I wanted to see if I could do it with just what I had in my lap. It was difficult, and I could not use pilotage skills on the flight simulator because there is no real-world scenery I can use in my area - I don't blame them, Houston is not a scenic place! But it would be nice if someone would develop some Houston area scenery for those of us who are marooned here and working towards our pilot's license. So anyway, I had to use dead reckoning on the flight sim. I found that I needed a decent lapboard, and airport diagrams with all the necessary frequency info in an easy to access form. Also, I was using flight planning forms where I had figured out course info, and right before my virtual flight, I had gathered all the virtual weather info and adjusted the resulting heading I needed to fly and ground speeds after wind was factored in. I found that these forms were a headache because the airplane's airspeed indicator is in mph and everything else is usually in knots. Plus during the flight weather conditions change so the adjustments to headings will have to be easily recomputed during the flight. So the flight sim was really useful for identifying what I needed to bring to the real flight.
The first thing I did was to make a flight planning spreadsheet, which I could upload to my cellphone. I made one which I must say is pretty versatile. I enter the calibrated airspeed from the aircraft in mph, and it computes the true-airspeed in knots with the altitude tweak built in. Then everything else is in knots. Before flight, or during, I enter the wind direction and speed, and it computes true heading etc. So it turned out pretty well. The only drawback is the cell-phone sized display, but it worked out alright.
So I got to the airport about an hour before and made some last minute preparations. Then the CFI got there and we talked about the plan. He seemed impressed at how prepared I was, especially with the airport diagrams and information sheets I had ready which I downloaded from AOPA. We looked at the weather situation, and decided to go to Palacios - a distance of 81 miles from the airport (something clicked in my head saying "yeah the weather's ok to Palacious, but how is it going to be on the way back? Then the thought was replaced by other concerns.) The weather decided to put a spin on things and the wind was blowing from the north for a change. So for only my 2nd time, I took off from runway 32. With full tanks of gas and two adults, the C150 slowly climbed to 2500' and I began my first leg to Bay City. There were a group of 3 small lakes that I picked on the map as landmarks, and I found them pretty easy. It was cool seeing my flight plan in action. I re-verified the weather conditions at Bay City, and updated my flight plan with the changing wind data. After the group of 3 lakes, I easily picked out other landmarks along the way. Bay City airport was difficult to spot. I learned that if you're coming in at right angles to the airstrip it's hard to spot. But when I did find it, I was nearly on top of it. The CFI was happy about that... so was I! That was a 55 nautical mile leg. Then I turned to Palacios. During that leg, the instructor said "Ok, let's assume you are completely lost and need to find out where you are. How do you do that?" I picked 3 VORs on the map to use to pinpoint my position. I really only needed 2, but the CFI wanted me to use 3. Two of the VORs pointed right to my position. The 3rd one from Schole's Field was at least 20 degrees off! WTH? The CFI double checked that one and he got the same thing. Can anyone explain that? I'd really like to know why that one was off. I guess that's why you need 3 VORs. So we made our way to Palacious and landed. It was only after landing and taxiing that it hit me - I did it! I successfully got us all the way over here. Very cool :) So we taxied over to take off again.
On the way back the CFI wanted me to call FSS to have them do flight following. One thing I am a bit concerned about for when I do this on my own, is how the heck am I going to understand them? I relied on the CFI to interpret what they were saying. It's one thing to learn what to say and when, but I can't even understand half of what they're saying on the radio. We requested flight following back to the airport. They came back and advised against it because of deteriorating weather conditions... Doh! CFI said to tell them understood, but we would request flight following anyway. We then requested weather info for Bay City. They said to stand by, and after 2-3 minutes we got tired of waiting and just went ahead and pulled up ASOS for Bay City on the radio. It was fine. We decided to land there and check out the radar at the FBO. This was actually turning out to be really good training because I'm learning what to do when weather fouls up your way home. We landed at Bay City and went to the FBO. There were some nice people there who showed us everything they had - which wasn't much. Just a radar of Texas and a few surrounding states. Not really good enough for determining weather conditions beyond Bay City. So we decided to try and make it to South West airport, which is a bit north of the route back to Pearland, and see how the rest of the route looked from there. I went a head and used my GPS for this impromptu route planning. On the way to South West I looked at the direction back home and it looked possibly rainy, but ok - no thunderstorms that way. So we re-routed again and headed back towards Pearland. All this was really good training I thought. When I make the solo xc I'll go during absolute blissful weather, but it's good to know what to do if things start looking bad. We actually made it all the way back to Pearland without even rain. By the time we got there it was sunny skies. I guess the storms moved off to the south.
When we landed the CFI asked if I thought I was ready to do that flight on my own. It was all pretty straight forward, so I said "Yeah, I can do it". He ok'd me to do it whenever I'm ready. I'll have to look at my budget to see when I can make it happen. I'm really excited to have this xc under my belt and am looking forward to the solo. I'm going on vacation for a week and a half in August and was wondering how much I had left to do for my license. It would be really pushing it to get it done by then and would probably blow my budget anyway.
By the way. As I write this, there are thunderstorms with lightning striking all around me, and the wind is really picking up. It's great to watch... when you're on the ground!
Here's the ground track:
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