Flying Vacation to PA

And We Are Done

2009-09-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

Well, 18 days, 47.4 hours of flying, 11 states, 17 airports, 21 landings, 1 go-around, and 9 hotel rooms later the adventure is over. It was a lot of fun and a great learning experience. We got to experience flying weather different than what we are used to and visit places that otherwise we would never have gone to. There was always something to see or do and we had a blast. Most importantly, after 47.4 hours in the same small space, Sharon and I are still talking to each other, which gives me hopes for the future of our relationship.

One question that we had before the trip was, how necessary is an instrument rating (so that one can fly through clouds) for this type of trip? Turns out it would have made some difference, but did not stop us from getting where we wanted to go. There was only day when we wanted to fly and couldn't, and a couple where we had to wait for the weather to improve. The rating would have made a difference in comfort, though; there were times when we were forced to deal with turbulence that would not have been there had we been flying over the cloud cover, instead of under it.

We'd like to finish this blog by thanking Cathy and Brian, Barb and Bill, and Linda and Rich for being such gracious hosts. We'd also like to thank Bill, Ed and Wolf for listening to our plans, giving us advice on the route and what to expect, and generally encouraging us to try this new experience. Thanks, and see you on the next blog.

Palm Springs to Palo Alto

2009-09-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

Ah, our final day of flying. Mostly retreading over old territory, with a few things to make it more exciting. Given we are in California, weather was not a problem: no rain, no cloud cover, just the threat of possibly, maybe, who knows, thunderstorms happening in the Palm Springs area about 5 hours after our proposed departure time. No worries.

We took off around 10 am, climbed to 8500 ft and were on our way to Palmdale, skirting all those Los Angeles / California fires you've all probably been reading around in the papers. We gave them a wide berth, never getting closer than 20 or so miles to its limits. Still, we were able to see some of it and it looked like this:

The only effect on us that the fires had was to make part of the trip, between Victorville and Bakersfield somewhat hazy, even though visibility was more than 10 miles. Once we were past Bakersfield, the haziness went away and things were hunky dory.

We stopped at Harris Ranch for lunch. It's a good place to go if you like beef. The restaurant and hotel have their own airport, with a long but narrow runway. Both Sharon and I had very good salads (there was beef on mine, so they did not kick us out of the restaurant). A cool thing about landing there was hearing the voice of one of our friends, Wolf, on the radio, who was using the same frequency (but unfortunately at another airport). Still, that was a clear sign that we were getting close to the end of our journey.

After lunch we took off and immediately abandoned any flight plan, opting instead to follow the "traditional" approach to get to Palo Alto from the California Central Valley: point the plane towards Mount Diablo and fly in that direction until you see the San Francisco Bay. Simple and effective. Mount Diablo, by the way, looks like this:

And that was it. We soon found ourselves on final at our home airport with one landing to go to complete our journey. Getting ready to land was a thrill, there is nothing like seeing the runway of your home airport in front of you. The view for us was like this:

And that was it. We landed, taxied to parking, tied the plane down, hailed a cab and were done with this adventure.

Palm Springs

2009-09-02T20:38:00.000-07:00

So we decided to stay a few days in Palm Springs to relax a little after all the flying we've been doing. We picked an hotel / spa off the web and it turned out to be a good choice. Nice room, nice spa, and smack in the middle of downtown Palm Springs so we were within walking distance of most everything. This is what our nice room looked like:

Palm Springs is a fun place to do nothing in. It's in the desert under the shadow of the St. Jacinto mountains which provided some very necessary shade in the late afternoon. The place gets so hot (low 100s while we were there) that we chose to spend most of the time at the hotel and only venture out after 6 PM. This is what a downtown that is close to the mountains and is filled with palm trees that have gotten a haircut looks like:

So, what did we do there?

We drank nutritious fruit margaritas (mango for me, peach for Sharon):

We had coffee:

We enjoyed the swimming pool:

We saw a hummingbird's nest:

Had some gazpacho:

Sharon had a hot stone massage (you will have to ask her for details) that left her absolutely limp. She also managed to get wrapped up like a mummy and came out of it smelling like coconuts. I like coconuts, I grew up in the tropics!

Oh yes, we ate at many different restaurants.

Unfortunately three days was all the time we had and on Wednesday we said goodbye and headed out on the last leg of our trip, back to the steed's home in Palo Alto and our home in Mountain View.

