Memorial Day Flight To KMOP

Today I decided to do a nice VFR cross-country flight.  I want to make sure I have more than enough cross-country time for my instrument rating, not to mention I wanted more flying time.

The weather was most promising and turned out nicely as forecast.

So I downloaded a weather brief and headed to the airport and got N8428S ready to go.

I wanted to fly rather precisely and try to interact with ATC as much as possible. I also figured it might be a busy flying day so having flight following helping with traffic wasn't a bad thing.

So, I took off from Pontiac and set course on the GPS for Mt.Pleasant, got on course and then contacted Great Lakes Approach for flight following. I got a squawk code, was told to maintain VFR and set to go on course at 5,500 feet.

The air was nice and smooth.

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Then, after a bit I set the autopilot to NAV mode and let George do some of the flying as I need to be comfortable using the autopilot. No hands needed. Ok, I actually hand my hands near or on the controls at all times as one should never completely trust an autopilot.  It take take some of the load off while flying though.

Once I had Mt. Pleasant in sight, flight following was terminated and I then made a nice smooth landing on Runway 27.  No one else was around, but there were a few planes on the tarmac.

A nice Mooney.

An experimental

 The Mt. Pleasant VOR is located on the field and its due to be shut down soon as part of the move towards GPS.

The terminal building at Mt. Pleasant is rather nice.  It has a conference room, a flight planing  room with computers to look up the weather, nice clean washrooms and a comfy lounge.

Sadly the Mt. Pleasant Casino is only opening tomorrow, so it would wait.

After a brief stop, I got in the plane and headed homeward.

After takeoff I called up Great Lakes Approach and got flight following back to Pontiac, including entering Flint's airspace.  I was requested to remain at 3,500 while transiting through, which I did.  Then to Pontiac where I entered the right downwind for Runway 27R and did another very nice landing.

That's 2.2  cross country time and 2 landings.