Over the Hills and Far Away

Today was a short cross-country flight to allow the instructor to observe how I did transitioning through the various phases of flight, navigating, communicating, and simply being organized in the cockpit.

To be fair, this was hardly my first go at these tasks, and I've done most of this from the right seat countless times. The main trick today was keeping the plane on course and flipping charts in the cramped cockpit. The DA-20 feels pretty roomy for such a small plane until you need to have something in your lap (something bulky, like a pencil). So, today, as the instructor just sat and observed, the flight was completely uneventful.

My first (logged) cross country was supposed to be last night, but 40 knot winds and moderate turbulence reported for our flight altitude caused us to scrub it. No sense getting beat up for no reason. A night flight would have been more of a challenge, but it was nice to go somewhere a bit different, and concentrate more on the cruise tasks rather than spin around in circles over the "patch".

The only real difficulty was entering a right-traffic pattern at an unfamiliar field, with a right crosswind across the runway. This meant that I would have needed to be a bit farther from the runway to account for being blown in close during my turns. I wasn't. In fact, I was a bit too close in and had to go around. I could have technically landed since the runway was 10,000 feet, but it would have taken too much room and I felt better going around and entering a left pattern. The result was a much cleaner landing. The landing back at the home base was even better. Although it was a bit fast, and didn't even trigger the stall horn, it was smooth as glass. I'm not sure if it was the best form, but it sure felt good (and no criticism from the right seat, so I guess it was OK).

Now, if the weather holds out, I will have a night cross country in about 48 hours, with a different instructor again. Looking forward to it.