Santa Teresa to Palm Springs

2009-08-31T09:21:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

Today was another long day of flying, with two legs of over 2 hours each. What made it easy was the good weather with no clouds, great visibility and no turbulence) all the way. We are also now back in familiar territory, backtracking through our original route.

Again we got to fly close to Mexico. The closest point was at the town of Perto Palomas. It goes all the way straight to the border and the fence. It looks like this:

According to the charts, during this leg we went over the Continental Divide. It didn't look much of a divide to me, but who am I to argue with cartographers, geologists and government charts? A continental divide, by the way, looks like this:

We also flew over Davis Monthan Air Force Base where apparently the Air Force stores a lot of their decommissioned planes. This is what a lot of decomissioned Air Force planes look like:

There are more decomissioned planes in this picture than the Brazilian Air Force has flying.

We trefueled at Marana Regional (the airport where we got the funky van on the way out) in Arizona and then took off for California. Again we got to fly over a lot of nothing. To give you a different perspective on how much nothing there is, let me explain a little differently. Our plane's GPS / moving map always shows the distance and direction from the nearest airport, town or navigation aid so that we can easily report our position to air traffic control. This is displayed on the lower right hand corner of the display. Usually, we are never more than 10 miles away from something. This is what it showed when were flying over nothing (actually it said 45, but by the time I got the camera out we had moved closer):

The same river was there marking the Arizona-California border, only this time it had a name; apparently it is the Colorado River, the same one that goes through the Grand Canyon. Here's what a river with a name looks like:

Now we get to spend a few days at a spa in Palm Springs, resting and eating and drinking until our last leg back home and the end of this adventure.

Oklahoma City to Santa Teresa

2009-08-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

Today was a different flying day than the ones we've been having lately. Woke up at 6:30, made it to the airport by 8 and took off around 8:30. No waiting for clouds to go away or for visibility to improve. Everything was hunky dory.

The first part of the trip was to Lubbock, TX where we intended to stop for refueling. Flight there was a non-event: 6500 ft, visibility more than 10 miles and smooth sky all the way. This leg was the "energy" leg. We saw windmills:

And hundreds of oil wells (each square is one well):

We also passed the Carlsbad Caverns (or so our charts said):

Landing at Lubbock was special. First because it's the home town of one of our friends, but also because airliners had to wait for us to land before they could take off. Ah, the power! This is what a waiting airliner looks like:

After refueling at Lubbock we were back in the air, this time heading for Santa Teresa, NM, on the outskirts of El Paso. This time we climbed to 8500 ft and stayed there. Clouds began to appear in our path, which made us unhappy, as we know that with these clouds come turbulence. And so it was for the next two hours, 15 minutes of turbulence, 15 minutes of smooth air, until we landed at Santa Teresa.

We got a courtesy van in much better state than our previous one, got a hotel room and went to explore the east side of El Paso. We saw Mexico from the ground this time, and it looked like this:

And that was it for this stop. Tomorrow we keep going westward, with hopes of making it to Palm Springs, where we will spend a few days kicking back and relaxing before taking the final leg back home.

By the way, did you know that Starbucks in El Paso have drive-through windows?

Springdale to Oklahoma City

2009-08-28T17:40:00.001-07:00

Click here for the route.

We woke up with the front past us, as we had originally expected. The cold air mass had left everything foggy, though, so we had to wait for the sun to heat everything up before we could leave. The weather people said things should pick up by 10 am, so we headed to the airport around 9 am, prepared the plane and waited for the minimum visibility and ceilings for us to feel comfortable with the route.

Well, the weather guys were optimists. By the time the weather was good enough for us to depart it was past noon and we scrapped our plan to move on to Lubbock, TX, after our stop in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City became our destination for today.

The flight was like most of our flights have been since we left Kansas during our trek east: clouds keeping us flying low and bumpy. We started at 2800 ft, but the weather improved as we flew: by the time we were around Tulsa we were flying at 3200 ft, and soon after the sky magically cleared and we were able to climb to 4500 ft for the rest of the trip.

After landing at Wiley Post airport we did the usual arrangements, got ourselves a car and were off to explore Oklahoma City. For us this consisted of visiting the Oklahoma City National Memorial, a tribute to the victims of the '95 bombing. Built on the site of the original building it is very nice, very well kept and just a pleasant place to be in and reflect. This is what Sharon and I looked like when we visited the place:

The only other thing we visited in Oklahoma City was Bricktown, a very nice looking restaurant and shopping quarter. Unfortunately, parking was impossible so were not able to stop and stroll through the area. From the car, it looked like this:

Dinner was Mexican food and now we are back in the hotel, getting ready for bed. Tomorrow, we cross Texas!

