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TTD-SPB-UAO-4S9-TTD Dual Cross Country
The last flight I had was soloing at Troutdale (TTD) on December 13th; two days before my vacation. After finally soloing at Troutdale, rather than continuing to fly, I went on a vacation to Costa Rica. The trip was awesome and not the worst of times to go, but there was some excellent weather here in Portland that I missed out on.
This flight was the followup to it which had me doing much more than I have in a long time. Rick sent me a route and I had to work out getting through it. As I had planned out the flight I missed some key points around actually navigating the flight. Mainly, though I had my angles corrected, I didn’t really have any nav aids and so the flight was more or less based on my knowledge of the land, which in Washington towards Scappoose (SPB), wasn’t much.
My landing over into Scappoose was quite rough as I didn’t plan for how I was going to get into the landing pattern for this airport. Scappoose has both a right and left pattern runway which requires me to land differently depending on where the wind is coming from. I didn’t think this through as I was getting their and so I had quite a dismal entry.
The landing itself was also rough as I came in way too low causing me to stall just above the runway bouncing us. I was quite upset with myself. I realize that you can forget quite a bit when you don’t plan out everything and don’t fly for over a month.
The next two airports weren’t too bad. Aurora we flew to and over. I ended up doing a couple landings at Mulino (4S9). My first attempt was a go-around due to the fact I didn’t give myself enough space for my pattern. My turns were so sharp that I didn’t feel comfortable bout it. My last was improved, but my landing felt rough for where I was in my training.
My return to Troutdale wasn’t too terrible, though based on how low I was, I didn’t know the look of the land well enough to know really where I was and I felt lost. Rick showed me some tricks to use when this happens with regards to using my map to relate it to points on the ground and to simply fly higher to get a better view of the surrounding area.
I flew in using the Boring (city) arrival which brought me in on a left bank for runway 25 into Troutdale.
Overall, though I made it everywhere I planned to go, it felt rough and showed me things I needed to work on. It was a long and expensive flight that will hopefully sink some knowledge into my head so it doesn’t happen again.
Logs
Flight Time: 1.6 Hours
Landings: 3February 1, 2013 / Jason / Comments Off on TTD-SPB-UAO-4S9-TTD Dual Cross Country
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