Cross Country

[Dunedan]

I'm going on my first cross-country this weekend. Anybody have any good stories?

 

[Fly Navy]

Nice, so am I. I leave in about 2.5 hours.

 

[feddoc]

Several years ago when I was stationed in Corpus I took a cross country in a T-44A to San Diego. One of the guys "had some relatives" there. So, we arrive on a Monday spend the night at the Q, get up and realize that the port wing tank is leaking. Shouldn't be a big deal, but, due to contract obligations we must use a local (Corpus) Beech mech to fix it. He can't fly in until Tuesday at the earliest. Back to the Q, but, they are full. One of the guys says, lets see if my inlaws will let us stay there.

Turns out his inlaw was retired AIRPAC. The AIRPAC. Very nice guy, very polite. Turns out he had to go out of town on business and turned the keys to his house over to us with only two cautions: don't drink all my beer and don't get anything in the pool that doesn't belong.

Plane got fixed on Thursday.

 

[Slammer2]

I'm going on my first cross-country this weekend. Anybody have any good stories?

Nice, so am I. I leave in about 2.5 hours.

How did your flights go??

 

[Fly Navy]

How did your flights go??

Well, our original destination was the Grand Canyon. We never made it there. If you were watching the weather, the entire southeast United States got slammed with a bad system, wreaking havoc on our plans. Our first leg was to Barksdale AFB in Shreveport, LA. We almost got stuck there, even the B-52s were cancelling! We finally got out of there, but we couldn't make it to Dyess AFB, our next leg, due to weather, so we went to Lackland AFB, San Antonio, TX. My instructor had a family issue pop up the next day, so we tried to fly back to Whiting via College Station and Chennault, LA. We made it as far as Chennault (AWESOME Crawfish Etouffe), but the weather wouldn't let us get any further, so we went back to San Antonio. The next day was a mandatory day off for me, so we went downtown to the River Walk and the Alamo and got liqoured up, it was a great time. Next day we left San Antonio and went to Arcadiana, and then Mobile, followed by our return to Whiting. I all of my RI flights done, and only have 1 night VNAV flight left. I should do that this Thursday. I learned a LOT on the road. Lots of inflight deviation and refiling, flying through the goo, etc. Cross country is definitely a valuable learning experience and I had a blast.

I highly recommend San Antonio.

 

[Dunedan]

I went to Miami (Opa Locka). There were three T-6's...each with an IP and a student. The first leg to Daytona Beach went pretty much as planned. We stayed there for about 2 hours - the FBO let us use one of their cars and we went out for lunch at some great seafood place on the beach. The next leg to Miami was chaos - we didn't hit a single point we filed due to vectoring by ATC. Had to search the low chart for a few points they sent us to. It was a pretty cool adventure.

Miami itself reminded me a lot of LA. We had a REALLY good time Friday night (details are classified), went to the beach Saturday (I don't know if it's legal, but some gals go topless), and came back home on Sunday. Again, pretty uneventful flying (except for a descent all the way to MDA before breaking out underneath an oncoming T-storm over Jacksonville international), but got a lot of good training in. We shot a bunch of drop-in approaches - did at least one of each type (ILS, VOR, GCA, etc).

Round-Robins will never be the same.....yawn....

 

[rare21]

Key West rocked when i went. Got drunk with all the instructors and formed our own rented scooter gang and lost my wedding ring (weird how that happens when you least want it to! :icon_smil ) good times...