Evansville to Springdale

2009-08-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

Click here for today's route.

Today's trip was an interesting one. Our goal was to get as far west as possible and then land before crossing the cold front moving in this direction. This way we'd be safely on the ground when the front and its accompanying thunderstorms and rain showers hit. That's how we chose Springdale, AR. They were predicting thunderstorms starting there around 4 PM, so we thought we'd aim for being there by 1 PM.

After our now traditional 6:30 am breakfast we checked the weather and, since visibility was bad, decided to wait until it improved. We finally left Evansville around 10 AM once all weather stations along our way were reporting 5 miles or more visibility.

We turned right after take off and immediately ran into our favorite river, the Ohio. From the air (for the last time), the Ohio looked like this:

Unlike the previous days where we had to stay under the clouds and in the middle of the turbulence, this time the skies were clear enough that we climbed to 6500 ft and stayed above the few clouds for most of the trip. No turbulence meant Sharon could sleep. This is what Sharon looks like, when she's sleeping on a plane:

We made it to Springdale while the weather was still ok, though the cloud cover had forced us to descend to 3000 ft and stay there for the last fifteen minutes or so of the flight. We landed in relatively good weather, tied the plane up and went to get ourselves a car and a hotel room. Two hours later the bad weather rolled in. This is what the view of the weather was like from our hotel room, before the thunderstorms started:

Sharon and I drove down to Fayetteville, the local university town. We found a very nice cafe and decided to hang out there while the rain fell, enjoying espressos and reading. Sharon went pensive on me at some point. This is what she looks like when she's pondering:

And that was it for today. We are now back in our hotel room, getting ready to bed. If the weather people are right the cold front will be past us tomorrow morning and we'll have relatively good weather on our way to Oklahoma City and possibly Lubbock tomorrow.

Waynesburg to Evansville

2009-08-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

Today's leg was all about visibility. We like 5 miles or more, and the weather people were predicting between 3 and 5, but saying it would improve after 9 AM. So we sat and waited at the Waynesburg airport until visibility got good enough.

At 10 AM local visibility was more than 7, so we took off and started making our way west. Ten minutes out we encountered haze and mist and decided that the weather was not clearing up as fast as we would like. So we turned back, landed at Waynesburg again and waited.

We took off again at 11 AM to much better conditions. This time visibility was 5 or more all the way and we were on our way. There was, however, a change of plans. Originally we were planning to go to Evansville nonstop, but the aborted first attempt ate into our fuel reserves and we decided we'd stop at Frankfort, KY to refuel. This is what I look like after refueling in Kentucky:

Apparently, to go anywhere in this region you follow the Ohio River. We met it soon after taking off and it crossed our path multiple times during this trip. Each time it crossed our path we entered another state: West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio or Indiana. This happened so many times we lost count. The Ohio River, by the way, looks like this:

The river is not only navigable, it is still a major transportation artery. There were barges everywhere, carrying goods both up and downstream. The barges looked like this:

Thanks to the time change from EDT to CDT we gained an hour and arrived in Evansville early enough to go exploring. Of course, we ended up on the River Walk which borders the Ohio River (now, I bet you didn't expect that). From the ground, the river looks like this:

They had a cool monument to all 50 states. This is what Sharon and I look standing by the symbols for our states:

And now we are back at the hotel, resting and getting ready for tomorrow's leg to Oklahoma City.

Waynesburg

2009-08-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

So we spent three days in Waynesburg, hanging out and recouping from the trip. Waynesburg is Sharon's home town and a place I love to visit, and not only because of the family (her sister, brother-in-law and nephew still live there, along with a few select cousins), but because I find it picturesque: little winding roads, rolling hills, groundhogs, chipmunks and small churches with cemeteries all over the place. As a matter of fact, the quintessential modern zombie movie, "Night of the Living Dead" was filmed around here. Their cemeteries look something like this:

Anyway, what did we do in Waynesburg? Well, we hung out with the family:

Had some ice cream:

Took Linda and Rich for a flying tour of Waynesburg and Spraggs:

But all good things must come to an end, so we hauled all our stuff to the plane and got ready to start our trek back. All our stuff, by the way, looks like this:

Danville to Waynesburg

2009-08-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

We made it! We are finally at our intended destination, Waynesburg, PA! Getting here was an interesting.

