I called my CFI yesterday and told him I planned on doing the solo cross country to Palacios (a 71 nm trip). He asked if I was going to fly the same plan (and sounded like he expected me to update it after my last flight)... "uh.. no I was going to redo the plan". So I re-worked it going straight to the VOR near Palacios, with no BYY fly-over. I marked checkpoints at the point where I would be at cruising altitude, where I would pass the 3 lakes I saw before, where I passed Bay City, and where I would start my descent. He OK'd the plan, and this morning I woke up to go fly. When I got to the airport, I saw this awesome sunrise, and looked just in time to see the fiery orange sun rising above the clouds. It was a good moment.
I updated my weather info - not much wind to be found anywhere - and then called 800-WX-BRIEF to file my flight plan. After I filed my plan the operator asked if I wanted a weather briefing for my route. I wasn't expecting any adverse weather, but I said "sure" anyway just to hear it. OMG... he went on and on and on. Talking about weather everywhere from the Texas coast, to Dallas to Big Bend. These places (except for the Texas coast) are several hundred miles away! Like many people had told me, the report was useless. They did tell me though that my route was not VFR. That was unexpected because all the metars en route reported clear to mostly clear skies. I would see for myself. I had the airplane fueled up, and off I went.
Now I could see what they were talking about. It was smoggy as hell! So much smog on a clear day that conditions were barely VFR!
Environmental Soapbox: People, clean up this crap! Yes, I even mean you oil refineries, heavy duty trucks and buses that are exempt from many environmental restrictions, even though you are the cause of much of it. It looks ugly and we have to breath this crap. Cut it out!
I believed I still had enough visibility to see my land marks and to continue on. I dialed in the Palacios VOR, and put in my heading. I was puzzled why it said 'From'. The needle was also way to the left. I verified the morse code ident, and it checked out. Oh well, I continued navigating by pilotage. My times to each checkpoint was right on. I had to descend from my planned altitude of 2500' to 1500' though because of the haze. Then as I neared Palacios I had to descend down to 1000' because of clouds. I used other VORs to check my position along the route as well. It was about this time I realized my stupid mistake. I'm supposed to use the course TO the VOR, not FROM the VOR... Duh! Ok... little learning experience there. Now the Palacios VOR made sense!
So I announced my arrival at Palacios air space. Listening to the radio, I thought I entered another country. Is there a red-neck equivalent of ebonics? There should be! Geez lol. I landed at Palacios, taxied over to the start of the runway, closed my flight plan and re-activated it for the return trip, and took off again before I was captured and raised by a pack of wild shrimp boaters. Yee haw!
On the way back I decided to try something different, and fly above the cruddy smog and scattered clouds. After doing a few spirals while gaining altitude I reached 5500' and was able to fly above the clouds. Very nice view. It looked like the smog reached a hight of about 5000'-5500'. It was now even harder to see checkpoints on the ground, but I still could do it. I followed the Palacios VOR back home, and also used my GPS for navigation to become more familiar with that. The GPS HSI is a big help for navigating (and yes, I know it's only for back up and that I should be using the airplane's instruments even though the course direction indicator is only accurate for about 3-5 minutes in the airplane I'm flying, but it sure does a nice job!). After a while the GPS blinked a warning telling me I was approaching an airspace in 10 minutes. Ah, thank you very much... I lowered my altitude down to 3500' so I could slip under the 4000' Class B airspace around Houston Hobby. Then I lowered to 1500' to avoid the 2000' airspace around Houston Hobby. I was now in familiar territory and could see my airport. I checked the winds and they were out of 340 at 4 kts. So I planned on landing on runway 32. Then I listened to the traffic and people were using runway 14. I radioed and verified which runway I should use. They reported back 14. Ok, 14 it is. I landed quite nicely, and that was it. My first solo cross country was in the books :) It was a lot of fun, and the unexpected smog/cloudy conditions turned out to be minor obstacles during the trip. It was nice being able to get up above the clouds and enjoy the view - and the cooler temperatures!
