Flight Log Updates

Thursday night's flight to Mexia was postponed, so I re-scheduled for Monday. The skies were crystal clear and the moon was full; spotting ground reference points was easy tonight. I found a little cluster of lights and two towers to the north that designated I was over Franklin, TX. A large refinery on the south side of a lake was my next waypoint, and finally I picked out the green-white rotating beacon of KLXY nestled between the cluster of lights that is Mexia and Groesbeck. As we got closer we could see the runway edge lights. As I approached for landing, the moon lighting and surrounding fields made the runway appear as if it were rows of tea lights floating on a lake. We made our touch-and-go and headed back to B/CS - logged 1.5 hours.

Today was my fourth progress check - I planned a cross-country route to Lone Star Executive (KCXO) near Lake Conroe. We departed Easterwood and climbed up to 3500'. My first checkpoint was the town of Anderson, followed by a north-south railroad that ran through Dacus. As Lake Conroe became visible on the horizon, my instructor stated (for instructional purposes, it was a clear day) that there were heavy clouds rolling in from the Gulf and we could not continue on - I needed to divert. Navasota was one of my planned diversion airports, so I was able to quickly orient the aircraft to the southwest and start navigating to the airport. Once I was turned around and tracking the Navasota VOR, the instructor had me fly 'under the hood' and tell him when I thought we were near the airport. I tracked the VOR inbound, then turned to intercept the 320-radial outbound  from the station. The Navasota Airport (60R) is at 5.5nm on the 320-radial. When the DME read 5.5nm, I took off the hood and Navasota was right below me. Then my instructor pulled the throttle to idle - not only did I have to divert, but now my engine is 'out'. I trimmed the plane for 65kts and started a descending turn to the right in order to enter the downwind leg. I hit my point in the pattern right on altitude and heading, put in 10 degrees of flaps, then started a left turn for the base leg. As I rolled out perpendicular to the runway, something very unsettling became evident - I spent too much time on the downwind leg, and with the strong winds today, I was a hair too far from the runway. I hoped for a thermal to  give me a boost of altitude. About 100 feet from the runway threshold was a road, and running along that road was a nice little powerline. That powerline kept rising in the windscreen as we got closer, and it was quite clear that we weren't going to be able to go over the top if we maintained our current glide path. You have three options at this point: pull up and over, go through it, or dive under. There are two basic rules to flying: maintain control of the airplane, and don't hit anything! (Especially powerlines) There goes option #2. If we tried to go over we might stall the plane, and from this altitude we would not be able to recover. The only solution was to get low. Being a training situation I stated my intentions in a real-case scenario, then applied a boost of power to clear the powerlines. We made a touch-and-go, then tried it again. The winds blew me short again, but I had just enough room to come in scrapping the grass and hit the runway. After this we returned to Easterwood. Apparently it was never really part of the flight lesson to actually make it to the intended destination, but to test a combination of skills when dealing with the unexpected. 1.2 hours today.

My next flight is the 'big' solo cross-country - a 150nm circuit involving the use of three different airports. Dave wants me to get experience flying in Class C airspace (think C = congested) so I will be going to Austin-Bergstrom Int'l, then Brenham for a total distance of 161nm. Five flights left in the syllabus! At this rate I will be a hair over the minimum of 35 hours at the time of my checkride.

Total Log Time: 27.5 hrs