Today was an exciting day for me! (Even though I still can’t talk much from the game yesterday). I had a flight lesson scheduled, polishing my skills before my check ride. We took off out of Thun field and headed to Crest Airpark (S36). Surrounded by trees, getting into Crest for my first time was a little nerve wracking especially the “dog leg” landing on runway 33 to skirt around the trees at the end of the runway. If you look at the image of Crest here, you’ll see the trees. Runway 33 is at the top of the image. You’ll notice it’s not advisable to come straight in on runway 33 because of the trees. You have to scootch over to the right (left as you’re flying in) and once you’re past the trees, scootch back over the runway and set it down. It was a little white knuckle … Read More
My First Cross Country Flight
Today (Sunday) I hit another milestone in my flight training, my first cross country flight! As I’ve mentioned before a cross country flight is a flight more than 50 nautical miles from your home airport. The plan today was to fly from KPLU (Thun Field) to KHQM (Hoquiam). My flight lesson started at 9:00 AM, and I booked 4 hours of time. I got up at 7AM and started plotting my course on the Sectional Chart and filling out my flight plan. I quickly realized I hadn’t allowed myself enough time to plan this flight! It’s crazy that a 2 hour flight, takes that long to plan. I’m sure as I get better at it I will be faster, but today there definitely was a steep learning curve. I called Lockheed Martin Flight Services for a standard weather briefing. Told them we’d be cruising from KPLU to KHQM at … Read More
A Little Simulator Time Today…
One of the plusses of flying at Safety In Motion Flight Center is that they have a Redbird FMX full motion Flight Simulator. Occasionally I think of it as a drawback when in reality it’s a pretty amazing training tool. Today Meg and I were supposed to fly to KTIW (Tacoma Narrows) where, winds permitting, I was actually going to get to land today. Unfortunately it wasn’t the winds that stopped us. We occasionally have a marine layer that settles in the Puget Sound region and doesn’t burn off until noon or so. That was the case this morning. When I woke up it was pretty overcast and I called Lockheed Martin Flight Services for a Standard Weather briefing already knowing that the cloud layer was too low. The cloud layer was reported at 1,900 feet for McChord and 1,800 feet at KTIW. As the plan was to fly from … Read More