Flight to Kirksville - Part 2
It was the curse of a very clear day. There was blue sky everywhere, but the winds were out of the north and vigorous, bouncing us around and keeping me active on the controls. Passing over the white triangular cone of the Daisetta VOR, we jogged ever so slightly to the north to make a beeline to Lufkin’s VOR and its airport slightly beyond. The land below was green with forests, though far to our left we could see the irregular shape of Lake Livingston. Using the maps and the GPS units, we tracked our slow progress across highways and small towns until we crossed the Lufkin VOR and could see the crossed runways of Lufkin’s airport beyond. From our perch, we could see the southern outlines of Nacogdoches and some kind of grass fire directly in our path, its black smoke drifting slightly east and below our altitude. Nacogdoches airport soon snaked below us as well, putting us about forty nautical miles from our first stop at Longview.
The airspace surrounding Longview was and is a Terminal Radar Service Area or TRSA. I had looked up its radio contact frequencies and put them on my navigational log, so I dialed our communications radio to the proper frequency and listened to the controller as we approached. Pulling back the throttle slightly, I began a long, leisurely descent. Keeping the power up would help keep the engine’s cylinder heads from cooling off too fast, cut our overall fuel consumption, and give us some added speed. With about thirty miles to go, I announced my arrival to East Texas Approach. He gave me a squawk but couldn’t see me yet; a few miles later, he announced he had radar contact. He told us to expect runway 35. That was fine with me. Not only would I not have to maneuver but the runway was the one closest to our destination, requiring only one turn off the runway onto a taxiway that fed directly to KRS Express Aviation.
Long ago, when we had first considered flying the Cheetah to Missouri, my wife and I we had talked about the logistics that were important to us when we stopped. At our ages, it was a sad fact of life that bathroom access was important to us. I had read a lot of good reviews about KRS at AirNav.com, and so we had stopped there to check it out even though I could have gotten cheaper gas at an airport 20 miles east and more in a direct line between Houston and Kirksville. We had been so impressed with KRS we vowed to stop there whenever we could. Secondly, the Longview airport (formal name “East Texas Regional”) had plenty of IFR approaches for the inevitable day when I got IFR current and proficient again.
KRS is located in a big, white, new hangar with showroom floors. The lounge has leather sofas, a good-sized TV, glass tables with aviation magazines, a popcorn machine, some recently baked cookies, and is collocated with the receptionist’s desk where you pay for your gas or whatever else you choose to buy there. The flight planning room has two new computers and another TV and some more furniture where pilots with some extra time on their hands can flight plan or watch a movie. There are some soft drink vending machines to assist with your thirst, and a small hall empties into an area with a table some chairs and the doors to the restroom. The men’s restroom comes complete with a toilet, a shower, sinks, and gold accoutrements, making it a restroom fit for a king or the discriminating corporate pilot who might as well be treated well by somebody. The women’s restroom is just as nice but there is no shower; at least, that’s what my wife tells me and I have to take her word for it or get into trouble exercising my old fighter RIO genes.
We knew KRS had class before we even saw the insides by how they treated us as we taxied up in our “low rent” Cheetah. The lineboy came out to direct us in and taxied us up, chocked us after I shut the airplane down, and offered to fuel the airplane. From the way they acted, you would have thought we had taxied up in Daddy’s King Air or in Air Force One. But it was only us in T-shirts and ball caps getting out of our airplane that needs a paint job. If there was one thing that was obvious to the most casual observer, it was that we were not going to be big spenders.
After gassing up the Cheetah and eating some popcorn and a cookie, we hopped back in the Cheetah and took off to the north again. We began a climb up to forty-five hundred feet to give us about two thousand feet altitude over the eastern end of the Ozark mountains ahead. But there was still an hour over Texas and Arkansas plains to go. It seemed to take us forever to get to altitude and level off into any kind of a reasonable cruise. While not checked in, we listened to Fort Worth Center handle his traffic and once calling us as traffic to someone he was controlling, but neither of us saw the other. Soon, we could see the outlines of Texarkana at a distance off our right wing and the large snake that was the Red River cutting the land ahead of us.
In the distance, we could already see the ragged outlines of the Ozark mountains. While my charts reassured me we were above them, the mountains ahead and far in the distance looked as high as we were and threatening. Using GPS and VOR tracking, we were making a beeline to the Rich Mountain VOR just west of several Military Operations Areas. I planned to hop on the VOR and track toward Fort Smith down a mountain valley that would keep me clear of a Restricted Area southeast of the town. But first, I had to cross two razorback-like ridges with a highway in between them; and though the ridges were easy to spot, I never saw the highway. I could see east toward Mena, Arkansas where I knew a pilot friend of mine had stopped to gas up several hours ahead of us; he was on a “quick in-and-out” flight to Sedalia, Missouri in a Cessna 120 to take care of some family business.
I spotted the VOR ahead of us and sitting on one of the ridgelines, looking more like we were going to hit it rather than fly over it. As we approached, I asked Connie to help me keep an eye out for other airplanes doing the same thing; flying directly over a VOR always made me nervous since the odds of someone else doing the same thing were fairly high; and, in our case, we were making just enough of a northerly jog to require a change in VFR cruising altitudes, making us more vulnerable than normal to a collision. Thankfully, no one was there but us; we hit the VOR and turned north toward Fort Smith with only the turbulence, mountains below, and blue sky above for company.
