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Commercial Cross Country Flight Complete
By Matt | October 21, 2009
Well….. I have finally finished my commercial cross country flight that is required for my Commercial License. The requirements for the trip were: 300 nautical mile cross country flight which shall include a minimum of 3 landings at points other than that of departure.My day started off by waking up early Sunday morning, calling FSS for a briefing and doing my final flight calculations. Once the calculations were complete, I drove to the airport and signed out the aircraft. So I hope in the Cessna 172, do my checks and notice that something is wrong…. The radio display lights was not working and I couldnt make out what frequency i was selecting on both COM and NAV. I tried doing a radio check on COM2 but that wasn’t working neither… ERRRR bad start to the day. I really wanted to take this aircraft because it’s the only one with GPS in case I needed it for my trip. So my plans for departing at 10 AM were not happening at this point. I had to cancel my flight plan and try and find another aircraft that was in working condition. After about an hour I found another rental aircraft that I could use for the flight. I did the w&b and refilled my flight plan with FSS. After all my checks completed, I departed CNB9 (Lake Simcoe Regional) and climbed to 5500 ft over Orillia. Once I was at cruise altitude, I dialed in the Coehill VOR and began tracking towards it, I then called up Toronto and requested flight following. This first leg was pretty laid back, just had to keep on track and listen to Toronto. I arrived at the Coehill VOR then flew a radial direct to CYRP (Ottawa Carp). I arrived at Carp with no issues, had a quick pit stop and then departed for the Ottawa VOR. I called up Montreal radio for flight following and tracked from Ottawa VOR to Mirabel VOR. This leg was a little bit more fun… Montreal called me up and said “2 non reported traffic at one o’clock position 5500 ft and eleven o’clock position 6000 ft” as he was talking all of a sudden I see a big glider just 500 ft in front of me, I descended and notified the controller that I descended and had traffic in sight. He told me to continue to keep eye out for traffic because the gliders are out off their practice area. A while after I passed over the Mirabel VOR and headed for my 300+ NM destination… CYRQ ( Trois-Rivieres Airport). The controller notified be to contact the airport early to arrange landing in between skydivers… This was quite the challenge, I guess I should of brushed up on my French before wondering into Quebec. I finally got a hold of someone that spoke English and landed at airport with no conflict. This airport was really well maintained and had a nice 6000 ft runway. I fueled up, had some lunch, filled a return flight plan and departed to my next destination CYGK (Kingston, Ontario). The sun was rapidly descending during this leg, and by the time I arrived in Kingston is was night. I’m glad I got checked out the previous week for night flying. I landed with no problems then taxied to the apron for some fuel for the flight back. Once fueled up, I departed back to CNB9. The flight back was all at night and the lights from all the cities was beautiful. I arrived back at 20:00 local time and called up FSS to close my flight plan. I logged 8.2 hrs total time for the day 
Now I just need to do some more instrument time and get ready for the flight exam.
Topics: Training, Uncategorized |
October 21st, 2009 at 12:23 am
Congratulations Matt for finishing your long cross country! I’m not surprised that you did great. You are the best pilot I know ! Hurry and finish your CPL!
December 3rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Hey Matt, it was nice to meet you today in Bradford, sounds like a pretty cool cross country flight. 8.2 hrs, wow thats a trip in a 172!