Wx Raining on My Parade

Last weekend I was scheduled to go up for my second solo flight. My first solo flight was just around the traffic pattern at Grand Forks, but this flight had me flying out to the practice area to perform various maneuvers by myself.

I was ecstatic to once again fly solo, especially since I'd be flying away from the airport out to the practice area. Unfortunately, the weather rained on my parade. Not literally. Actually the weather would have been perfect to go up on a dual flight with my instructor; the only bad atmospheric conditions were the winds. They had just gone above my solo wind endorsement as I was getting ready to walk out the door.

I contacted my instructor and we changed our plans to skip the solo flight and move on to the next lesson. The next one was a ground lesson that would introduce me to cross country flight planning. There are two ground lessons in a row for the flight planning, so we were able to accomplish the second one the following day.

After the two ground lessons were completed my instructor gave me an assignment of planning out my first cross country flight. The trip had to have 3 legs, with one being at least 50 nautical miles. With those requirements, I chose to fly from Grand Forks, ND to Bemidji, MN for the first leg, proceed to Thief River Falls, MN for the second leg before returning to Grand Forks for the final leg. To fit the trip in with our schedules we had to move my launch time up from 1000 to 0800...the exact time the sun was supposed to wake up for that day. I was supposed to be at the airport by 0600 to meet my instructor so we could do the last bit of flight planning that we need current weather data for.

With that I made the decision to wake up at 0430. I had checked the forecasts the previous night and the weather was looking iffy, but I thought there might be a chance it would clear up. My instructor called at 0530 informing me that she did not like the weather outlook and we would reschedule our flight.

I did not like the fact that I woke up at 0430 only to cancel my flight. But on the upside we reschedule for 2200 that night, allowing me to get the next lesson in, a night flight. That was a good choice that my instructor made. When I met up with her for my night flight she informed me that had we decided to continue our flight we would have gotten stuck in Thief River Falls because by the time we would have arrived around that area the conditions had gone IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), meaning I could not have continued my flight because I have to stay VFR (Visual Flight Rules).

Every pilot, no matter how experienced they are or who they are flying for, has to deal with the weather.