When I left the house, the METAR for KSAF read "00000KT 10SM CLR," meaning zero wind, zero clouds, and perfect visibility. Not a bad day to fly.

We started off with most of a simulated checkride just to make sure all my maneuvers were in order. Flew out to the SW practice area, staying a bit more south than usual because there were some experimentals doing acrobatics practice out over the reservoir. Started with steep turns; I came out of the first one a bit early, and got a bit shallow in the second, but otherwise they were OK. Then we did slow flight maneuvers. This was going fine until we heard the Santa Fe tower warn someone else that we were in the area doing maneuvers. As I was doing a shallow turn to the left in slow flight, I was almost 100% focused on instruments since in slow flight you are so nose up you can't really see where you're going anyway, when Michael calls "right turn, now" in a somewhat urgent voice. I reverse my turn and look out the left window to see another Cessna cruising by about 50' below us and not more than 200' away. Probably the closest I've been to another aircraft in the air. Michael says, "I bet the ATC people get pretty excited when they see something like that on their radar."

We continue with slow flight for a bit, then a simulated electrical fire in the cockpit breaks out, with Michael doing some B-grade acting in the right seat with lots of simulated coughs and simulated not being helpful, I got out the fire extinguisher and failed to put out the imaginary fire with my simulated pull of the trigger. So, having simulated depletion of the extinguisher, we entered a high-speed spiral dive of the aircraft to get it on the ground as soon as possible. Note that the dive was not simulated. Got the aircraft up to a ground speed of 142 knots during that dive, which is pretty fast for a 172 with no wind... When we got close to the ground, I set up for an emergency landing in an open field west of La Bajada. The cars diving on a nearby road were probably pretty excited about my mad dive and then getting down really close to the ground out in a field. But given that this is the standard practice area for the flight school, they probably see that stuff all the time.

After aborting the emergency landing, we stayed low and flew out to a nearby windmill and did a turn around a point. With no wind, this was trivial. We just did one circuit. Then we went over to the nearby road and did some S-turns, again trivial with no wind.

That was it for maneuvers, so we flew up to Los Alamos for some more landing practice there. As we were passing the radio telescope, there were two other planes in the LAM traffic, one doing his run-up and one preparing to land ahead of us. The Mooney ahead of us landed, then the Bonanza on the ground back taxied to runway 9 for takeoff. At this point, we were just flying over White Rock and I decided to do a loop around my house to give the Bonanza some space. Having visually confirmed that my house wasn't on fire, and with the other plane safely out of the way, we went in for our landing at LAM. The Bechtel Bump was more significant this time than I had felt it before, and there were some squirrelly winds just before touchdown. I thought I was handling it pretty well, but right at the last second my directional control went a little south and the landing ended up ugly. This is somewhat discouraging, considering there wasn't much wind speed at all; just a bit variable. We taxied off to the terminal ramp to make way for another plane that was preparing to take off, then followed him out and back towards Santa Fe.

As we entered the left downwind for runway 2, Michael suggested we try to do an impossible turn just for demonstration purposes. The tower cleared us for it. So we did a short-field stop-and-go landing on 2 (which went very well), From about the 2000' marker on 2, we did a standard takeoff, then climbed to 7,100' (about 800' AGL). Here, Michael pulled the throttle out and we waited the two seconds to simulate the time it takes to realize that your engine has indeed died, then I pushed us forward to the desired 65 knot best glide speed, and started a reasonably steep turn back towards runway 20. It was immediately clear that there was no way we would make it. The steep turn burns too much altitude and we had gotten pretty far away from the runway climbing at Vy. The climb performance of the 172 at 6,300' just isn't all that impressive with two on board. I'd guess we'd have landed a good quarter mile short of the runway. So I powered it back up and did a regular landing and that was it for the day. Michael said that next time we get the chance he'd like to try the impossible turn again, but from a lower altitude (but correspondingly closer to the airport). Also we should start with a regular takeoff position rather than 2000' down the runway after a stop-and-go. These experiments are interesting and fun, if somewhat depressing. The moral of the story is, if you lose your engine just after takeoff, you're not getting back to the runway.

