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My second cross country took place yesterday, June 21, 2003!
I made sure to get to the airport early so we could get the proper weather planning taken care of rather than racing to get things taken care of like the last cross country. I got to Falwell Airport (W24) at 9am and we got down to business. The Virginia Air Defense had swamped the lounge. (The VAD is a government program like CAP except not nearly as professional and kinda leans toward Army heritage rather than Air Force. Last time I had been to Falwell and they were there, they were teaching eachother how to Iron clothes LOL) Anyways, My Instructor and I pulled the weather and performed the necessary calculations and filled the naviagation log up with details concerning our flight.
I called Leesburg Flight Service Station and Filed our flight plan. I was put on hold for about 7 minutes before they were able to "service" me! They played this funky elevator music that seemed to have a hint of porn music in it! Yeah, weird. Anyways, all was taken care of and I preflighted the C-152.
Two VAD pilots took the other C-152 (N4824B) out for Aeral Photography and as the C-152 zommed down the hill and lifted off runway 10, it became obvious that there was turbulent air over the runway. 24B's wings waggled and the plane chugged into the air. I became worried that we might have to scratch the entire XC flight but we decided to "give it a go!"
Leg 1:
Aircraft: C152
Time Enroute: 45 minutes
Cruise Altitude: 5500 MSL
Time Off: 9:41am
We taxied up the hill and took off at 9:41am. We had a brisk tail wind of 16 knots and so we were "cooking" along. I called Leesburg after takeoff and opened the flight plan. We climbed up to 5500 MSL and proceeded east towards FCI (Richmond Chesterfield Airport). I requester Flight Following and contacted Washington Center. About half way to FCI we encountered some puffy clouds at 5000 feet and had to desend to 3500 feet. It was cool cause We flew through gaps in the clouds barely remaining VFR! It was awesome. As we got near Chesterfield, we crossed over the Swift Creek Resaviour and all the Planned neighborhoods like one sees decending into ATL were all around us. There were about a Dozen aircraft in the pattern/prop turning at Chesterfield so I took extreme caution entering the pattern.
I flew a almost perfect final and touched down 45 minutes after takeoff having covered 74 Nautical Miles. We taxiied to the ramp and I put the little squat C-152 right next to her bigger sister, a Cessna Citation! I performed the shutdown and we walked across the baking tarmac to the chilled GA Terminal.
First things First! I went to the flight Planning office anc closed the flight plan and filed teh return flight plan. We were going to eat at the local restrurant but it is only open on Weekdays, Doh! Well, we decided since we had 20 minutes to burn we went out and walked down the tarmac checking out the local festivities. It turns out they were giving Young Eagle flights so we watched little and older kids hop in a C-337 Super Skymaster eager fly for the first time!
We'll time caught up with us and we decided it was time for us to head home. After a brief Preflight we climbed in and I perfomed all the neccessary preflight checklists. We taxied out to runway 33 and performed our run-up. FCI is the headquarters for Virginia CAP and a CAP C-182 taxied up behind us and began their run up also. After the run-up, we taxied onto the runway and tookoff.
Leg 2:
Aircraft: C152
Time Enroute: 30 minutes
Cruise Altitude: 2500 MSL
Time Off: 12:05 pm
We flew the Flat Rock VOR to the VOR. I opened the flight plan and contacted Potomac Approach and requested Flight Following. We were going to climb to 4500 feet but Clouds caused us to amend out altitude to 2500 feet. We flew up to teh VOR and then Flew the From VOR on heading 268 heading back to Falwell. On the way back, we used visual checkpoints to backup the VOR navigation. Some of the Checkpoints I used were: Golfcourses, The VOR station, A town called Ballsville, and some others. Then, the coolest thing happened.
