Sunday 10 November 2013

It’s the little things….

….that bother me sometimes. I’m currently mulling over my impending cross country flight.

Together Bob and I have looked over the navigation portion of it and the airspace part of it and I’m slowly getting my head around that. It’s challenging but not impossible. Bob appreciates my need to see the sense and reasoning behind certain things and I think it became apparently during our last briefing that the penny was slowly starting to drop.
But we haven’t touched on one area yet. One that, surprise surprise, is starting to cause me a little anxiety. It’s the radio stuff.

I usually fly form a nice controlled airport in Class C airspace. Although it is still my responsibility not to whack someone with my plane I, I have a nice ATC person telling me what to do and where to go. Out in the wide blue yonder I’m going to have to deal with flight services, mandatory frequencies, ATF’s and so on.
Worse, I’m going to have to file a flight plan! Even worse I’m going to have to make position reports! Eeek!

The flight plan form looks intimidating, and once you’ve filled the damn thing in then you have to phone it through.  We all know how much I love talking on the phone. Same with the position reporting thingy. I just feel, I dunno, a bit stupid; calling someone up on the radio and saying “Hi it’s me. I’m here.”
I mean what are they going to say in return “well done! Whatcha want me to do about it?” Obviously they aren’t but if the positions were reversed I’d be very tempted to say something similar. I must remember that not everyone is a sarcastic so and so like me.

Then I start running over the stupid, mundane details again. Like where will I park it? Where do you do your run up checks? What if I need help putting it into a space?
Again it’s all stupid stuff; I mean the idea is I’ll be doing the entire flight with Bob first one day before I attempt it myself. But my mind does this to me.

I wish it didn’t

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