Cross Country

This past Tuesday night I was able to do my first cross country flight. The FAA defines a cross country flight as any flight that the arrival is somewhere other than the departure airport. I made a flight plan to leave our home field of Augusta, Kansas (3AU) down to Ponca City, Oklahoma (PNC) where we did a touch and go and back to Augusta. In my opinion this was a good first cross country because it is 1. almost straight south of Augusta 2. only 57 miles and 3. there are numerous towns, airports and other landmarks along the way to help you keep track of where you are and adjust your flight path accordingly. After going through my flight plan (this entails figuring out what your heading will be mainly adjusting for wind correction and magnetic variation and checking the weather we talked through who we would talk to on ATC (although this is not required I believe it should be taken advantage of and is valuable experience). We were able to take off on runway 18 (heading 180 degrees or straight south) and were on our heading to Ponca City immediately. Our cruising altitude for the trip down was 5,500 feet above sea level (ASL). For visual flight rule (VFR) flights if your heading is between 0 and 179 (straight north to one degree west of straight south) you have to fly an odd number altitude plus 500 feet (3,500 5,500 7,500 etc.). Between 180 and 359 you have to fly an even number altitude plus 500 feet (2,500 4,500 6,500 etc.). Remember these are all altitudes above sea level. We contacted Wichita approach for flight following and after they got done dealing people that were bigger, faster, and actually in their airspace we were able to get a squawk code (a four digit number you put into your transponder so they can identify you on their radar scope). The hand off to Kansas City Center went smooth (mostly because my instructor handled the radio communications for the way down) and I felt I did a good job of identifying the towns and landmarks along the way. It was a blessing in disguise that there was haze that limited our visibility to 8-10 miles because it forced me to pick out more places to cross check our path, on a clear day I am told you can almost see Ponca City from a few thousand feet right after take off. The arrival at Ponca City went very well as I crossed over midfield and entered a right downwind for runway 17. The runway at PNC is almost twice as long and much wider than 3AU. These differences if you are not careful can be dangerous as they change your perception of your attitude. The touch-n-go went well and we headed back to 3AU. I handled the radio communications on the way back, I was not good at all but it was my first time right? The haze also caused it to get darker a little earlier and we got back to 3AU at what was essentially sundown at that point. While approaching 3AU we had a small issue with a plane taking off on runway 36 while we were entering the pattern for 18 (same runway just different ends going opposing directions...not good). Even though I had made several radio calls he did not say a thing until he pulled onto the runway and went to take off. Thankfully I had enough time to adjust and make a quick base turn to land on runway 36 (overshot final but was able to recover and land pretty well!). I was hoping to do some more flying today since it is my bi-weekly three day weekend but the weather is not cooperating. Hopefully the wind calms down the ceiling goes up and it stops raining sometime soon! Let me know if you have any questions about aviation!