barnstorm2
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2003
- Messages
- 14,573
- Location
- Cincinnati, Ohio
- Aircraft
- 2-place Air Command CLT SxS (project), & Twinstarr Autogyro
- Total Flight Time
- 750+hrs and climbing
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Connie is nearing the time for her cross country for her FW sport pilot license.
The place she is taking her lessons from is "old school" big time. The Cubs and Aronca's have NO RADIOS, no GPS and you have to bring your own time piece. The only thing they have on the dash is RPM, Airspeed, Altitude, Oil Pressure and the mag switch.
Last week Connie planned out a cross country trip with 4 legs that meets the requirements for Sport Pilot Fixed Wing for us to fly. Of course it does not count for anything since I am not a CFI and we are flying a rotorcraft but she wanted some practice to see how it all worked out.
She used our electronic E6B, Airport Directory, Current Sectional and the performance information for my Twinstarr to work out the flight planning.
One interesting feature of the trip was that to get to Mad River airport (used by the flight school as one of it's primary cross country destinations) you had to pass through the Dayton corridor.
If you don't live around here you are probably not familiar with the corridor. Many of the local airport have information about the corridor and warnings about it's use posted in the pilot lounges.
Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton International and Springfield Beckly (fighter base) airports form a 'blockade' between Cincinnati and Dayton. So to give people a way to fly from Cincinnati to Dayton without going around all this mess they made a 1 mile wide corridor that passes between WPAFB and SpringBeck. When you fly the corridor you get to look right down the maul of both airports, one on each side. The corridor often has alot of traffic so you have to keep your eyes open.
In the morning we called 800-WX-Brief and she re-ran the fuel and time calculations based on the newest wind information.
It was a weekday (we took vacation days) so we knew there was a possibility of seeing some military traffic.
Our route looked like this:
We took off and as soon as we were out of the pattern we took on the planned heading and speed. I had all of the GPS's turned off except one for me and her set to compass (the magnetic compass in my gyro is the auto-drugstore type and highly inaccurate).
About 5 minutes out from the end of the first leg we could clearly see Red Stewart airport. We were in the pattern precisely when the flight planning had predicted it and right over the top of the runway. We were both surprised how well it worked out.
After fueling we departed for Mad River. The sky was so clear we could actually see our landmark (big factory/plant) through the Dayton corridor from the Red Stewart airport pattern! That made it pretty easy and again the time/heading worked out just as planned.
We turned at the big plant and headed up the narrow corridor. It was creepy. We found our next landmark and turned for Mad River.
When we were 2 minutes out from Mad River we could not see the airport. Unlike Red Stewart we had never been to Mad River before and it was a grass strip. I was sorely temped to use the gps but we did find it as we were almost over the top of it. Again the timing and heading had worked out spot-on.
The return trip was basically the same except that when going through the corridor we got to see a F15 fighter jet cross by us and land at Springfield-Beck. Also, when we arrived at Mad River the FBO was out to lunch or something so we could not fuel up. We made it back to Red Stewart fine but quite low on fuel.
The photos I have of the fighter make it look very far away but it seemed mighty close in person.
Well, enough blabbin. Here are the photos:
Do these two horses have it made or what?
I took a closer photo of the Koi Pond in front of this house on the way back.
