Student Pilot Journal Podcast #16

First Solo Cross Country!

This episode of the Student Pilot Journal documents my first successful solo cross country from Valkaria (X59) to Pahokee (PHK). Notice that I said successful. I had previously tried to accomplish it but low ceilings caused me to play it safe and turn around about 15 miles out. Better safe than sorry. I chose to get flight following for the entire CC. I have to say that flight following makes things so much easier. It never hurts to have another set of eyes on your route. This episode only shows the trip to PHK. I forgot to plug the audio cable into the camera when I changed tapes at Pahokee so the trip back was noisy. It was probably a good thing because I started back trying to hook up with Melbourne's VOR at the North side of the lake and soon discovered how flaky the VOR is. I can only imagine what my ground track looked like as I was trying to intercept it. All in all things went very well aside from my Pahokee landing which was way off centerline due to slacking on the sideslip over the runway. Crosswinds are commonplace at Pahokee airport.

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Steve Tupper From Airpseed Podcast Visit

Throughout my flight training and this podcast I have been talking back and forth with Steve Tupper from The Airspeed Podcast. Early on I learned what a huge aerospace junkie he was. I never claim to know too much about it myself....hey...I just work there. IT guys can be fairly involved in their work, you know. Forget everything else. :-) Early in the year he had made mention of a planned trip to Kennedy Space Center which is literally just down the street from my office so I offered him a tour of our satellite processing facility at Astrotech. Last week we were able to meet and it was a pleasure to have him. Of course we talked a good bit about flying and then proceeded with the tour. I am sure most of you reading this are well aware of Steve and his podcast, but if you are not please check it out here. He is just as nice in person as he is in the podcast. I hope to meet up with him again in the future. It truly is amazing how you can meet people through the podcasting medium.

Student Pilot Journal Podcast #15

Dual Cross Country

This is the video for the dual cross country from Melbourne to Okeechobee. See the blog post from Feb. 15 for details on the flight.

-Greg

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Student Pilot Journal Podcast #14

Night Flying

This was my first introduction to a number of things. Night flying, a Cessna 172, right hand traffic pattern at an unfamiliar airport, and takeoff from a towered airport. The video quality is extremely dark, so in an attempt to make things somewhat better I increased the resolution of the video to 640x480 so you might make out some objects so this is the reason for the larger download. It is still pretty dark, though. There is some good audio for those interested in what is different with night flying.

-Greg

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Student Pilot Journal Podcast #13

Solo Flying

It has taken me longer than I wanted to get this one out. I have probably accumulated another 10 hours since this one. I have had the flu and have not felt up to editing the last couple of weeks. Not the most interesting of my podcasts, but hey.....flying is cool anyway you put it. My goal was to catch the sun rising but ground fog rolled in just when I was set to taxi out so I had to postpone for an hour. It is just me by myself talking so not too much in the educational department. Enjoy!

-Greg

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First Dual Cross Country

Yesterday we flew our first dual cross country. I flew the 172 (N183SP) from Melbourne (MLB) to Okeechobee (OBE). Flight time was 35 minutes. For this cross country we used pilotage and dead reckoning for navigating. I really enjoyed navigating this way. Although the trip was short, it is interesting to see just how accurate the sectionals are. I managed to stay fairly accurate to the estimated airspeed (105 kts.). I was surprised at how quickly the checkpoints arrived. Once I calculated the time it took us to get from our first checkpoint to the second, it was time to look for the next checkpoint. After the next checkpoints, Casey asked me if I could see my next major landmark. Well.....if you look at a map of Florida, there is this gigantic body of water in the south central part of Florida. I pondered for a few moments and looked at my sectional only to see no more checkpoints, but I did not see anything that jumped out at me. Little did I know that about 15 miles in front of me was the huge lake of Florida known as...well....Lake Okeechobee. Once I saw that, I knew the airport was close. We had an uneventful landing and went inside to have some coffee and take a short break. They had a complimentary coffee/cappuccino/french vanilla/hot chocolate....you get the picture, machine in the lounge so I enjoyed a french vanilla and managed to scald the tar out of the roof of my mouth so needless to say nothing tasted the same for the rest of the night. On our way back to Melbourne, I got a little off course because I read from the sectional a bend in the Florida Turnpike that was a bend off to the west so I was flying about 5 miles west of our ground track. Other than that, the trip went fine for my first one. What did I learn? Don't focus so much on too much detail in the sectional. See the big picture. The sectionals are very detailed and when something is just off of the right of your ground track....it really is...just off to your right. The scale is much closer than I was thinking. Also, stay ahead of the airplane. I always know this, but easier said than done when your 3500. And the last thing - get a kneeboard so you’re not fumbling with everything when the ride is bumpier than expected. Our next cross country scheduled next Thursday is from Melbourne (MLB) to Lakeland (LAL) to Orlando Executive (ORL) and back to Melbourne. I have already started plotting the course. I should learn a lot on this one seeing as how both LAL and ORL are Class D airspace.

-Greg

Student Pilot Journal Podcast #12

Busy week....finally I am able to get this out to you all. This is from last Saturday the 2nd. We intended to fly to Melbourne (MLB) for some more towered field work as well as Sebastian Municipal (X26). We only made it to Melbourne due to some holdups at Valkaria. In my previous post I mentioned the headset frustration so you will get to see it first hand in this one. Overall it was a good lesson as aggravating as it was. You are always guaranteed to learn something each time you fly, no matter your level of experience. I've taken a few more videos so I have plenty of material for the next few podcasts. I just need to find the time to edit them. This one took a while, since I wrote the music for it. Sometimes the better musical ideas come when you are not even trying to write anything.

-Greg

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