After breakfast with our hosts in Danville, we started checking the weather. Visibility was good throughout our intended route, 10 miles or more. The cloud cover, however, kept changing from 1900 ft to 4500 ft to 6000 ft. Anything above 3000 ft was ok for the trip. It would keep us low, but at legal heights above ground and beneath clouds. So we waited, checking the weather every 30 minutes or so.

Around noon the clouds were reported between 3000 ft and 6000 ft, with a few scattered around 2500 ft, so we decided to give it a try. We picked a route that would keep us near airports with automated weather reporting so that we could always use the radio to figure out what was ahead. Our plan was to keep going as long as the clouds ahead were high enough and to land at the nearest airport if the weather worsened. The only bad side of this plan was that we couldn't use flight following, as we wanted to be constantly switching among the different weather reporting stations.

So, with the sandwiches Barb made us safely stowed in the back seat we took off, leveled at 2500 ft and started heading East. About one hour out the cloud cover was such that we could go up to 3000 ft and half an hour later we were up to 3500 ft where we stayed for the rest of the trip.

As we got closer to Waynesburg we saw rain between us and our airport, the weather's last valiant attempt to keep us from getting our destination. Visibility got worse than the 10 miles we've had until then, but not enough to be a problem. By the way, the weather's last valiant attempt to stop us looked like this:

What the weather didn't know, though, was that we had borrowed Wolf's Garmin 496 GPS, with satellite weather information, and were prepared for it. We knew it was coming, we knew where it was going, and mostly importantly, how to get around it. Thanks, Wolf!

And finally we were there, overflying Waynesburg on the way to the airport at the other end of town. We overflew Rich and Linda' s (Sharon's sister) house and they actually stepped outside to wave at us. Here is what their waving at us looked like:

Calm winds made the landing straightforward. We parked the plane, tied it up, removed our luggage and were officially in Pennsylvania. This is what we look like when we are officially in Pennsylvania:

And now we rest here for a few days before starting our trek back home.

By the way, after we landed the clouds disappeared and the sky became a nice, peaceful blue.

Danville to Nowhere

2009-08-22T19:09:00.001-07:00

Today was our first non-flying day for this trip. Our original plan was to make our way to our easternmost destination, Waynesburg, PA. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. Our personal minimums for this trip were cloud cover no lower than 3500 feet and 5 miles visibility. Though our destination had perfect weather (no cloud cover, winds at 6 kts), we would have to first cross Indiana and Ohio, where the clouds were way too low for our taste. So we decided to sit and wait.

We did check the weather every few hours and eventually the cloud cover improved, but it started raining in Indiana and the visibility got really bad along our proposed route. We eventually gave up and went to the movies instead. This was the first time during this trip where not having an instrument rating kept us from getting where we wanted to be.

We will try again tomorrow, when the weather is expected to be somewhat better.

Manhattan to Danville

2009-08-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

Another interesting day of flying. Today's plan was to do our longest flight yet, 3.2 hours. That would take us from lovely Manhattan to Danville, where Sharon's friend Barb lives.

The flight started out nice, with clear skies and very favorable winds. How favorable? Until now our average ground speed has been between 115 and 125 knots. The winds at 5500 ft were pushing us along at around 30 kts, giving us ground speeds in the vicinity of 155 kts. Here's what the GPS looks like, when you are going really fast (for a 172, at least):

But good things never last. Once we got past Kansas City bad clouds appeared around 4000 feet. Bad clouds like to travel in groups and cover the sky where they are, which means we had a choice to go above them or under them. Above would mean that we would have to hope to find a hole in the cloud cover to come down through near the destination; below would mean flying at only 3000 feet, with lots of turbulence. Since the cloud cover was supposed to be there all the way to our destination, we chose to go under and endure the turbulence. Bad clouds, by the way, look like this:

This was the first time in this trip that an instrument flight rating would have been useful. With it we would have been able to come down through the clouds at our destination and enjoyed a much smoother ride most of the way. Instead we bumped our way through Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, hand flying the plane because the autopilot was getting very confused. Lots of work, but we were ok.

