That’s right, after almost a month of having bad weather in my attempt to fly my second dual cross-country flight, I finally got up in the air today. According to the 1200Z (7:00am EST) TAF (1)for Bloomington Airport, it was going to be good visibility (6+ miles), with a cloud ceiling at 3500′ and winds under 6 knots. The ceiling was a bit low for enjoyment purposes, but well within what we can fly. Can’t pass up smooth air with low winds, so off we went.

Usually, the instructors at BMG don’t have student pilots file VFR flight plans for cross-country trips because we don’t fly in remote areas and the staff is going to initiate a search if we’re late in the rental anyway, so why risk forgetting to close a plan and starting a real search? Keep in mind it’s hard to be more than 2 miles from a human being in this part of the country, and this time of year, it’s really easy to spot the plane sitting in the middle of the field. Anyway, I’m going to be flying in the middle of nowhere this summer, since I’m going to be in New Mexico. I made Willis walk me through filing a flight plan for this trip, which was quite simple. But now I know what I’m doing, so I’m less likely to screw it up out west. With flight plan filed, we headed out to fly.

Today’s flight was Bloomington (KBMG) to Mattoon, IL (KMTO) via Terre Haute (KHUF), then direct to Lawrenceville, IL (KLWV), then direct back to Bloomington. So we headed out from BMG towards Terre Haute, climbing to 3000′ MSL. I messed up my VOR radials when I wrote them down, and was off by 180 degrees for the radial to fly on on the first half of the trip, when we were on Hoosier (the VOR at Bloomington). No biggie, and quickly fixed, but something to remember for next time. The flight was absolutely smooth for the trip to KHUF.

KHUF has an approach radar system, so I flew an ASR approach under simulated instrument conditions so that I would know what to do should I ever somehow end up in instrument weather conditions. Basically, the guy sitting in the approach room in the tower reads of compass directions and altitudes to guide you onto the runway, correcting your drift (or bad flying) by changing the compass heading you should be flying. I did ok, but was having trouble holding altitude and heading at the same time. I have about a 5 degree drift either way, which is not good for instrument conditions. I need to work on this with Willis in the plane sometime — I still need .5 hours of simulated instrument, so that won’t be a problem. The approach controller was excellent at guiding me to the runway – I was right where I needed to be when I was at decision height. Since we didn’t need to land at Huffman, we aborted the approach at that point and headed out to Mattoon.

Once we were out of the traffic pattern, Willis pointed out one of the reasons I was having so much trouble holding a course heading. 591’s directional gyro seemed to be losing accuracy when we were running at less than cruise power. The suction gauge was reading normal, so it must be something in the line after that gauge. With the foggles on, I can’t see the magnetic compass in 591 because it’s at the top of the windshield, so I couldn’t see this happening. Once we were cruising again, it seemed to hold course much better, and we were more careful to adjust to match the magnetic compass at regular intervals for the rest of the trip. We also found out that 591’s transponder seemed to not be sending it’s altitude information back to the radar center. They could see our transponder code, but not the Mode C (altitude) data. Hopefully, this can be fixed before my second solo cross-country flight, as I’d like to fly into Urbana, which would mean going into class C airspace, where I can’t get by with just a transponder. For those wondering why this wasn’t noticed at, say, the beginning of the flight, transponder codes are really only used when on instrument flight or when in Class B/C airspace (big airports, with commercial flights). 591 rarely goes there, so it just hasn’t been used since the last person flew an ASR approach in Terre Haute.

The first half of the flight from Terre Haute to Mattoon was uneventful, and was mainly spent chatting about planes with Willis. About half way to Matttoon, I went to switch from the Terre Haute VOR to the Mattoon VOR only to discover that there was no signal from Mattoon. Some quick checking showed we had the numbers right, so we had an unexpected problem. We called up flight services and found out that a NOTAM (2) had been issued that Mattoon VOR was off the air. Thankfully, the NOTAM had been issued after we left from Bloomington, so it wasn’t something I had missed when getting my pre-flight briefing this morning. Since we clearly weren’t going to use the Mattoon VOR to guide us to the airport, we got some GPS navigation time in during the flight. The airport was soon in sight, and I made a reasonable approach and landing. Because of our approach point, the pattern was a base with a 45 degree turn to final (instead of the normal 90 degree turn one might expect). It all worked out and I made a reasonably smooth approach and landing. The mattoon runway is more narrow than the others I’ve landed on, which didn’t seem to cause me any issues (which is good, because that’s one of the places you can get in trouble regarding depth perception).

