Lesson 12 – Cross Country

Today is the day we get to see what real flying is about. We will be doing the dual cross country today and land and eat lunch at another airport. The flight will consist of a mix of pilotage, dead reckoning, and gps navigation. I will also get practice with filing a flight plan, getting flight following and doing a diversion to another airport.

The term cross country in regards to pilot training is kind of a misnomer. The FAA defines it as a minimum of 150 miles total during the day and 100 miles at night. I suppose in some states, you could fly to another state and back in that distance but in big ole California, 150 miles isn’t going to get you very far on a geographic map of the state. In the case of today’s flight, we are flying out to Lodi airport which, as the crow flies, is 60 miles from Palo Alto. After our Lodi stop, we were going to practice GPS navigation and a diversion to another airport. A diversion is useful if you have some emergency which dictates that you land as soon as possible. It is also used when the weather at your destination deteriorates to the point that you can’t land there.

The day did not start off great as I did not sleep well the night before because I was excited for the flight. Then I woke up early in the morning thinking about all the things I had to do before heading out to the airport. First on the list was to get myself ready and then I logged into Duats to check the weather. I entered the route and got the winds aloft forecast for my intended cruising altitude of 7,500 feet. I then did all the flight heading and ground speed calculations. This gave me a magnetic heading to fly using the compass and it gave me an estimated time enroute. For the dead reckoning portion of the flight, we don’t use any VOR’s or other navigation tools. We use features on the ground as checkpoints and then fly certain headings from those checkpoints and time how long it takes to get between checkpoints. If the weather is as forecast and the calculations are correct then when your timer reaches your Estimated Time of Arrival, you should be over your checkpoint.

The weather forecast for Palo Alto and for Lodi called for broken clouds at 4,000 and 8,000 respectively. I prepared the flightplan and filed that online and was about to leave when I decided to check the weather one more time to be sure. As I was doing that I had the thought that I didn’t really check the weather between Palo Alto and Lodi. Since the distance was 60 miles, it shouldn’t be too much different but I thought I should check anyway. It was good that I did because the METAR report for Livermore showed an overcast layer at 4,000 feet. Since our cruise was 7,500, we would be over this layer. This would be legal for VFR flight as long as you stayed 1,000 feet above the clouds. However, today we were doing dead reckoning where I needed reference to the ground enroute. Because of this, I elected to change our cruise altitude to 3,500 to stay below the overcast. With a change in cruise altitude by 4,000 feet, I would need to recalculate the headings and ground speed as the winds aloft would be much different. This delayed our start a bit as I did this.

Once the plane was ready and my instructor had a short discussion with me on the ground about our flight, we climbed in and started her up. The taxi and takeoff were the same as usual with me requesting a right Dumbarten departure. Once over the bridge and established in a nice climb, I contacted the Oakland flight service station and opened our flight plan. As we approached the hills and Sunol golf course, I noticed that the overcast layer was lower and more pervasive than expected. My instructor asked what I wanted to do and I said that I saw two options; either turn around or climb over the clouds. They were too low that flying under them would put me at risk of flying into the hilly terrain. My instructor recommended the climb so I climbed up to 5,500 feet. From here I could see that they were broken in a lot of spots and my intended route would take me along the edge, which would allow me to have enough ground visibility to be comfortable with continuing on.

One we reached Sunol, the pilotage part of my navigation was over and the dead reckoning part begin. I turned to a heading of 18 degrees on the compass and started my timer. We would fly for approximately 9 minutes and then I should be over the Byron airport. The Byron airport is a nice checkpoint because it is situated right next to a large lake. This lake is visible from a long ways away in the air so if you are off from your intended path, you can easily correct it by heading toward the lake. As it was, I was right on and I crossed over the airport 45 seconds past when I was supposed to, which was close enough.

I then turned 4 degrees to the right and flew toward Lodi which was 28 miles away at this point. Half way to Lodi, we encountered a big cloud formation at our altitude. I started to descend but I did not allow enough time and we got too close to it so I had to do a circle. Once we completed the 360 degree circle, I was low enough to continue on. While doing this, I had forgotten to stop my timer so I guessed that our circle took about a minute and a half to complete and I stopped the timer for a minute and a half and then started it again.

