Flight to Kirksville - Part 1
One of the reasons we bought the Cheetah, or at least one of the rationalizations we used to buy it, was so we had the freedom to travel back to my wife’s home in Missouri when we wanted. Of course, when you’re talking about flying anywhere under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), then the words “freedom” and “want” take on a qualified meaning. That’s especially true in the springtime when fronts start pushing through the country like speeding railroad trains. To accommodate that, I had set aside a full week to get up there and back. It was the week spanning from March 11 through the 19th.
I had watched the weather reports all week. Our initial intent had been to fly up on Saturday, the 11th. However, the trip up looked marginal to me; and every forecast indicated that I would have much better weather in a few days. So, I told my wife we were not going to launch out on the weekend; and that we would look at flying up early in the next week.
Of course, as the day wore on and I watched the forecasts, I became convinced that we could have made it up there. That night, though, and on Sunday, Missouri got hit with almost one hundred different tornadoes. Though the Kirskville area we had been headed for did not get hit, they did take a severe beating from golf-ball sized hail. Had we gone up, our airplane would have been sitting out on the line at the Kirksville airport. I was and am fairly convinced it would have been totaled.
First lesson: You not only have to consider the weather on the flying leg but must also consider what the weather’s going to do after you arrive, even if the plane is going to be on the ground.
On Monday, as I studied the forecasts, I became convinced that we only had one shot at making the trip that week. That was to leave on Tuesday and return by Friday. It would be a severe clear day all the way up on Tuesday, though fronts were supposed to roll through the mid-section of the country after that. Saturday and Sunday were starting to look problematic both in Missouri and in Houston, where a stalled cold front and a second one pushing through were going to make it a wet weekend or so said the forecast. The difficulty in judging forecasts more than a few days in advance is that very little aviation weather products are available and you become dependent on the generic forecast with some probability of rain and thunderstorms. So, thumb-rules have to be applied with the knowledge that they are inherently un-rigorous in their application. Twenty to thirty percent chances of rain are acceptable. Forty to fifty means you will encounter rain but the ceilings are probably marginal VFR. Sixty or more means the rain will be fairly continuous and there’s a good chance ceilings will be IFR.
Of course, the trick is to watch the weather as it actually develops and see how close you are.
Based on what I was seeing and how the weather forecasts over the past week had matched what had happened, I thought that the best chance for us to get out was on Tuesday and to get back was on Friday. Saturday and Sunday were starting to look like washouts in Houston, though the weather forecast was saying that there would be few problems between Kirksville and Longview, Texas, our last planned stop before reaching home. So, Connie and I agreed to give that schedule a try. While the weather did not look too great for getting back into Houston on Saturday or Sunday, that would still give us two extra days to mull things or try to sneak back in one airport at a time.
Tuesday did turn out to be a CAVU day (Clear air, Visibility Unlimited). We took off from Pearland at about 8:50 a.m., a bit later than I had wanted but not bad considering how hard it is to get Connie to get anywhere in the morning. We climbed up to fifteen hundred feet in a beautifully blue and almost cloudless sky and leveled off heading east, flying over the houses that were Friendswood and between the grey ribbon highways of NASA Road 1 and FM 518. As we passed south of the open, grey, striped, and green patch that was Ellington Field and the white block buildings of Johnson Space Center, I called Houston Departure on 134.45 with a request.
“November 9848 Uniform, say your request,” Departure answered.
“Yes, sir. We’re VFR to Greg County airport; requesting flight following.”
“Give me the designator for that airport…and say your requested altitude and route.”
“Golf-golf-golf,” I answered, “and we’ll be requesting fifty-five hundred and headed toward Daisetta.”
The controller gave me a squawk and asked me to IDENT. I complied.
“Radar contact,” The controller said. “N9848U, you’re cleared into the class B airspace; climb and maintain three thousand for now and continue on course.”
“Four eight-uniform, cleared into the class B and leaving fifteen hundred for three thousand.”
I pushed the Cheetah’s throttle in all the way and raised the nose gently to maintain a 100 mph climb. We edged upward and entered the invisible Class B airspace, pointing the nose to the northeast to cross the north end of Galveston Bay. We passed over the boats, yachts, restaurants and carnival rides of Kemah, crossed over the stacks and pipes of petroleum plants of La Porte, and watched the twin wire-tressed spires of the Fred Hartman Bridge slide down our left side. Reaching three thousand, I pushed the nose over and let the Cheetah pick up speed. But we were already in the strong north winds that would plague us all day and were barely making a hundred knots across the ground.
We were too far east to see Houston Intercontinental Airport as we passed it; instead, we contented ourselves with tracking roads, power lines, and small towns as our two GPS units led us northeast. I was steering both by the black line drawn on my chart and my panel-mounted KLN-89B GPS unit while Connie was tracking us on my handheld Airmap 100 GPS. My first checkpoint was the Daisetta VOR, and I was riding not only the GPS steering toward it but the VOR needle in my Nav/Comm radio as well. As we neared it we also cleared Houston’s airpace, and the departure controller “told us to maintain VFR” and switched us to Houston Center. We checked in, and I informed the controller who was busier than a one-armed picture hanger that we were with him and climbing to fifty-five hundred. The controller rogered the call and then left us for the airliners and high-flying airplanes that had most of his attention. The winds weren’t forecasted to be any better at fifty-five than thirty-five, but I was hoping I might get out of the turbulence that was bouncing us. It was a vain hope. Nothing improved.
