Flight of the Navigator

Wow, that first solo flight seems like ages ago now! Over the last week and a bit we have moved on to a lot more of the navigation element of flying, which includes solo navigation flights. This involves planning a route based on approved ones Oxford give us, and flying and navigating the route as best we can. My last solo flight was an hour and a half nav flight around the Rainbow Valley and Southwest Practice areas, covering just over 100 miles. Part of the way I was also flying in to the sunset so I couldn’t see the terrain ahead of me, which meant I just had to fly  the heading on my compass and hope I ended up at the right place! Luckily I wasn’t too far off, and managed to get back to Goodyear on time and in one piece! My next flight is around 200 miles, which I’m really looking forward to! We also had a couple of really cool flights to Ryan and Phoenix Mesa Gateway airports. Ryan is a place we will be headed on some of our solos and is located near Tucson. We even stopped for breakfast at the cafe before our return journey home!

I also have had a couple of flight cancelled this week, either due to nasty looking thunderstorms en route or the high temperature. Once it gets above 45 degrees then we are unable to fly, as the plane just don’t get good enough performance. We had a nice break from the heat on Thursday when we had our first flight in the simulator. Oxford have a couple of Warrior/Seneca sims out here which we do part of our instrument training on. It was great fun, though it is a lot more challenging to fly than the real aircraft, and is designed to be so that we can deal with tough situations. We also had time for a bit of fun at the end of the lesson, involving loops and barrel rolls from 20000ft down to an engine-out approach into Phoenix Sky Harbor, so much fun! I have another sim flight this week, plus a few more solo navs, and then the night flights are fast approaching, which I am really looking forward to!