Astoria Flight

For those of you wondering what my training looks like, I thought I'd give you a firsthand sampling. The pictures I'm going to attach are from a solo flight I conducted from Harvey Field in Snohomish, WA to Astoria, OR.

The purpose of this flight was to satisfy curriculum in my Commercial Flight training syllabus. The "lesson", or experience, which more accurately describes the objective, is to successfully plan and execute a "cross country" flight of a given distance. Some flights require me to go 100 nautical miles (1 nautical miles = 1.15 miles), while the granddaddy of them all have me flying a straight line distance of at least 250 NM and including at least 3 different airports to fly to and land at. Just to give you some perspective on what 250NM looks like, first open Google maps. Find Snohomish, WA. Now Google places such as North Bend, OR or Libby, MT. Compare the distances and you'll find that I'm covering quite a bit of ground considering the aircraft I'm flying is the Cessna 172, which is a light trainer aircraft... definitely not the Boeing 737s you might be used to. Additionally, the entire flight usually lasts at least 6 hours, so there's plenty of time for me to either get lost and watch my plan fall apart, or demonstrate to myself that my ground planning and inflight execution was solid because I hit all of my checkpoints on time and on course.

As I write this, I am nearing a major milestone in my training and preparation for service as a Missionary Aviator. I have 15 more flight hours to obtain before I will be eligible to take my Practical Test and become a certificated (licensed) Commercial Pilot.

I ask for prayer from anyone who is reading this and loves Jesus. Once I have my Commercial pilot certificate, all that would remain practically is flight time and experience. I am still passionate about Mission Aviation and still believe that the Lord has called me and placed me in a ripe position to obey His leading to go support the evangelism and eternal saving of people whom I haven't met, but have been commissioned to make disciples and followers of Jesus. I simply ask for prayer that I will stay true to the Lord and that I will follow His leading, and that He will open doors and make those opportunities abundantly evident to me.

Here's the pictures!

Cessna 172

Entering Astoria's airspace (Feet wet)

A handful of aircraft carriers that I happend to fly past.. very unexpectedly sweeet