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

posted by Sam @ 17:38 2 comments