Our Dumb Blog

I flew, all by myself, to Ardmore, OK, did a touch and go there, then flew to Paul’s Valley and did a touch and go there, and then flew back to OUN. Total Distance: 120 NM, Total Time: 1.8 hours.

Admittedly, it’s a very simple cross-country. I-35 goes ALMOST all the way to Ardmore, and where it veers off my course, there’s a railroad. The railroad is kind of hard to spot, and Ardmore is just on the other side of what is the first hill I’ve ever seen from the window of a plane I’ve piloted. There aren’t many hills there, and when you’re used to seeing COMPLETELY flat ground, this thing looks like a mountain.

The weather wasn’t perfect, there were just a few scattered clouds between 4-5 thousand feet, and central OK was surrounded by warm, unstable airmasses. After looking at all the weather, the radar pictures and talking to weather briefers, I decided it was okay to go anyway.

I flew down to Ardmore at 3500ft. It was a little hazy but not too bad since the sun was more or less behind me. There were just a few clouds at 4,000-5,000 feet. I called OKC approach and got flight following all the way to Ardmore. I’m not required to do that, but I feel much safer as they’ll watch for traffic for you. While they’re not responsible for separation, it’s nice to get advisories. (More about this later.) They transferred me to Fort Worth Center about 15 miles south of OUN. I heard quite a few planes with the callsign “Candler” talking to Center– it was the first time I’d heard it as a pilot. “Candler” is ASA’s callsign, and with a hub in Dallas, it’s not unsurprising to hear quite a few of them on Fort Worth Center.

I didn’t get lost at all. I was able to navigate exclusively by pilotage, i.e. landmarks. I flew over Noble, Purcell, Wayne, Paoli, Paul’s Valley, Wynewood, Davis… All these little towns I probably wouldn’t think about even if I drove through them. Little towns are kind of neat from the air, the way you can see how they have all the need to be a little town, the ways they’re all alike, yet how you can tell one from another… (VFR pilots have been known to fly around looking for water towers with town names on them when they get lost…)

As I was nearing Ardmore, center told me ADM was 12 miles at 11 o’clock and asked if I had the field in sight. I looked at 11 o’clock and saw a clearing, on which I thought there was an airport. I told him I had it in sight, he told me squawk VFR and contact Ardmore tower. Which I did, after getting the ATIS. Tower told me to make a left base for runway 13. About this point I realized that the clearing I THOUGHT was the airport wasn’t the airport at all. No matter, I immediately found it at my one o’clock position. I’m not terribly sure why tower thought it was at my 11 o’clock. Admittedly, I was crabbing a little, but not very much, and I was crabbing to the RIGHT. But I should have been tracking straight to the airport, and I think I was, until I started flying to the airport that wasn’t the airport. And if I was tracking straight to the airport, the controller should have said it was at 12 o’clock. In any case, visibility wasn’t good enough for me to have been able to see it 12 miles out anyway. I did, in fact, set myself up for a LEFT base, just like I was supposed to. I reported one mile left base, and was cleared for the option. I made my touch and go and asked for a north departure. I called up Forth Worth Center and got flight following back to Paul’s Valley. Everytime I ask for flight following for a 30NM flight, I can just hear them snickering.

After he told me he had radar contact, I was nearing 4,000 feet. I was supposed to fly at 4,500 or 6,500 on the way back. (VFR traffic eastbound flies at odd thousands+ 500ft, VFR westbound flies at even thousands + 500ft and IFR traffic flies even/odd thousands). That scattered layer, which thinned out toward Norman, was such that I wasn’t sure if I could find a hole big enough to climb through it. And by the time I got up to 6,500 I’d have to fly circles to land at Paul’s Valley. Since the cloud layer was right about 4,500 I decided just to stay at 4,000. I figured if there were IFR traffic, Fort Worth Center knows about me, and they’d tell me.

I made LEFT traffic for Paul’s Valley, did a sweet touch and go there, and called up Fort Worth center for flight following back to Norman. They were rather rude, said I should call OKC approach, I was too far north, blah. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to know for sure, since OKC approach handed me off to Forth Worth Center well north of Paul’s Valley, and Forth Worth Center was the last person I talked to. And then it took me a good 10 minutes to actually get through on OKC approach it was so busy.

I need to find out about handoffs. I was withing a couple of miles of OUN’s Class D airspace without having called them, even though I was on with OKC approach. I’m required establish radio contact before entering their airspace. But OKC approach is supposed to hand me off to them in time. Since they hadn’t, I asked if I could switch to tower. “Niner One Echo contact Westheimer Tower one one eight point zero.” Right.

Anyway, I landed without incident. And I felt like the coolest guy in the world.