The idea was for today to be a day to clean up my specialty takeoffs and landings, tomorrow I'll fly with Michael and we'll do a practice checkride, then next Friday I'll take my written and we'll proceed directly with the actual checkride.

However, work has interfered and it is looking like I'll probably be in central Asia by next Friday, so I'm not scheduling my written. It is unclear how long I'll be gone, but either by my absence or the associated jetlag afterward, I'm probably going to be out of pocket for flying until the end of March. By then enough time will have passed that I'll need to do some more catch-up flights. And also the spring winds will be here... great. Oh well, bad timing.

The weather was too perfect not to take advantage of, however, so I went ahead and did the pattern work I had scheduled. No issues, had the pattern to myself for the most part. Did a few crosswind landings just for a refresher, got a few slip landings in, and a bunch of soft and short-field landings. Reasonably happy with my performance.

Probably the most significant event of today's flight was passing the 10 hour mark on my solo time, which was the last remaining flight requirement according to the FAR before I can take my exam. The only requirement now is to pass the written.

Given that my checkride is no longer "imminent," we may switch it up tomorrow and do something other than a practice checkride... we'll see.

Anyone in town want to learn to play handball?

For all the flak the local squash and handball players give each other, I'm going to feel like a chump if I have to start playing squash...

Last night I was at a dinner party and checked the ADDS weather website, the forecast looked abysmal and weather.gov said snow all day every day this week for Santa Fe. When I woke up at 6 this morning, I couldn't see the mountains across the valley and it looked like the ceiling was really low. So I went back to bed for awhile. Then Michael sends me a text at 7 saying that the current weather was great and the radar looked good, despite the forecast still looking horrid. I looked back out the window to find that there was quite a bit of blue sky; whatever was obstructing my visibility before was gone. By 8 there no sign that it was going to be worse, so I drove down to Santa Fe for my 9 AM flight. On the drive down, some snow virga moved in from the south and it started looking worse again. When I arrived, it was overcast at about 6,000' AGL. But it was good enough that we felt confident in taking off and at least starting to do some work; if the precipitation started coming down or the ceilings dropped, we'd just fly back and land.

The good news is that below overcast skies the air tends to be quite calm. Such was the case this morning; no winds to speak of and no turbulence. We took off on runway 20 and headed out to the SW practice area. Did a quick refresher on some of the basic maneuvers including clearing turns, steep turns, slow flight, and power-off stalls. Had no problems other than a regular hesitancy to bring the aircraft down to below 40 knots for the slow flight.

With the maneuvering out of the way, I put the foggles on and we did a bit more instrument. A couple of basic turns, climbs, descents, and a few unusual attitude recoveries. Then we flew back to SAF with me still wearing the foggles, and simulated the ILS-2 approach. When I ripped the glasses off at minimums, I was displaced laterally from the runway by about 100', but it was easy to recover that in time and make a successful landing. We did a touch and go then made a right turn to join right traffic for runway 33. Here we practiced all of the specialty landings that I had worked on during my solo on Friday. Maybe its just because of the lack of any crosswind, but I nailed all of the landings. Put the soft field down nice and soft, kept the nose wheel off, etc. The precision landing was right on the stripes. We did a couple no-flaps landings with big slips on final, which were a bit ugly; haven't really every spent any time practicing that.

Next we made a quick jaunt up to Los Alamos (only about a 10 minute flight) so that I could get some more practice landing there. No wind there as well, so the landing was trivial. Turned around at the end of the runway and took right back off, flew back to Santa Fe, and did a final short-field landing on 20 for the day. For this one, rather than try to land the plane on the 1000' stripes, Michael had me land on the numbers right at the front of the runway. This meant targeting my final descent into the dirt preceding the runway, then flaring out over the pavement and setting it down right at the beginning. I missed the numbers by about 20 feet, but I'm happy with that considering it was my first try.

The weather was actually perfect; no wind and very smooth air. Overcast, but whatever. It always looked like it could start hailing at any moment, but it stayed very hospitable the entire time we were up.

