(I am writing this over a year after the flight so it will be less specific than other posts. However I wanted to fill it in to complete posts of all my training flights.)
I thought that I was going to be making my long cross country this day… After the night cross country I was going over plans for my long cross country with my CFI and it came up that I had only made two previous solo cross country flights. The school has a requirement that you have to make three solo cross country flights before your long cross country, so there was still one more to go. I made plans to fly to Palomar (KCRQ) and if necessary divert to Ramona (KRNM).
I had been to both of those airports before and enjoy the views flying into and out of Palomar better so that was my first choice. The only hitch was whether the marine layer would lift in time for my flight. I watched the weather all morning and the overcast was lifting by a few hundred feet per hour and I thought it was all going to work. However, once I got out to the airport and made one final check of the weather and the layer that was lifting had reversed and KCRQ was socked in… It was going to be Ramona after all.
The flight there was fairly uneventful, that is unless you consider the immediate vector given by ATC for a traffic alert. As soon as I made the turn I saw the Cessna climbing straight for me. I couldn’t see it before because it was lower than me and obscured by the nose of my plane but thanks to using flight following and the help of the great folks at SoCal Approach it was a non-factor.
The landing was fine and the flight back mundane enough that I don’t remember anything specific from it at the time of this writing. The great thing was I could check off that requirement from the school and make my long solo flight the next day.
