Brief Description: Took a break and took to the air
Now that I have my license, keeping current on my skills is going to be important. Life complications had kept me out of the game since passing my practical test on 9/29, so I took some time off work to do some fairly intense cross country flying. Because my final push to get my license did not require any cross country flying (since that had been logged a few years ago), I really felt it would be valuable to have an instructor ride along. Ryan Ruel from The Airplane Factory/Sling Flying Club was my 2nd set of eyes on this trip. I designed the day to be an exercise in navigating the fairly intense airspace of the LA basin by landing at 5 different airports on a trip that was 111 nautical miles (127 statute miles) in length. Starting at KTOA (Torrance) we flew the Special Flight Rules route over the top of LAX to drop down abruptly to KSMO (Santa Monica). From there we reversed direction back to just south of the Class Bravo airspace where we headed east to KFUL (Fullerton). This is the airport where I logged about 40 hours of instruction back in 2003. It's a compact Class D airport that has undergone an impressive facelift since my time there. Then on to KCNO (Chino) using flight following. This is the airport where I will complete my project assembly and Phase 1 fly off. It's also Class D, but sprawling with plenty of runway choices and length. Again using flight following we departed for KSNA (John Wayne). This is one busy Class C airport where I took about 20 hours of instruction in 2004. Taking off from there requires Clearance Delivery which is something I wanted to be refreshed on. By this time it was around sunset and we departed for the home airport (KTOA) following the coast line to return just before evening civil twilight -- my bewitching hour as a sport pilot. All in all a great day of flying. 3.1 hours on the engine and a bunch of good learning. Thanks, Ryan.