After parking the plane and pushing it back into the hangar, we did a bit of quizzing regarding the oral exam. I didn't do great, but not horribly either. We'll be doing more of that next weekend after my next flight. Michael said he was very happy with my skills in the plane and said we should be wrapping up the training very shortly. Today's 0.4 hours of instrument time complete my requirement for 3.0 hours total, leaving only 0.7 hours of solo flight remaining in my requirements list. I have a solo flight scheduled for next Saturday morning, where I'll complete that requirement and practice those slip landings a bit more. Then a flight the following morning with Michael where we'll do a simulated checkride. I'm going to try to take my written exam a week from this coming Friday, possibly flying down to Double Eagle to take it. Once that's done, all that remains is to schedule my oral and checkride, possibly for the following weekend (if I'm not in Kazakhstan).

Taking off just before me was Larry and a student of his, a Japanese national who's English was not the best, in N64962. They flew off to the practice area while I started doing my touch and gos. The tower told me to make left closed traffic... and somehow I went right. No idea why, left is always easier so he gave me what I wanted... and I just spaced it. Luckily I was the only person in the pattern so it didn't make a difference.

After a short while, 962 returned, did one circuit of the pattern, then landed full stop. Apparently the Japanese guy was doing a solo and Larry was just checking him out to make sure he was capable, because as soon as they taxied to parking, he called on the radio indicating he was going to come back to take off again. Up to this point, his radio work, taxiing, landings, and flying had been perfect.

So I'm flying downwind for 33 and I hear the tower tell 962 to turn onto taxiway Charlie for runway 33. This is all normal. But then as I'm turning base, I hear him inform 962 that he's turned onto the wrong taxiway and that he is now on Delta (a taxiway that intersects the runway I'm lining up for). He tells me to exercise caution then instructs 962 to turn around and head back the way he came. I'm on final at this point, and I can see 962 still taxiing towards my runway. The tower starts getting pretty agitated as the guy is heading towards the hold line and a runway incursion. He's yelling into the radio, "962 stop. Stop moving right now. Stop now 962!" Meanwhile I'm getting pretty close to landing and have to decide what I'm going to do. Because of all the nonsense going on with 962, I was coming in a bit high, anticipating a go-around. When he finally did stop, just short of the hold line, I went ahead and did a touch-and-go without incident.

Behind me, the tower is now instructing 962 to make a left turn onto runway 15/33 and back taxi to the end for a departure from 33. As I'm climbing out away, I hear tower say, "962 where are you going?" and I look back to see him still on Delta, having crossed 15/33. Tower is totally annoyed at this point and sets him up for a departure on runway 2. I volunteer to go out to the VOR and orbit while he gets the mess taken care of, but he says it probably wouldn't help. I felt sorta bad for the Japanese guy, I think this was clearly just a language barrier problem; his flying seemed very solid. The tower was being really helpful as well, speaking very slowly and repeating instructions. It turns out this was the guy's second solo ever, so I imagine he was feeling the pressure and it was just too much when combined with the language barrier.

Anyway that was the end of 962's exciting taxi antics; he took off from 2 and went back out to the practice area and I didn't see him again while I was up. I got 14 total circuits of the pattern in, every time trying to do either a precision landing or a soft-field landing or both. I did a few soft-field takeoffs, but there's not really much to them. I wasn't very happy with my landings; doing tricky landings turns out to be hard with a bit of crosswind in an unfamiliar plane and the weird sloped runway of 33. I made some progress but wasn't totally happy with it. I'll need more work on this, I imagine Michael and I will work on it some more when I fly again on Sunday (weather permitting).

Just to add to the excitement for today, I started losing my radio reception towards the end. At the takeoff end of 33, I couldn't really hear what the tower was saying and he was really choppy. Apparently he could hear my just fine, but over the course of my last three circuits, the problem seemed to get worse. Couldn't find a cause on board, so I decided to switch to my backup radio... only to find that the small tuning knob was being wonky and I was unable to tune in the tower frequency. Great. I actually had to call for a light signal for permission to land. At that point, I was done.

