First Cross Country - September 2004

Although I was only just starting the advanced part of my training (low flying, instrument flight) Amy needed to go to Tauranga to try on her new wedding dress, and rather than drive the 8 hour return trip, I convinced her that we could do it as a cross country flight with an instructor.

I managed to book a Piper Archer for the flight, and an instructor. The weather was perfect, no cloud and almost no wind. It took almost 2 hours from when we arrived at the airport, until we actually took off, just because it was my first ever cross country, and we had to do the full briefing and flight planning first.

Amy was not at all nervous, but I was! Taxi and takeoff was fine, but entering Napier controlled airspace was nerve racking as it was only the 2nd time I had done it, and the Archer was so much faster than the Tomahawks, I was definitely getting behind the aircraft.

The actual flight was good, and I handled the navigation and aircraft well for my first attempt. Everything was going fine until joining the circuit in Tauranga, which was much busier than anything I had encountered before. I handled the first few instructions from ATC, but eventually had to give up and let the instructor handle the radio so I could focus on flying the aircraft.

My circuit was ok, I kinda cheated by applying flap and slowing down very early on downwind so that the whole circuit was at tomahawk speeds :-). Also the landing was pretty good, but I was talked through everything by the instructor. I even heard the satisfying screech of the tyres on the runway, something that we never seemed to get in Hastings.

I waited at the airport while Amy went to try on her dress (I wasn't allowed to see it!) so got to spend about 2 hours going through a debrief with the instructor. That made the return flight MUCH more relaxed as I had more of an idea what to expect.