We were nearly half way from the VOR to W24 and my instructor pulled a "Hypothetical situation." He said we had a rough engine of something just wasn't right and we needed to Divert to a nearby airport. I called Potomac Approach, requested the cancelation of Flight Following and squwaked 1200. I took a look the charts and saw that Farmville Airport (FVX) was about 12 NM to the southwest. I tuned 45 degrees south and we proceeded to Farmville. The base to Final turn was crap as I was way off center and I got crap for that later but we landed fine.
On the ground, there were these little birds that run real fast, and they CAn fly. They are kinda like Sand Pippers like you see at the beach, but anyways. My instructor told me he had seen these before and that their were probably baby birds nearby. He walked behind the parked C-152 and began hunting through the grass. The Momma bird then did an awesome thing. And My instructor knew the brid would do this. Momma began showing her tail feathers like a hand or cards, Flopping around trying to look injured to persuade us away from her babies to her. It was awesome.
We walked inside to cancel the flight plan and what do you know, there is a little resturant there! WOW! We had cheesburgers and while we were eating a CAP C-182 came in and landed. They got out and came in and had lunch too! I was pretty positive they were the same guys who had perfomed their runup behind us back at Chesterfield. We finished lunch, paid and went back out to the plane.
Leg 3:
Aircraft: C152
TimeEnroute: Not recorded, perhaps 20minutes
Cruise Altitude: 2500 MSL
Time Off: Not recorded, perhaps 1:45
We took off and turned west toward the Blueridge mountains. It was barely 2pm but it felt like 5pm. Clouds had begun to form an almost overcast layer at 5500 MSL so the land looked darker than normal. (Sunglasses don't help either!)
We flew back to Falwell and landed with a killer windsheer on Short Final. I got freaked out cause we were left of the runway, 35 feet off the ground, 50 knots and not to the runway yet. I gave it power and we landed fine. We flew a total of 2.4 hours, 0.6 hours more than the first XC.
All in all, I had a fantastic time! Everytime I go up flying I know Im getting that much closer to getting that covetted license!
Hope you enjoyed the trip report! If you got a question, please don't hesitate to ask!
DeltaASA16
I made sure to get to the airport early so we could get the proper weather planning taken care of rather than racing to get things taken care of like the last cross country. I got to Falwell Airport (W24) at 9am and we got down to business. The Virginia Air Defense had swamped the lounge. (The VAD is a government program like CAP except not nearly as professional and kinda leans toward Army heritage rather than Air Force. Last time I had been to Falwell and they were there, they were teaching eachother how to Iron clothes LOL) Anyways, My Instructor and I pulled the weather and performed the necessary calculations and filled the naviagation log up with details concerning our flight.
I called Leesburg Flight Service Station and Filed our flight plan. I was put on hold for about 7 minutes before they were able to "service" me! They played this funky elevator music that seemed to have a hint of porn music in it! Yeah, weird. Anyways, all was taken care of and I preflighted the C-152.
Two VAD pilots took the other C-152 (N4824B) out for Aeral Photography and as the C-152 zommed down the hill and lifted off runway 10, it became obvious that there was turbulent air over the runway. 24B's wings waggled and the plane chugged into the air. I became worried that we might have to scratch the entire XC flight but we decided to "give it a go!"
Leg 1:
Aircraft: C152
Time Enroute: 45 minutes
Cruise Altitude: 5500 MSL
Time Off: 9:41am
We taxied up the hill and took off at 9:41am. We had a brisk tail wind of 16 knots and so we were "cooking" along. I called Leesburg after takeoff and opened the flight plan. We climbed up to 5500 MSL and proceeded east towards FCI (Richmond Chesterfield Airport). I requester Flight Following and contacted Washington Center. About half way to FCI we encountered some puffy clouds at 5000 feet and had to desend to 3500 feet. It was cool cause We flew through gaps in the clouds barely remaining VFR! It was awesome. As we got near Chesterfield, we crossed over the Swift Creek Resaviour and all the Planned neighborhoods like one sees decending into ATL were all around us. There were about a Dozen aircraft in the pattern/prop turning at Chesterfield so I took extreme caution entering the pattern.
