Houston to Laramie - A pilot's view.
Hooks Ground, Seven Juliet Alpha runup complete, ready for departure.
Seven Juliet Alpha, roger. Taxi to and hold short of One Seven
Left Approach and contact Tower on 118.4.
Hold Short 17L Approach, going to tower point four, Seven Juliet
Alpha.
Hooks Tower, Seven Juliet Alpha ready to go, holding short 17L
Approach.
Seven Juliet Alpha, cleared for takeoff 17 Right at Echo.
Cleared for takeoff, 17 Right at Echo, Seven Juliet Alpha.
I taxied onto the runway, centered the aircraft, and increased the throttle to the stop. Ease back at 44 knots, climb at 58 knots. Positive rate of climb, flaps up. Turn to the right, 90 degrees, and again to head north west, bound for Laramie, Wyoming, over 900 miles away.
The weather had been very bad in Houston for weeks, with almost continuous rain and storms, and I was very close to cancelling the trip to Laramie for Chris and Andy's wedding, and buying a commercial airline ticket for the trip. However, I thought I'd see if I could sneak out of Houston around the storms, as the weather promised to be fine once I reached the Dallas area, only a couple of hundred miles to the north.
I climbed up to escape the lowest clouds at 2,000 feet, and then wound my way around the biggest storms, but had a fair bit of rain to deal with. I was consious also of the Prohibited area, P-49 that is over Bush's ranch at Crawford, TX, as I was not cleared to overfly that. The weather pushed me to within several miles of the place however!
I flew over Waco, and Lake Whitney and fuel consumption placed me within reach of my first stopping point at Wichita Falls' Kickapoo Downtown Airport. What a great name! I dived under a low bank of stormy weather, and then came out into the sun, the first I'd seen in weeks! I entered on the left downwind keeping a sharp lookout for the jets training at the Shepherd Airforce Base, and landed on runway 17.
Whilst my aircraft was being refuelled, (279 nautical miles down), I checked the weather and called for a briefing of the hazards that would lay along my route to the next planned stop of Liberal, Kansas. Duly appraised of weather issues (very scattered storms a fair way from my intended route and no flight restrictions), I climbed back in the Diamond DA-20 and took off once more.
I climbed up to 6,500 feet, and headed northwest once more, leaving Texas for Oklahoma for the first time. I was heading into an area with a fair bit of military traffic, so thought I would call the local approach control for a bit of help in looking for other traffic that may affect me.
Altus Approach, Diamond Three Nine Seven Juliet Alpha with request.
Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha, go ahead.
Altus Approach, Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha is a DA-20 with Uniform at
6,500 feet 16 miles southeast of Altus, northwest bound for Lima Bravo Lima,
request flight following, traffic and workload permitting.
Diamond Seven Juliet Alpha, Roger. Squawk 5253.
Once I'd been identidied by the Squawk Code on their radar, I flew through the Altus Terminal Radar Service Area, and was handed off to Kansas City Center. As it was Friday evening, there was little traffic in the skies, so I had a pretty uneventful journey with no advisories from air traffic control. The weather was calm, with blue skies, and just the hot sun beating down on the aircraft, a mere dot above the Oklahoma, North Texas, Oklahoma again and finally Kansas plains. I flew over rivers, Interstate highways and county roads with trucks all but invisible but for the plumes of dust thrown up behind them. There were scattered ranches, and grain silos that would catch briefly in the sun as I zipped over with a groundspeed of anything up to 148 knots (170 mph), thanks to a nice tailwind from the south.
By 7pm I was approaching Liberal, Kansas, and made a great approach to landing on runway 17. I headed inside, once again called the briefer for weather, checked the radar and decided to call it a night as my next planned stop, Longmont at the foot of the Rockies was another 2 or so hours away and wouldn't be reachable in daylight. Whilst I am happy flying at night, I decided that mountains, dark and an unfamilar airport may not be the best combination.
I secured the aircraft for the night on the Kansas Plains, and was collected from the airport by a local motel, and taken downtown for the night, installed myself in a basic but comfortable room and pretty much just hit the sack. I'd spent the day at work, and the late afternoon and evening flying over 500 miles from Houston - all in all an action packed day.
I woke early in the morning, and was back at the airport by 8am and in the air by 8:30am, resuming my north-westerly progress towards Wyoming. The ground over which I was flying, although flat, had risen to over 3000' elevation, so I was flying higher as a result. Gradually, on the horizon, I began to make out a hazy image of higher ground - my first glimpse of the rockies. So quickly that it was a shock, the plains and ranchland gave way to towns and suburbs of Denver, and I once more had to content with busy airspace, restrictions and locating a safe routing under the Denver airspace for my landing at Longmont. I took a wide circle approach to landing due to the skydiving activity over the airport, and placed my plane down at 9:45am local time (I had gained an hour due to time zone changes).
