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- Monday June 10, 2002 - Smoke on the Water
This was another one of those days that was just practice and more
practice. I struggle a bit as I try to back fill this journal for some
of these days to stand out and today was one of them.
What I do remember is it was my 2nd and last practice diversion before my
Stage II check. It was another one of those things that I just had down
so easy that there wasn't a lot of point in needless drill. I was
certainly feeling a little vindicated after taking so long to solo that my
cross-country and navigation training was going so quickly. I had
navigation down pat - partly just innate geographical endowment, partly years
of experience at land navigation in the Army and Scouts, partly yeas of being
mainly an "instrument" pilot in Flight Simulators - where the scenery for a
long time was too bad to navigate by so all your cross-country navigation was
VOR and other radio aids.
The most memorable thing about this day was the smoke. There were a
number of field fires so it was very hazy and smoky. We had diverted to
Kingdon - a small but nice little strip at a residential airpark just north
of Stockton. One of these burning fields was very near the field.
It was so hazy and smoky that it was in all honesty borderline VFR in some
places. But we had two pairs of eyes and picked up flight following
from Stockton so we were doing okay.
That was pretty much the day...
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