One thing I expected for this leg was to fly over town after town with the big central water tower with the town name. They might have been there, but we were bouncing around too much for me to have the time to leisurely look for them. One town, though, was nice and decided to make sure I did not miss their water tower. This is how a town makes sure you don't miss their water tower:

The cool part of the trip is we got to fly over two major U.S. rivers: the Missouri and the Mississippi. This is what the part of the Missouri we saw looked like:

And this is what the Mississippi looked like:

Another interesting thing about this flight was how flight following was handled. Since we were flying so low, we were frequently getting out of radar range and the air traffic controller would cancel the flight following service, give us another frequency and tell us to try talking to them in 10 miles or so. This happened 3 times. Only when we got past St. Louis were we able to get flight following all of the way.

Landing at Danville was challenging, due to the stiff crosswind (16 kts, 60 degrees from the runway heading). We found another Cessna trying to land at this airport and used him as a "piranha bull." It landed successfully, we attempted our landing and were able to get down in one piece.

Sharon's friend Barb picked us up and took us out for lunch and ice cream. Here's what Barb, Bill and Sharon waiting in line for ice cream look like:

And that was it for this leg. Right now we don't know if the weather will allow us to make it to Waynesburg (our final destination) tomorrow. We'll have a better idea tomorrow morning.

Roswell to Manhattan (Not that One, the Other One)

2009-08-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Click here for today's route.

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.

El Paso to Roswell

2009-08-19T11:37:00.001-07:00

Click here for today's route.

I know, I know, today was supposed to be a long flying day and we were to go to Amarillo and then on to Manhattan, KS. Unfortunately there was a stationary front over Amarillo bringing winds of 20 kts, gusting to 30 kts, so we decided that would not be good. As for Manhattan they were promising thunderstorm after thunderstorm throughout the afternoon. So our longest flying day became our shortest flying day, with a 1.5 hours hop over to Roswell.

Why Roswell? Well, it gets us vaguely going in the direction we want to go, it's a place we've never been to and the winds there were only going up to 15 kts. However, being back in New Mexico after having spent a couple of hours yesterday crossing it makes me feel like we are backtracking. However, my maps assure me we are not.

Not much to report about the flight, though. More nothingness, but we are tired of taking pictures of nothing. If you want to know what a non-picture of nothing looks like, it looks like this:

Roswell is another one of those airports which they use to store airplanes. Huge apron, with jetliners sprinkled all over the place. It's a little intimidating taxiing a small C-172 around these huge things.

We had almost a full day to kill so we decided to explore the local sights. Number one on the list was the Bottomless Lakes State Park. If there was truth in advertising they would have called it
Sink Holes State Park, since the "lakes" are really caved in caverns. One of the sinkholes looked like this:

And this is what Sharon looks like when she stands in front of a sinkhole:

Very nice park, would have been fun to be there when it's not as hot.

The other thing we did was wander around downtown Roswell, where everything is alien-related. Every store has alien window dressing, even when the store has nothing to do with it. The local music store, for example, had drum playing alien dolls.

Even the city is in on this game. Their lampposts look like this:

And that was it for sight seeing. We spent the late afternoon relaxing in the hotel's swimming pool and sauna. Well, Sharon did the sauna. I spent most of my time relaxing in the pool.

A nice dinner at an Italian restaurant to celebrate our wedding anniversary and we were done for the day. By the way, this is what we look like celebrating:

Tucson to El Paso

2009-08-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

Click here for today's route

Again, we successfully woke up at 6 AM, but were much more efficient this time. Packing, breakfast, check out and flight planning were done by 7:15 AM and by 8 we were taking off from Marana Regional. Straight out departure, talk to Tucson air traffic control and we were on our way to El Paso.

Remember, when I said there was a lot of nothing between Palm Springs and Tucson? There is a lot more of it between Tucson and El Paso. Here is what the New Mexico nothing looks like:

Midway through the flight we encountered a new and fascinating weather phenomenon, clouds. Never having encountered those things before we were wary and approached them in a timorous way. They were few and friendly and let us by without a problem. We decided to take a picture with them and this is what they looked like:

Eventually we got to parallel the US-Mexico border, flying just a couple of miles away from it. Seeing another country was fun, even though that part of Mexico looks a lot like its northen neighbor, New Mexico! We even got to see the border fence everyone talks about, though we needed binoculars to make sure it was actually a fence. Without binoculars, this is what it looks like:

By the way, it's in the upper part of the picture. The lower line is, I believe, route 10.

