A Flight Story: Stage 3 complete!

Today I completed stage 3! Monday I finished my final solo cross country. The weather was great at Newton, but I was flying to Topeka, Manhattan, and then back to Newton. The further east I got toward Topeka, the more the ceiling closed it. It was down to a bout 2000 ft as I was 20 miles out, so I told flight service it was looking a little to iffy for me as a student pilot and that I wanted to go direct Manhattan. I adjusted my heading and flew pretty much straight there. I was pretty proud of my pilotage skills. I wanted to make sure, however that I SAW the runway and didn't miss it because immediately on the other side of the airport is a restricted area. I didn't want to become one of those general aviators who was intercepted by an F15 just because he wasn't paying attention.

I did two landings there and got to practice with commercial traffic in the pattern. There were a couple of US Air Beech 1900's departing around the time I was landing. It was a good experience.

Today I did a local flight with Amy, reviewing maneuvers that I haven't practiced in a while. Right as we were taxiing to take off on 35, a Chinook came out of no where, buzzed the runway, and then went back into the pattern. There was actually a stackup today! Yes, they happen even at a small airport like Newton. We waited at 35 while a Piper Aztec landed, the Chinook on final right behind him for number 2. As we taxied into position to take off, the massive twin rotored helicopter smoothly decended to about 10 feet off the grass and hovered there, slowly turning. Those mammoth beast of machines fascinate me.

After we finished our flight I was watching another aviation student flying on the sim when Amy said "There was something BIG that just landed, you guys might want to go take a look." We both ran out onto the tarmac and saw a Gulfstream III taxiing to the FBO. It stopped there for 5 min or so and then taxiied to 35. We hopped in our cars and drove to a little dirt road that was right near the runway. Man, I wish I had my camera on me. Then I realized there was NASA written on the tail. Don't ask me what they were doing in Newton, but I tracked their flight using FlightAware and see that they are now heading to California.

Either way it was a great day!