At about 5000 feet altitude on the way to the Mersing

For the first time I have flown on my own to a place I have never been before!  I did my homework and prepared a flight plan and a flight log to Mersing.

The idea is to slowly get to the point at which I will be ready to jump over to Pulau Tioman.  The weather was ok with wind from NE and NNE at about 5 to 8 kts on the runway and I would guess about 15 kts at 2000 ft.   This was also my first flight with my new Lightspeed Zulu headset!  I will write a review in another post.  I was slightly surprised that ATC cleared me to take off on runway 34 from intersection bravo, but that wasn’t a problem after all.   As predicted by Captain Singh the ride got bumpy close to Kota Tinggi, because the wind blows over the hills in the North and East of this place.   I got adventurous and ask for clearance for 3000 ft first and then for  4000 ft.  The view over the clouds was just gorgeous!  I fumbled a bit when ATC asked me to squawk on 0005, a number I had never heard before in this context.  Later they also asked me to switch to mode C, which I hadn’t done before, but thankfully, after staring at the transponder that had not a single “C” written on it, I remembered that mode C means the transponder is broadcasting the altitude, which is something the transponder knob actually shows.

Transponder Altitude Setting

On the way back the controller was concerned that I was flying too close to the danger zone 231.  Since I had to decent to 1500 ft (cloud base probably at about 1700 ft to 1900 ft), my original course would have put straight into the zone.  However I had everything on the GPS device and was planning to track a sharp course around the danger zone.  Anyway, ATC thought I didn’t know what I was doing and asked me to turn there and then.  Always a bit frustrating, because everybody can hear the radio messages, but nobody can see that you have everything under control.  They also brought me back on course to east fo the airfield as soon as they thought I was well clear of the danger zone.  The track shows what happened.

the GPS track with explanations and danger zone