My First Real Crosscountry Flight
Part 1
September 2015
First some background,
My family was moving from Colorado to Mississippi. The Challenger II, the plane I am learning to fly in, needed to be moved to our new home. The flight would be over 1,000 miles, quite ambitious. I had only flown one Crosscountry. It was from my home airport of Springs East (A50), to Limon (LIC) to catch some lunch, and back again. I had a total time of 1.5hrs and I flew the whole flight. By the time the packers came to take our stuff to our new home, I was landing in all conditions, my dad nearly ever touched the controls, and I was practicing several times a week.
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The Challenger II
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It is the year 2015, the cool September winds blew across the great eastern plains of Colorado. At the local FBO I took a crash course to calculate compass corrections with trigonometry. Later I sat With my dad in front of the family desktop computer. Before me, displayed on the screen, I saw tabs such as the AOPA airport finder, Online sectionals, Fliteplan, and Google maps. My dad walked me through the process of generating our route. After hours of work we had it, along with secondary options strapped to a kneeboard. Little did I know that to faithfully follow our flightplan we would endure hours of, heat, cold, and extreme winds, all to finally land at a crooked narrow runway, with steep cliffs and groping trees on the approach end. 
The day had finally come, the day to begin my amazing adventure in aviation. As the sun slumbered beneath the horizon, My dad and I slipped out of the house and drove to the airport. (A50) Our arrival at the small strip went unnoticed by all except for the airport dog, Blue. She ran after our car as fast as her little jackrabbit chasing feet would take her. Trailing off as always, Blue returned to her sleeping bed before we made it to the hanger. I unlocked the hanger with cold hands and set to work on the pre-flight check. As the sun peeked out over the plains casting long shadows, we affixed our baggage to the strut with a motley crew of assorted bungee cords.
I climbed into the front seat, taxied us out, checked the pattern, and pushed the throttled sending us barreling down runway 18. Thus began the first leg of my first real cross country.
Our route of the first chunk was A50-LIC-ITR-OEL-HYS-9K7-3JC-LWC-0N0. I set off from Limon (LIC), the second takeoff of the day, with ease. The trouble came when it came time to refold the map. I had practiced on my bed time and time again, I had specifically folded the map to make the refold easier. But nothing could prepare me for folding the map while flying and being blasted with 55kt relative wind. I took a second to prepare myself after passing the final tower, grabbed the stick with my knees, and snagged the sectional off my kneeboard. I flipped it, I folded it, I spun it, a small waggle of aileron and I was back on the map, and the map was back on my clipboard. The rest of the flight was windy but otherwise uneventful. We landed at Kit Carson (ITR) and quickly found the bathroom. After a few bites of our Wal-Mart Mega sub sandwiches, I buckled in to the plane, switched the key to on, gave my dad a thumbs up to let him know the key was in, and waited for the engine to start. My dad yelled "Clear Prop" And pulled the starter. Nothing. Again, nothing. I pulled the key and hopped out to investigate. We grabbed the emergency repair kit, that we took everywhere, and began our investigation. When we removed the spark plugs, they were covered in goop. We tried to clean them, but they were shot.
A half hour later I was riding in the courtesy car towards the nearest autoparts store. We had already been grounded for an hour and a half, and we needed to hurry it was getting to be noontime. Striding with a purpose in through the sliding glass door, we shot straight to the spark plug section. They were nowhere to be found. Up to the checkout counter we walked and asked an employee if there were any of the spark plugs we needed. None were found. The next auto store was another 10 min away, so 10 min later when we again checked the sparkplugs aisle we were extremely relieved to find that they had what we needed. Unfortunately there were only 4 plugs, exactly what we needed, but still no spares. The Courtesy car flew around the turn into the airport and we quickly installed the plugs. I clambered in to the plane yet again, and turned the key. Again Dad yelled "Clear Prop!" but this time, the engine started with a satisfying roar. Held the brake as my Dad jumped in the back seat, and away we went. As I taxied I remembered my taxi stick positions. We cruised up to the hold short line, glanced at the approach end, spun a 360 scouring the sky, and rolled on to the runway. I smoothly advanced the throttle, let the plane accelerate, and at 40 knots began my rotation. just seconds later we were climbing up to cruise altitude at vy. (I knew that because x has lots of angles so vx is best angle of climb, while vy is best rate of climb.)
There was a large increase in wind speed, but we were flying a Challenger darn it! The gas gauge was near 1/4 (2.5 gal) and I declared the idea that I had been testing out in my head. "Dad, I think we should divert to OEL." He told me to do whatever I thought i needed to do. and in fifteen minutes we were entering OEL on a 45.
After gassing up, we flew for one of our longest legs, almost a full 2 hours. OEL-HYS. The wind relentlessly attempted to blow us off course, but I had the ultimate tool. AN INTERSTATE TO FOLLOW! When we were 10ish miles out I rechecked my kneeboard, and saw that it had only a north/south runway, I was relieved. That strong crosswind we had been fighting was straight down the runway! Little did I know that due to such strong winds on approach, my groundspeed would plummet. I flew down final and dropped in just past the numbers. While rolling towards the ramp I asked why I Plummeted like I did, and I learned the magic and possible danger, of strong headwinds on landing. As we taxied towards the tiedowns for the night, we got nearly toppled over by a business jet carelessly doing his run up. When we did arrive at a tiedown spot, the airport manager was out to greet us, and the first words out of his mouth were "What where you doing flying in this kind of weather!?" the phrase that would be repeated by so many people we met along the way. We laughed it off and secured the plane. back in the FBO, we located the pilot's lounge, which was dominated by two, large, comfy, reclining, arm chairs. We removed our gear from the plane, and basked in our accomplishment.
Early next morning, our stuff was packed, and we were ready to go. For hours we flew, landed, took off, and repeated until Roosterville. Roostervile (0N0) was our midway point, and final destination for "The first chunk" As we approached from Lawrence KS (LWC), we passed Worlds of fun, and Schlitterbahn. By the time we arrived at 0N0, I was tired, and quite frankly was willing to land anywhere just to stretch out my legs for a few minutes. I will never forget what I thought that first peek at the runway. "Wow, that's kinda crooked. Huh, are those cliffs?" When I voiced my questions I was reassured that they were in fact cliffs, and the runway was crooked, and to add to it, that the runway has bumps in it! I steeled myself and entered the pattern. The approach was normal enough, but I thought I heard the trees and power lines grumbling about airplanes always buzzing them. The cliffs were not as bad as one might think. Imagine you are landing on the numbers, now imagine that behind you is a big hole that's not part of the runway. Yup, the cliffs are purely psychological. Flying a Challenger means that that curve in the runway didn't even factor into it. We were stopped and turned around ages before the bend.
Out of the plane we scrambled, and met up with our buddy, who was waiting for us at his hanger on the approach end of the runway. We quickly unloaded and stowed the plane. It may have seemed and impossible task, but they fit together like puzzle pieces.
Stay tuned for part two! Coming 2017 1st 1/4
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