Dual Cross-Country to Corvallis

After a few cancellations over the past couple weeks due to weather, Kelly and I were finally able to fly my dual cross-country solo I'd planned to Corvallis Municipal Airport and back. I did all the flight planning, including the weather and winds (actually I did it for the third time since I'd also done it before on the occasions that got scrubbed). I also filed the VFR flight plan with the FAA flight service station this morning while I got the en-route weather forecast.

It was a fun and rather relaxed flight. Compared the super choppy winds during last night's night flying session, today was a breeze (pun intended). Actually, there was almost no breeze. We flew at around 3500 feet and our air speed and ground speed were pretty much identical, so there wasn't much wind going on most of the flight.

Probably the most complicated part of the flight was the first ten or so minutes, just because there was so much to do. We got into the air and flew over the Newberg VOR. Kelly took the controls for a couple minutes while I dialed in frequencies to activate the flight plan, listen to weather, and then change over to the Portland approach frequency to request VFR flight following (which puts us on the screen of air traffic control's radar, allowing them to keep an eye open and let us know about other airplanes or things we might need to know). Then I noted our time of departure and over the VOR, from which I needed to determine our approximate estimated time to the checkpoints along the way and to Corvallis, which is a lot more complicated in the air than I'd realized it would be. Basically I just needed to add 30 minutes to my pre-recorded ETAs since we departed a little late and crossed the VOR 30 minutes later than I'd originally planned.

Once I got all the logitics work done, it wasn't too hard. I activated the flight plan (which I think I'll do from the ground next time, just to keep the in-air work a little simpler), got on ATC's radar, and then used the VOR radio to track my flight path along a radial that would take us down to Corvallis. After a little experience seeing how easy it is to drift off course using VOR radials, I started to get a little better and to maintain a straighter track. We set up a track on the GPS unit's screen as well, so I got to compare how the two work side by side. Looking outside, I was able to visually find all my checkpoint landmarks that I had written into my flight plan, passing curves in the river, towers on hillsides, and airports on either side along the way. Before too long I was able to see the field at Corvallis off in the distance.

There was a slight haze covering the area, but by the time we were 15 or so miles away you could see the big runway pretty well. I set up for a straight-in approach since there did not appear to be much other traffic active in the area (just one other Cessna), and because I need to see and practice how that works - descending straight in from a longer distance. It's not the same as flying a standard pattern, which is pretty easy to do. On a long straight-in (or direct) approach, you have to figure out how much time you have left to fly, how much altitude you need to lose, and from that information at what rate you need to descend. I was at about 3000 feet before I started riding downhill and I needed to get to the field elevation of 250 feet. After setting up a descent rate of about 600 feet per minute I felt like I was doing pretty well. At the end of my trip to the pavement I needed to add a little extra flaps to get down a bit faster, and I put the airplane on the runway. I completely forgot that this landing was supposed to be a touch and go, and started to do a full stop to pull off onto the taxiway, but Kelly had me turn back to stay on the runway and depart directly from there. I'm sure it looked pretty funny, but it worked. I told him that was a touch and go practice for "I just landed, but then I realized the airport was under attack, so I changed my mind and decided to hurry up and leave."

Once in the air again, Kelly asked me what we needed to do next. I thought about it and said "Find Independence airport?" He said that was our next stop, but was there anything we needed to do at Corvallis? I thought again for a couple seconds and realized it was time now to close out our VFR flight plan, so the FAA and Civil Air Patrol would not be out looking for us. I called up McMinnville flight service on the radio and closed the flight plan, and we answered some questions the flight service controller had about the visibility and meteorological conditions at Corvallis. He had automated sensor readings showing the conditions were IFR (meaning Instrument Flight Rules, or unsafe for visual flight), and we were able to tell him it was definitely VFR conditions with greater than ten miles visibility and no clouds. I remember a couple weeks ago when I got my first weather briefing for this trip that there was a notice to airmen (NOTAM) that stated the automated weather reporting at Corvallis was unreliable. Apparently it still is. I wonder if it was the light haze that caused the automated sensors to be in such substantial error.

We departed the Corvallis area with the plan to fly under basic VFR, without filing a flight plan, back to Twin Oaks. We also planned to make a stop at Independence Airport, which is just about 10-15 minutes north of Corvallis. I flew another straight in approach, and my descent was pretty good but again I was a little high and had to drop some extra flaps there at the end before the airport lights told me I was on the glide path. It's a medium sized runway, and is situated next to a huge neighborhood of houses, of which most seem to have hangars for garages. Sure enough, when we parked on the ramp and walked around a bit, there was a man puling his airplane out of his garage/hangar attached to his home, which he taxied down the airplane version of a street and onto the taxiway. It looks like some of the "roads" are aircraft taxiways and others are for vehicles. Cool place. Looks like fun, and a lot of money.

Unfortunately the restaurant was closing as we walked up so our plans to eat lunch were foiled. With grumbling stomachs we looked at a few other airplanes parked there, then got back in the airplane and prepared to get back in the air and on our way home.

The remainder of the flight I flew with the Garmin 296 GPSMap for navigation, which is an amazing device. If I ever own an airplane it will have one of these, without a doubt. There's so much information in there it's just awesome, and it makes a lot of the work you have to do with folding charts and looking things up in books and reference sheets much simpler, so you can focus more of your attention on flying the plane and looking outside. You still need to be able to do everything by hand (what if your GPS breaks), but having the modern technology is pretty terrific. Hard to get lost with one of those.

We flew directly back over the Newberg VOR on the ridge south of our home airport, and a couple minutes later I entered the Twin Oaks pattern. As I was finishing my downwind leg and about to configure for landing, Kelly pulled the power on me and said I had an engine out. I turned short for the runway and dialed in some flaps, missed the push-to-talk button trying to call on the radio, fixed that problem, checked my speed and maintained it, and descended to the runway, where I touched down fairly well after a steep-ish approach.

All in all, it was a very good day. Great weather and flying conditions, especially for this time of the year. I had fun and learned some new things, and got to do some new stuff on the radio. I also got to apply all the navigation skills I've recently learned and see how things really work.

Next up for me is a "short" solo cross country (meaning to an airport more than 50 miles away), which I hope to be able to do on Saturday. the weather forecast has been changing a lot over the past 24 hours, and right now it looks like the weather might just cooperate, but tomorrow I'll know for sure. I'll be flying to Lebanon State Airport and back for that trip, but I plan to also write a plan for an airport somewhere to the north just in case the weather doesn't support flying down the Willamette Valley tomorrow - It's known for harboring some stubborn fog at times. Now that I'm done writing this, I need to go put those plans on paper. I'm excited and looking forward to it!

Also, I'm getting up early in the morning because every first Saturday of the month is when the Experimental Aircraft Association chapter based at Twin Oaks holds it's 8 a.m. Pancake Breakfast, and it sounds like a lot of fun. A friend is meeting me there. She's never been to the airport before, so I'll get to do the nickel tour, too - Fun!