I had a premonition that we wouldn’t be flying today when I encountered IMC while driving to the airport. There was a low layer of fog which made the drive in pretty interesting. Sure enough, when I got to DXR, my instructor said we’d be doing some ground school today and going over cross country planning.
I was pretty excited about this, since, as my instructor says, this is why you fly…to get somewhere! He told me my mission was to fly from DXR to Groton, CT (GON), about 65nm away. Then we would head to Windham (IJD), an untowered airport about 25nm north of Groton. Finally, we would head home to DXR, 63nm to the west.
We sketched out the flight plan on my sectional and looked at considerations like airspace we’d be passing through, safe altitudes across the trip, and any obstacles we might have to content with. My CFI showed me how to use my E6B flight computer to calculate the proper headings, and then he showed me how to use the E6B to factor wind forecasts into the equation and come up with a wind correction angle (WCA) for each leg.
I was told we would not have any more ground school until I came up with a full flight plan for the cross country. I’ll be posting about this process in more detail as I work through it. Even though I haven’t soloed yet, this made me feel like I was really on my way to a major milestone in my training!