Debrief 20090419

This is not only the debrief for the day. I'll get the salt lake pics up eventually. So last week (monday) I went up. Another solo X-country, from N27-ITH-N23. It was over 150 nautical miles. I did two full stop landings at ITH and a crosswind landing over at Sidney. I really needed to relieve myself so I shut her down at Sidney for a little while and went to the bathroom. I mozied around a bit. It's a nice airport. I thought it was kind of dumpy at first but all in all it's not too bad. The right traffic still messes with me sometimes. There's a black airplane there. It's a jet and it looks like the Vampire. Jerry says he's never seen it anywhere else. He says it's never moved. That makes me sad cause that jet looks like it belongs up in the air. I bet that plane is like a homesick angel. If I could, I'd fly it. In fact, I may inquire about it before I go off to college in August.
Earlier in the week (saturday) the weather was not in the right conditions for this XC so Jerry and I went up and worked on PTS prep, and 720 degree turns about a point.

Debrief 20090419
At first look this morning the clouds seemed to just hang over but as the day wore the clouds dissipated or else moved somewhere else. I didn't think I at first I'd be able to go, but as it turns out, everywhere but BGM was clear (which I knew) but just before I went, we checked BGM again, and all was clear. Everything was peachy dandy so I went to preflight. Jerry signed me off and I fueled up the baby, of which I've come to a conclusion about her.
The 152, may be underpowered, but is a beautiful airplane. It's small, compact, and although it's a high-wing (low wings tend to look cooler) it looks sleek. My only gripe about the airplane; she's underpowered. When I get the money, I'm going to own one, and I'm going to give her the power she deserves.
So I took off and picked up my heading while I climbed to 3500 feet. I flew to the BGM VOR. I called them and ended up doing a touch-n-go on runway 10. They handed me off to Elmira and they followed me until Ithaca to which I was left alone to fly by D'ed Reckoning to get myself to Fingerlakes Regional Airport. It is beautiful country up that way. That's as far north as I've gone during my Xcountries. Normally I stop at ITH, but on the sectional, I saw that it was near the north end of the lake and I've been wanting to fly up it, so that's why I decided to make my XC for there. I'm glad I did, it was every bit as beautiful as I thought it would be. I landed at 0G7 then took off again and headed to ITH via the VOR. I flew overhead and picked up a heading to take me home following the ITH VOR. Everything went extremely well today. Just enough turbulence to keep things interesting, I talked smoothly on the radio, didn't wreck the airplane, landings went great, takeoffs were great, winds cooperated. Everything just went great. 2.4 hours later I was back at my home airport. And I didn't even have to use the restroom midtrip! Haha in all seriousness I almost hit a bird. It flew right underneath me, it was kind of creepy, cause not more than five seconds later, I was flying parallel a big hawk. It was cool. Very good day, now begins Practical Flight Test Prep! Woo! Almost there.

Mission: COMPLETE