I was actually endorsed to fly this short cross country prior to my first “real” cross country last week to Gadsden. As usual, due to scheduling and weather I wasn’t able to get this flight in until more recently. This is a short little 20nm hop from Carrollton (KCTJ) up to Northwest Atlanta Regional Airport in (KPUJ) in Paulding Co. The flight is very direct, with plenty of clear landmarks along the way, which is why I received the endorsement after a single flight up there with my CFI.
The morning of this flight my nephew flew a XC up to Chattanooga, TN in Big Red. After I saw a photo of 10Z parked at TAC Air in Chattanooga, I was itching to fly. The weather was still perfect late in the afternoon, so I headed to the airport after work. With the weather so beautiful, the airport was buzzing with people. There were people taking off, guys hangar flying on the ramp, and planes lining up for fuel. || Read more
After a couple of weeks of no flying at all, I was able to get in my first true dual cross country flight. I met my CFI out at the airport and we decided to plan a route from KCTJ > 25A > KGAD > KCTJ. We used 25A primarily as a checkpoint and to have more references than a direct flight to Gadsden. This was also the first flight that I used the CloudAhoy iPhone app for as well. I have no idea how that app works, but it captures some pretty impressive data.
We planned the flight manually using a sectional chart, plotter and E6-B, making calculations and completing a VFR flight planning sheet. We also verified our information with FltPlan.com. I was happy to see that my calculations were almost exactly what the online/automated planning stated. I was even happier when I discovered our actual flight times were within about a minute of what we had calculated. All of this helped to verify the ground learning I have been working on. However, there’s no way to replicate how hectic it can be to divide attention in the cockpit and stay ahead of the plane while in flight. I’m sure like everything else in my training, this will become easier with time and experience, but for this flight I had my hands pretty full and was just short of being overwhelmed. || Read more
For the first time since I started my PPL training, I was able to schedule a weekend lesson with my CFI. As I was preflighting Big Red, he said “I’ll be right back.” I was thinking he might be gathering information for our flight. I suspected that we would do a short cross country as intro to flying away from the airport. As usual, my CFI stepped it up a little bit. After preflighting, I met back up with him in the hangar and found that he printed the airport diagram and AF/D for Fulton County Airport (KFTY). He wanted me to radio procedures for flying into a towered airport and how to communicate with Atlanta approach. I was already looking forward to this flight, but now I was really excited! || Read more
Yesterday I had the opportunity to head out to the airport after work and get a little bit of practice in on short/soft field takeoffs and landings. I must admit, when I first started studying about these “specialty” takeoffs and landings, I was a little concerned. The techniques made sense in theory, but I wasn’t sure how difficult they would be to implement. As it turns out, they aren’t nearly as bad as I had imagined. I actually prefer the challenge, especially of these landings, over the normal landings I’ve been practicing thus far. || Read more
After just over a month of solo practice flights, I had another dual lesson. During this lesson Brian planned to go over some ground reference maneuvers as well as introducing short and soft field takeoffs and landings. There was a lot packed into this lesson and it was a ton of fun. We got to fly lower than our previous lessons to perform the maneuvers and then left the practice area to shoot some “real world” short field approaches at a grass strip a few miles away. || Read more
