Once again, these updates have been overcome by events. Back on the 11th, Michael and I did a cross-country night flight. We flew from Santa Fe to Santa Rosa (SXU) to Las Vegas, NM (LVS) and back to Santa Fe. The first and second legs were dead reckoning, which is considerably more difficult at night. Initially, we had I-25 in view and could sort of make out the towns along the sides. Once the interstate turned to the north, it was all inky blackness. We choose this route intentionally, because it would be difficult for dead reckoning. Regardless, the first leg went very well and I managed to stay pretty much on track.
The second leg, between SXU and LVS, passes over exactly nothing. Until we got up to cruise at 10,500' and could see Las Vegas in the distance, it was like flying into a black hole. Based on the chart, the LVS entry in the AFD, and experience from having driven by the airport in the past, I knew where to look for the airport lights and couldn't see them. I kept trying to use the radio to turn on the lights but was getting nothing. It wasn't until we were within a few miles that I actually got the airport to light up, which was a relief. The landing was a bit high but otherwise good.
The last leg we did VOR and GPS navigation to avoid the terrain hazard presented by the southern foot of the Sangre de Christo mountains. Saw the only traffic in the air of the entire trip as we were leaving the Las Vegas area—an air ambulence coming in and landing at the Las Vegas hospital. As we made the turn at TAFOY, we started to get into some light snow. Couldn't see the cloud it was coming from, and had no problems with visibility of the ground, but every time the strobe went off, there was a bunch of small white dots all around the plane. I got to turn on the pitot heat for the first time. Other than some minor novelty, the snow presented no problems for this flight. We used the GPS to set up for the ILS approach to runway 2 at SAF. Instruments make everything easier. I can't wait to start working on my instrument ticket.
This flight put me over 40 hours total time, 10 night takeoffs and landings, and three total hours of night flight. These are three of the requirements for a private pilot's license, so I'm getting close now. GPS track log for this flight.
I was supposed to do my long solo a couple days later, but (predictably) a huge storm rolled through the area, dumping 15 inches of snow on Los Alamos. We postponed the flight for a week, and when the 20th rolled around, the weather turned out to be perfect.
I had worked out a flight plan that took me north to Espanola, then northwest towards Farmington by way of all the small airports in the area. From there, I would visit Ship Rock, then travel south to Window Rock, AZ, over to Gallup, NM for a fuel stop, then back to Santa Fe by way of a flyby of Cabezon Peak.
The snow was still covering everything at the higher elevations, which made the first third of the flight very pretty. The airports I wanted to familiarize myself with were all plowed, though some of them had no plowed access road. Heron Reservoir was difficult to use as a waypoint because it was covered in a low ground fog, so I couldn't see the water as I approached. I had GPS backup, so I didn't have to rely on dead reckoning.
Coming into Farmington, there was a bit of traffic and the tower controller sounded sorta pissed off, so I just did a stop-and-go and continued on my way, rather than stay for a couple rotations of the pattern as I thought I might. Just west of Farmington is the Ship Rock Airstrip (5V5), which is a short strip with no accoutrements. There was a Cessna twin sitting on the taxiway as I entered the pattern, and he called for me to land before he would take the runway. I think knowing he was waiting for me combined with complete unfamiliarity with the airfield made me biff the approach pretty badly, ending up way too high for such a short strip. I tried to slip in, but it wasn't enough and I had to go around. I sheepishly called back on the radio announcing my plan to go around and told him he should go ahead and take off.
On the second try I pulled off a touch-and-go, then turned towards the Ship Rock mountain that is just a few miles to the west. I flew around it for a bit and took a bunch of pictures. Ship Rock is incredible, especially from close up and nearby. Highly recommended.
The 60nm flight south to Window Rock was uneventful. Had an interesting traffic event with a King Air coming out of RQE. We were in touch on the radio and he had me in sight so there was no problem, but I didn't see him until he was abeam me at the same altitude and reasonably close range. Quite exciting.
