Friday, October 10, 2014
The first solo cross-country flight
By Hobo
Hudson
The aspiring
flier fidgeted as she stood in line waiting for her instructor to review her
flight plan. This doesn’t look too bad, she thought, watching her instructor
cursorily scan the flight plans and make a notation on the bottom before
entering permission for the flight in the student’s logbook and sending the
student on his way.
When it was
her turn, her instructor carefully went over every detail on the flight plan
and even asked her to justify her compass heading. Pulling out her “spin wheel”
and her notes from her flight service weather briefing, she explained the true
course would be 055 but a wind from 190 made her adjust her course slightly
and, after adjusting for compass deviation, how she had come up with the course
she noted.
Finally, her instructor
nodded and wrote LD07 on the bottom and explained that Lima Delta Zero Seven
would be her call sign to contact Tampa Approach if she got lost and needed
radar assistance.
She smiled in
satisfaction as she noted her instructor’s permission for her first cross-country
flight while walking to the flight line. This day had been a long time coming
but she felt confident and fully prepared.
After
watching her lift off, the instructor tuned his radio to the destination
airport’s frequency to monitor his other students’ progress since the first of
the flights should be about ready to land. To his surprise, he heard nothing
but silence. He shook his head and tuned to Tampa Approach’s frequency and
heard a babble of voices….LD03 turning to 268, descending to 45 feet. Will dive
after passing over roof top for final to 180, etc.
Shaking his
head, he called to the other instructors to take off and help Tampa sort out
the developing feather ball. After takeoff, he heard a clear confident feminine
voice: LD07 is a black bellied whistling duck-student flier. Currently 12 wing
flaps west of Cafeteria-level at 100 feet-plan to enter a left cross wind for
Cafeteria and make a wide left down wind for landing on runway 18.
LD07-Tampa
Approach. Whistle 1207 and whistle if you need radar assistance. Roger that. LD07
whistling 1207.
The grizzled
old instructor rushed to take off and hurried to Cafeteria to find out what had
gone wrong. As he approached, he saw a slight fog had developed and, although
he had excellent vertical and horizontal visibility, he could not see the
runway ahead of him. However, he
knew the surroundings intimately and upon landing, saw a sole student on the
ground.
“How did you
manage to find the airport when none of the other students could find it?” he
asked.
“Hobo told me
his dad used to fly and I’ve been picking up tips from him,” she replied. “He
told me that sometimes a slight fog will develop and you can see ahead and down
but can’t see at an angle. He called it ‘slant visibility.’ He also told me
that if it happened to me to try to find a very visible landmark a little to
one side or the other of the airport and aim for it while looking straight down
so I flew a little left of my true heading until I could look down and see the
east/west highway and flew on top of it until I crossed 14th Street. From that
point, it was a piece of cake.”
The old
instructor was silent for a few moments as he digested her explanation. It was
an approach he had never heard about. He then asked for her log book and, after
scanning it, he pronounced that she was nine minutes short on blinder time and
short two cross-country flights.
Making a snap
decision, he told her to eat breakfast and then put on her blinders and he’d
fly with her a few minutes east, do a few maneuvers and then fly towards home
until the nine minutes were up. If that worked out all right, he would send her
on a cross-country flight the following morning to Wimauma and then a cross-country
flight to Manatee the next morning, and if she felt up to it on her return, he
would give her flight test upon her return and she could be a fully licensed
private flier in two days.
He then
congratulated her and told her that she would be the fastest student he had
ever had to earn her wings.
The little
duck smiled and thanked him before walking away to eat and didn’t tell him that
Hobo’s dad had rented an ultra-light plane and flown along-side her several
times to help her practice her maneuvers but couldn’t log them because he
didn’t have an instructor’s license. She’d just let him think that females are
naturally better fliers than males.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
To order
This was Hobo Hudson, my doggy brother, a little terrier mix with black fur. He became famous after his first attempt at writing stories, which was an article published in the newsletter of our local animal shelter, the same shelter in which I ended up years later before Hobo and his parents adopted me. Hobo’s fame quickly spread as he made a name for himself as a business dog and an adventurer. To keep his memory alive, my doggy sister, my three kitty siblings and I, Wylie Hudson, are continuing his blog. Our mom is the blog’s editor.
Favorite sites
Powered by Blogger.
0 comments:
Post a Comment