First cross-country preparation

On Monday we'll aim to have our first cross-country. Chuck and I met up at the flight school this afternoon to talk about the planning and considerations (distance, headings, time enroute, weather, performance, fuel, etc), the chart-and-computer methods, the electronic methods, and the odds and ends of a longer trip.

My task over the next few days is to do the planning. Husband is going with us as a back-seat observer, so the weight and balance will be different from what I'm used to.

I'm going to try to figure out the circular slide-rule flight computer (wowzah) to do it the old way, and of course use an electronic system to do it in a more efficient way (probably AOPA's Real-Time Flight Planner). Of course I'll use ForeFlight to check weather the night before and the morning of the flight.

The route will basically be:

• JGG to the Richmond (RIC) VOR, overfly RIC
• Gordonsville (GVL) VOR up the V38 Victor airway to Charlottesville (CHO), home of Dave Matthews
• Land at CHO (a towered airport), taxi and takeoff
• Head down to Lynchburg (LYH), land, refuel and stretch
• Get to Halifax (RZZ) or another southern-middleish airport, and either land/taxi/takeoff or just overfly
• Back home

If we do go to Halifax, there's a nice big lake south of Lynchburg that would be pretty cool to use for a pilotage leg.


A preliminary throw-it-in-to-get-a-baseline routing in AOPA/RTFP says that's 327 miles, 3 hours 9 minutes, and 29 gallons of fuel. We're aiming for 3 hours of flight time, and the plane holds 38 gallons.

The western part of this route is on the Cincinnati sectional; the rest is on the familiar Washington sectional.

I'll post more as I get into the details...