And that is it for the flight itself. The adventure really started after we landed. Our original plan was to land, check the weather ahead and possibly go on to Amarillo. The AOPA airport guide describes Horizon (the airport where we landed) as having "courtesy car/van, internet access wireless, pilot supplies, refreshments (vending), rental car, rest rooms." I expected the airport to be big and bustling (after all, it has a runway almost as big as San Jose's) but it looked like this:

Still, the people there were very helpful and courteous. By the way, did I mention that the runway makes a curve?

Anyway, seeing the clouds building up along the route we intended to take, we decided to call it a day, rent a car and try Amarillo the next day. Renting a car involved calling Enterprise and managing to be lucky enough to find the only store in town that still had a car available, thanks to a last minute cancellation. They did pick us up, but not without first being surprised that there was an airport in Horizon and getting lost on the way there.

Still, we got our car, made it to a hotel, went sightseeing around suburban El Paso, relaxed in our room and are now enjoying the thunderstorms and lightning in the horizon. On to tomorrow!

Palm Springs to Tucson

2009-08-17T14:49:00.000-07:00

Click here for the route.

Amazingly enough, we did wake up at 6 AM and by 6:30 were downstairs having breakfast. We did take it too leisurely, though, and by the time the plane was fueled and ready to go it was 8:40 AM. DUATS showed good visibility and moderate winds all the way to Marana Airport, our destination outside of Tucson.

Take off from runway 35, a right turn to the East and we were on our way. There was nothing to see along the way, but there was a lot of it. I've never spent some much time flying without seeing anything. The closest thing to towns were clumps of four, maybe five houses. So, here's what a lot of nothing looks like:

This was our first flight to somewhere outside of California (don't blame us, California is big!), so of course we were excited to cross the CA AZ border. Lucky for us, California planned ahead and made the task easy for us by putting a river there. So, when we were exactly over the border and looked down, this is what we saw:

We were surrounded during most of the flight by military operation areas which were active. Occasionally a fighter had to cross from one area to the next and we would see them flying low and fast beneath us. Way too cool!

The adventure of this leg came somewhere past Gila Bend when we lost GPS signal which we were using for navigation. Not to worry, though, we were backing it up with VORs and just switched to them as our main mode of navigation. Five minutes later the GPS signal returned and everything was back to normal.

Due to our later than desired start we started running into some turbulence, and could see the thermals building up along the route. But soon after that started we were landing at Marana, which apparently is also used to store old planes. As we taxied off the runway we saw a Constellation and I immediately told Sharon she needed to take a picture of it for Marc, a friend of ours who has a "thing" for these planes. So Marc, here it is:

We parked the plane, went to have lunch, observed the cloud buildup in our proposed path to El Paso and decided that we would stay here in nice and comfy Tucson for today and attempt the mountainous leg of the trip tomorrow early morning. A brief stop at the FBO and they gave us not only directions, but let us borrow their crew car for the rest of the day.

A crew car, for those who don't know, is usually a clunker the airport keeps around so that crews that arrive can run into town for a quick meal. Ours was an old van that had some doors that don't lock, a broken cigarette lighter (hence no way to power the GPS), and made strange noises every time we braked. But amazingly, the engine worked and it was a loaner, so we were very happy to get it. This is what it looked like:

After resting a little in our hotel room, and waiting for the heat to abate, we went to explore Tucson. There isn't much to the city, but the desert around it is fantastic! Tall mountains, rolling hills and huge cacti everywhere! Were it not so hot I would have loved to have spent some time trekking through the wilderness. Instead, we sat:

And now it's off to get some dinner and prepare for tomorrow's flight to El Paso.

Palo Alto to Palm Springs

2009-08-16T19:50:00.001-07:00

Click here for the route.

Well, the first day is over, the hotel has internet access so I can sit and write about today's adventures. It definitely was an interesting day.

The day started, as most days do, way too early for my taste. Marc and Stacey gave us a ride to the airport and helped us pack our two suitcases, two flight bags, three headset bags, emergency backpack, one hand bag and our emergency potty into the plane. Still, with all that, we are still 130 lbs under maximum weight. I spent 3o minutes with the computer last night making sure that whatever combination we came up with for stowing all these bags would not move the center of gravity to where it did not belong. Turns out all combinations I tried were ok, and even with all this luggage we were still more than 120 lbs below max weight. And so we were ready to go.

