Today was actually the first nice day I've seen in a while and after the last flight where my instructor and I picked up some ice, it was a nice change of scenery. It was also a nice change of tempo for me as well because although my flight instructor was unavailable today, I still decided to go up solo and do some "relaxed" flying for the first time in a while. And I think I needed it too, because my recent flights have been towards training with some "hard" IFR experience; on top of that, school and life outside of flying has added to the stress! So I decided to fly for myself today starting with my first flight out of two I did today, with a daytime solo outing out to the Oregon coast and chasing the shoreline!
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| Taking N5174E to chase the shoreline on the Oregon coast! |
After the usual pre-flight and before-takeoff procedures, I got airborne off Runway 34 and turned straight out to the west. After crossing the hills separating the valley from the coast, I flew directly over Newport. From there, I stayed at my chosen cruise altitude and flew northbound along the shoreline; with several coastal airports along my flight path, I made sure to make position reports on the respective CTAFs for Newport, Siletz Bay, as well as Pacific City. Other than that, I just enjoyed the view as I flew along the coast with the vast Pacific Ocean off my left wing and the state of Oregon off my right wing.
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| Looking out to the Pacific Ocean after turning north of Newport, Oregon. |
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| A view of the Siletz Bay/Gleneden Beach area as I headed northward. |
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| Approach Pacific City, Oregon, with Chief Kiawanda Rock and Cape Kiawanda in view. |
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| View of Chief Kiawanda Rock and part of Cape Kiawanda. |
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| A view of Cape Lookout as I turned and descended towards Tillamook. |
I planned to only go as far as Tillamook, where I did a touch-and-go on Runway 31 at the airport there, making the flight a cross-country as far as straight-line distance between my origin and destination were concerned. After doing my touch-and-go and I initially made a straight out departure and proceeded to do a circling climb over Tillamook Bay. After getting up to my desired cruise altitude, I flew straight back to Albany. My routing to avoid some scattered cloud layers that were over the mountains between the coast and the valley put me just west of Independence and directly over Monmouth and the Western Oregon University campus.
After passing the Monmouth/Independence areas, I made my descent towards Albany and entered the downwind for Runway 34, the same runway I departed from. After an uneventful landing, I taxied over to the fuel pumps to top off tanks for my second flight later on during the evening before returning the plane to the hangar. After putting the trusty Skyhawk back in for a brief respite, I too headed out for a little break before having to come back to the hangar in few hours time.
Today's flight was worth it though, as the views I got to enjoy served as both inspiration and a reminder as to why I got into aviation in the first place, especially after dealing with a period of stress in recent weeks.
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