Taxied back, which was fun because the plows hadn't done a great job on the ramp; there were significant ice chunks and berms of snow to navigate through. Pushing the plane back into its parking space was a real chore; I couldn't push very effectively because of the ice, I had no help, and occasionally I'd get a wheel chocked on some ice and have to either kick it free or back up and maneuver around it. Not easy with the tow bar. Eventually Larry saw me struggling through the window and came out to give me a push. I told him about the issues with his student (who was still out flying) and with my radio. He powered the plane up and tested the radios and couldn't replicate the reception problem. He told me that the knob on that second radio had always been touchy and showed me how to work past it. He also said he'd take the plane up later today and try to replicate the reception problem.

Quite an off-nominal day. Wow.

Instead, we just stuck around in the pattern and worked on special takeoffs and landings at Santa Fe. Specifically, short field and soft field takeoffs and landings. The precision target landings of short field are a lot of fun, and I was able to hit the stripes dead center every time, but often at the expense of...gentleness. I'd sorta get into the flare, float out over the stripes while rapidly losing speed, then idle the engine and nose it up, causing me to essentially fall out of the air exactly where I wanted to land, but roughly. The soft field landings, which need to be gentle and also require keeping the nose wheel off the ground as long as possible, essentially riding a wheelie down the runway, were more difficult. I could either grease the mains but then have the nose touch down shortly afterward, or have a harder mains landing and then ride the wheelie out as long as possible. Both landing styles need work, and this is probably what I'll spend my 2.3 remaining hours of required solo working on. The takeoffs are pretty straightforward and probably don't require as much practice. They are more interesting than regular takeoffs, particularly the soft field takeoff, in which you pop the aircraft into the air as soon as possible, then keep it really low in ground effect while accelerating up to Vy, then rocket off into the sky^*. Being that low makes the speed seem all the more intense.

The one thing that spiced up what is otherwise 13 boring circuits of the pattern was that there were two L-39 jet trainers sharing the pattern with me. They're quite a bit faster than me, somehow.

^* It's a 172. Hyperbole may exist here.

The weather was perfect; totally clear, almost no wind, bright moon, and snow on the ground so that the ground was easy to see. The plan was to fly out to the southeast practice area, do some instrument maneuvers, unusual attitude recoveries, then fly an instrument approach into SAF just for fun.

As soon as I got us about 500' above runway 20, I put on the Foggles and they wouldn't come off until I was at minimums on the approach to land. I was surprised at how well I was able to handle the instrument maneuvers and recoveries; it went much better than my last two instrument flights. One key thing on the unusual attitude recoveries was looking first at the artificial horizon to gauge the "am I going up or down?" question that must first be answered before knowing the proper sequence of recovery procedures. In the past I think I was using the altimeter for this, which is a bit slower to grok. Anyway, this time it went really well. We did quite a few recoveries, then headed in for the instrument approach.

We did the VOR/DME-A approach starting from the wrong side of the airport, so I got to work on some VOR navigation to get from wherever I was (had no idea, since I'd been under the hood since we started and had no GPS) to the MITUM intersection north of SAF. From there, we did a [very ugly, see GPS track. It was my first one, give me a break, jerk.] procedure turn onto the SAF 158° radial which took me right in to the airport. Michael acted as second pilot, handling the radio work and chart understanding. He just told me what distances to look for on the DME, what VOR radials to use, etc. So I concentrated on the instrument maneuvers portion of the show. When we got down to 4.3 nm from the VOR and 7,000', which was our designated minimum, he told me to rip off the foggles and take a look. We were right over the airport, couldn't miss it! Instrument approaches are hereby declared to be very cool.

I'm really looking forward to doing instrument training.

The landing was a bit odd because instrument minimums put you a bit lower than pattern altitude, and it was nighttime, so I ended up being a bit fast and high on final, but overall it went well. A bit flat, but totally acceptable. After we got the plane tied down, we talked for awhile about the remainder of my flight training which is now in the home stretch, and what will come after that.

