Flight to First Flight

Posted by my wife:

Today Jason and I flew from KPHF to KFFA for lunch. Our plan was to walk to a nearby Dairy Queen or Subway that Jason had read about, grab food to go, return to the park, have a leisurely lunch in the grass, and tour the monument and museum before the return flight.

Jason asked me (the non-pilot wife!) to write this up to give a different perspective. My role today was part nagivator, part entertainer :) You must give me both creative license and a large quantity of forgiveness for everything that is stated improperly or called by the wrong name!

We got to PHF a little later than planned, around 11:15. We got checked in and went out to the tarmac. Jason walked through the preflight a little more slowly than usual, talking me through what he was doing and having me spot check some things.

Bear with me and I'll recite some of what I learned, in no particular order... (jump down to the ----------- a few paragraphs down to skip this section...)

The flat little dealie on top of the fuselage above the front seats is the GPS antenna. Also on the top of the wings toward the back on either side of the fuselage are the two COM antennas. The VOR antenna is on the tail. The fuel tank air intake is mounted just behind the left wing strut so that in icing conditions it won't get clogged; it's gotta stay clear so that as fuel exits the tanks to the engine the volume can be replaced by air.

Under the tip of the left wing is a little barb (maybe plexiglass?) that refracts the light from the red/white lights on the outer edge of the wing so the pilot can see them; I didn't notice whether this was on the right wing as well. We talked about tire pressure, checking for brake fluid leakage and checked the tread.

We talked about water and crud settling in the low parts of the fuel system and that being the reasoning for the placement of the 5 ports on each wing and the three under the engine. We lowered the flaps, making sure they simultaneously descended at a good, smooth pace. We checked all the hinges of flaps and ailerons and elevators and rudder for tightened bolts, aligned hinges, no junk caught anywhere, any bolts with "hairpins" properly clipped, free movement where appropriate, etc. We checked that the braided static things (are they wires?) were not pinched or unattached, and the little static antennas were normal.

We checked that the baggage door was securely closed. We looked at all the surfaces for dents or abnormal contours. Jason checked the edges of the propeller for "chinks" and checked the oil, which was at 7 1/2. We looked at a rectangular opening on the leading edge of the left wing and I don't remember exactly what that was; I want to say something to do with the autopilot but I don't think that was right.

There was also something behind the baggage door, a flat disk that was a static port that I also think had something to do with the autopilot. I got to test the fuel on the left wing and then pour it back in through the port on the top of the wing. While we were doing this, two different military jets came in for landings and taxiied past us. Other than un-chocking and un-tieing the plane, That's all I remember on the outside.

On the inside, there were lots of switches to be switched and knobs to be turned. I remember master avionics and the strobe switch, and dialing in the ATIS to find 29.92 for the altimeter (but that's air pressure, right?). There were electrical tests to make sure the gauge lights came on, checks of pressures and synchronization of the GPS with certain pieces of info.

Doors closed and latched, windows closed, clear prop, fuel pump, mixture lean (or was it rich?), engine on, mixture rich (or was it lean?), something with the throttle. Since I've never worked the throttle and the mixture, I've never bothered to learn whether in or out is this or that!

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Jason then called the tower to tell them we were a 172 and would like to leave southbound; he gave us the okay for runway 7 and we were off. At the runway threshold, Jason did the engine run-up and checked the idle. I don't remember whether it was at this point or previously that he switched the magnetos back and forth, but before long we were off. We departed SSE and Jason had me doing visual navigation and telling him where to go based on where I thought we were on the map and the landmarks and whatnot. I always knew I was bad at gauging distance and getting oriented, but this was a very practical illustration of just how bad I am at that stuff! Our goal was to get to Kitty Hawk doing VFR without violating Norfolk's airspace or wandering too close to the "active military" areas, and picking landmarks off the map that we could identify visually was tough (remember, I'm navigationally challenged).

Landmark the first was a bridge crossing from Hampton over toward Portsmouth (not the bridge tunnel, though we could see that off to the left as a reference). If we crossed the Hampton end of it at a certain angle, we'd be set up on a good tangent of the outer bounds of the ORF airspace and making a good line for the Hampton Roads Executive airport (PVG). With the multitude of water features in this area (rivers, inlets, islands, bridges, etc), it became easier to track where were were.

