Timebuilding Trip

[flockflyer]

My name is Andreas, I recently did fly a 100 hour cross-country trip to gain some experience (and log hours) after my PPL (on my way to a JAA CPL). I rented the plane from CPS and Michael asked me to write a few words about it here.

The plane was a 1984 Cessna 152, and the price was $50 per hour (= $5000 upfront), with fuel and oil on me. The plane has over 10K hours total, but was in a decent condition with good engine performance.

I came to CPS because Michael was willing to let me fly the plane to any place in the U.S. My route took me from Missouri to Virginia, Florida, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, San Francisco, back to Mississippi and finally to Missouri again. At times it was hard to sit in such a small cockpit for hours at a time, but I don't complain. I could have rented a bigger plane (and paid more) but choose not to.

The trip was worth it. There are many very nice airports in the U.S. with friendly people (and a minority of not so nice ones). And I also took the time to take a break from flying for a day or two. If anything I would have liked to spent more time at some places. I had slightly more than a month to complete the 100 hours, and at the end I did fly some trips just to complete the hours.

I did learn a lot in this time, working the radio and ATC, effective flight planning, and a lot of different flying conditions and airports. Of course I also got stuck, twice, in bad weather for a few days. Very tempting to take off into bad weather after being stuck for some time. I did fly in marginal weather one day, and it turned out fine in this case (I had a plan B for the case it didn't). The real world learning environment complete with (some) (time) pressure is invaluable.

I did cross the mountains near the Mexican border in both directions, as I wasn't comfortable with flying the 152 up north in the higher terrain, because with full tanks the climb performance is non-existant above 10000 feet, and even to get to 9500 (cruising east-bound in the mountains) takes in excess of 30 minutes.

The experience with CPS was a good one, foremost because the plane worked fine apart from some very minor issues. Michael refunded me the money for the routine oil change enroute, and another issue (the hobbs meter runs slightly too fast) was also resolved in a good way (flying a couple extra hours).

Hope this helps somebody.

[Michael95U]

Thanks for the write up, Andreas! Hopefully you have some pictures you can post from your trip!

Michael