First XC is Tomorrow... Any Advice

I didn't make the claim about the busiest, another CFI did. :-) Whew. Ducked that one. haha.

I enjoyed the view most of the time, but on final, i was concentrating on flying. On the climb out of 31R, we turned right semi-quickly after take off to avoid the school (per AF/D). This also avoided the class C. There was a bit of turbulance as we climbed pretty steep on our departure leg.

Here's a question: I climbed at 70Kts, Vy is 73, Vx is 59. I wanted to get up to clear the hills, but didn't want to over heat the engine. Is this a good or bad decision? Looking back, i probably didn't need to climb so quickly and would have cleared them at Vy anyways. My CFI didn't say much when I said I'm climbing slightly slower then Vy to clear the mountain.

Sorry for thread hijacking. :-)
 
TazzyTazzy said:
I didn't make the claim about the busiest, another CFI did. :-) Whew. Ducked that one. haha.

I enjoyed the view most of the time, but on final, i was concentrating on flying. On the climb out of 31R, we turned right semi-quickly after take off to avoid the school (per AF/D). This also avoided the class C. There was a bit of turbulance as we climbed pretty steep on our departure leg.

Here's a question: I climbed at 70Kts, Vy is 73, Vx is 59. I wanted to get up to clear the hills, but didn't want to over heat the engine. Is this a good or bad decision? Looking back, i probably didn't need to climb so quickly and would have cleared them at Vy anyways. My CFI didn't say much when I said I'm climbing slightly slower then Vy to clear the mountain.

Sorry for thread hijacking. :-)
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I really only worry about Vx / Vy when I need to worry about it. Recursive thinking, I know. I generally cruise climb, which is faster than Vy.
 
Brad Z said:
Once you get up in the air, figure out your heading, taking into consideration winds aloft, and then pick a distant landmark off the nose and point to it. Control the aircraft pointing to this distant landmark
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Good piece of advice too.

So here's how it went down in a nutshell. Last night I checked out my various sources of weather and called for an outlook briefing. Got up early this am and called for the abbreviated briefing mainly to get winds aloft and see if anything new popped up. Briefer detailed some icing, but at far higher altitudes than I'd be dancing around. Only concern to me was wind. Destin was about 12 kts at almost 45' to the runway gusting to ~20. I've done it before, but it's not fun. So I fill in my corrected headings, calculated ground speed, fuel burn for the three plans I'd be filing (last leg we follow the gulf coast, and it's pretty hard to miss Destin at that point) and I'm off to the airport.

With the winds noticeably picking up, I check with my CFI to make sure he wasn't just waiting for me to make a go/no go decision myself. He assures me we're going because if we 'wait for it to be perfect, we may not go for another month, and this "breeze" will make a man of ya". So he checks all my calculations and we call in the plan. I call Eglin Clearance from the ground to get permission to go through the north corridor to Andalusia and off to pre-flight. Unless it was my imagination, I promise the winds just kept picking up. Weather check after start up, winds are now around 02015G24. About a 60' differential from rwy 32.

Definitely had my hands full with the winds on takeoff, but the airspace was nice and quiet, and the plane just settled in nice and smooth at about 900'. It was so quiet that Eglin departure even cleared us through the restricted area straight to 79J since they had nothing going on (guess the "breezes" would blow their bombs too far off course), but we stuck to our route for the sake of practice.

Operationally, things went well. My ground speed was a little better than calculated, but not unacceptably off. I had to be reminded that it might be a good time to tune to coming frequencies on the first legs, and how to talk to FSS to open and close the flight plans for various legs of the route. All in all it went pretty well though. One time I let the heading indicator wander a 'little' from the magnetic compass on leg 3 to panama city beach. When I thought the airport should be almost directly ahead, it was in fact 30 degrees left. That's a large runway to miss! :rolleyes:

My CFI kept up with foreflight and on a few occasions showed me the route plotted with our plane within about a qtr mile of that magic magenta line. All except for the latter half of that third segment of course :mad2:. I felt comfortable on the radios (except FSS, but probably because today is the first day I've called them).

The highlights: 1] Flying around army training copters at Cairns (though I could tell I was a nuisance to them) 2] Landing at a controlled tower - First Time - and feeling prepared to do so 3] Passing a departing Southwest airlines jet on approach to Panama City - first time to see an airliner so close from the air 4] And last but definitely not least, navigating 200 NM in 3 hours with 4 landings using a map and MY calculations.

I honestly think the first solo cross country might be more gratifying than that first solo! Thank you guys for the advice. I am no pro, but being the first time, I think it went well with many of your inputs.
 
Sounds like you had a great flight! That's a long flight. 200NM..at least to me.

LeeDeep said:
I honestly think the first solo cross country might be more gratifying than that first solo! Thank you guys for the advice. I am no pro, but being the first time, I think it went well with many of your inputs.
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Can't wait for us to both find out! :-) Either way, you and I will always remember our first solo. :-)
 
Mitch, you don't have to fly in a straight line.

Vy will get you the most altitude in a given time.

The only time to climb slower than Vy is when clearing an obstacle on takeoff, or when constrained by terrain and aircraft performance (not at all a good place to be).

