Cross country flight to Paragould
Today’s flight was a practice cross country between Dexter, Missouri and Paragould, Arkansas. Although I have completed all my required cross countries, it has been a while and my instructor wanted to make a refresher trip. This was especially helpful because it would be my first cross country flight in the club’s new Cessna 172.
Most importantly, this would provide an opportunity to get familiar with using the autopilot system in real world conditions. Our old plane had no autopilot at all, and the new aircraft has a system that is controlled by an IFR capable touch screen Garmin GTN 650. It is a huge step up from the VFR-only system we had in the old plane.
Kirk Field is 51nm southwest of Dexter and with the wind conditions on this morning I estimated that we would be able to make the southbound trip in 35 minutes. My estimate was fairly accurate and we arrived 33 minutes after take off. Along the way down I got familiar with switching the heading hold between GPS and VOR control. One of the things that surprised me along the way how easy it was to get distracted while learning a new skill. A couple of times I was so fixated on what I was learning about the autopilot that I nearly missed marking and timing the checkpoint we were flying over.
Our landing in Paragould provided a good opportunity to review the rules of displaced thresholds, something that I do not have to deal with at any of the airports we flight into regularly. The trip back home was done as a simulated instrument flight. We took off and my instructor put me back under the foggles. My instructor turned off the map mode of the GPS so I had to tune in the Malden VOR in order to get back to Dexter. After my difficulty holding altitude under the hood on Tuesday I had to hand fly the plane instead of using the autopilot. The practice seems to be helping and I was even able to fly a simulated instrument approach to runway 36 at KDXE.
Overall, my instructor was happy with my cross country planning and flight performance. He made some suggestions on how to figure ground speed in a climb and how to choose better checkpoints. He said that my air work is good, but that I still need to polish up my landings before he would be willing to recommend me for my checkride. Weather permitting, we will work on that on Monday.
