{"id":612,"date":"2012-09-23T01:41:43","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T05:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/?p=612"},"modified":"2012-11-06T16:37:21","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T21:37:21","slug":"i-love-flying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jlg.name\/blog\/2012\/09\/i-love-flying\/","title":{"rendered":"I LOVE FLYING"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weather cooperated (somewhat) and I indeed got to fly last weekend for my second solo cross-country flight:<\/p>\n

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JLG cross-country solo over Newport, RI, September 16, 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

By the end of the flight I was positively giddy; as I walked back to my car I texted Evelyn the above picture with the caption “I LOVE FLYING”.\u00a0 Almost all of my flight training has left me grinning from ear-to-ear, but this flight was by far the most fun I’ve had yet.<\/p>\n

(Almost<\/em> all of my flight training has left me grinning:\u00a0 The required night landings weren’t nearly as much fun as I thought they would be, especially since my instructor chose to test my performance under pressure — asking me to fly an unfamiliar approach to the runway, while simulating a landing light failure, all during a rushed and chaotic situation — and I didn’t handle it particularly gracefully.\u00a0 But “trial by fire” was the whole point, and I feel that I learned from the experience and am better prepared to execute emergency landings at night.\u00a0 I also did manage to land the airplane despite the chaos, though I’d drifted off the runway centerline and was still drifting as the wheels touched down.)<\/p>\n

The cross-country flight was spectacular<\/strong>.\u00a0 All the more so because I didn’t think I’d get to fly due to the weather:\u00a0 There was a cloud layer (“ceiling”) around 4,000 feet along much of the route, well below the 5,000 foot minimum required by my flight school for cross-country flights.\u00a0 Also, the surface winds were gusting to 16 knots at KBED and 18 knots at KGON, both above the 15-knot limit that my instructor chose for my original solo endorsement.\u00a0 But my instructor waived both limits for the flight, citing his comfort level with how well I’ve been flying lately, and off I went at 3,000 feet.<\/p>\n

It felt as though everything went right:<\/p>\n