LORAN would have been a big help lol). I made sure I was even more strict on keeping the needles on the VOR centered up, as well as knowing where I was on the Sectional at all times than normal. I stayed dead on course the whole time, and got to BYY with no problems.

Despite the Scuzzy Weather, and messing up the Flight Plan it was a great Flight, and I would not change it if I could. A few lessons Learned, that I'm glad I got with a CFI on board.

I logged 1.8 Hours, which brings me up to 35.3 Hours.