Solo to Santa Barbara
Aircraft:Cessna 172L – N19688
Length of Flight: 2.0 Hrs – Solo
Total Flight Hours to Date: 47.6 Hrs
Altitude: 4500-5500 Feet
Route: Whiteman to Santa Barbara
Cost: $181.00
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Here’s the video!
Woohoo! First solo to another airport! What an awesome trip, clear, calm and cool! Everything went by the books…well except for when I had to talk to ground control at Santa Barbara.
So I get to Santa Barbara and everything was going great, I was doing fine talking to all the airports along the way etc, etc. But as soon as I landed in Santa Barbara and had to talk to ground control I sorta choked. First I didn’t switch to the second radio which was on the ground control frequency, so I was still on the tower frequency. So I’m talking to the tower thinking I’m talking to ground. And they’re like…uhh you’re still on the tower frequency. Not a good thing, then when I finally did get on the ground frequency I told them I wanted a left downwind departure instead of a left cross wind departure. That’s like saying I want to make a U-turn after I takeoff instead I really wanted to just turn left after I took off, which is kind of a big deal because the tower wants to know where you’re going. So a little confusion but it all got sorted out and nobody got poked in the eye, yeah for me.Before the flight I did a navigation log of all the visual points I would fly over and at what time, kind of a checklist for navigation. And I hit every point within a minute! It really works! and I did it all by hand, no computers (well I used a calculator once or twice). So that was awesome.Great flight, next one is to Borrego Valley (L08) for my long cross-country.