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Flying Lesson 10
This lesson took us out of the local airspace of Seaman's airport and over to our local commercial airport. The Avoca airport (AVP) or Scranton/Wilkes-Barre airport is our area's big airport. It features plenty of commercial flights and of course an air traffic control tower. The instructor was in charge of all communications with the tower for this run. I have never landed anywhere but at Seaman's so this was going to be exciting. We used Wilkes-Barre's VOR to guide our way. We set the airplane's VOR before takeoff and proceeded to fly our way along the VOR radial to practice landing again. After some radio communication we were told to change our squack frequency. We were also required to listen to the airport's weather brief prior to communication with the tower. At the end of the brief, they recite a letter from the phoenetic alphabet. When we initiated communication with them, we had to give them back the letter in their brief to prove that we had listened. This is a clever idea, one of many clever ideas I've seen so far since my introduction to aviation.
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The Avoca airport's weather report told us which runway was in use for the day and also that there was a crosswind of 15 knots. This was a bit greek to me but my instructor said a 15 knot crosswind was substantial and would complicate the landings. On the other hand, he said this was a grand opportunity to practice crosswind landings on a large and long runway.
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This happens to be a scenic area. As we made our way over to the airport we pass over a ski resort, closed for the season of course, as well as a minor league baseball stadium that hosts the AAA Yankees team, and a premium golf course that I would probably never have an opportunity to see from the ground. After a few moments of sightseeing, it was back to business. The beginning of the runway has two sets of lights. All were red as I initially approached. As we descended, the front set of lights turned white. signifying that we were at a good altitude. I believe they both stayed red on one of my approaches due to too much height. I forget the name of the lights right now, but I'm sure I'll see them again soon.
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The cross-winds were harsh just as the weather report said they would be. With the runway as large as it was, I thought I'd have an easier time landing and instead it was much more difficult. We actually landed with some throttle to help battle the steady wind. Even on the final approach I needed tons of left rudder to straighten the plane because we were literally being blown sideways. We made about five landings, he contacted the tower to tell them we were finished, we climbed to 3000', and headed back towards the VOR radial leading us back to our airport. The heading we took back to the airport lead us over alot of familiar sites in my home area. I took a little more time to sightsee on the way back. One last first for this lesson was that we encoutered a brief rain shower. It was the time I had seen raindrops on the windshield. We flew through it and out the other side back to clear visibility. After landing we discussed the lesson and I headed home for the day.
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