OMG it’s an airport!

Today’s statement of the blindingly obvious but an important achievement for me. Important in that not only did I manage to successfully navigate us to Oshawa airport, I actually managed to spot the airport. This may sound trivial but airports can be surprisingly tricky to see from 2400ft when they are in the middle of a built up area. I was probably over excited by my new found skill but hey! No one ever died from over enthusiasm.

Today’s flight to Oshawa was FUN!!!* And quite frankly one hell of an achievement for me. It certainly is starting to sow the seeds in my mind that eventually I just might be able to tackle this cross country stuff. As Bob said, you get the departure and approach sorted, everything else is just distance in between**. Today I successfully:

·         Planned a route to an unfamiliar airport

·         Identified all the pertinent information I needed to know prior to flying

·         Flew the correct heading and route to arrive at that airport

·         Exited one control zone and entered another, making the appropriate radio calls at the correct points

·         Spotted the airport in good time and figured out the runway configuration

·         Correctly anticipated the potential circuit joining instructions and established myself on the correct leg

·         Spoke to an unfamiliar control tower and successfully communicated my intentions***

·         Flew two circuits at an unfamiliar airport (aced the landings BTW!)

·         Exited their control zone and got myself back to my home airport without causing any issues!

Not bad eh?

Unfortunately once we got back to City, this is where things didn’t go quite as swimmingly. I managed two pretty sweet touch and goes at CYOO, only to be magically repelled from the tarmac at City. It took two overshoots before I got the damn thing down L

 

*I really want to emphasise this. It was hard work for sure but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Sometimes straight after a flight I`m so caught up in what I did wrong that I forget what went well and how much fun it was.  It would be very easy to get the wrong idea and think I wasn`t enjoying it. I really am J

** Yes I know the ``bit in the middle” can be problematic it its own right too but give a girl a little bit of hope!

*** and I didn’t p!ss them off either, nor them me!