D32 and Sky Harbour

This week was again a week of a lot of cancelling. I flew only on wednesday and friday. Wednesday the weather was just within limits... There was fog just a few miles south of the field at Gateway and Chandler. It was a beautiful sight from the air! Because of the fog we departed to the north after one touch and go to get the feeling for the aircraft.
When we came back to Falcon Field we saw that the mist was getting worse. We couldn't see the ground in the south at all! It looked like there was a very white glacier slowly moving over the city! It reminded me of the Stephen King move The Myst. Very beautiful, but also a little bit scary.

Later that day I found out that Bas and Jorg made an appointment with the operations superintendent of Phoenix Sky Harbour airport. This airport is the international airport of Arizona, like Schiphol is for The Netherlands. Maurits and I asked if we could join them which we could. It was a very interesting tour by car all over the airport. First he showed us the platforms where the planes park and the south runways and cargo facilities. We even stopped at the beginning of 2 runways to see the planes land and take-off from a very short distance. We stopped near one of the fire-fighting stations on the field to look at the enormous fire-trucks and the last part of the tour was in the basement of the airport where all the luggage is handled.

When I woke up the next morning I could not move my neck. The muscles in my back felt like they were made of concrete. I had to cancel my D32 navigation check but I asked the instructor to give me the oral exam, just to see how ready I am. We found only 2 mistakes in my navigationplan: I made a mistake in my cruise speed and I should select another alternate airport. The last one was not really a mistake, but he just gave me some advise.

On friday my back and neck had not really improved, but I could turn my head and look outside of the airplane so I decided to fly anyway. I didn't want to wait untill monday to fly my check because I didn't fly a lot already last few weeks.
Unfortunately I didn't pass my check. Everything went very well untill at one point I didn't see a private airfield right in front of me during a diversion and almost flew right through the traffic pattern on that field. My instructor took over my controls and diverted me around the airfield. From there I just seemed to have a black-out. But it is not a really big problem. I will get one extra lesson and then just continue with my syllabus. I don't have to do the exam again.