Last night Mark and I flew down to Rockford, IL on my first night flight. Student pilots are required to have two hours of night cross-country flying and a total of ten takeoff and landings to a full stop. Our trip to Rockford and back covered most of the requirement.

While preflighting I had the distinct [...]

Today was a crisp, blue day with milder winds, so I decided to get that last stop and go over at Madison’s towered airport in.

The only 152 available was the Cessna Aerobat, which is a 152 designed for acrobatic maneuvers. It has a higher maneuvering speed than a standard 152. The seat harness was a [...]

I finally did my first “long” cross-country solo, to Fond du Lac yesterday. The task is to fly 100nm (total) or more with a full-stop landing at an airport I had not been to. This was made more interesting with Fond du Lac’s right-hand pattern on two of its runways. I hadn’t done a right-hand [...]

The weather has been absolutely miserable this past week, and I knew yesterday I’d have to scrub. Mark is going to try to get me in this coming week (we finally have some nice days expected).

Yesterday Mark and I flew down to Dubuque, Iowa, on my first “long” cross-country. This trip required some extra planning, since we would be flying over 50-60nm of south-western Wisconsin farmland.

Planning included careful inspection of my sectional. I plotted a direct course from Morey (C29) to Dubuque (DBQ), then picked out towns that it intersected. [...]