I’m not sure why, but mostly because I’d been dreading my first solo cross country. I was sure I’d get lost, or I’d make some other stupid mistake. But it all went just fine. And I did it!

(My solo was on Wednesday. Today (or what was today) I did my first night flight. I’ll catch up with the journaling soon.)

When I showed up for my lesson on Thursday D. sent me up with Ed.

I’m not sure if he said something that helped, but my landings were much, much better. I made several good landings and no bad landings. I’m not sure if it was Ed that helped because even my first landing with Ed was better than I had been doing. Maybe it was the time off.

I still need practice, lots of practice, but I can land with a crosswind just fine.

On Friday, I took D. on a cross-country. I plotted a course to Paul’s Valley and flew down there solely by reference to landmarks, flying my predetermined heading. My predetermined heading seemed to be fairly accurate, but it’s hard to tell since I don’t tend to hold a heading all that well. Finding Paul’s Valley is quite easy, since both I-35 AND a set of railroad tracks go right to it. I’m supposed to be able to time the distance between checkpoints and come up with estimated groundspeed, fuel burn, time to arrival, fuel remaining, etc, etc. Such calculations really seem pointless when you’re flying somewhere 30 minutes away and you’ve got 4 hours of fuel. 6 gallons of fuel per hour.

I found Paul’s Valley, though I probably should have seen it long before I did. It’s an uncontrolled airport, so I made the appropriate radio calls. I entered the pattern downwind at a 45 degree angle and did a decent touch and go. As I was climbing out, D. was like, “What are they waving at?” There were a couple of golfers waving their arms over their heads at us.

“Uhm. Do you suppose they realized that we just flew right traffic for a left-hand pattern field?”

“Oh. Maybe.”

So now the two of us have managed to screw the same thing up twice. I guess it’s good there was no one else in the pattern; that could have gotten somewhat messy.

As we were climbing out, D. said, “Okay, now divert to Lindsay.”

For my next check ride, I’ll have to plan out a cross country and start flying it. Before I get very far, the check airman is going to divert me somewhere, anywhere. And after he tells me where, I have to tell him what heading it’s at, how far away it is, how long it’s going to take me to get there, how much fuel I’m going to burn getting there, and so on. I’m a bit worried about being able to do that satisfactorily AND fly a plane at the same time. It’s hard to do.

This time I had a railroad to follow, supposedly. Only, it became rather obvious that the railroad didn’t really exist after awhile. There was what looked like a line through a field where it seemed like it ought to have been. But there was no railroad. I did find a road and kept a pretty good idea of where I was.

Which is why I was getting quite frustrated when I realized I was nearly over the town of Lindsay and STILL couldn’t see the associated airport. D. was thoroughly amused.

“It’s… rinky-dink,” he said. “First time I got diverted to Lindsay I thought I was never going to find it.”

“It’s not THAT LITTLE ROAD is it?”

“You tell me.”

It was. I could tell, in fact, that you could just barely read “19” painted on the “road”. I’ve seen roads in much better condition. I’m not sure how wide the runway is, but it couldn’t be wider than 30 feet. And however wide it once was, it seems to be shrinking. It’s weed covered. It’s also really short.

“Lose the centerline, and you’re in the grass,” D. cautioned.

After coming in a little high, I decided that while I could put the plane DOWN on the end of the runway, I certainly couldn’t do a whole touch and go. So I went around. As I was climbing out I screamed, “WE DID IT AGAIN!!!”

“Huh?”

“I JUST FLEW ANOTHER RIGHT PATTERN.”

“This is pathetic.”

I mean, I’m supposed to make mistakes. But not the same one over and over again. AND MY INSTRUCTOR IS SUPPOSED TO CATCH THEM! We were both feeling frustrated as I flew the correct pattern to try for another touch and go.

I ended up making a pretty good landing. But then the crosswind picked up right about the time I gave it full power to take off again. I started drifting left, and I applied right rudder, but I really needed more aileron correction. The plane felt way too squirrelly for any more right rudder than I was giving it, skipping across the runway a bit, and I was nearly at rotation speed. And I did, indeed, have one wheel in the grass. And couldn’t get it back on the runway. So I took off.

“That was… interesting,” D. said with a queer expression.

“Well, you warned me,” I told him.

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen anyone actually do it! Well… not unintentionally anyway…”

I got vaguely lost on the way back to Norman, although not really lost. I knew I was flying toward Norman somewhere north of Lindsay. Also, the ADF was pointing right at the OUN NDB, so I had a pretty good idea. But there was absolutely NOTHING on the map to identify where I was with a landmark. So I tuned up the nav radios to find out exactly.

Hopefully I’ve got the traffic pattern thing straightened out.