:-D

• Hours total: 47.0
  
• Hours solo: 7.7
  
• Hours at night: 5.1
  
• Hours single engine: 45.1
  
• Hours multi engine: 1.9
  
• Distance Traveled: 3395 nm
  
• Landings: 171
  
• Landings at night: 12
  
• Hours by type:
  
•     Cessna 172 (44.5 hours)
  
•     DHC-6 Twin Otter (1.9 hours)
  
•     Cirrus SR-22 (0.6 hours)
  
• Total cost for aircraft rentals and instructors: $6,601.02
  

They have a volunteer program wherein people sign up to act as chef, housekeeper, and assistant to the scientists working at the summer for a week. I put in an application last month and yesterday they called me up and offered me a spot! So I'm going to be spending a week this coming October in New Hampshire, living on the summit of Mt. Washington, cooking meals for weather nerds.

I won't know until I get there if anyone has food allergies, special diets, etc. So I'm not going to be doing a food plan in advance; I'm just going to show up with a repertoire of meals I can cook and let them choose what they want. The trick is it has to be done using the ingredients they have in stock at the time, and I won't know what these are in advance either. I have a list of what they try to keep in stock, but they only stock their freezer once a month, so if I come in late in a stocking cycle, there could be distinct deficiencies.

So I need to accumulate recipes that don't use any exotic ingredients or equipment, can be cooked for a group of 10 or so people, and covers a reasonable variety of possible diets, etc. Feel free to suggest something! I'll be cooking test meals over the next 10 months and reporting on the recipes and results here. Suggest something, send me a recipe, etc., and I'll give it a shot!

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.

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.

Finally, something that isn't pattern work. It's been awhile since I've done a flight with no more than one landing at any given airport. This was a welcome change. I've really been looking forward to cross-country training; this is the sort of flight that I want to do the most of when I get my license anyway.

I showed up at the flight school at 8am for an hour of discussion before our flight at 9. We decided that our route would be to fly south from Santa Fe to Moriarty, the airport where Nina did her acrobatic glider flight birthday present back in 2003. From there, we'd go 10 miles WNW to Sandia Airpark Estates East Airport, where a colleague of mine lives, which features a 30' wide runway with houses along the side that used to be just a regular road. From there, over to Albuquerque International to experience the opposite extreme of runways; a 14,000' x 150' behemoth. Finally, back to SAF. The navigation was to be all pilotage, so we just looked at the charts and picked out some visual cues to look for. Technically none of the airports we were visiting are more than 50nm away from SAF, so this isn't a "cross country flight" as defined by the FAA, but that's not really important; I require a certain number of hours of dual cross country flight training in addition to my solo cross country flight hours.

With everything worked out in terms of route, we went to the hangar to get the plane. There was a P-51 Mustang in there that was getting a bit of light maintenance done to it in preparation for transfer to a new owner. It was awesome; every part looked new. The redline on its airspeed gauge read 500 knots. Yowzer.

Preflight of my somewhat slower Cessna 172 went without a hitch and off we went. Flying into the morning sun I had a hard time spotting my first waypoint, the Santa Fe VORTAC, though I knew where it was relative to the nearby prison from previous flights in the area. From there, I split the line between Galisteo and Placer Peak, then turned south looking for the intersection of a highway (that I could see) and a high-tension electrical line (which I never did see). Did overfly the Victoria's Secret mansion and its private airfield, and eventually started going direct to Moriarty which was easy to pick out in the distance.

Descending into the pattern at the airport, there was no other traffic and no signs of life down on the tarmac. Michael stated that his students have universally made lousy landings on their first cross country when presented with airports they had never seen, so I was really happy with my very good landing at 0E0. The wind was directly crossed, so we just rolled to the end, turned around, and took off in the other direction.

