Supplemental: Cross Country Pre-Planning

I'm starting to think seriously about cross-country flying, which will also help me prepare for the written test (charts, plotter, wind, etc.). I scheduled a lesson with Mario for 9:30 am Saturday and left him a voice mail suggesting we do a "mini-cross-country" as a change of pace from all the pattern work. I roughly planned this last night, deciding to fly to Orange (ORE) then to Fitchburg (FIT) and back to ORH. This is a total of 68 nm which should be 0.85 hours (51 minutes) if average ground speed is 80 knots. I picked out check points too. This should be pretty educational for local area familiarization -- pass near a couple of the nearby western airports, over Barre (which shows a race track on the sectional), near the north tip of the Quabbin and into ORE. Then east over Gardner Airport (and VOR, GDM) and into Fitchburg, finally SSW over Sterling, west of the Wachusett, over Holden (possible detour to West Boylston), and into ORH. With landings, this could be up close to 1.5 hours. I think it's a good intro to cross-country flying.

I also found my old Los Angeles VFR terminal area chart and thought about that cross-country on September 17. I think I'll plan to go down to French Valley, which is in the SE corner of the LA terminal chart, near Lake Elsinore, uncontrolled, about 55 nm SE of EMT. Then I'll see if we can stop at Chino on the way back to EMT -- that would be cool to land there myself!