A New High

View of a part of Anchorage

The lack of blogging should not be interpreted to mean we are sitting around doing nothing. We have been busy with lots of household renovating activities of which we will catchup on in a future blog. Most Saturdays have been filled with working on house items around my 2 hour session of flight training lessons as K works during the week as well on cabinet staining, painting, finding projects for me to work on and putting together pictures of various beautiful places we’ve been. I currently have accumulated 18.7 hours of flight time to include 2.3 hours of solo. I did my first Dual Cross Country (where the instructor is with me) last Sat. traveling all the way to Palmer for a touch and go (about an hour’s drive by car) and back. That trip was delayed a couple of weeks due to weather and a Sat. of laying on the couch from a back ache. I have to do one more with the instructor and then another solo.

Having done a solo successfully allows me to do some practice flights on my own and this past Tuesday I went out after work for an hour’s flight solo, going to what we refer to as the practice area. Since the days are quickly getting longer it gives me more opportunity to get some flight time in. This was the first time I went alone away from the familiar area of the airport and out of town. It requires a little more communicating with ATC (air traffic control) which has been my greatest challenge. I will admit to a couple of errors at the beginning of the trip (like before I even taxied out of the hangar area…) and I was quickly and firmly corrected by the tower.  You have to repeat back all of their instructions, using their terms as well as identify who you are each time you open the voice airway. They also don’t really want you to respond to them about instructions that are intended for the airplane next to you…. So despite my miscues, I was allowed to takeoff.

Looking up the Knik Arm

The airspace around Anchorage is fairly complicated because of  the proximity of a large international airport (Ted Stevens), a seaplane base (Fort Hood), a busy general aviation airport (Merrill Field, my training field) and a large airforce base (Elmendorf) not to mention some private air and water strips in and around town. That means you must know what routes can be used to go whatever direction you need to go and at what altitude. You don’t want to be crossing the incoming flight paths of the big transport jets coming into the airforce base when one is approaching or taking off. So ATC tends to get a little picky about your activities and if you know what you are doing. I appreciate that…..

I manage to leave the airport traffic and head northwest across the Knik Arm to the fields that we use as the practice area. As this is also the area the airlines use to make their approach to one of the major runways at Ted Stevens, I was a bit intimidated when I looked back toward that airport to see I was in line with that runway. I have to stay below 2500 ft to be out of the airspace “owned” by the airport but to envision a 747  making the final approach along there had me keeping my eyes peeled and alert. The picture to the right does not do justice to the view as you can see a ring of snow covered mountains in almost every direction you look, some of which are only a few miles away and a couple (Denali and Foraker) that are 150 miles away.

I try to do some practice maneuvers such as steep turns and turns around a point but it is really bumpy and difficult to keep this light plane in a steady path so after 20 min. I give up and head back to Anchorage. I notify the tower when at the appropriate check point and they change the direction of pattern turns around the field that I haven’t done yet alone….so I have to make the approach doing right hand turns instead of left. I manage to do a couple of touch and goes circling to the right  and as I am taking off, the tower comes on and tells me it is now changed to left hand turns…@#%&*!!>$#@! I decide he is still mad at me for my earlier misdeeds but I comply and do the last one to the left. I guess I do need to practice both. If you can only turn one direction in flight, it might present a problem….

After this next week, I will have to put the flights in a holding patten for a couple of weeks as K and I both get to head to Ok to see our favorite grandbaby on her birthday. I’m looking forward to the day I can take her up with me to catch a great view of God’s beautiful earth….

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