long cross country solo done and was a real learning experience

i did my long cross country solo yesterday. i went from leesburg (JYO) to charlottesville (CHO) to richmond (RIC) and then back to leesburg with landings at each airport. i had a few technical problems on the way. they included:

• navigation lights out, this is not critical for daytime VFR (but i was planning on using them to alert the real pilots that "i was out there")
• comm-1 radio failed about 15-minutes out, it was fine during pre-flight check and getting squawk from ATC and requesting flight following, on the way to CHO it was receiving fine and i asked ATC for something, got no response kept trying and then realized it was not transmitting (the 'T' appear on the radio during transmit so it thought it was transmitting), i switched to comm-2 for ATC and that worked, after a while comm-1 stopped receiving as well which meant that i couldn't monitor 121.5 (emergency) nor check weather on it in advance of arrival, i considered this and pondering aborting the flight and returning to JYO but i thought i could get by with one radio, note, after the flight another student suggesting using the VOR radios for monitoring guard/weather since they can receive but can't transmit, i had never thought of that before but it is an excellent idea
• the next technical problem was on the return from RIC to JYO, ATC notified me that my transponder was intermittent which was affecting their ability to provide flight following, they also started getting busier, after another 10 mins or so they lost it entirely and terminated flight following and i noticed that i became "unidentified traffic" when they talked to other aircraft in my area, this concerned me a bit since i had to squawk 1227 to enter the DC ADIZ on my return to JYO, i pondered diverting to winchester (OKV) but figured i was already north of the CSN VOR so i changed my route a bit and dropped to 1,400 and flew JYO via upperville and purcellville, nothing (like an F-16 or Blackhawk helicopter) intercepted me so i guess i squeaked by this time
• the last technical problem i had was that the right wing fuel gauge needle would drop to zero and then back up to the correct level every now and then, that was distracting because i could see it out of the corner of my eye but i could live with it since i had topped off fuel in RIC

and to top all of this off, when i got back to JYO someone had parked in my plane's spot (first time that has happened to me) so i had to turn around and find another spot (probably annoying someone else later).

as to my flying, when i got to CHO the winds were calm and a dash-8 (twin engine commuter/regional airline type plane) was doing touch and go's on a left downwind and the tower told me to fly the right downwind. this was a first for me as i was on the downwind with the dash-8 directly abeam me on the opposite side. the tower told the dash to turn base and said i should be able to turn shortly, i (foolishly) thought that meant the tower would tell me when to turn base so i kept going, and going, ... and going and someone behind me commented on the unusually long time i was taking to turn base so i realized that the tower wasn't going to tell me to do it. this of course made me look rather dorky. ah well, another lesson learned.

landing at RIC was also entertaining in that i think the CHO tower had told them i was taking the short bus to RIC so they were very helpful to me and gave me very specific headings all the way to the runway. i also got progressive taxi to get to the executive terminal (sounds better than it is). it was very interesting being around large aircraft for a change. on the way out, the tower had a large jet following me on the (long) taxi to runway 2. i wish i had had a camera pointing out the back window because i'm sure it would have shown some very annoyed real pilots behind me as i was putt-putting my way down the taxi way.

all-in-all it was a very interesting and informative experience. as far as i know, nobody cried (including me) so it turned out to be a positive thing.
this now means that i have the final checkride at my school to evaluate my skills/knowledge and then the FAA test.