The flight to 1N1 is a short one, but the airport is really hard to see. Because the runway used to be a road, and doesn't have any markings other than the numbers at the ends, it sorta blends in with all the other roads. The only thing that allowed me to see it from a distance was the fact that I've been there before (in a car, to visit my colleague who lives there) and remembered that there was a maintenance facility at one end with a bunch of white hangers in rows. From the air, I could see this arrangement of buildings as distinct from everything else in Edgewood, despite not being able to see the runway proper until I was quite close. I had to overfly to get an idea of the winds anyway, so it wasn't a problem. Found the windsock, which again read more or less totally crossed, and turned into the pattern for tiny runway 27. It was a real clencher being as narrow as it was and with some crosswind, but I managed to pull it off reasonably well. The rough pavement was a surprise and I mistook that for something wrong with my landing initially, but it wasn't my fault; it's just not a precision surface. We did a 180 on the tiny runway, rolled back to the end of 27, and took off again, heading west towards the mountains and Albuquerque.

Albuquerque is in Class C airspace, which is a first for me. In Santa Fe, there's just the guy in the tower handling all approach, departure, pattern, and ground traffic. So there's never any question of which frequency to be on or who you need to say what to. In Albuquerque, I needed to get handed off from one person to the next several times on my way in, and make sure that I had clearance to do so before I switched the radio over. Luckily there was very little traffic at all; I was given clearance to land as soon as approach handed me over to tower, long before I started my downwind. Somehow, the landing on this giant, immaculate runway was the worst by far. Maybe it was just too big or something. I did find it mildly humorous that an entire 737 full of Southwest passengers had to hold short while my tiny dinky plane landed and taxied to the nearest exit from the runway. Negotiating the labyrinth of taxiways at ABQ was a bit of a challenge, though the fact that there is a dedicated ground controller there made it somewhat less of a problem.

The people at the FBO, Cutter, were nice even though we weren't picking up fuel or doing anything else that might... make them a profit. I had a cup of iced tea, gave Nina a ring, and got back in the plane. The flight from ABQ and SAF was quick and easy. Had to stay a bit close to the mountains to clear some helicopter traffic over the city, but otherwise the flight was straightforward.

Oddly, there was considerably more traffic at SAF than there had been at ABQ, and it was a bit busy coming in; I had to extend my base a bit to make room for a King Air making a touch and go. Landed, put the plane to bed, and that was that.

Completely excited about cross country flight. Looking forward to my next one on Friday. Cross country is a lot of fun.

With my solo out of the way, the time had come to branch out into some other areas of flight training that I hadn't seen yet. The big one is cross-country navigation. The other significant area was night flying. The nice part about night flying is that, despite the short days that prevent me from my usual after-work training, I can do this on weeknights. So I drove down after work today.

The weather had been very clear all day, but high winds had made me somewhat skeptical of my chances of flying. However, when the time came to fly down, the SAF METAR indicated only 8 knot winds, which is no problem at all. It was well after dark when I got there, and really cold.

Michael and I talked a bit about what we would be covering—it would start with some maneuvering at the southwest practice area, followed by eight or so circuits of the pattern to work on night landings. He pointed out that night training was a bit odd in that it was the one thing we would be covering before my practical exam that would not be covered on the exam. For that reason, this would be the only night training I would receive unless I specifically requested it before I got my license.

The wind was right down runway 33, so that's what we used. Runway 33 has the added advantage of having no lights beyond it. It's just dark mountains. So once you rotate on takeoff, you can't see anything at all. It's a bit disconcerting the first time. Once up a few hundred feet from the runway, it became clear that the airport was just sitting in a wind shadow. There was a really large headwind and a lot of unstable, turbulent air up there.

We went over to the practice area, did a couple steep turns, some slow flight, and a power-off stall... but the turbulence was bad enough that it made all of the maneuvers pretty ugly. We called off the maneuvers portion of the flight somewhat early and headed back to the airport. I was concerned about landing in such gusty air, but was relieved to find on my first landing that at about 1500' AGL the turbulence magically disappeared and left a nice (if fast) laminar boundary layer that was quite smooth to fly in.

The wind was quite fast above about 50' AGL, to the tune of 50 knots. However, when I passed through 50' on my way down, suddenly it was more like 15 knots. This made landing tricky—I was on a proper glide slope with a 50 knot headwind, and then suddenly that wind goes away and my indicated airspeed drops by... 35 knots, putting me right up against stall territory and I started to fall out of the sky. The first one was a big ugly; I had to push the throttle all the way in to make the runway, but otherwise it was a good landing. The ground comes up a bit earlier than expected because all the runway lights are on 2' posts, and I tend to flare at about 3'... so I'm a lot lower than I intend to be if I don' take that into account.

