NovaBandit
Well Known Member
Hey everyone, posting the conclusion of our first long cross country trip after getting my instrument rating!
https://youtu.be/wRVgvQdNIgo
Some things I learned during the flight, and by watching hours of video while editing:
https://youtu.be/wRVgvQdNIgo
Some things I learned during the flight, and by watching hours of video while editing:
- I need to be better about ending all radio calls with ATC with my tail number. I do pretty good on including it on specific instruction readback, but there is quite a bit of room for improvement.
- I should have been more prepared to better know how to load victor airways into the GTN. I had done it before, but it had been a long time ago, and only in the simulator. I was lucky that the GTN is pretty intuitive in the way it handles victor airways... which leads me into the 3rd point:
- Amendments to the flight plan. Again, this was the first long cross country trip fully in the IFR environment (outside of my training flights). And it was in the tight airspaces over Florida. And it there was bad weather across most of the state. I think amendments were inevitable, and I am continually impressed by how awesome ATC is to work with.
- And finally, in the 400 or so hours I've been flying around the country, we had our most frustrating fuel stop. I had researched my potential stops, looking up prices and user reviews on both AirNav and in ForeFlight. KFAM had great prices and great reviews... but I think things are much more of an unknown when you're planning on landing outside of standard hours. We got to KFAM and the fuel pumps didn't work. No one answered the 24h phone line. Just to get into the FBO, I had to call a number (which they don't mention is the police dept), I had to give them a LOT of information, and then they gave me a code. All in all, a very bad experience when you've been flying for 7 hours, it's cold, the kids are screaming because they're hungry, and I had to tell them to wait while I researched where else I could fly that would have gas and access to food. I don't know what the solution to this would be, other than perhaps physically calling ahead to ask them if things are working...