As we plugged northeast, I used the charts to locate a nearby city and lake on our left. Ahead, a mountain jutted out of the otherwise flat valley, and we scooted down its ragged west side, as the city of Fort Smith loomed head of us. On the radio, I contacted Razorback Approach who gave us a squawk and asked about our destination, which was Rogers Field. We were headed to Beaver Lake Aviation, the only FBO we knew of owned by Wal-Mart. Hopefully, we wouldn’t be met by protestors; we were only stopping for gas.
To be continued...
The airspace surrounding Longview was and is a Terminal Radar Service Area or TRSA. I had looked up its radio contact frequencies and put them on my navigational log, so I dialed our communications radio to the proper frequency and listened to the controller as we approached. Pulling back the throttle slightly, I began a long, leisurely descent. Keeping the power up would help keep the engine’s cylinder heads from cooling off too fast, cut our overall fuel consumption, and give us some added speed. With about thirty miles to go, I announced my arrival to East Texas Approach. He gave me a squawk but couldn’t see me yet; a few miles later, he announced he had radar contact. He told us to expect runway 35. That was fine with me. Not only would I not have to maneuver but the runway was the one closest to our destination, requiring only one turn off the runway onto a taxiway that fed directly to KRS Express Aviation.
Long ago, when we had first considered flying the Cheetah to Missouri, my wife and I we had talked about the logistics that were important to us when we stopped. At our ages, it was a sad fact of life that bathroom access was important to us. I had read a lot of good reviews about KRS at AirNav.com, and so we had stopped there to check it out even though I could have gotten cheaper gas at an airport 20 miles east and more in a direct line between Houston and Kirksville. We had been so impressed with KRS we vowed to stop there whenever we could. Secondly, the Longview airport (formal name “East Texas Regional”) had plenty of IFR approaches for the inevitable day when I got IFR current and proficient again.
KRS is located in a big, white, new hangar with showroom floors. The lounge has leather sofas, a good-sized TV, glass tables with aviation magazines, a popcorn machine, some recently baked cookies, and is collocated with the receptionist’s desk where you pay for your gas or whatever else you choose to buy there. The flight planning room has two new computers and another TV and some more furniture where pilots with some extra time on their hands can flight plan or watch a movie. There are some soft drink vending machines to assist with your thirst, and a small hall empties into an area with a table some chairs and the doors to the restroom. The men’s restroom comes complete with a toilet, a shower, sinks, and gold accoutrements, making it a restroom fit for a king or the discriminating corporate pilot who might as well be treated well by somebody. The women’s restroom is just as nice but there is no shower; at least, that’s what my wife tells me and I have to take her word for it or get into trouble exercising my old fighter RIO genes.
We knew KRS had class before we even saw the insides by how they treated us as we taxied up in our “low rent” Cheetah. The lineboy came out to direct us in and taxied us up, chocked us after I shut the airplane down, and offered to fuel the airplane. From the way they acted, you would have thought we had taxied up in Daddy’s King Air or in Air Force One. But it was only us in T-shirts and ball caps getting out of our airplane that needs a paint job. If there was one thing that was obvious to the most casual observer, it was that we were not going to be big spenders.
After gassing up the Cheetah and eating some popcorn and a cookie, we hopped back in the Cheetah and took off to the north again. We began a climb up to forty-five hundred feet to give us about two thousand feet altitude over the eastern end of the Ozark mountains ahead. But there was still an hour over Texas and Arkansas plains to go. It seemed to take us forever to get to altitude and level off into any kind of a reasonable cruise. While not checked in, we listened to Fort Worth Center handle his traffic and once calling us as traffic to someone he was controlling, but neither of us saw the other. Soon, we could see the outlines of Texarkana at a distance off our right wing and the large snake that was the Red River cutting the land ahead of us.
In the distance, we could already see the ragged outlines of the Ozark mountains. While my charts reassured me we were above them, the mountains ahead and far in the distance looked as high as we were and threatening. Using GPS and VOR tracking, we were making a beeline to the Rich Mountain VOR just west of several Military Operations Areas. I planned to hop on the VOR and track toward Fort Smith down a mountain valley that would keep me clear of a Restricted Area southeast of the town. But first, I had to cross two razorback-like ridges with a highway in between them; and though the ridges were easy to spot, I never saw the highway. I could see east toward Mena, Arkansas where I knew a pilot friend of mine had stopped to gas up several hours ahead of us; he was on a “quick in-and-out” flight to Sedalia, Missouri in a Cessna 120 to take care of some family business.
I spotted the VOR ahead of us and sitting on one of the ridgelines, looking more like we were going to hit it rather than fly over it. As we approached, I asked Connie to help me keep an eye out for other airplanes doing the same thing; flying directly over a VOR always made me nervous since the odds of someone else doing the same thing were fairly high; and, in our case, we were making just enough of a northerly jog to require a change in VFR cruising altitudes, making us more vulnerable than normal to a collision. Thankfully, no one was there but us; we hit the VOR and turned north toward Fort Smith with only the turbulence, mountains below, and blue sky above for company.
As we plugged northeast, I used the charts to locate a nearby city and lake on our left. Ahead, a mountain jutted out of the otherwise flat valley, and we scooted down its ragged west side, as the city of Fort Smith loomed head of us. On the radio, I contacted Razorback Approach who gave us a squawk and asked about our destination, which was Rogers Field. We were headed to Beaver Lake Aviation, the only FBO we knew of owned by Wal-Mart. Hopefully, we wouldn’t be met by protestors; we were only stopping for gas.
To be continued...
posted by Andy Foster at 10:17 PM
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