To be continued…
I had watched the weather reports all week. Our initial intent had been to fly up on Saturday, the 11th. However, the trip up looked marginal to me; and every forecast indicated that I would have much better weather in a few days. So, I told my wife we were not going to launch out on the weekend; and that we would look at flying up early in the next week.
Of course, as the day wore on and I watched the forecasts, I became convinced that we could have made it up there. That night, though, and on Sunday, Missouri got hit with almost one hundred different tornadoes. Though the Kirskville area we had been headed for did not get hit, they did take a severe beating from golf-ball sized hail. Had we gone up, our airplane would have been sitting out on the line at the Kirksville airport. I was and am fairly convinced it would have been totaled.
First lesson: You not only have to consider the weather on the flying leg but must also consider what the weather’s going to do after you arrive, even if the plane is going to be on the ground.
On Monday, as I studied the forecasts, I became convinced that we only had one shot at making the trip that week. That was to leave on Tuesday and return by Friday. It would be a severe clear day all the way up on Tuesday, though fronts were supposed to roll through the mid-section of the country after that. Saturday and Sunday were starting to look problematic both in Missouri and in Houston, where a stalled cold front and a second one pushing through were going to make it a wet weekend or so said the forecast. The difficulty in judging forecasts more than a few days in advance is that very little aviation weather products are available and you become dependent on the generic forecast with some probability of rain and thunderstorms. So, thumb-rules have to be applied with the knowledge that they are inherently un-rigorous in their application. Twenty to thirty percent chances of rain are acceptable. Forty to fifty means you will encounter rain but the ceilings are probably marginal VFR. Sixty or more means the rain will be fairly continuous and there’s a good chance ceilings will be IFR.
Of course, the trick is to watch the weather as it actually develops and see how close you are.
Based on what I was seeing and how the weather forecasts over the past week had matched what had happened, I thought that the best chance for us to get out was on Tuesday and to get back was on Friday. Saturday and Sunday were starting to look like washouts in Houston, though the weather forecast was saying that there would be few problems between Kirksville and Longview, Texas, our last planned stop before reaching home. So, Connie and I agreed to give that schedule a try. While the weather did not look too great for getting back into Houston on Saturday or Sunday, that would still give us two extra days to mull things or try to sneak back in one airport at a time.
Tuesday did turn out to be a CAVU day (Clear air, Visibility Unlimited). We took off from Pearland at about 8:50 a.m., a bit later than I had wanted but not bad considering how hard it is to get Connie to get anywhere in the morning. We climbed up to fifteen hundred feet in a beautifully blue and almost cloudless sky and leveled off heading east, flying over the houses that were Friendswood and between the grey ribbon highways of NASA Road 1 and FM 518. As we passed south of the open, grey, striped, and green patch that was Ellington Field and the white block buildings of Johnson Space Center, I called Houston Departure on 134.45 with a request.
“November 9848 Uniform, say your request,” Departure answered.
“Yes, sir. We’re VFR to Greg County airport; requesting flight following.”
“Give me the designator for that airport…and say your requested altitude and route.”
“Golf-golf-golf,” I answered, “and we’ll be requesting fifty-five hundred and headed toward Daisetta.”
The controller gave me a squawk and asked me to IDENT. I complied.
“Radar contact,” The controller said. “N9848U, you’re cleared into the class B airspace; climb and maintain three thousand for now and continue on course.”
“Four eight-uniform, cleared into the class B and leaving fifteen hundred for three thousand.”
I pushed the Cheetah’s throttle in all the way and raised the nose gently to maintain a 100 mph climb. We edged upward and entered the invisible Class B airspace, pointing the nose to the northeast to cross the north end of Galveston Bay. We passed over the boats, yachts, restaurants and carnival rides of Kemah, crossed over the stacks and pipes of petroleum plants of La Porte, and watched the twin wire-tressed spires of the Fred Hartman Bridge slide down our left side. Reaching three thousand, I pushed the nose over and let the Cheetah pick up speed. But we were already in the strong north winds that would plague us all day and were barely making a hundred knots across the ground.
We were too far east to see Houston Intercontinental Airport as we passed it; instead, we contented ourselves with tracking roads, power lines, and small towns as our two GPS units led us northeast. I was steering both by the black line drawn on my chart and my panel-mounted KLN-89B GPS unit while Connie was tracking us on my handheld Airmap 100 GPS. My first checkpoint was the Daisetta VOR, and I was riding not only the GPS steering toward it but the VOR needle in my Nav/Comm radio as well. As we neared it we also cleared Houston’s airpace, and the departure controller “told us to maintain VFR” and switched us to Houston Center. We checked in, and I informed the controller who was busier than a one-armed picture hanger that we were with him and climbing to fifty-five hundred. The controller rogered the call and then left us for the airliners and high-flying airplanes that had most of his attention. The winds weren’t forecasted to be any better at fifty-five than thirty-five, but I was hoping I might get out of the turbulence that was bouncing us. It was a vain hope. Nothing improved.
To be continued…
posted by Andy Foster at 8:57 PM
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