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Originally posted by B.Butler
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There are Good Things, and Bad Things, about learning to fly in the New York metropolitan area. My first solo cross country was from Caldwell NJ to Bridgeport CT. As I recall it, the distance between the two airports was something like 50.001 nautical miles, which presumably had something to do with why the owner of the flight school used that as a first. So, here I am, a student with twenty or so hours, flying a ruler-straight line that took me right over White Plains (HPN) and thence to Bridgeport -- VFR, but all the time in contact with New York TRACON. I was nervous as hell, and suffering from target fixation -- the target being a safe landing at BDR -- and although NY was recommending that I stay at 4,000 feet, and I although was vaguely aware that ATC was talking to some aircraft that was busy departing BDR, I broke in to tell ATC that I needed to start descending.
He came back, absolutely dripping with sarcasm, about how I could do that, but if I did, there'd be a commercial airliner climbing right into my face, and "What are your intentions?" I replied, with as much aplomb as I could muster, that I intended to stay at 4,000 feet until he let me know I could descend.
Left me pissed off at ATC for while. When I joined the freq, I had told him I was a student, and that I was on my first solo XC, but this was a man who had left compassion sitting on his dresser that morning. And that's pretty much my only clear memory of that flight.
The 300-mile long cross country also has a couple of memories. One is of flying smack dab right over McGuire Air Force Base. The controllers there were perfectly happy to have me in their airspace. The notable moment there came when a couple of A10 Warthogs flew by me, pretty close, and pretty slow. I can't tell you why -- making sure I really was a C152? Taking an opportunity for some training? Maybe I just happened to be where they needed to be? -- but it was certainly cool from where I was sitting.
But the real moment was in tremendous contrast to yours. Third and last leg. Outside temperature was about 100 degrees, which meant the inside temperature was about, well, 100 degrees. I was flying northeast, with a lowering sun hard on the horizon from my left. I was hot, and tired, and the engine was droning, and this was before I figured out about headsets, and then the engine note changed, and then I woke up, and after a few seconds of "Where am I?", and then remembering that I was piloting a plane, I realized I was in the beginnings of a power spiral dive. Not an unusual attitude; it wasn't that bad. But it was certainly an uncommanded attitude. Okay, so I level off, and start a climb back to the altitude I had started at, and turn back to the heading I had started at. And then, asked again, "Where *am* I?"
I learned something about sectionals, that day. They work really well if you've been following along, and you can say, "Okay, that's such-and-so road, and there's this-and-that river." But if you've been unconscious for even a little while, and then start trying to match northern New Jersey to a map of northern New Jersey, which is criss-crossed by rivers and roads that all look alike from 3,500 feet, while simultaneously there is a drumbeat in the back of your head about, "Okay, then, where do you suppose the TCA actually *is*?, well, for a few minutes there you lack "...absolute certainty..." about finding your way home.
I mean, I never doubted for a moment that I would find my way home. But there was a certain amount of concern about the amount of 'splainin' I might have to do!
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