Lesson #35

I’m way behind my blogging. Lesson #35 was on Monday, March 20th. It was a night cross-country from Gary (GYY) to Rockford (RFD). Rockford’s airport is interested in that it is surrounded by a TRSA. Alex asked what I knew about TRSAs and I gave him the rundown of what I knew. You can request flight following through a TRSA and if you’re traveling to or from the airport at the TRSA’s center, it is substantially similar to flying into Class C airspace—except that TRSAs are entirely voluntary, so I never actually need to communicate with them. Alex told me that while I am technically correct about the voluntary nature of using TRSAs, in reality “they” really prefer it when you use the service so “they” know what you are doing and can vector traffic appropriately. Good to know.

Based on the positive reviews of my passenger on the previous cross-country the day before, I suggested to my wife that she join me on this flight as it would be her last opportunity to fly with me in the presence of an instructor. Said differently, she could use it as a confidence-booster before flying alone with me after I get my PPL. She agreed. Unfortunately, the winds were gusty up to 3,200 MSL, so yet again my wife got an overly-bumpy flight experience. Once I was out from under Bravo’s airspace, I quickly climbed to 4,500 MSL and the ride smoothed out.

When planning for the cross-country, I had made it a point to pick landmarks that would lighted at night. In particular, I chose towns whenever possible. Also knowing that night flying by reference to landmarks is inherently hard, I chose to fly to the Joliet VOR and off of that toward Rockford, noting the radials both ways. Alex phoo-phoo’d the radio navigation—not because it was a bad idea, but because I’m supposed to be learning how hard it is to fly at night by reference to landmarks, so radio navigation is cheating. I didn’t change my flight plan; I just chose to not dial in the VOR on the way to Rockford. This left me a bit worried, though. There are two Class D airspaces along the route (DPA and ARR) and I was counting on VOR navigation to keep me clear of them. Actually, I only noticed one of the Class D airports (DPA) when I planned the trip—Alex had to point out the other one (ARR) when I started venture too close to it. Slipping through them was tricky given that I didn’t have any references in the area other than the airports themselves. Alex had to point out the airports on the ground, because I could not make them out on my own.

Once clear of them, I headed to Rockford, spoke with TRSA, spoke with tower, did a stop-and-go on the long runway, and headed home to Midway. Alex let me play with the navcoms for the trip home, and setup some radials for me to intercept at various points. For example, “Intercept the 270 radial of Joliet at a 30 degree angle” and “fly me to the intersection of radial 80 from Joliet and radial 300 from Chicago Heights”. All of this I handled easily—radio navigation is really a fun game for me.

Landing at Midway was tricky. The gusts were bad. I was cleared for 4R, one of the 150’ wide runways and I still would have botched it. I wasn’t getting the rudder and ailerons in right and I got pushed way to the left—almost off the runway—when I was only 20 feet or so above the ground. At just that moment, I knew what I was doing wrong, but the situation seemed unsalvagable. Alex grabbed the controls and landed us. I know what I need to do for next time, but what really bothered me about the incident was that I never thought to go around. The situation clearly slipped from my control and I needed to abort, but the thought didn’t occur to me—I was too fixated on figuring out how to land. I need to add a “think go-around” step to my GUMPS check on final to remind myself that I can abort at any time.

My biggest take-away was that I’ll never fly by night without GPS and/or dual VORs for triangulation. Knowing what I know now, I would have planned to fly by reference to interstate highways the whole way. Night flying is best done IFR: I Follow Roads.