We were flying at 3,500 feet again and I needed to recalculate where to start the descent down to 1,500 feet. Basically I figure 4 miles for every 1,000 feet of elevation loss. Since we needed to lose 2,000 feet then I could start the descent 8 miles before the airport and, according to my chart that would put us over the Kingdon airport. It was at that moment when I looked out the window and wondered if we had passed the Kingdon airport already. I looked ahead and saw an airport so I had about 30 seconds where I was unsure if that was the Kingdon airport or our destination of Lodi. The easy way to tell is that Kingdon only has one runway and Lodi has two. Once the airport ahead came in to view better I saw that it had only one runway so I hadn’t missed it.

When we passed overhead, I reduced the throttle to 2000 RPM and started the descent. Since Lodi is an un-towered airport, I dialed in the common traffic advisory frequency and made the call to announce that we were 10 miles out and our intention was to over fly the airport to look at the windsock. This airport has a lot of parachute activity going on so we kept hearing them come on to the frequency announcing parachute activity. Because of this, I flew wide of the airport and took a look at the windsock, which indicated that runway 26 would be the best runway to land on. I set up for the 45 degree entry to the downwind and called my position on the CTAF. There was noone else around so it was clear sailing all the way down to the ground. My landing had a really small bounce and then it settled down onto the runway. We taxied to the Transient parking and shut the plane down so we could have some lunch at the café.

After lunch I got a chance to try the self service refueling station. It is a bit different than fueling your car so it was good to get a chance to do this. We then took off and headed east where my instructor told me to divert to Stockton. I grabbed my chart and plotter and determined that Stockton was about 16 miles away on a heading of 175. I turned the plane that way and was about to level off at 2,500 when my instructor said, “Lets circle,” and he moved the stick to the left. We circled around and talked about a few things like how to use the GPS and he wanted me to double check my estimates. We had flown a little south by then so I said we were now about 14 miles from Stockton and needed to head 175. I dialed in Stockton to the GPS and sure enough, we were 13 miles away and needed a heading of 173 which was very close to what I had said.

While we were circling, we were inadvertently climbing as I was paying attention to the chart and not the plane so I descended to 2,500 to stay under some clouds and I followed the course line on the GPS to Stockton. As we neared Stockton, I got the ATIS and tuned into tower and said, “Stockton Tower, Citabria 374DM is..” There was a pause as I realized I had no clue where we were at the moment. I finally said, “15 miles north, inbound to land with Alpha.” The controller attended to a couple other planes before getting back to me and then he said a bunch of things and the only thing I caught was “Make right traffic runway 29 right squawk 3…” In the midst of trying to decipher what he said I started to reply back, “right traffic runway 29 and repeat squawk please.” I forgot to say 29 right and he didn’t answer me with the squawk so after he finished commands for another couple of planes I said, “4 Delta Mike can you repeat the squawk please.” He said “4 Delta Mike squawk 3475.” “3475 for 4 Delta Mike.”

Finally I was done blabbering my way through that and I entered the pattern at Stockton to land. The runway was very long; 10,600 feet to be exact. I could have landed and taken off three times in the span of the runway. My instructor said even though it is very long, I still need to pick an abort point. The approach and landing was nothing new here but it was nice to fly into a place with a really long runway and that has jets flying around besides GA planes. Once we landed I was instructed to take off again so I put the throttle all the way forward and eased the stick forward as well to lift the tail off the ground. We took off and flew for a couple minutes before we reached the end of the runway and turned back toward Palo Alto.

On the way back to Palo Alto, I contacted Nor Cal Departure and requested flight following. He did not give me any alerts for most of the flight as there wasn’t any other traffic around us. I did get two alerts for traffic in front of us after crossing Sunol intersection though. One was flying away from us and we would never catch him and the other crossed in front of us about 6 miles or so.

When we neared the bay he told us radar services terminated and frequency change approved. He did not tell us to contact Palo Alto tower, which I thought was weird. Normally, they hand you off to the next controller. I dialed in the tower frequency and waited until I was over Lesli Salt to contact him. Just before I pushed the button in for the microphone, I heard the controller ask if we were on the frequency. I told him I was and gave him the normal position report and told him my intentions. He cleared us for right traffic on runway 31. I thought that was odd that he asked about us given that we were not handed off by the previous controller. My instructor voiced this same opinion as well.

The last landing of the day was similar to the others but maybe a tad rougher. Overall, this was a good day. I feel like a real pilot now and feel confidant that I could handle cross country flights solo; especially if I can use the GPS. The next item on the lesson plan is night flight. I need to do a cross country flight at night with my instructor and perform 10 take offs and landings. After this the only thing left is wheel landings and soft field take offs and landings. Then I will need to complete all the solo work and I should be ready for the check ride to get my pilots license.