The Rocky mountains reared up from the Colorado Plains above the airport providing a fantastic backdrop to the busy skydiving and small aircraft flying in and out. The Sun was hot, over 33 C at the plane, giving me a bit of sunburn whilst waiting for freinds to drop by - they'd spent the night in Longmont. It was fun to show everyone around the plane - it always causes comment as the Diamond is so small - just a two seater - but has a surprising number of interesting buttons to play with, and good performance to boot, something I was glad of when it came time to take off from a high airport in the middle of the hot Colorado day.
Takeoff time came, and I waggled my wings as I departed on the final leg of the journey to Laramie, now only 75 miles away. The hot sun had caused storms to begin building over the mountains, so I bounced through the rising air, gaining the necessary altitude to safely get me over the mountains and into the Laramie basin. The airport came into sight, and I overflew the field to remind myself of its layout, and landed on Runway 3, and taxied to the ramp for the final engine shutdown. I had arrived. 803 nautical miles direct, a little further thanks to storm avoidance, but I was there, over 7,000 feet higher then I had been when taking off from Houston.
Labels: flying, wyoming
Quick Flight
Well, the weather was looking hopeful on Saturday evening so I headed out to the airport for an evening flight. It's not getting dark until 8pm here now, so I had rented the Diamond DA-20 once again from 6 'til 9pm.
I departed northeast from
KDWH, and headed over the Woodlands and just south of Lone Star Executive (
KCXO). The ride was smooth, thanks to the cooling air, and the light Diamond soon reached 1,700 feet (to remain under the Houston Class B airspace) and accelerated to 125 knots. After Lone Star, the class B airspace begins to rise up until it dissapears entirely about 10 miles further on, so I climbed up to 5,500 feet and flew over the Sam Houston National Forest until crossing the shoreline of Lake Livingston, a large reservoir.
It was only another 15 minutes or so to Lufkin from here, so I pressed on and began a 500 fpm (feet per minute) decsent as instructed by the GPS. This set me up for a nice left downwind for runway 15, and I touched town uneventfully and taxied to the ramp.
With sunset minutes away, I didn't linger on the ground for too long, and instead took off to head back towards Houston. It's always great to see sunset from an aircraft, and I made a touch and go landing at Livingston. By the way, I should point out that a touch and go is a landing where you touch down, but then immediately go flaps up, and throttle full for an immediate takeoff.
I turned right to leave the airport area to the South, which took me immediately over the lake again, where the was the odd boat cutting through the water.
By the time I had reached KDWH, it was 30 minutes after sunset and pretty much dark. This makes the landing a little more difficult as your depth perception is poor in low light conditions. This means you can't see how high you are above the runway, which calls for a slightly different landing technique. I basically set up in a nice glide to the runway, and then once I think I am within 10 feet begin a slow flare that slows my descent yet further, and I hold this until the wheels touch the ground.
One thing to be very careful of is to not to decend too low on approach. For this reason airports usually have some type of indicator that will give you a visual indication of glideslope angle. At Hooks on 17R it is a series of 4 lights on the right of the runway. All white means you are too high, all red means you are too low. I followed it down with 2 red and 2 white which means you are on glideslope.
As I had not flown after dark for some time, I made this landing a touch and go, and went around in the pattern once more. The second landing was executed with no problems, and I asked the controller to make the next one a full stop. I was cleared to land on 17R, and I called it a night.
Great fun, and a great aircraft to fly.
Labels: flying
Thanksgiving Flying 2006
For the past couple of years, I have headed out of town for the Thanksgiving break which runs from Thursday to Sunday at the end of November, creating a great 4-day weekend suitable for all sorts of travel.
For a change, this year I stayed in Houston for the day itself, heading round to some friends for a full thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings - great!
On Friday morning I headed to the airport and took command of a Diamond DA20. It's a cool. modern looking aircraft, low wing, fighter-jet canopy and a single 125 horsepower engine. I'd just got checked out in in the week before, and it flies fast, climbs well (much better than the Cessna 152 and even the more powerful 172) and has some nice new toys, such as a Garmin GPS and traffic avoidance system.
After preflighting and getting clearance to taxi from the controller, I headed for 17-Left for departure. Due to traffic, I was cleared to 17-Right at Charlie for takeoff, so fprward went the throttle, and I began the takeoff roll. Within seconds I was at 45 knots, and lifting of the ground, seconds later at 70 knots and in a 1000 feet per minute climb! I turned right about 100 degrees to get established on my now familiar westerly heading, and stayed low, below 2000 feet until I was clear of the Houston airspace.
