So at first I was just going to solo today, but then I decided I didn’t feel quite comfortable with leaving the Lunken airspace by myself, so canceled the lesson. Sharon called me back a little later with news that they just hired a guy on and that he could do my lesson this afternoon if I still wanted to go up. Well of course I did!
This lesson was a surprise actually, it was my first cross-country flight. We took off from Lunken 21R and went north to past the Blue Ash airport and over Kings Island. I saw the building where I work, but I wasn’t able to see my house up in Mason without getting a little closer, all the trees are really big. So we continued from Kings Island up to the Lebanon/Warren County Airport where we flew a little bit past, saw Wright Field and turned around to land at Warren County. We taxied off and around the runway before taking off again (not another plane in sight). We headed back to Lunken while Gary (Porter) explained VOR to me and how to navigate with it. It makes logical sense in my head, but completely doing it while flying is another story… I’ll have to get used to it.
We made it back to Lunken where I was told to continue south of the field and radio at mid-field for entrance to downwind of 21R. So at mid-field I start turning to cross at mid-field because we are on 21L side and radio the tower… “Crossing mid-field wasn’t the initial instructions, but that’s ok, enter on the 21L downwind.” What!? You said 21L… well apparently we were both wrong, he did say 21L when he meant 21R but at the same time he never did say cross mid-field which I had done. Whoops… he was very friendly about it. The ATC folks at Lunken are extremely nice, I’d like to go up and meet them sometime.
After the lesson I sat around with Gary for quite some time and we talked about a whole lot of different things… I was there until 8:30, when we had landed just before 7:30.
Overall, it was a great lesson. Gary is a character, I will enjoy his company for the remainder of my dual flights (hopefully he’s my third and final instructor). I enjoyed seeing some places outside of the boring Clermont County airspace as well… turns out Ohio isn’t all just farm land… hah, we followed I71 pretty much up from exit 5ish up to exit 25ish (Kings Island).
Tomorrow I have another lesson, wish me the best.
Later!