Eblo

VOR Work

Finally, after a mechanical problem my last time out, then a week off for turkey day, I got back in the air today.

It was a clear, sunny day, but boy was it windy! Running some errands about an hour before my lesson, I saw a few overhead cables (just TV, not power) resonating nicely in the wind - a perfect standing wave pattern. It was pretty neat to see, but it didn't instill confidence that I'd get my last set of supervised solo pattern work in today.

I checked the winds reported in the area and though they were pretty much right down runway 27, they were about 13 knots gusting into the twenties. I was kind of surprised I didn't get a call from my CFI at 11:30, so at 11:50 I headed over to the airport.

After I did the preflight check and we buckled in, he said, "Let's see if we can't get that third solo in today." He didn't seem to concerned about the wind, so I wasn't anymore, either.

I taxied out to 27, did my run up, made my radio call, and was off the runway in what seemed like about 50 feet of roll. Yowza, that's a strong headwind. I climbed to 500 AGL, made my crosswind turn, hit the traffic pattern altitude, did a quick GUMPS check, called my downwind, and in a flash it was time to throttle back and throw out the first notch of flaps. My base leg required about a 30 degree crab, and though I looked a bit high on final, the headwind took care of the extra altitude and I put it down just a touch past the numbers. Not a bad landing.

The second takeoff was a little more eventful. The winds were getting squirrelier and we got the $%^& pretty well kicked out of us on the climb-out. At this point my instructor announced that today would be a good day for VOR (navigation) work. It was actually a lot of fun tracking the needle and I think my years on Flight Simulator helped out a bit. If I say so myself, I did pretty good keeping a straight track considering the winds.

Click for a larger image.

First we headed north and tracked to the BURBUN VOR and played around there for a bit. We flew over Alpine Valley, where Stevie Ray Vaughn met his fate, so that was pretty interesting. Along the way when the wind was pushing us, we clocked a 130kt groundspeed. Not bad for a Warrior.

On the way home, I followed the 180 degree radial from Burlington until I picked up a 140 degree heading to the Northbrook VOR, which took us right home (C81). This was the straightest part of the ground track. I was really getting the hang of it.

The one thing worth mentioning about the return to the airport was a bit of a mistake I made. I was proud of myself for remembering to make my position call about 4 miles out from Campbell. I also got in my 45 and downwind calls. But my bubble was soon burst. My downwind call was answered with, "Traffic for Campbell Airport, check your frequency." DOH!!!! When we were tracking back and forth over BUU, my instructor had dialed up their CTAF and was advising of our intentions. Well I never switched the radio back to C81's CTAF. Ah well. My CFI said he let me make that mistake. I wonder. . . .

Anyway, the landing was uneventful and even thought I STILL have only soloed twice, it was a good lesson and a great day to fly. Hopefully the winds will calm down tomorrow. If not, we'll just work on more VOR stuff.

One sad thing that I realized upon looking over my logbook today was that I only flew three times in November. The weather and scheduling gods were against me. Here's to a new month.

In case anyone cares, here is a picture taken after my first lesson.
Here are the GPS plots I've gotten online so far.
And to date I have logged 76 landings in 19.9 hours. Only 7 of those landings and 0.9 hours are PIC time.