Lesson 15 - Cross Country Flight to the Olympic Peninsula

Flight Time: 1.9 hours
Total Time: 22.6 hours

Ed and I met last night to prepare for today's flight, which was my first cross country flight. During our three hours at a Starbucks in Bellevue, we went over the DUATs weather briefing and plotted our flight from Boeing Field to Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula. This included setting checkpoints on the ground as well as estimated time of arrivel for each of those checkpoints. This would ensure we stayed on course and would allow us to recalculate fuel usage if our ground speed was lower than projected.

Pre-flight went smoothly and we were in the air with little delay. The ceiliings were lower than had been projected near Seattle - about 1,500 feet, but cleared up to the north. 1,500 foot ceilings are above the legal minimum for VFR flight, but don't leave much extra room. If I had been solo, I would have called off the flight, but since I was with Ed, I was comfortable with going forward as planned.

Downwind departure to the north

The wind was also a little bit stronger than expected, so I had to adjust my pre-planned heading by a few degrees to maintain course. The extra wind didn't have that much affect, though, and we ended up hitting our check points within seconds of the times we estimated the night before.

The Hood Canal Bridge

A piece of the old floating bridge that
sunk during Ice Storm in 1996. Someone
bought this to use as a dock.

As we moved north, the ceilings started to get really low over our planned course, so we ended up diverting to follow the shoreline rather than cutting across the land. This gave us more room to maneuver since the ceilings were a bit higher and we had water below rather than hilly terrain.

Lowering Ceilings

We continued north along the shoreline and cut across land near Port Townsend, where we intersected our course north towards Protection Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where we turned towards the west to fly straight in to Port Angeles. As predicted, the clouds broke near the coast, and I was able to get some amazing views from the air of some of my favorite parts of Washington State.

Dungeness Spit

The Olympics

The view to the north was thick, low clouds, which confirmed that our decision not to fly to Orcas Island, as we’d originally planned, was correct.

Victoria and Orcas Island are through there somewhere

The airport at Port Angeles doesn’t have much in the way of attractions, so after a quick touch-and-go, we turned back around to Port Townsend, where we’d planned a stop at the Spruce Goose Café for a late breakfast.

Straight in to Fairchild International
in Port Angeles

Fairchild Int'l from the Downwind Leg

Port Angeles

The Spruce Goose Café, Ed told me, was known for its pie. They made a variety fresh every morning, and by the afternoon they sold out. I had a shrimp and crab omelet which was fantastic. The crab meat was fresh and they did not skimp at all.

Straight in to Jefferson County Airport
in Port Townsend

The Spruce Goose Cafe

Ed and I ate a talked (mostly about flying) for about an hour before walking back out to the transient parking area for our return to Seattle.

Going Over the Checklist Before Takeoff

Waiting for a Cessna 150 to Land

The wind was picking up as few north, and the ride was much rougher. Again we had to divert to follow the shoreline, but this time I could see whitecaps on the water below.

We flew straight in to Boeing Field over Elliot Bay and ended the flight after 1.9 hours in the air, and about three hours total for the trip. Not a bad morning, and an excellent first cross country experience. My next big step will by my night cross country.

Google Earth Map of Today's Flight