I flew a almost perfect final and touched down 45 minutes after takeoff having covered 74 Nautical Miles. We taxiied to the ramp and I put the little squat C-152 right next to her bigger sister, a Cessna Citation! I performed the shutdown and we walked across the baking tarmac to the chilled GA Terminal.
First things First! I went to the flight Planning office anc closed the flight plan and filed teh return flight plan. We were going to eat at the local restrurant but it is only open on Weekdays, Doh! Well, we decided since we had 20 minutes to burn we went out and walked down the tarmac checking out the local festivities. It turns out they were giving Young Eagle flights so we watched little and older kids hop in a C-337 Super Skymaster eager fly for the first time!
We'll time caught up with us and we decided it was time for us to head home. After a brief Preflight we climbed in and I perfomed all the neccessary preflight checklists. We taxied out to runway 33 and performed our run-up. FCI is the headquarters for Virginia CAP and a CAP C-182 taxied up behind us and began their run up also. After the run-up, we taxied onto the runway and tookoff.
Leg 2:
Aircraft: C152
Time Enroute: 30 minutes
Cruise Altitude: 2500 MSL
Time Off: 12:05 pm
We flew the Flat Rock VOR to the VOR. I opened the flight plan and contacted Potomac Approach and requested Flight Following. We were going to climb to 4500 feet but Clouds caused us to amend out altitude to 2500 feet. We flew up to teh VOR and then Flew the From VOR on heading 268 heading back to Falwell. On the way back, we used visual checkpoints to backup the VOR navigation. Some of the Checkpoints I used were: Golfcourses, The VOR station, A town called Ballsville, and some others. Then, the coolest thing happened.
We were nearly half way from the VOR to W24 and my instructor pulled a "Hypothetical situation." He said we had a rough engine of something just wasn't right and we needed to Divert to a nearby airport. I called Potomac Approach, requested the cancelation of Flight Following and squwaked 1200. I took a look the charts and saw that Farmville Airport (FVX) was about 12 NM to the southwest. I tuned 45 degrees south and we proceeded to Farmville. The base to Final turn was crap as I was way off center and I got crap for that later but we landed fine.
On the ground, there were these little birds that run real fast, and they CAn fly. They are kinda like Sand Pippers like you see at the beach, but anyways. My instructor told me he had seen these before and that their were probably baby birds nearby. He walked behind the parked C-152 and began hunting through the grass. The Momma bird then did an awesome thing. And My instructor knew the brid would do this. Momma began showing her tail feathers like a hand or cards, Flopping around trying to look injured to persuade us away from her babies to her. It was awesome.
We walked inside to cancel the flight plan and what do you know, there is a little resturant there! WOW! We had cheesburgers and while we were eating a CAP C-182 came in and landed. They got out and came in and had lunch too! I was pretty positive they were the same guys who had perfomed their runup behind us back at Chesterfield. We finished lunch, paid and went back out to the plane.
Leg 3:
Aircraft: C152
TimeEnroute: Not recorded, perhaps 20minutes
Cruise Altitude: 2500 MSL
Time Off: Not recorded, perhaps 1:45
We took off and turned west toward the Blueridge mountains. It was barely 2pm but it felt like 5pm. Clouds had begun to form an almost overcast layer at 5500 MSL so the land looked darker than normal. (Sunglasses don't help either!)
We flew back to Falwell and landed with a killer windsheer on Short Final. I got freaked out cause we were left of the runway, 35 feet off the ground, 50 knots and not to the runway yet. I gave it power and we landed fine. We flew a total of 2.4 hours, 0.6 hours more than the first XC.
All in all, I had a fantastic time! Everytime I go up flying I know Im getting that much closer to getting that covetted license!
Hope you enjoyed the trip report! If you got a question, please don't hesitate to ask!
DeltaASA16
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