Dual x-country done!

Sorry for the delay in posting the details of this entry, I've been really busy.

My first dual cross country was booked for Wednesday Jan. 10 at 8 AM. I arrived at the airport an hour early and checked the METERs, TAFs, NOTAMS for all three airports, then I checked the GFA and upper winds. Next I did my navigation calculations based on the forecasted winds, all this took about an hour as it was the first time that I had done all of this since ground school, I double checked everything.

Dave arrived and filed a flight plan for us, I did my exterior preflight as the previous student topped up the tanks for me, I thanked him then got in and started my interior preflight. Dave arrived, I did our runup and contacted tower for the airport and traffic advisory. I informed tower that we were on a VFR flight plan to Moncton and a few minutes later we were off.

The weather was perfect, sunny and visibility as far as the eye could see, the air was perfectly smooth. With the visibility so good I knew within a couple of minutes that my initial heading was off by about ten degrees. My navigation calculations were good, it's just that the winds where we were slightly different than at the recording station, 70 miles away. We had a stiff headwind so our ground speed was just 80 kts.

Over the next hour Dave had me plot our progress and revise our ETA, I revised our heading again slightly. Dave then did a position report over the Confederation Bridge which was fairly simple. Twenty minutes out we grabbed the ATIS for Moncton, which told me what the winds were and the active runway. I maintained my heading and spotted the airport about 15 miles out, right where the map said it would be. I called tower, YQM was very busy, tower told me that we were third and that I could continue straight in on our current heading for the active, which was runway 29.

The local flight school has received a huge contract from China to train pilots, and as such it now has alot of English speaking Chinese students. I don't mean to be rude, but we could barely understand what they were saying in English on the radio. I commented to Dave that the tower must get use to their very thick accents.

Some of the aircraft that this flight school trains on are small two seat Diamond Eclipses, I had to look carefully to spot them from a few miles out. We saw number two land just about the time I had Fern all setup for landing, 20 degrees of flaps and trimmed for 75 mph. Tower called to tell us that we were now number one and asked us to expedite our approach. I resisted the temptation to reply that the whip would be applied to the hamster, instead I replied with a professional "will do, fox romeo november". I left everything as is and adjusted the throttle to increase our speed to 95 mph, with the added power I had to hold the nose down and fly her down all the way to the threshold. A normal approach would have me adjusting our glideslope with power, so it was fun to actually "fly" down the glideslope.

I chopped the power at about 100 feet, let the excess speed bleed off, then topped off this unusual (for me) approach with a nice landing as six other training aircraft watched from the taxiway beside the runway. This was the first time I did a expedited approach and I was able to pull it off without any help from Dave. I quickly cleaned up the aircraft as we rolled down the runway, a few minutes later we arrived at our cruising altitude on a heading that would take us to our next airport.

Within a few minutes I had to tweak our heading to keep us on our proper track. With a stiff 32 kt tail-wind pushing us along, the 105 kt mile leg went quick. I made the required calls to Trenton unicom and reported our position and intentions to the local traffic, eventually someone replied from the airport with the winds. I thanked them and joined the downwind for the active at midfield. I found myself high on final so I used a full slip to bring us down. I reached over to ensure that I had full carb heat on, (something I alway double check) but I accidentally grabbed the mixture knob instead. My brain immediately caught the error but not before my hand had started to move, by the time the engine coughed I had already started pushing it back in. Dave gave me a look and I returned it, after a couple of seconds I said "I know".

I had taken my hand off the throttle for some reason, the carb heat is to the left of the throttle and the mixture control is to the right. I know this with my eyes closed, but when I reached over I grabbed the wrong one, (something that would not have happened if I had not taken my hands off the throttle in the first place). Note to self, keep your damn hand on the throttle while on final.

This runway was different from what I am used to as it slopes downward at the western end, the runway and the land past threshold seemed to fall away abrubtly as we climbed out. Everything different is new and exciting.

We climbed to 6,500 ft in order to ensure that we could cross the Northumberland Straight safely, as it is much wider at this point. At this height we could easily see the Charlottetown harbour, 50 miles distant, and we could just make out the Summerside harbour as well, which must have been at least 75 miles. The visibility was the best I've ever seen, Dave commented that the air can be much clearer in the winter.

Thirty minutes later l finished my dual cross country with a nice straight in crosswind landing in Charlottetown on the inactive. My often delayed dual cross country was finally done, three different provinces, three different airports in 2.7 hours.