After checking out RQE, I turned back to the east and headed in to nearby Gallup for landing and refueling. No problems getting onto the ground, though I had no idea how to get to the fuel. A call to UNICOM informed me that a line guy would show me where to park. I drove down to the east end of the field and tooled around for a bit, with no line guy in sight. Only after I had pulled into a marked parking spot did some guy come running out and indicate I should park in a different spot. Whatever. Had a free donut at the FBO, checked the weather, paid my $109 for fuel, and took back off. From GUP I went over the Crowne Point uranium mining facility and on to Cabezon. The mountain looked interesting from nearby and above. There were no cars at the trailhead and I saw no one on the summit, so no wing-waving for me.
From there, it was a straight-line in to SAF over more or less familiar terrain. No problems getting back into home base, good landing on runway 33. 4.6 hours of total flight time. This puts me over the necessary cross country time for the private license. Now I just need 2.7 more hours of solo flight time, 1.7 more hours of simulated instrument time, and three hours of preparation for the practical exam. Should be wrapping up pretty soon! GPS track for this flight.
I neglected to write a trip report after my previous flight, so I'll bundle it in with this one; they were basically the same flight twice in a row anyway.
Last weekend Michael and I did a preparation flight for my first solo cross country. The idea was that we would fly to some far-off airport, learn about various navigation techniques along the way, and then I would repeat the flight but with no one else on board. In that way, the number of variables is reduced for my first cross-country solo.
We choose to fly to Vaughn (N17) which is about 75nm away from Santa Fe, out in the very flat southeastern plains of New Mexico. This was chosen specifically because it was flat. A lack of obvious terrain features makes navigation considerably harder. Because I have climbed in a healthy percentage of the mountain ranges of New Mexico I can recognize most of them by sight and can navigate great distances just by seeing where the mountains are relative to each other. Something similar is possible flying over roads that I'm familiar with, but in the SE there's only one road I know and everything else is barren unidentifiable flatness to me.
On the way down, we planned to use dead reckoning to navigate, so we picked out a series of landmarks on the charts that we thought would be recognizable from the air, then calculated our magnetic heading and travel time between each. The idea was we'd start the stopwatch at takeoff, then fly on the calculated heading for the calculated time, then look out the window and see if we could see the landmark, then repeat, all the way to Vaughn. On the way back, we'd do one VOR leg (N17 to OTO) using radio beacons to navigate, and one GPS leg, using signals from OUTER SPACE to navigate.
We also went through the full weather breifing, flight plan filing, and pirep reporting motions. This was to be my first real cross country flight so we did almost everything you can do without entering fancy airspace. I invited Nina to join us and she invited her college friend Skye to come as well, so we had a full plane.
The first leg, the dead-reckoning part of the show, was a total disaster. I found the first waypoint at the top of climb largely because it was only a few miles out from the airport and was easy to spot. After that, we were so far off course that we never saw another waypoint. It was really frustrating. All four of us were scanning the ground looking for this damned microwave tower and we just couldn't find it. Eventually we crossed Interstate 40, which is easily recognized, but couldn't identify Clines Corners, the only point of interest along I-40 near where we were supposed to cross. Where were we?? Finally, a ways south of I-40, I saw a feature that I recognized on the chart—a large wind farm on top of a low mesa. We were flying very close to it, which indicated we were a good 15 miles east of where we were supposed to be. Ouch. Initially, I couldn't figure out what had gone wrong and I was really feeling bad about my ability to navigate.
Then we did a windspeed calculation using the Garmin 430. It indicated 33 knots This explained much. The winds aloft forecast had estimated 12 knots, which is what I used to calculate the wind correction angles and ground speeds for each leg of the trip. With winds three times faster than we calculated, there was no chance dead reckoning was going to work. This was a great lesson in how badly dead reckoning can fail if the forecasts are wrong, and also a great explanation for why no one uses it. Michael said that I had to learn it because it would be on my practical exam. After that, I'd probably never use it again. He has over 4,500 hours and says he hasn't used dead reckoning once since he took his practical.
The wonky winds forecast made me feel a lot better, and we did actually arrive at Vaughn successfully. The surface winds were reasonably low so I went in for a landing. The airport is brand new; it's only been there a couple years. The google maps satellite imagery still shows it under construction. There are no facilities at all. No buildings, no hangars, no planes. Just a big parking lot for tying down aircraft and a single strip. No runway lights (just retroreflective posts). This is a minimal airport. I can't figure out why they built one here; Vaughn is at the intersection of nowhere and nothing , and there's no reason to go there unless you're passing through on your way to someplace else. I stop there to eat at the 24-hour diner when I'm coming or going to Carlsbad for some caving... but if you were flying, there are better airports nearby that have 1) fuel available, 2) bathrooms, 3) something to see. Anyway, the airport is there, and it makes a good difficult place to navigate to on cross-country training. Maybe they built it just for me.
