Lesson 32 - Solo Cross Country to Medford

Ok, this afternoon I got to do another solo cross country, this time to Medford. This was quite a kick since I have never been to this airport before. Over lunch, I went to the airport and met Paul so he could go over my flight planning. He was quite impressed with my custom spreadsheet I created for my plan, and like my overall approach. I could have sworn I heard from the briefer that runways 9/27 was closed, and that surprised Paul since he had another student en route at that moment to Medford too. I said I must have misheard it. I later checked that day, and yes in fact the runway was closed, so I called up Paul telling him so. When I got to the airport, there was a note for me from Paul saying the same thing, he must not have gotten my message. :)

Anyway, preflight good, filed flight plans, was off the ground only 10 minutes past my scheduled time. The flight there was awesome and uneventful, although Minneapolis Center seemed too busy to give me flight following, since they ignored three of my calls. No big deal, but its always a little unnerving to see another plane pass just above or below you that you didn't see until the last minute, I suppose that is why we have our assigned altitudes. I also had a little trouble picking out my second checkpoint, a wide railroad track / power line, probably because I mistaken one lake on my map from another, but I found it eventually.

Once on the ground in Medford, I couldn't raise FSS to close and open my new flight plans until I was a good 10 minutes on my way back. The way back was equally nice and pretty easy. I am constantly looking for emergency landing sites and scanning for traffic, it's fun, although I have to do a better job of sharing my attention doing instrument scans. Maintaining altitude on the way back was pretty easy too. The excitement came when I was attempting to land back in Eau Claire. Tower 22 as the active runway, I was already cleared for a left base pattern entrance. About 3 miles before, a citation jet wanted to come straight in on the same runway, opposite direction! We considered that a bit, and controller asked me to keep up my speed and land "in front of" (or more accurate play chicken with the jet), well that threw me off a bit. My effort to accommodate the controller made me come in high and fast, bust my flap range and land WAY down the runway, making the second to LAST taxiway exit, it was ugly. Although the good news is I landed considerably ahead of the jet, and the controller thanked me for my help. I know what I did wrong, this is what I would have done differently when I have another instance like this:

• Keep my speed up until hitting that base leg turn.
• Cut throttle to idle
• Pitch way up to quickly bleed off that speed to quickly get to 75 kts. Don't worry about gaining a couple hundred feet, get those flaps down! Watch that airspeed don't stall!!
• Within flap range, quickly full flaps, pitch down to approach.
• Forward slip the crap out it.
• Finally, be HONEST. If I am uncomfortable, just ask the controller to go around.

So, some excitement at the end, I certainly pushed my skills, and learned a ton.

One more cross country, I have one planned for a two stop to Merrill, Wisconsin Rapids, and then back to Eau Claire.

After that, it's at least 3 hours of test preparation. I am at 45 hours now. If I were to guess, I will be going on my checkride at around the 50-55 mark, probably closer to 55.