Outside the terminal

Danville, VA Handstand

Akward Pano of Danville Terminal

Danville FBO Office (Next 2)

Took this one for Justin

Leaving Danville (Next 3 pics)

Out the front on the way back from Danville

Can you find where I did “S turns across a road” and “Turns about a point?”.

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So, Danville XC is now supposed to be tomorrow AM.

Here are some pictures from today:

The New River near Claytor Lake

More New River

I-81 going over the New River

Zoomed out, the same bridge

Part of Claytor Lake

“The Quarry” where people usually get community service hours for trying to run down the railroad tracks and cliff jump into it.

Lane Stadium

Lane Stadium Again

Recognize Main St?

Excited/stressed to plan/hope weather is good.

Blacksburg->Danville->”Blue Ridge Airport”->New River->Blacksburg (154.6nm)
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The GREEN and RED (My GPS probably lost signal for a few seconds? a minute?) are where we flew.

The BLUE was where we were “supposed” to go. Well, we had Blacksburg->Lewisburg planned real well, but that was about it…

3 Solo Tower Controlled Landings to a full stop at Lewisburg.

After that, the next leg to Bluefield came out of the “blue” (ha!) and was different from where we planned (Beckely, WV) because we had to get the plane back for the next guy. We then diverted off “course” from Bluefield back to Blacksburg and I learned how to triangulate using the VOR.
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Blacksburg (KBCB) -> Bluefield (KBLF) @ 4500′

Bluefield (KBLF) -> New River (KPSK) @ 5500′

New River (KPSK) -> Blacksburg (KBCB)

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So, my first leg got off to a not so great start. We ended up in Princeton, WV which I thought was Bluefield and that got me all turned around, finally we started to loop around the “town” and the airport was off to my right, I was a little confused, but it all makes sense when you look at the GPS track. (We weren’t allowed to use anything but the compass and the map for the flight) Anyways, it was a good day and first Cross Country experience because I learned how important it is to stay on your heading, correct when you can do so, and if you have gone as far as you planned, and you’re not there… something is going awry.

Well, it was odd that on our last short leg we were really low on fuel in our left tank and the right was pretty much full. After we were back in Blacksburg we found out that we’d been flying the whole day without a gas cap on the right wing. I guess it wasn’t put on securely after fueling up the plane. This made sense of the left tank being low (it was the only tank with suction to the tank). In any case, the new guy “Hop” (Last name ‘Hopper’) from LC’s flying service (Blacksburg’s new F.B.O.) helped us search for us and the maintenance guy from Blacksburg (Jim) was finally able to find it on the taxi way down towards where you turn onto the runway. Well, that was a lucky day!

Well, definitely a fun (at times mildly nerve racking) first cross country flight!

Anyways, I got some software for my computer to edit and create GPX data (A standard for manipulating. I can create routes in GPX format and put them on my Garmin Nuvi 750

The most awesome find was this site which allows you to download airports and navaids all OVER the place. Pretty sweet: http://www.navaid.com/GPX/