On Thursday, I flew my first solo CAP Transport mission...
Three of us (the unit commander Nick, the unit operations officer Mickey, and I) drove to Craig Municipal in Jacksonville where we picked up the Craig squadron's new Cessna 182 G1000 glass cockpit aircraft. The glass cockpit is absolutely amazing. The amount of information available is incredible. Having real time weather and traffic is a huge plus. I rode in the back seat so Nick and Mickey could hone their G1000 skills, both having been recently qualified in the aircraft.
The flight down to Daytona (KDAB) was smooth and uneventful.
After making sure that our aircraft was ready, Mickey and Nick headed off back to Craig, leaving me to fly our aircraft back to Fernandina by myself. The reason we didn't take a fourth person is that due to weight and balance issues, CAP C172's and C182's can typically only carry three adults.
This was my first time ever acting as PIC departing from a class C airport. Fortunately, I had flown into Daytona a month ago, and had flown right seat out of Daytona earlier this year, so I was at least familiar with the airport. Still, I was a bit apprehensive - not from a safety concern, but from a concern that I would stumble on a procedural element.
Although I tried really hard to do everything right, I did make one stumble. I started off properly, first listening to ATIS and writing down the information, then contacting Clearance Delivery to receive my initial instructions. My stumble occurred when I went to contact Ground. Rather than using the proper ground frequency, which I had previously written down, I used the Departure Control frequency which I had just written down from my communication with Clearance. Departure was nice and gently corrected me. The rest of my procedures - contacting Ground, taxiing, contacting Tower and departure were smooth. I did learn two good lessons:
- It is a good idea to slow down a bit, double check what frequency I will be using, who I will be talking to, what I am going to say and what I expect to be told prior to each step. That, and to take a breath...
- The world doesn't end and there aren't hordes of people pointing and laughing at you if you make a minor mistake.
One of the nice things about departing from a class C airport is that there is no extra step needed to request flight following - at least there wasn't for me as Clearance Delivery offered this at initial contact. The down side of this was that being in constant communication with ATC makes it difficult to contact Flight Service to activate your flight plan - if you remember, which I didn't until 1/2 way through the flight. Once I realized I hadn't activated my flight plan, I requested a frequency change from Approach so could could contact FSS.
Other than the items above, the trip was really nice. There were some scattered puffy clouds near Daytona, but they diminished as I traveled north. The air was smooth and the temperature was lovely.
I made a well planned approach into Fernandina and capped it off with a nice smooth landing.
What more can you ask for?
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Posted by David at September 29, 2007 10:41 AM