Up, Up and Away

YEEEEEEE HA!!!!!!!!!!

This week's flight was more fun than.....well....something that's a lot of fun. The goal of this lesson was to work more with VOR navigation and (more importantly) fly into my first controlled field. I feel very comfortable with the navigation part. There are times that I still have to really think about what Kary is asking me, but if I were out on my own, I'm confident I could find my way.

On a side note, I will say that I think my time spent flying in MS Flight Sim was well used. I've heard many "real" pilots knock MSFS as a game and dismiss it. From experience, I will tell you that my navigation and instrument understanding was helped IMMENSELY. There is still TONS to learn, but basic concepts were learned a long time ago when it didn't cost me $4/gal of gas. I even "invented" my own procedure for flying paralled to a VOR and timing a 5 degree change. Then by doing the math, I could figure out how far from the VOR I actually was. I thought I was cool, until someone told me that you have to know how to do something similar for your IFR ticket. So much for being a visionary :)

But back to Thursday morning. I arrived at LUG at 8:30 and Kary was ready to go. I went out and preflighted 51F before we sat down to discuss what we were about to do. Basically, the plan was to leave LUG, keep up with where we were using the VOR's and eventually pickup the radial that would carry us from Shelbyville (SYI) to Smyrna (MQY). From there we'd make the required radio contacts and land. Take a break then head out again. We reviewed the chart, got all my frequencies together (which was new...I thought the whole world operated off of 122.8) and headed to the plane.

We fired up, taxied out and took off...eh...."departed"...Lewisburg. As we were climbing out, it was actually pretty cool to realize that we were "going somewhere", albeit only 35 miles, it sure beats the pattern I've been relegated to (not that there's anything wrong with that!!!!). As we made our way NorthEast, Kary was quizzing me as to where we were and where the SYI VOR was, etc. We ended up picking up our MQY radial about 10 miles North of SYI. Apparently, we were inside someone else's practice are, because we got to fly some formation maneuvers with a Piper who liked our airspace. We safely snuck behind him, but I still don't think he ever saw us.

We picked up our radial (352 FROM SYI, i think), and headed for MQY. One cool part of this was that I've never flown over most of this area. The majority of my flying has been west and south of here, so, it was all new to me. We climbed on up to 2500(ish) to be sure that we were well above a nice little 2000ft tower in the area and made our way north. One thing that was new to me on this flight was simply keeping up with the frequency changes. I don't think I've ever changed frequencies in 51F, other than to go from the standby freq (always set to LUG's AWOS) and back to 122.8 (CTAF for most of the airports in the area). So, believe it or not, I had to figure out how to tune our own radio. Sad, but true.

As we got about 13 miles south of MQY, I made my first ever ATC radio call. I really wasn't nervous about doing this, like I thought I'd be. Kary had told me (and given me a example "script") what to expect and what to say, so now it was just a matter of doing it. It was kind of neat to realize that someone on the other end of the radio actually gave a crap about what I was saying. When talking in the pattern at LUG, your just blindly calling out where you are for others, but no one is speaking TO you or expecting you to understand them with great clarity.

MQY is in Class D Airspace, but part of it sits just under the edge of Nashville's Class C shelf. So, even though there isn't any reason for that to be a problem, it's still cool to realize that I've got to do it right (or Kary gets blamed!).

There wasn't too much traffic as we got closer, but we were told to find a Katana on an ILS approach and were cleared to land behind him once we did find him. Now this is where everything I ever learned about a pattern went out the window. Suddenly, we're turning a VERY wide base-to-final turn and trying to keep the Katana in sight. When I got lined up with the runway, we were all of 5 miles out. I suddenly knew what it was like to fly a Citation....except it was going to take me another 4 minutes to get there!

There was traffic behind us, so Kary told me to keep my speed up to about 90mph until we got in tighter, just to be nice (we later found out that the traffic behind us was a Blackhawk....I don't think he would have complained about us doing 80....he could have just hovered and waited :) ). About 1 mile out, I drop a few degrees of flaps and slow us down. Kary had warned me that this was a BIG runway and the depth perception might be a problem. I'll admit, the sight picture is definitely different, but expecting it, I was able to make a fairly good landing. We taxi to one of the FBO's and shutdown. Pretty cool experience.

After about a 20 minute break (and the obligitory coffee and free popcorn), we go back out and fire up. Contacting ground went just like Kary explained it would. As with all the radio comms, it's just a matter of knowing what you want to do, how to say it and then what to listen for. We taxied out to Rwy 1, did our runup, contacted the tower and left....eh....departed.

The trip back was pretty cool. I opted to fly the VOR all the way into SYI, did a touch and go there, dodged another Katana and flew home.

All together, we managed 1.6 hours in the air. And it was FUNNNN! Just going places....ANY places (even the break room of Smyrna Air) makes this whole thing that much more fun.

I know guys who did all their training at a Class C airport. ATC comms to them started on the first lesson. What's funny is listening to them talk about being intimidated about flying into an uncontrolled field. They think us Class G'rs are insane! :)

I'm starting to think I like this flying thing....but that "free" bag of popcorn just set me back $100. Welcome to General Aviation, Mr. Franks!

It's all good.

jf

posted by Jeff Franks @ 6:11 PM