Flight 10

9/12/2009

Flight Hours: 01.6
Cumulative Hours: 13.0
Takeoffs:6
Landings:6

Plane: Cessna N1402F

Today we decided to do a short cross-country flight from Tucson to the Marana Regional airport. Taking off in Tucson, I had a pretty strong crosswind, but I'm pretty much past having issues with crosswind on takeoff. We flew over to Marana and made 5 touch and go landings. My previous flight had me making 6 completely unassisd landings, each one good enough that I could solo on them. However, the wind was relatively calm that morning.

This flight, I had variable wind on landing, meaning that during the landing approach sometimes it was a headwind, sometimes a 90 degree crosswind and sometimes it was behind me. While it was a little more challenging, I made all landings unassisted and good enough for solo flight. My instructor decided to make it a little more fun for me by having me remain at a higher than normal altitude during final approach. He did this so I could practice performing a side slope approach. You use a side slope when you are too high during final approach and need to lose altitude quickly without gaining much airspeed. Even with this wrinkle, things went well.

After we performed 5 landings in Marana, we performed some ground reference drills(S-
turns, turn around a point) and headed back to Tucson. The view coming back into Tucson from the Northwest was much better than I'm used to, as we flew over the heart of the city. To make it even better, as we were getting ready for landing, Air Traffic Control had me turn to a new heading and advised that I had two F-16's crossing in front of me from right to left. I wish I would have had my camera with me, as the crossed directly in front of me, at my altitude, about a 1/2 mile in front of me.

After clearing the traffic, ATC cleared us to land on the parallel runway as the F-16's and I knocked out landing #6. My instructor noted in my progress report that student is ready for solo. I think he's going to have me one more lesson with him and cut me loose.