The View From the Top

Here are some some pictures from last week's trip to Las Cruces.

This is a farm of some sort, surrounded by those round fields I mentioned in a previous post. You'll notice one of the fields has a slice missing out of it. The Cochise VOR is located in the missing slice.

This is just a cool highway shot I couldn't resist taking.

This is the airport in Deming, NM. I personally don't think it's a very good airport, but it looks cool from the air.

These are some semi-rare non-round fields I found. I like this picture because it reminds me of a patchwork quilt.

And this is my personal favorite. C'mon, it's Pac-Man. How can you not love that?

SAD

Occasionally, when I fly a cross-country it becomes necessary to stop and fuel up the plane. Twice now, I've gotten fuel at Safford Regional Airport (SAD). I really like stopping there. It's sort of remote and quiet, and it's good practice taxiing from the active runway to different points on the airport. Anyhow, when I was there on last week's cross-country I took a few pictures. The mountains in the background look fake but, trust me, they're real.

The building behind the Cessna is the FBO where I buy my fuel. On the men's room walls, they have newspaper pages from the late 1940's. They also have an amusing little sign next to the sink. I'm going to try to get a picture of it on my next cross-country.

These are fuel trucks. It's impractical to try to taxi a plane up to a gas pump for fueling, since planes have a fuel tank in each wing, so they fill the truck up with fuel and drive the truck up to the planes for fueling.

This is just a cool-looking hangar with some beautiful mountains in the background. That's my rudder on the right hand side, but its presence in the picture is incidental.

And finally, this is a jet that was just sitting on the ramp. It looked very out-of-place as it was the only jet among a handful of prop planes. I had to snap a picture.

And that's Safford. I hope to fly my wife out there one day.

Trains

During yesterday's cross-country, I somehow managed to fly over 3 different trains at 3 different points on the trip. I know my father-in-law likes trains, so I did my best to take pictures of all 3 of them. Enjoy!

P.S. If you click on the individual pictures, you'll get a bigger version to look at.

And February 7.

And February 6.

This is the cross-stitch as it appeared on February 3.

As some of you know, I'm cross-stitching a picture of Yoda for my lovely wife. For the sake of the pictures I'm about to post next, this is the original picture, more or less (I'm not sure why it looks like Yoda has a dandruff problem. That's not how the picture is supposed to look).

At 4.5 hours, today's cross-country was my longest yet. And my scariest. It was very windy in New Mexico, and I was catching some incredible turbulence off the mountains. So much so that I spent some of my flight time in prayer. I'm not kidding. I was a little concerned about my airplane losing a wing or something. In retrospect, it probably wasn't that bad out, but it sure felt like it at the time. I took a bunch of pictures, but I haven't downloaded them yet. When I get around to it, I'll be sure to stick some of them on here. I'll also go into more detail about the flight later. I just woke up from a nap, and my fingers aren't typing so good.

Photo op!

As of right now, the forecasted weather for tomorrow is looking good, so I'm probably flying my Las Cruces - Safford cross-country tomorrow morning. And good old 2143Y is back on the ramp and ready for flight. She's been in the hangar getting her 100-hour inspection the past couple days. I LOVE that plane! Assuming I don't forget the digital camera at home, expect some aerial photos to be up at some point this weekend.

Speaking of cameras, Erin has actually recommended I start bringing the camera along and taking pictures on my X-Cs, to help break up the monotony a bit. Apparently, I'm past the point where taking photos in flight would get me in trouble. This is very good news. Expect photos!

Since Saturday's cross-country didn't happen for me, I'm going to try again on either Thursday or Friday. And then, assuming I'm able to fly to Las Cruces on one of those two days, I'll try to get another X-C in on Saturday morning. It'll probably be Silver City, NM - Safford - Willcox. It's not really necessary for me to start doubling up like that, yet. I'm just trying to stay a little bit ahead of the game. Besides, cross-countries are fun.

This morning Jen and I got to sleep in a bit, since I didn't have to fly at 6:45. Erin called last night to tell me she was on her way to Tucson for dental surgery and that I should get dispatched for a local solo by Jorge (another flight instructor here). I wasn't sure if Jorge had a first-thing-in-the-morning student today, so I went in for the 8:15 flight period instead. The solo was fine. I worked on some commercial maneuvers (chandelles, 8's on pylons, and 8's around pylons), then I flew back to the college and did 4 landings. I'm pretty much over the fear of flaring, but my landings are still a little rusty. And yesterday I got introduced to the power-off precision landing. Doing them successfully requires some skill with short-field landings. Doing short-fields successfully requires soem skill with normal landings. Hence, I did 4 landings before shutting down this morning. One was pretty rough. One was really nice. The other two were passable.

I got my radio nav test back in class yesterday. I missed two, which earned me an A. This test was much easier than the first one, mostly because I took the time to sit down and go through the relevent questions in the study guide. Turns out it pays to never underestimate the power of the study guide. It's a lesson I won't soon forget.

Maybe Wal-Mart by noon...

Sigh... never mind. I spent 3 hours last night working on flight planning for my Las Cruces/Safford flight. Then I spent an hour getting the plane ready this morning, so everything would be A-okay for my X-C. Then when I was finally all ready to go (90 minutes behind schedule, due to several factors), the engine wouldn't catch and the starter eventually killed the battery. So my choices were walk back to security, sign out a different plane key and start preflighting all over again, or call it quits and come back home. The first option would have put me at least 2 hours behind schedule, and I wouldn't have gotten home until somewhere around 2:30. Option B wound up being the winner.

Las Cruces by noon...

I'm flying a solo X-C to Las Cruces, NM (LRU) tomorrow morning, weather permitting. We stopped overnight in Las Cruces on our voyage down here. It's the only time I've ever been to the place and I'm excited, for nostalgia's sake, to be flying there, even if it's only for a touch-and-go. It'll be more or less a straight shot from here to Las Cruces, then from Las Cruces up to Safford, then back to good old P03 (that's the airport identifier here). It's looking to be a fairly long X-C. The P03 - LRU leg alone should take me well over an hour. The longest cross-country I've flown was exactly 4 hours, from initial engine startup to final engine shutdown. I'm curious to see if this one takes the record. I'll let you know.

Ear to ear

That's how big my smile is right now. Why? Because I just received my private pilot certificate in the mail. Now, granted, I've been a private pilot since November 21, but all I had to show for it was a flimsy half-sheet of printer paper that Mr. Perry very unceremoniously handed me upon completion of my private pilot check ride. But now I've got an official plastic credit card-type certificate. Now it feels real! And I'm lit up and grinning like a jack o'lantern.