Tuesday, July 26, 2011

N321PF, Cleared to St. George airport...

Yesterday was an exciting day for flying.  Started out with the Spanish Fork Pioneer Day parade flyover.  Me and about 10 other planes flew a figure 8 pattern over the parade route at 1000 feet above it.  It was a blast just buzzing the parade.  I took some people along with me in the airplane too so that was neat.

After the parade, Nick and I talked about our flight plan for our trip to St. George.  This flight was to be an actual IFR flight.  So after working out the flight plan (which is way easier for IFR than VFR) I called up flight service and filed the flight plan.  Pretty easy.  The briefer was quite pleasant to talk to.

Our filed altitude was 12,000 feet.  Yesterday was very hot and that airplane just didn't want to climb very well. We had to do two climbing 360's to get enough altitude to clear the terrain on the way to Fairfield VOR.  After we got up to about 10,500 we called up Salt Lake Approach and requested our IFR clearance to St. George.

"Diamond Start 321PF, Cleared to St. George airport via heading 220 intercept Victor 21 to Delta then cleared as filed.  Climb and maintain 11,000.  Squawk 4325."

So...I did what he told me to do.

When we got towards Delta we requested an approach into Delta from Salt Lake Center and they cleared us fro the approach to Delta.  I flew the VOR/DME 17 approach.  Wasn't perfect, but it wasn't too shabby either.  Executed the missed approach and climbed back up and got cleared again down to St. George.  We turned the autopilot on so it did all the work.  Honestly, the rest of the way to St. George was really kinda boring.  Only when we got to Cedar City did it get exciting.  But before we got there, we switched over to Los Angeles Center and they cleared up to climb to 13,000 feet  and then for the LDA/DME approach into St. George.  Flew that pretty darn well.  It was freakishly windy at St. George and insanely hot.

Upon landing we bought fuel and then took a courtesy car into town for some lunch at Cafe Rio.  FYI, the new airport in St. George is about 20 minutes away from town.  Kinda sucks.

We flew home direct VFR.  But we did run into some pretty cool rain storms on the way.  Flying in the rain is really fun.  Upon reading Fairfield again, we flew a practice approach into Provo and then back home to Spanish Fork.

It was a pretty fun flight.  Spent 5.2 hours in the airplane yesterday.  I won't even mention of much that cost.

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