EAA Sport Aviation - January 2010

REMOS leapt off the runway as soon as the needle
hit 50 mph. I waved goodbye to Oshkosh and
pointed the nose of the plane toward the Ozarks.

I leveled out at 6,500 feet and made the first notation on my chart to mark my location and time. Wisconsin has no shortage of landmarks to see from the air, but I knew I would not be so fortunate along the whole route.

About every five minutes I made another mark
on my chart noting my location and time. I’d heard
this can help on cross-countries, but the flights
big smile on my face, and I wasn’t about to pretend like this wasn’t
a big deal for me. I was doing it! I was flying across the country!
Walking toward the fixed base operator (FBO), I glanced over
my shoulder to the aircraft parked on the tarmac. I felt an incred-
ible feeling of competency—similar to the feeling I experienced
after soloing for the first time.
Observation 3: Folding and unfolding charts alone in the cockpit
requires practice. Driving a car with your knees is much easier than
Stay close to your cockpit.
Somewhere north of Springfield,
Missouri, I flew over my first
cloud...in all my flight training,
I never flew high enough to
be over clouds.
during my training were too short to discover the
real benefit of this practice. After being in the air
about an hour it was easy to see there were regular
intervals between each five-minute mark.

Observation 2: Sectional charts are amazingly accurate! I was in northern Illinois when I started to really love them. I was about to fly over a large section of farmland with no good landmarks visible. I took a deep breath, set the chart down, and held a tight heading. I was ecstatic when almost exactly 15 minutes later, there was a lone railroad track beneath me. I looked out my right window and saw a small town with a creek to its north, a small pond to the west, and a little highway to the south. Exactly what the chart said. I celebrated by scribbling down another mark.

I followed the Mississippi River south to South-
east Iowa Regional Airport (BRL) near Burlington
and squeaked the wheels onto Runway 12.
Climbing out of the cockpit I let out a big
shout. The fuel guy gave me a funny look. I had a

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRADY LANE

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