Only a single booking today, and the last one of the day, from 5 to 6:30. I had forgotten my map at home, but Brad managed to scrounge one up for us. As we walked out to the plane, Brad was laughing his evil laugh so I was a little anxious about was what ahead. Especially since Brad had been talking to Dave about ideas for diversions.
We headed out to the practice area and then right to a small town, the name of which escapes me right now. Anyways, once we got there, Brad showed me where we had to divert to. It was quite a ways away, somewhere around 23 NM or so. I came up with a heading and a time estimate and away we went. I let Brad know when I thought we were about half way there and estimated how much longer it would take to get the rest of the way (the same time it took for the first half). We eventually reached where we were headed, although a little off to the left (there was quite a strong wind). When we got there, Brad told me what I did wrong. I didn’t reset my heading indicator, I didn’t lean the mixture, and I even manged to lose a bit of alititude along the way. I also didn’t circle any obstacles in the path. Not great, but I did manage to find the place, so he was happy about that.
Brad picked another place, I figured out what needed to be figured out, reset my heading indicator, leaned the mixture out and set off. Well I have no idea what went wrong this time, but I got pretty far off course and pretty much ended up flying back the way we had come. Oops. We had only planned to fly about half way anyways, so we turned back towards Ottawa.
It was nearly 6:30 as we made our way back and it was definitely getting dark out at this point. I’ll tell you, the city at night from the air is pretty spectacular! I can’t wait to get my license so that I can start my night rating.
Brad got me to do a soft field landing when we came in, and although it certainly wasn’t my best one, it wasn’t the worst one I ever did either so…
Supposed to fly again (solo) tomorrow morning, but I don’t think the weather is going to cooperate.