Once I had figured out the wind shear problem on final, the landings went well. I'd start high and fast, and suddenly be on a steeper-than-normal but totally acceptable glide slope. My flares were generally good. Once we had done five landings, Michael started changing things up. We did a simulated landing light out landing, essentially no headlights. Not a problem; I was just looking at the runway lighting anyway. Then we did a simulated full electrical failure, with no flaps, no cabin lights or instrument lights of any kind. I had a headlamp with me, so that was no problem either. The lack of flaps actually made it easier to deal with the shear because I wasn't moving so slowly.

On the whole, I did considerably better than I thought I would have. I was surprised to see how fast the wind turbine near the airport was whipping around; there was some serious wind by the time we finished, yet my landings had been solid. Yay.

Finally, everything worked out. The weather was good on a day when both Michael and I were available to fly. Got there early Saturday morning to take advantage of the favorable morning winds. Michael and I headed out in N52708 and did some pattern work on runway 2. Nothing out of the ordinary, the airport wasn't too busy, and my landings were all fine. After the sixth touch-and-go, he asked me how I felt and I said fine, so he said full stop it next time around.

When I pulled up to the parking area on the ramp, he jumped out and I gave him my camera to take some pictures. He told me to do one circuit of the pattern and come back so we could talk about it. He wanted to make sure that I wasn't shaking in my boots after the experience of soloing. I told him to have clean shorts on standby.

ATIS changed while I was sitting there, so I listened to it to make sure nothing weird was happening, and taxied back out to runway 2. I was surprised to find myself not remotely nervous or anxious, but I suppose I did have 30 hours going into my first solo... No problems on the first circuit, landing was good. Was pretty pumped to have successfully soloed. Did some Sean Connery impressions on final.

Taxied back to Michael, who made sure I wasn't freaking out and cut me loose to do a "comfortable amount" of touch and gos before heading back in. I gave him my other camera, which can do video, and asked if he'd shoot a video of me taking off and landing. As I taxied out to runway 2 for my second batch of solo work of the day, the wind abruptly did a 180 and I had to taxi all the way back to runway 20, which is 8342' away so that took awhile. Then, as I took off, the pattern suddenly was overwhelmed with traffic and the tower operator had me do a 360 turn on downwind for separation, then extend my downwind 5 miles to get in line fourth behind some other arriving traffic. It was an unusual circuit of the pattern to say the least, and took easily twice as long as usual. I was thinking about Michael down there on the ramp expecting me to come around to land and wondering where exactly I'd flown off to... but he managed to catch my landing perfectly in the video. I added some music for effect:

I did a total of there touch-and-gos before heading back in to have my shirt back cut off and celebrate. It was a good day. Now, finally, after almost 150 circuits of the pattern leading up to this moment, I get to work on something other than takeoffs and landings. Monday evening we start night training, and Wednesday is my first cross-country (weather permitting, of course).

It is a significant improvement over email and instant messaging when used in a way that emulates one of those forms of communication.

It is difficult to say whether it is a reasonable alternative to something like a bulletin board, listserv, collaborative document generation system, etc. without having more contacts to share things with. Right now I only know two people who are in the beta.

The sudoku app they included in the beta has a lousy board generation algorithm; my first try (on expert) produced a board that required guessing on multiple occasions, and ended up with a multi-solution endgame only one of which was accepted by the app. Boo. Sorry, off-topic.

I am unsure as to whether there is a way to make certain waves publicly readable and searchable. Would be nice; that way I could search for some sort of conversation about topics I'm interested in and join in, meet some contacts with whom I could better test the protocol.

Update: Just as I saved this, Brett erm... waved me (?). Turns out he's a friend of my college roommate, Aaron. So thanks Aaron for sending him my way with the invite, and now I have two more contacts. :)