We took off a little after 10 and were happily on our way to Palm Springs. We climbed to 9500 ft, where the weather was not as hot as down below and chugged merrily along, letting the autopilot do most of the flying. We kept in touch with air traffic control, but not much was happening.

The first stop in or non-stop flight to Palm Springs was Victorville. We were a little bit past it, flying directly to Palm Springs when visibility started getting really bad. Before it got too bad we decided it was time to land and rethink our route. I warned air traffic control of our intentions and told them I was diverting to Palmdale. They kindly informed me that that was a military base and suggested I go to Victorville instead.

I got concerned as we approached Victorville, seeing the airport apron taken by jetliners and wondering if I was going to the right place. Turned out we were, Victorville is one of those places in the desert where they store airliners and they were everywhere, except, thankfully, on the runway. We landed, taxied to the FBO and spent a few minutes relaxing going to their planning room to figure out how to get where we were going. We did come up with a plan, one that involved not getting as close to the L.A. basin and decided to try that.

We topped up the tanks, took off and the route we chose worked out just fine. 65 minutes later we were landing at Thermal, 100 ft below sealevel. And for Marc, who was curious as to what the altimeter would show, here it is:

And now, after a nice meal, we are in our hotel room, resting and enjoying the evening before tomorrow's 6 AM call to get on the road again.

Not many pictures because it was too hazy, but the highlights of the flights were seeing Edwards Air Force Base (where the shuttle sometimes lands) and the airplane cemeteries in the Mojave desert.

Figuring Out the Route

2009-08-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Once we had our noble steed, the next step was to figure out how to make our way to Waynesburg. We decide on some criteria early on:

Legs should be about 3 hours long. With full tanks the faithful steed could do 4.5 hours with reserves, but we decided our butts did not have that kind of endurance.
Limit ourselves to airports at 4500' or below. 180 HP is plenty, but hot days on high altitude airports might make it "just enough."
Be done with flying by early afternoon. During the summer, high winds and thunderstorms happen mostly in the afternoon and by flying early we should avoid the worst weather. This means at most two legs a day and waking up way earlier than people would normally expect me to.
Stay close to roads; no flying over large unpopulated expanses (a.k.a deserts)

There are two stops we want to make along the way: Manhattan, KS, to visit Sharon's niece, and Danville, IL, to visit Barb.

Once we had those parameters we made our way to the airport shop and bought a huge map of the US and cut a piece of yarn equivalent to roughly three hours of flying. We decided on a southern route to avoid the higher peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and ended up deciding on stops in California, Arizona, Texas, Kansas, Illinois and finally Pennsylvania.

With that in mind we moved to WACs (wide area charts) to figure out our actual route. ONe more trip to the airport shop, 6 charts and a bigger piece of yarn this time, and with the help of AOPA's Airport Guide, we got our stops: Palm Springs, Tucson, El Paso, Amarillo, Manhattan, Danville and Waynesburg.

We then moved on to AOPA's flight planner to figure out our actual routes. Two evenings trying different combinations and we had a plan. As a last check we showed the proposed route to our instructor and a couple of friends who have flown this route before. They warned us about thunderstorms in the afternoon, but agreed with the general plan.

So one more trip to the airport shop, this time to buy the 10 sectionals, which are the charts we will actually use for navigation. And now, 4 weeks, several emails, three visits to friends and 17 maps we are finally ready for the trip.

The Steed

2009-08-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

Some time ago Sharon and I decided we wanted to take a flying vacation, going from KPAO (Palo Alto, CA) to KWAY (Waynesburg, PA) in a small plane. Now, this means 40 hours of flying over mountains, valleys, plains and deserts so we needed to find the right plane for the trip.

The problem is, of course, that we are members of a club that gives us too many airplane choices: from blazing fast Mooneys that can go at over 230 kts to small trainers that fly at 100 kts or less. So we looked, poked, huffed and puffed and decided to take one of the club's Cessna 172SP, N669TW.

Why the 172SP? It's a plane Sharon and I each have over 200 hours in and feel very comfortable with. Add to that a very nice avionics package with GPS, a big moving map display, and an autopilot that can do pretty much anything and we have a dependable plane that can take us where we want to go with minimum fuss. With full tanks we can fly for 3.5 hours with another 1.5 hours reserve, which should give us a very nice safety margin.