A minimal cross country flight

Today I took a friend and co-worker named Doug up for 1.4 hours. We had a simple flight plan - go to KMFV, do a touch-and-go, and return to JGG.

Since that plan involves crossing the Chesapeake bay, I plotted the shortest distance across the water, which turned out to be the CCV VOR 290 radial giving us about 13NM over open water. I decided to use 6500' of altitude so that we could glide back to shore even if we lost the engine in the middle of the bay. The interesting part was calculating where the "middle" was, based on the winds aloft. Going to KMFV we crossed the bay in about 4:15 (132 kts ground speed) but coming back it took about 7 minutes (~90 kts ground speed). I watched the engine instruments closely during that part of the flight. :)

We had a good flight with a few winds making things interesting close to the ground. There was some chop in the air at 2000' and we had a nice crosswind at KMFV (my landing was a bit off there, didn't work the rudder like I should have). The landing at JGG was a little better. We had a good wind, but it was mostly down the runway, with occasional gusts coming from the left. The landing there was almost a bad one when our sink rate increased greatly about 10 feet from the ground, however I managed to flare just enough more to cushion us before touchdown.

That was the longest I have gone without flying since starting up again, I think: 3 weeks. I didn't feel too out of practice, thankfully.

Another note, we hit a new high altitude for me today, at least based on my last 40 or so flights: 6500'.

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