Sometimes you climb faster than Vy to improve visibility. I try to do that only above 1000 AGL, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

Visibility ahead in a 172 SUCKS at Vx. At a non towered airport, you're not guaranteed that someone isn't coming right at you (especially in calm wind), so you would be well advised to fly slower than Vy only when you really need to. Gliders are a particular problem, as they will be much lower in the pattern than you.
 
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Lee -
Congrats.
Sounds like you did good and had Fun.
 
MAKG1 said:
Mitch, you don't have to fly in a straight line.
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Wait. I'm confused. You mean. I can turn? :goofy: Hehe. I know. I could have turned or did circles.

I'm just being a sponge and trying to learn as much as I can and like to learn about various alternatives. :-)

MAKG1 said:
Vy will get you the most altitude in a given time.
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Understand that. But, the mountain sorta kinda butts up against the airport. Not that close. For for grins, lets say it is. It's not an obstacle at the airport (tree or whatever to clear at Vx) per say, but need to climb out of a valley.

I guess the question is, is flying between Vx and Vy an acceptable solution to climb out of a valley? Just need to keep an eye on the temps and running pretty rich to keep the engine cool.

Cheers.
 
TazzyTazzy said:
I guess the question is, is flying between Vx and Vy an acceptable solution to climb out of a valley? Just need to keep an eye on the temps and running pretty rich to keep the engine cool.

Cheers.
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Does it give you adequate terrain/obstacle clearance? Then yes. The only two people who really care about you flying Vx and Vy are your instructor and the DPE. Maybe there are still some anal-retentive pilots who feel the need to fly at Vx or Vy every time, but once your training is done, just fly at whatever attitude you feel works safely for the situation. Sometimes I will climb at 500fpm which is WAY WAY WAY faster than Vy, just because well, just because.
 
While you "can," it's not advisable to fly slower than Vy. Leaving KRHV for the north, just follow 680. The highest terrain is barely 1000 feet, and it's some 15 miles north of the airport.

It won't save you time to climb that slow.

If I were headed over Mt. Hamilton from KHRV, I'd circle in just about anything. There is a departure procedure for SJC that goes through there, so you DO NOT want to have restricted visibility anywhere you can help it. I've never crossed through there at 5000 or so without NorCal giving me multiple traffic advisories. There really are better routes to just about anywhere. If headed to the Central Valley, Livermore/Altamont and Pacheco Pass are both much better.

Though it may be counterintuitive, it would be much safer to cross SJC midfield back and forth, as there is virtually no traffic southwest of the airport and you can circle safely there.

You're pretty far along in your training now. You tell us, are you happy with your forward visibility during a short field takeoff?
 
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MAKG1 said:
You're pretty far along in your training now. You tell us, are you happy with your forward visibility during a short field takeoff?
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I do special neck stretches before short field and soft field take offs. :-) Being 6'4 to start with, my special trademark neck stretches help even more. :lol:
 
I don't think there's anything quite as exciting as the first solo XC...and really, all the solo XC's after that during the PPL training. I was so frickin' happy to be leaving the Bay Area (was learning at KSQL) after spending so long doing air work along the coast and pattern work at HAF, HWD, PAO, RHV, and SQL.

Congratulations and keep it up!
 
Yeah, but when practicing the pattern at SQL, you can repeatedly flip the bird on base (or crosswind if 12 is in use) to Larry Ellison. :)
 
I don't mean to step all over your thread but the weather held up for me yesterday and I was able to make my xc. A simple 105nm flight direct to AIK from LRO. Had a decent headwind up which was hard to predict. Winds between 3000'and 6000' were almost exactly a 180deg shift. We flew at 4500'. Had about an 18kt headwind so that slowed us down. Flew up using pilotage with some referencing of the GPS. Dead reckoning was out the window since ATC diverted us and the headwind. CFI said we would recalculate on the next xc. Flew back with the GPS off and found my way back home just fine.

Things I learned were to pick slightly different landmarks and study the airport I'm flying to more before I leave. Some of the landmarks I picked were easy to spot but things like straight roads perpendicular to my route only really told me how far along I was, not how far north or south I was. Since this is a route I'll be taking regularly in the future I was able to find even better landmarks. When I arrived at the Aiken airport I knew which runway number I wanted to land on but wasn't quite sure which was which when trying to get on a 45.

I got to interact with ATC a lot more. Since I'm from an uncontrolled airport it's still a little intimidating, but I was much more comfortable. A couple more times and I think I'll be there.

Met my parents at the airport and they took us to a nice lunch before we had to head back. Can't wait to do it again!
 
Feel free, Dodge. I like to read about other XC experiences anyway. The more I read, the more I learn. Glad yours went well. I saw SC in your previous post, but didn't realize MTP. That's awesome. My wife and I moved to FL in April from Summerville. I love Charleston, wasn't much of a fan of suburbia that is Summerville having no kids. But she worked at the hospital in Walterboro (yyyyeeeeaaaahhhh), so MTP or downtown, even West Ashley was too far of a drive.

Anyway, congrats on the XC. When I head back that way to check on our rental, I'll ping ya since we seem to be on the same pace (and hopefully will have that golden ticket to fly together w/out someone else).
 
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