Cross Country

For the last few ground sessions, we have been working on flight planning and talking about things like magnetic variation, wind correction angles, fuel burn, weight and balance, center of gravity, calculated airspeeds, pilotage, dead reckoning, etc.

A lot of this activity involves the infamous E6B Flight Computer. Think slide ruler. I know that there are electronic versions of the E6B but it seems like all of the CFIs like the old-school version. Personally I don't think that the manual version is any more difficult than some of the electronic versions that I played with at my FBO's pilot shop.


Anyhow, all of this preparation is for cross country flight. Today I had planned a cross country flight to Sedona (KSEZ). If you have never been to Sedona, I highly recommend it! The landscape is beautiful! The airport is situated on a mesa that is about 500 feet above the town. It looks like you're landing on an island.


The cross country flight plan includes certain landmarks that based on your calculated groundspeed, and heading adjusted for wind and magnetic variance, you should fly over at a calculated time.


A couple of things that I took away from this experience are that 1) Forecasted winds aloft are different than actual winds aloft. 2) Spotting landmarks from say, 9500 feet, is a lot more difficult that one would think. My instructor says that it takes some getting used to... For our first cross country flight, we did relatively well and while I was inclined to "check my work" against the Garmin, RC wouldn't buy it. We ultimately made it to our destination.

Had a great omlette at the Sedona airport. So, how are we going to get home? I guess I never thought about that! RC knew that I hadn't planned the return trip and conceded to allowing me to use GPS to get home. The first cross country was a lot of fun; however, don't plan on a lot of sight seeing if your the one flying the plane...


Flight time: 2.0


Total time: 43.1