I suppose if January is going to give you a day as nice as it was this morning, you gotta go, Thursday or no Thursday. It was ice cold, about 15 degrees F when I arrived at the airport at 8AM, but sunny and calm. The airplanes were plugged into their block heaters which kick on at 6AM but I had the feeling that might not be quite enough. I went through the preflight in my down jacket, hat and gloves and everything seemed in order except that the engine needed a quart and the last guy to fly didn't fill the tanks... doh! At any rate, the plan today was to fly to a tiny podunk airport near Ravenna, Ohio called Portage County (29G). This would be somewhat of a two-legger as I planned to fly roughly a 300 heading, overfly the Akron VOR and, then head nearly north to 29G. I pulled the plane out of its hangar, got everything situated as far as the map, timer, E6B, etc, went through the pre-ignition checklist, turned the key and.... not much happened. The prop on 549, my 152 trainer, spun around a few times but it was clear the battery was pretty much frozen.
Oh well, I called Mike and let him know what happened, and proceeded to tell him I was going to head to work. "But hang on", Mike said, "we have another trainer!". "But Mike, 45M only has one radio, one OBS and no GPS!". "Well then it will be good practice for you"... So ok, I was planning on using ded reckoning and VORs for navigation anyhow but the GPS in 549 is certainly comforting to have. Besides, I was familiar with 549, as I had done just about all of my training in it. But before I could talk myself out of it I had preflighted 45M and pulled it out on the ramp. Don't get me wrong, 45M is a great 152, in fact to me it feels like the motor pulls a little harder than 549, but lets just say the cockpit is a little lacking in the avionics department, at least comparatively. Of course 45M fires right up, so no more chance for an excuse, and I'm off departing runway 35. I played it super safe by flying around the pattern, climbing above pattern altitude, and then overflew PJC to mark my time and get my heading correct.
Well it wasn't long before I realized something wasn't right, I hit Ellwood City as planned, but I soon realized that my checkpoints were not appearing. I did not know it at the time but Mike and I deduced later that the winds aloft had swung from being nearly from the west when I called the briefer and did my planning, to north-north east. Where I was holding a bearing of 300, my aircraft was heading more like 270 due to a lack of proper wind correction. I did get a little panicky particularly because I knew I was flying close to Pittsburgh International class Bravo airspace. I dialed in the Akron VOR and much to my surprise it was telling me to fly a much more northerly heading that I expected. This did not sit well with me as I had still not thought I was so far south of my plotted course. I was about to turn around not wanting to continue further without finding a recognizable landmark when I just happened to look straight down, and lo and behold, out of sheer luck, I was directly over Youngstown Elser airport (4G4) and one of my checkpoints! I immediately course corrected and dialed in my 300 radial on the ACO VOR and then, seeing how the needle was moving away I finally realized something was up with the wind. I course corrected and held the VOR heading and eventually overflew the VOR (my first TO-FROM flip experience) and then headed the last 7 miles up to 29G.
The airport was deserted and the runway in need of repair, but I swung the plane around after landing and navigated back home much more confidently using the landmarks and ded reckoning primarily with the VOR for backup. I would say all-in-all it was a great experience not to have the GPS on board as it showed me 1) how important it is to stay on your checkpoints and 2) I do have the capability to fly a fairly minimally equipped airplane X-country. I would recommend that every student perform their cross countries, at least one of them, with a heading change and ditch the GPS!
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