Now I have my RA-Aus Pilot Certificate, the next chapter in my flight training is the cross country endorsement which extends the privileges of my Pilot Certificate allowing me to travel more than 25nm from the point of take-off.
My flight school held an all day Navigation Brief on Saturday 22nd. It was a great brief that covered a lot of material. This was the same brief I attended just before Xmas and before I had my Pilot Certificate, but wanted to take the opportunity to revise the navigation material and learn as much as I could in preparation for my first Cross Country navigation the next day on Sunday.
Saturday night, I completed my flight plan for Sunday by obtaining the weather forecast and NOTAMs from Aviation Services NAIPS and applying the cruise wind corrections to my plan. The winds over the range towards Stanthorpe were forecast to be about 25 knots at my cruising altitude.
The flight plan would see me fly a Southern departure to Logan Village, track to Stanthorpe, track to Grafton then track back to Archerfield for a Southern arrival via Park Ridge Tower.
On arriving to my flight school Sunday morning, the guys advised due to winds over this route, we'll fly a Northern navigation route today. So we quickly did up another flight plan, lodged it through NAIPS and filed a SARTIME (search & rescue).
The new flight plan would see me make a Northern departure from Archerfield tracking to Dayboro (DBO). From there, I track to Wonai (YWND) aerodrome, then Maryborough (YMYB) then back to Archerfield (YBAF). About a 3.5 hour round trip.
Having done all the flight planning preparation on the ground, this was my first experience of en-route navigation using dead reckoning. I won't go into specifics but it basically involves referencing various documents in flight, comparing chart features to ground references and making actual time and distance calculations. Documents used in flight included my flight plan, WAC chart and VNC chart.
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| Nav #1: YBAF - DBO - YWND - YMYB - DBO - YBAF |
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| Full stop landing at Wondai (YWND) |
Arriving at Wondai, I overflew the aerodrome (a grass strip) to check the windsock then joined the circuit for a full stop landing (making all the required CTAF calls). After landing, I back-tracked along the runway and taxied onto the apron shutting down the Cessna. We hopped out for a quick break, went to the bathroom and discussed our next leg to Maryborough.Arriving close to Maryborough, the town was blanketed in heavy rain and visibility was poor, so we made the decision to bypass the Maryborough waypoint and make a right turn and to track back towards Archerfield via Dayboro.
The above GPS track (Google Maps) shows the right turn tracking approx. South back to YBAF after seeing the rainy weather over Maryborough. The zig-zagging around was me flying around rain clouds :-)
Arriving near Archerfield, I completed the usual procedure, checking ATIS and radioing Tower to receive circuit joining instructions and landing clearance. My North inbound track to Archerfield(coming in West of Mt Cootha TV towers) saw me fly over the Centenary Bridge and near my house in Darra! :-) The GPS track below shows my flight path (red line) and my street (blue circle).
A great first introduction to cross country navigation :-) Nav #2 is scheduled for Saturday 15th March where, all going well I'll be flying the Stranthorpe - Grafton route :-)
Until next time, have fun and fly safe!
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