My directions to the PIC were certainly not mature or of a high professional standard; they were more like "See that dealie out there at 1 o'clock? Keep it on our right." Some dealies were easier to describe, like Lake Drummond, which became a big landmark after passing PVG. We set a heading to be a bit more westerly, cutting another tangent of ORF, and headed toward the Chesapeake Regional airport (CPK).

Now's probably a good time to describe the weather. It was hazy and parts of the flight felt dark, though it was easily VFR the entire time. Occasionally clouds would seem like little buoys at about our same altitude, but we never got near any. On the return trip we encountered a good amount of thermals (particularly over the water) and some turbulence.

After CPK came ONX (Currituck) and this was the last good airport to use as a reference; for me, things now got harder since runways are usually pretty easy to pick out and the farther we got down the peninsula, the more complicated the land/water became. The shoreline was always easy, so there was a definite bound on the map to where we could be. But combine a variety of peninsulas and rivers and inlets with my crappy sense of distance, and for a long time I wasn't sure just where we were. To really lay out for you just how bad my sense of distance is, I told Jason I could find us on the map within an error of 50 miles; he replied that that pretty much spanned the entire distance from PHF to FFA! I also had to keep re-orienting the map to "heading up" instead of north up so I knew whether to look right or left for landmarks -- quit laughing, I just need practice!

Anyway, the shore and islands and scenery in general were nice to see from above; I get the feeling that we spent a large portion of the flight at 3500 feet based on what Jason would call out when we were in the vicinity of other traffic, but I never checked the altimeter. We got down to the Grandy area, staying over the mainland and then decided to cross over to the Outer Banks and fly that strip the rest of the way. We found a major pier that was labeled on the map, and Jason started the descent. We spotted the Wright Brothers monument and entered downwind west of the landing strip. We touched down lightly at First Flight airport after a somewhat bumpy approach, back-taxiied, did the shutdown procedures (to which I didn't pay a lick of attention! You're welcome.) and hopped out. Our plan was to walk to a nearby Dairy Queen or Subway that Jason had read about, grab food to go, return to the park, have a leisurely lunch in the grass, and tour the monument and museum before the return flight. Unfortunately, we were running late and would have only about 45 minutes on the ground in order to make it back to PHF before the plane was due. Long story short (ha ha ha), we hoofed it to Subway and back and had a nice little picnic in the grass. I got lettuce on my shin. Thought you should know that.

We then hoofed it up the spiral-feeling walkway to the monument, where Jason snapped a few photos before running down the other side to do the preflight for the return trip. We agreed to think of this as a scouting trip and determined that it's a location to which we'd like to return with at least a 2-3 hour block of ground time.

Well, so far this little documentary feels very Stephen King-ish. Excruciating detail leading up to the main event, which is over and done with in two paragraphs. You'll just have to live with that! (Mom C, surely you feel right at home with it!)

The return flight was mostly a reverse trek of what I described above. We flew further east as we went up the shore, spending more time over the Outer Banks. There were lots of boats and beach-goers out, and even some surfers. We flew past a plane dragging a banner. Since this leg of the trip was uneventful, I'll fast-forward to the re-entry into the Hampton area. We flew up the river next to the Northrup-Grumman (and probably other) shipyards and saw both wet- and dry-docks for what must be enormous ships. There was an aircraft carrier in the water and another hoisted up on land. That was kinda cool to see.

Jason called ahead to PHF and was happy when they approved a straight-in path to runway 2. Our transponder was in-op on this flight, so they asked for a heads-up when we were 2 nm out. As we approached the runway, we saw a Cessna Citation waiting to depart on rwy 7. Landing seemed fine to me, but as usual, Jason was very critical of it. We pulled of on D something (bridge?) and taxiied over to the parking area in front of the CAP building. Shutdown procedures again, chock and tie-down, 1.9 on the Hobbs and another number from the tach, collect belongings (use caution as items may have shifted during flight), and the end. :)