Solo Navigation

Perhaps the largest and obviously the happiest step in my life so far was my solo nav trip. Flying form Gillespie to Cochran Regional Airport and then down Salton Sea to Imperial County Airport, right on the Mexican border. It was great flying, 10,000ft over the mountains and then dropped straight down into the deserts. Eating peanut butter mnm's and crusing at FL100. How can you beat that?

After the take off, which was good, as always, lol, i headed to El Capitan and then over to the Julian VOR. I followed the planned route that well, that i had trouble finding the beacon as it was directly beneath me. A steep turn quickly sorted that problem out. After that i descended slowly towards Cochran, or Thermal as its commonly known via Borrego Valley, a small aerodrome in the desert. The traffic at Thermal was minimal, but as the VHF frequency is only a air/ground radio, it was fun to say the least. After parking Zula Papa next to a learjet, (it was the best place i could find lol) it was a short trip to Imperial via Salton Sea, a large inland sea/lake. After a tricky, but not uncalculated landing and a can of mountain dew, it was back to Gillespie, via a long and ardous climb back up to altitude in the exhausting heat.

After three and a half hours of flying in the heat, it was a landing well asked for both me and Zulu Papa. A totally amazing day, one which will surely reamin one of my fondest memories for years to come. Thats surely why flying is such a fantastic and well deserved object of desire.