The landing was fine. I was glad that I could pull off an acceptable landing at an airfield I had never seen before, particularly when I had an audience in the back seat. We pulled onto the ramp and I called in to flight service to get my flight plan closed. Then it was time to takeoff and head back. Approximate time spent in Vaughn: 3 minutes.
The radio nav portion of the show was so much easier. At the top of climb, we tuned in the OTO VOR, turned to the indicated bearing, and went straight to it. That's all there is to it. GPS was even easier. It draws a map with a big magenta line showing the direct path between where you are and where you want to go. You keep the line vertical on the map and you end up where you want to be. Nothing could be simpler.
We landed well back in Santa Fe and that was that. The next flight I would do this same route, but alone. Nina and Skye seemed to have enjoyed themselves, they spent most of the flight writing notes to each other in a small note pad and taking pictures of each other (there wasn't much photoworthy outside).
On the GPS track, you can see the effect of the unexpectedly high winds aloft. The SAF-N17 leg (to the east) was supposed to be a direct line between the two airports. We start heading considerably farther east than we should have because of the huge winds blowing us off course. When I see the windfarm, you can see the big turn to the south that I make to correct. On takeoff, we used a calculated bearing during climb, and you can see the point where we stop flying that bearing and start using the VOR. The GPS leg is direct and straight, no problems. The moral of this story is: use GPS when its available.
So that brings us up to yesterday, my first solo cross country flight. I decided to attempt to do all of the same navigation again and hoped that my winds aloft would be more accurate this time. There was some concern about the surface winds as well; there is no forecasting at Vaughn, and the closest reporting stations indicated the possibility of significant wind speeds. If the winds at Vaughn were above what I am endorsed to land at solo, I wouldn't be able to land there and would have to fly back to Santa Fe. This would be a bummer, since it wouldn't count as "cross-country hours" if I don't have a landing at an airport >50nm away from my starting location.
Anyway, I took off, and started the dead reckoning. It had snowed a couple days earlier and the snow left a patina of white on everything along the entire route. It turns everything in a high-contrast mottled mess that is difficult to pick out features in. Nevertheless, I was able to find all of the waypoints. Even that damned radio tower. If anything, I was over-correcting for wind and found myself a bit west of my desired track at a couple points. But never far enough that I couldn't see where I wanted to be. This was a huge relief.
Upon arrival at Vaughn, I found the winds to be very agreeable. They were blowing straight down the runway, didn't seem to be too variable, and I'd estimate based on the wind sock that they were blowing at about 15 knots. I decided that landing was acceptable. The runway at first looked like it had glare ice on it, but it turned out to just be melting snow. A bit of slush was all, no problems.
The landing was good, I closed the flight plan, and flew back. Radio nav was just as easy solo as it was with a full plane. I had some interface issues with the 430; its various knobs take some getting used to to be able to program in the waypoints I wanted to fly to.
About half way back, I realized that I had forgotten to take my GPS out of my flight bag and turn it on, so I don't have a flight track of this flight. This is a big disappointment for me, because I totally nailed the dead reckoning and wanted to show off. Now I wonder if Michael will think I either biffed it again or didn't land at Vaughn and didn't want to admit it. :(
My landing at SAF was one of my worst in a long time; I think it had something to do with the oddly good performance of the plane in the really cold temperatures. When I flared for landing, the plane stayed in the air so long that I got distracted by it and started monkeying with pitch and power to get it down rather than keeping myself aligned well with the runway. I ended up coming down somewhat hard with a good sideways component. Successful and safe landing, but very ugly and uncomfortable.
Almost to 40 hours, the minimum required for a pilot's license! My next flight will either be my night cross country (with Michael on board) or my long solo cross country. The night one (tomorrow) will probably get canceled as a large winter storm is supposed to blow through.
