Well after a long wait, Sunday was the day that I finally got to do my cross country to Kingston. Unfortunately Saturday was the day of Shelley’s wedding which meant I wasn’t in tip top shape on Sunday, but I survived.
I actually checked the weather earlier in the day and it wasn’t looking good. I went to the club anyways, thinking that I would just end up doing some flying around Ottawa. Just before two, Brad tells me that we’re going to Kingston. That meant I was way behind on my flight planning. Oops.
I took about an hour to complete the variable part of the flight plan and then actually file the flight plan. We ended up heading out at around 15:40 or so. It took us 1.4 hours to get down there. I learned a lot on the trip down, mostly that I was rusty again after more than 2 weeks since my last flight. I was having trouble holding my altitude and less troulbe holding my heading. I must have done ok though since we reached Kingston around about the time we expected to.
I don’t know if it was due to the night before or what, but I really need to work on my radio communications.
We landed on runway 25 and then pulled into the Esso ‘parking lot’. :) Grabbed a bag of chips and relaxed a bit before heading back.
We took off runway 25 and headed towards our set heading point of Sydenham. Once there we set heading for Carp and away we went. Let me tell you, navigating over a bunch of lakes (and nothing else) is tricky! I did much better with my navigation on the way back than I did on the way there. Still had trouble with altitude though.
When we were getting close to Carp, I couldn’t find the airport. I figured we couldn’t have flown by it, since enough time haden’t passed for that to happen, but for the life of me I couldn’t find it. Brad was being awefully quiet at this time. I asked him how far off course he was going to let me get to which he replied, “we’ll see”. Turns out I wasn’t off course, we were flying right over top of the airport! Crazy stuff! Anyways, flew over it, then turned around and descended to circuit altitude. Got into the circuit and did a touch and go before heading back to Ottawa.
On the way back into Ottawa, the tower cleared me to the right downwind of runway 22. I was at 2000 feet at the time. I kept going, heading for the airport. Just about the time I was thinking that I should probably descend down to circuit height the tower guy came on the radio and told me to descend to circuit height. Turns out I should have started my descent when he first cleared me to the circuit.
Had a pretty decent landing to finish the day off. Brad reminded me to ask Ground to close my flight plan after we were off the runway. Good thing to remember. It ended up taking us 1.4 hours to get back, which meant a total of 2.8 hours for the day. It may not sound like much, but with the state I was in, it was enough to make me pretty exhausted.
Now I have to fly a diversions lessons with a different instructor before doing the same cross country by myself. Not sure when the will happen. I’ve got my ground school exam tonigth (Wednesday). I would have liked to get it in on Saturday and then perhaps do the cross country on Sunday, but it seems ALL the instructors are booked solid on Saturday so…
If not this weekend, then next weekend for sure. I just have to make sure that I keep flying until then, even if it is just in the circuit.