Long IFR XC and long VFR Commercial night XC

Tuesday - February 7th


I was very excited because this was going to be one of the longest if not the longest XC I have ever done. We were supposed to go to Daytona Beach with stops at Jacksonville Craig and St. Augustine. However, when I arrived to the school, my instructor told me that plans had to be changed due to weather.. I got a little disappointed since the weather at PDK was amazingly beautiful. I took a glance at my ForeFlight App and there it was: IFR conditions were forecast for the south of Georgia and Northeastern Florida. We could go the on an IFR flight but the night flight on our return had to be VFR.
We then started looking at the map, the only good option was Meridian, MS. again. the flight had to be over 250nm with 3 different approaches to 3 airports so we did KPDF-KJFK-KTLC-KMEI with an ILS approach to Walker, Co-Jasper (KJFX) a VOR approach to Tuscaloosa (KTLC) and a RNAV approach to Meridian (KMEI). ATP has a policy that this flight must always be to KPDK-KCRG-KSGJ-KDAB, the instructor had to call dispatch to request authorization for this flight and he got approved so off we went.
The flight went smooth and I was able to do all three approaches with minimum intervention from the instructor, I just need a little more experience with the Garmin GNS430.
ATC advised all aircraft that the MOA's were active; Meridian has a lot of military training so ATC was routing us away from those.  A military operations area (MOA) is "airspace established outside Class A airspace to separate or segregate certain nonhazardous military activities from IFR Traffic and to identify for VFR traffic where these activities are conducted.

We landed at Meridian, the marshall showed us the way to park and we went inside Meridian Aviation for some free hot dogs and ice cream, I love this FBO.
Our way back had to be a night flight 300nm total distance at night with the first landing at 250nm from the point of departure. We planned for a flight from KMEI to KWDR, then landing at KLZU and finally at KPDK. I was a little tired but just imagining myself flying at night to 3 destinations on a long cross country.. that was a dream come true.. and just that thought took any tiredness away and 1 hour after sunset we departed Meridian for a night flight, we were routed through a Victor Airway between some active MOA's and after a while we were cleared direct to KWDR; we used pilot controlled lights, landed a little hard and then taxied back for the short hop to KLZU; the tower was already closed there, (they close at 9pm). I believe is mostly because people complain of airplane noise... I wonder why on the first place would you live near to an airport if the airplane noise bothers you. Come on!
Then we landed at PDK; the landing was better than the last two. The seminole doesn't flare as good as the C172; you need to land with a tiny bit of power just like a soft field landing.

On Thursday (actually tonight) I will be doing 10 takeoffs and landings at night at a towered airport. As always, I can't wait! I'm halfway through my instrument checkride already.

 Meridian Aviation

Enjoying the goodies at Meridian