I headed out, past Austin, seeing other aircraft on my GPS screen which really helps with safety, and flew over the hill country to Enchanted Rock. A turn to the south saw me on the approach to Fredericksburg where I landed for fuel. It was only a brief stop, and I turned south-west to land at Leakey, where I was met by a veritable busload of work colleagues and friends. Thanks to the speed enjoyed as a pilot, it was still early, and the usual 5 hour car journey had taken me under 2 hours. There was therefore plenty of time to have lunch, sit by the Rio Frio go kayaking and locate a boatload of driftwood for the fire. I'd brought some steaks and red wine along, so we had a great BBQ that evening. Excellent!
The following morning we headed down to Garner State Park for a bit of a wander round - we walked up to the high point, and were rewarded with some great views of the Frio Canyon, the trees resplendent in the fall colours (getting carried away now, I realise that...), and once again had lunch by the river.
Back to the airport at 3pm, and whilst fellow brits John and Viv had to head back to Houston in their plane, I had other plans and turned west once again. I flew over pretty remote terrain, keeping as always a watch for other aircraft, heading towards Alpine, quite some distance away.
I was also keeping a close watch on fuel consumption, as I was hoping to get all the way to Alpine without stopping, and the plane was burning about 6.5 gallons per hour. I'd already done a good 45 minutes of flying the day before, and several takeoffs and landings at Leakey, so reckoned I had about 15 gallons remaining at most at takeoff. This was confirmed with the fuel 'dipstick', and therefore I thought the 1 hour and 45 minutes flying time from Leakey to Alpine would use a little over 11 gallons rounding to at least 12 if I included the extra fuel for high power at takeoff. 3 gallons 'reserve' would take me about 30 minutes, therefore putting me right on the nose of the minimum legal reserve for day flying. I resolved to land at my only alternate option, Terrell County, about 50 miles closer than Alpine if I was behind schedule by more than 5 minutes.
As it turned out, I managed power and altitude pretty well, and was slightly ahead of schedule at Terrell Co., so continued on to Alpine, skipping over the peaks of the Glass Mountains to lengthening shadows, and touched down at 5:30pm, exactly as scheduled.
After refueling, spending the night in Alpine, and being transported back to the Airport by the world's nicest taxi company (Desert Willow Limo & Taxi, (432) 837-7178 or (432) 294-0555 if you're in the area) I preflighted and departed south in the early Sunday morning sky, headed for Big Bend. I followed the highway towards Lajitas, a small border town, and the familiar sight of the Chisos mountains and Santa Elena Canyon drew closer. Pilots are requested to remain more than 2000' above the surface of National Parks, so I respected this, and did some circles and swoops around the park. I've got a fleet of good photos that I need to get up here... I circled up to over 12,000 feet and got a great view of the Chisos Basin below.
Leaving the park behind, following at first the road north to Marathon was aided by a 40 knot tailwind meaning I was covering the ground pretty quickly at almost 200 mph. I was planning on refuelling at Terrel County before heading west back to Houston, but this was thwarted when I was 30 miles away by a low cloud deck. I couldn't safely get under the cloud at this point due to terrain, so diverted to Fort Stockton which was reporting clear skies. I found the airport completely deserted, so after fuelling at the self-service pumps I went inside to check the weather. It was very strange - a large municipal aiport, with pilots lounge, computerised flight planning and weather was just devoid of all life! It was like the set of some weird B movie...
I checked the weather, saw lots of cloud in between me and Houston, but probably high enough to allow me safe passage underneath, so thus informed I headed out to the aircraft once again, climbed in, secured the canopy, started the engine and taxied out for departure to the east. I flew merrily on, following I-10, planning on 'airport hopping', flying from airport to airport to give me the option of landing if the weather was looking dodgy ahead, or even turning back to the airport behind me if necessary. Because I-10 is a major interstate crossing the USA, there are towns every 50 - 80 miles even in this remote section.
As it happened, I did not have to land, and even got some nice flying in the clear blue on top of the clouds before the deck began to seal itself beneath me. You can see from my Google Earth flying track of the route where I executed a neat maneuver to get below the clouds at one point.
After landing at Kerrville to refuel, I headed out on the last 183 nautical mile jaunt to Houston, flying much of the time up high, far above the clouds below. It's clearly the way to travel.
By the time I returned the plane to it's base, I had logged 11.4 hours of flight time, and covered 2000km - a little more than Land's End to John o' Groats (and back)
Labels: big bend, flying, thanksgiving
