Today was our longest flying day so far, two legs, 2 and 1/2 hours each. We again did manage to wake up at 6 AM (this is becoming a bad habit) and were in the air by 8 AM. 2.5 hours later we were landing in Pennington, TX, just shy of the Oklahoma panhandle. We got flight following at Roswell, but they soon dropped us and we were on our own until we got to Amarillo where we got flight following again which kept us company all the way to Pennington.
The interesting part of this trip were our encounters with the weather. We crossed the front that kept us from going to Amarillo and the weather was overcast. We first tried to go under, but soon found out that we were flying lower than we wanted to. So we turned back, climbed, and skirted the edges of the cloud layer flying about 2000 ft above it. We always had the ground in view, so we were fine.
Once past the cloud layer we saw the weather getting hazy ahead. Turned out there were dust clouds on our path, and again we had to climb to be above them. It was cool, though, and I called Flight Watch (the weather advisory people) to give them my first pilot report ever, informing them of the phenomenon. No wonder they call that area the dustbowl! By the way, if you are curious, dust clouds look like this:
The flight from Pennington to Manhattan was interesting for a few reasons. First, we were unable to get flight following. The first time I called, soon after departure, they never replied. We monitored the frequency and the controller was rejecting requests right and left, so I guess they were overworked. We tried again after Hutchinson, got a "stand by" from them and never heard from them again. We were about 1/2 hour away from our destination, by then, and then decided to just skip flight following altogether.
The other interesting thing was, again, the weather. The clouds in this part of the country were not as friendly and provided a lot of turbulence. We climbed above them for some time and the air smoothed out, but as their numbers increased we decided we wanted to be below them, so back in the turbulence we were. Unfriendly clouds, by the way, look like this:
Landing itself was also interesting. We were on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern for landing when the tower asked if we were ok with landing 1/3 of the way down the runway because the wanted to do work at the runway threshold. Not a problem, but made for an interesting landing.
Our niece and grandniece picked us up at the airport and took us to a very nice Mexican restaurant for an early dinner. After that, it was home and hanging out with the family. Hanging out with the family, by the way, is not only very nice, it also looks like this:
And now its bed, and getting ready for tomorrow's trip to Danville.
No wonder there were no flight tracks. I almost thought you got stuck in the-middle-of-nowhere Texas. Glad you didn't. That town looked like a perfect set for a remake of "The Last Picture Show".
ReplyDeleteGotta watch them unfriendly clouds. Look what they did to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz - and she started out on the ground!
No pretty pictures of friendly family and unfriendly clouds, though. You're probably tired. :-(