Finally, the expected Solo Cross Country comes. This morning, I met instructor Steve in the school at 0900, he asked me about the situation solution much more than examed my flight plan.
"How to activate your flight plan in the air?" he asked.
"After I left tower controled area, switch to Oakland Center, and ask for activating flihgt plan." I answered.
"What if you got lost in the air?"
"I will ask Norcal for VFR flight following after flight plan activated."
"What are you gonna talk?"
"I will say..Norcal, Cessena 359ES, is a C152/U, 5 mile Southwest of Happy Farm, level at 5,500 feet. Request VFR flight following to Man's Paradise."
"Squawk 7777, Cessena 9ES." I continued.
"Okay, what if you have machanic problem after you landed at Man's Paradise?"I could tell he held himself not to laugh badly.
"Call school for help, cancel flight plan, have my sandwich and wait ."
"Okay, let's see the weather." Weather man brought me to outside and observed the sky.
"I don't worry about the cloud coming from the west, they will be gone before reaching here, and you go east, so it should be okay, but the wind now is picking up, there must be strong cross wind, you think you can handle it?"
"Affirmative!" I replied and gave him a typical naval sloppy salute. We both used to be in navy, he knew what I meant.
"Good, have fun though."
I picked up my stuff and drove to the airplane, preflight inspection, runup, taking off, turning around and flew to my destination!
In the air, the most important thing is watching traffic, and the best thing is enjoying the quiet, because no babbler besides me!
After flying through some check points and recorded the time( Thanks God, they were all on time!), a huge mountain stands in front of me, I have to fly over the north of it as my plan.
Finally, the destination runway popped out after passing the mountain. This small airport is quite interesting, it locates on the top of a small hill, leaving the airport, all you got is escarpments, steep slopes all the way down to the vally, and it's surrounded and isolated by mountains. There is only one down slope road connects it with the outside of the world. Who says it's not a paradise?
It was a quiet Sunday morning, only few people there. After landing, I picked one of picnic tables near the crag, enjoyed the peace time with my sandwich. Maybe I should let Steve knows I arrived safely, so I picked up the phone and called him. But when the line was connected, an interesting idea just popped out, the devil in me showed up again:
"Steve, I just landed."
"Good job! Is everything Oaky? No trouble? NO issue?"
"Everything is fine, no trouble, no
issue. But...."
"But what? What's going on?" his voice was getting speed up.
"This airport doesn't look like the one we landed last time." (Ha Ha Ha! the devil was laughing.)
"The airport doesn't look like what we went before!?"
"I don't know, this..."
"Eric, Eric! Listen to me! Listen to me!" He shouted."What is the runway number!?"
"Uh... I can't see the runway number from here..." It's time to stop! Devil."Oh! I saw a sign here--Man's Paradise. Oh! I got the right place!"
"What..What.. You.. You.."
"I'm kidding you, Steve, of course I have the right airport."(That's was not me, the devil!)
"Oh, it's a joke........."
