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[continued from yesterday's post; series starts on 05/01]
I only flew one cross country by myself, and that was from Orange to Lufkin and back. After making and filing the flight plan I took off in 94G, the black and white Cessna 150 that Ed used for all of his students.
After doing everything necessary to get going in the right direction and up to my planned altitude of 6,000', I watched the ground roll by down below (mostly boring forest) and scanned for traffic the way I was taught. Well, a little more than halfway through the flight I noticed that my landmarks below weren't just right. Five minutes before everything fit, but now there were some railroad tracks running parallel to a road, and they were on the wrong side of each other! I looked around and looked around, and suddenly nothing was where it was supposed to be. I fiddled a little with the VOR, which I had been tracking fairly well, but that didn't mesh either and only increased my disorientation. What to do?
An idea came that salvaged the situation.
There was a small town a few miles ahead that I saw through the haze. I descended to about 2,000' so that I could make out details on the ground much better. Then I simply located the water tower and read the name of the town, which was Zavalla. Once the town was identified - which was only a tad off my planned route - I ascended again to 6,000' while heading south of the town. My reasoning was that if I approached the town from due south, correcting for the wind, I could get a good VFR bearing straight to Lufkin.
It worked like a charm! I hit the Lufkin airport dead on, flawlessly communicating with their dispatch, entering the pattern, and lightly touching down at the appropriate spot on the assigned runway. To top it all off all three wheels hit the paint marks when I parked. The lady in the office was very nice, cheerfully signing my logbook before I hopped back in and flew back to Orange. Overall a very positive experience...
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