Long way to fly...

God willing, I'll be making my long solo cross-country flight tomorrow morning. I've got all my courses and checkpoints figured out; I'm just waiting til 7pm so I can get the weather forecast and finish up my nav logs. I'll be flying out of here at 6:45 tomorrow morning, and I probably won't be back til sometime around 3:00; maybe even a little later. In preparation, Belinda and I worked on gusty crosswind takeoffs and landings during my flight period this morning. Those went well, so I don't see any reason why tomorrow shouldn't be more of the same.

On a sadder note, there was a plane crash at the Benson airport last night, that apparently claimed 2 lives. Benson is a 50-mile flight from here, and the airport is a popular checkpoint for Cochise College students, when flying to Tucson. As a matter of fact, I'm using it as my first checkpoint tomorrow morning. The plane that crashed was making a short trip from Safford (one of my favorite airports) to Benson. The pilot landed hard and bounced, then added full power, which flipped the plane over and killed both people on board. It's a very sobering thing to hear about, and it makes a pilot realize once again that panic and poor planning are two things we can NEVER allow into the airplane with us.