Grove City Cross Country

Yesterday was my first cross-country flight in the DA40. I got up early on Saturday morning with my dad for some flying around, and we ended up heading to Grove City, PA (29D) to grab a landing and a quick look at my Alma Mater, Grove City College. I was struck by the sight of the light streaming from the open hangar door and the DA40 peeking out, and had to grab a picture. This was the first time that I had actually flown in the DA40 since we got it, and I am now officially in love with the G1000. Can you say "Suh-WHEET!"??



Climbing off the end of the runway at 1000FPM, and getting up to about 5000ft MSL in a hurry, we could get a nice look at the Conesville AEP Powerplant. Check out the different wind directions swirling the water vapor around coming out of the cooling towers. It was fantastic visibility and the effects of all the mist laying in between the hills, coupled with a low angle of light from the rising sun really was beautiful this morning. We dialed in a heading of 058° and headed for 29D. At 5500ft, we cruised at about 135-140kts true airspeed and landed at Grove City in about 45 minutes. It was really quick, and the G1000 just has so much neat data available - it calculates wind speed and direction on the fly, the moving map is awesome in detail, the engine instrumentation is complete and accurate....everything at your finger tips.

Upon arrival at 29D, we landed and I got out to take a photo of the FBO for the CONUS Challenge. It's not taken yet, so I'm hoping that my claim gets taken! We got back in the DA40 and flew over my Alma Mater, Grove City College, and I was surprised at how the campus has changed since I was last there about 5 years ago. They have done a tremendous about of building, just look at all that white, new concrete. Calderwood (center left) is unrecognizeable as the 1960's era flat-roofed building that it was when I was a student there. It's like they are trying to undo all of the architectural mistakes that were made in the 60's and putting a uniform look of late 19th century high gabled roofs on everything. I expect that in another 5 years, they will have bulldozed Hicks Dining hall & dorm, and put a 4 story brick gabled cafeteria/starbucks/apartment complex. Anyhoo...the football field looked nice, but I must say that I'm really not a big fan of the new stylized shield logo for the college. I liked the old burgundy shield logo a lot better. Call me old-fashioned.

Total time to and from Grove City was about 2 hours, even with a 35kt headwind on the way back. We tuned in the VORs and played with the autopilot - pretty cool, and would really take the hard work out of a long cross-country for maintaining altitude and heading. I could really see flying this airplane all over the country. Time to play with the G1000 simulator and learn how to really make that work....