From Mattoon, we headed out to Lawrenceville. Lawrenceville only has a terminal VOR, so we had to use some dead reckoning and GPS navigation to get us from Mattoon to the range of the terminal VOR (about 1/2 way there). Flight was basically uneventful and was more chatting about planes with Willis. He spent a good deal of that time trying to convince me I should buy a classic fabric skinned plane when I finally get a real job. I’m going to enjoy plane shopping, I think. Lawrenceville is the home of the Vincennes University aviation school, and the pattern was nice and full of student pilots. I had a little more trouble with the radio than I would have liked (I keep stuttering when I speak – need to stop that), but the pattern work, approach, and landing were all pretty good. Since everyone was doing touch-and-goes, we did the same. We needed to leave in basically the opposite direction we took off, so around the pattern we went and off we went.

Since the pattern was pretty full and we didn’t stop, I didn’t get a chance to get my bearings, refold my map for the next leg, or get the directions for the next leg until we were a bit away from the airport. Next thing I know, Willis turns off the GPS and tunes the VOR receiver to dead air so I’m back on pilotage and dead reckoning. Unfortunately, I didn’t know *exactly* where I was at the time, so that made life a bit tricky. I knew I was on course, so that limited it a bit. Unfortunately, I drifted a bit while trying to pinpoint my location on the map, so it took a bit to get things worked out. Soon, I found a landmark, got back on course, and was able to fly from there to Bloomington without any issue. But lesson learned – always be ready to lose the electronic navigation aids and have to revert back to map and compass.

For some unknown reason, I was way too high on approach to Bloomington. Even more weird since I flew two approaches at foreign airports without problem. But get back home and screw it up. I entered the pattern a bit before midpoint on downwind and was at pattern altitude at that point. I was a bit fast (but only by 5 knots or so) parallel to the end of the runway, still at the right altitude. I think I just didn’t begin the descent fast enough on the last bit of downwind, then flew a really short base for some reason (I drifted too far during the last part of the downwind), leaving me too high after I turned on final. I lowered the flaps to 40 degrees and flew a steep approach (god bless those Cessnas) to correct. Ended up hitting the IFR touchdown point on the runway, which is a bit long for my usual approach, but no biggie). There was a bit of a cross-wind, which I corrected for without too much issue. Made a nice one-wheel landing, kept her straight while the other wheel came down, and we were home. I wasn’t happy with the approach, but I was really happy with the landing. The cross-wind caught me a bit by surprise because it was the first wind I had dealt with all day and I wasn’t as ready for it as I should have been (hence the short base). But even with 40 flaps acting as a giant sail, I still made a nice smooth landing. There’s hope for my cross-wind landings yet.

All in all, a good flight. Learned a lot, and was able to correct some things I didn’t like about my flying the last cross-country. I now get to do two solo cross-country flights. One will be KBMG -> KMTO -> KLWV -> KBMG, so basically the same thing I did minus the Terre Haute approach. The next one gets to be my choice of destination. I’m hoping I can head to Urbana to have a quick lunch with Anne and then fly back. The time and distance both look like they’re almost spot-on for what I’ll have left. I also need to do some night flying, which I’m hoping to do next week, as there’s a new moon and Willis likes doing them when it’s *really* dark outside. After that, it’s just practice for my checkride and then do the checkride. Woo!

(1) TAF: Terminal Aerodrome Forecast. A report giving the weather prediction for the next 24 hours for the area within 5 miles of an airport. They are updated 4 times a day, at 0000Z, 0600Z, 1200Z, and 1800Z (7:00pm EST, 1:00am EST, 7:00am EST, and 1:00pm EST). They include things like predicted cloud cover and ceilings, visibility, precipitation, etc

(2) NOTAM: Notice to airman – a notice from the FAA that something is out of the norm. Things like hardware (VORs, runway lights, runways, etc.) being out of service, flight service stations being down, etc. are all published via NOTAM for the period that the issue exists. Other NOTAMs include flight restrictions, like listing the prohibited airspace that is setup when the president is out and about the country.