Flight to Kirksville - Part 7

As we approached, I could see that the long runway that looked so good from the air wasn’t. The black asphalt was cracked and patched though not bad enough to make it look unsafe or unsavory to land on. I called our position on the radio as I flew the last portions of the final approach. The runway was at least six thousand long and there was only one turnoff about a third of its length from the opposite end. I landed at about the midpoint of the runway to cut down our taxi time.

We turned into the terminal area to find a small, red brick terminal building white a white roof and a set of gas pumps out near the taxiway. I taxied over to the pumps to gas up even though we didn’t have far to go to finish this leg. As we reached them, I could see that the pumps were not the automated self-serve type found at many general aviation airports. They were the old style manual pumps. That meant someone needed to be around to take some money. So far, though, we hadn’t seen a soul. Well, we could reach Rogers without refueling if we couldn’t find anyone. It was just extra insurance to take on some gas.

I shut the airplane down. We slid the canopy open, and I got out and examined the gas pumps to see if I could figure out how to use them. The first thing I noticed was that the grounding wire, which is usually mounted on a retracting reel next to the pumps was gone. The reel was there, just no wire. As I was standing there, a white haired gentleman came trotting toward us from behind the terminal building.

“Sorry, “ he said as he reached us. “I didn’t hear you come in. We’ve got vending machines and phones in the building. Do you need some gas?”

“Yep,” I replied.

“What about bathrooms?” Connie asked.

“They’re in the terminal, too.” He reached over and started the pumps up, resetting their gallon counter to zero.

“The grounding wire’s broken,” he said. “It would probably be better if you pumped your own gas.”

I agreed even though I knew the real reason was so that if my airplane caught fire and blew up, they could claim they had no liability. I doubted if my wife’s lawyer would let them off so easily. Still, I thought the risk of a static electricity induced fire was less than that of us needing the extra gas; and I didn’t think it was worth the time to pack up and fly somewhere else. Taking the pump in hand, I pumped gas into the wings, filling the airplane up to the wing tank’s tabs. That put in 19 gallons per side, enough for us to fly for four hours. We had only a little less than an hour to go, assuming I could get there.

The gent noted how much gas I had pumped when I finished, and he led me to the terminal building. Inside the white, wood-framed door, a pilot’s lounge was to the left, a glass counter top where there was a wireless phone, a credit card modem, and some stickers listing the local Flight Service Station’s number. The restrooms were in the rear of the building where most of the fixtures and partitions were grey metal, like those I was used to from my years on aircraft carriers. Connie had disappeared into the women’s restroom. The gentleman was busy dialing in with my credit card info.

“They’re going to rebuild this place,” he said. “It will be pretty nice when they’re done.” And he went on to tell me about visits from the Missouri Department of Transportation and meeting their requirements and about flying his taildragger. It was obvious he rarely had another pilot to talk to.

He had offered a phone to call Flight Service, so when I told him I wanted to call them, he handed me the wireless phone, trusting I could call the number on the sticker. I did and got through to a briefer. After giving her my airplane’s “N” number, I told her we were trying to go VFR to Rogers. She started giving me the METAR’s in the area which were really not any different than the ones we had heard in the air. She assured me, though, that Rogers was clear, and I mean just that, i.e., not a cloud in the sky. The overcast she insisted would end right at the Missouri border.

So, Connie and I manned up again, taxiing out to and down the black runway’s long length. Near its end, I turned us around, called “departing” over the radio, and gunned the throttle. We lifted into the air and I rolled us to the right, turning us back the way we had come.

The ceilings had lifted a couple of hundred feet; but, more importantly, we were seeing an occasional break in the overcast. The layer really wasn’t very thick, maybe only a hundred feet, definitely two hundred at the most. You can bet when I realized that, I was kicking myself for not being IFR current. Had I been, we would have been in a pleasant, sunshine filled, VFR on top situation all day instead of crawling along in the mud.

The visibility was definitely better, though it still wasn’t fantastic. In front of us, I could easily see five miles and to the sides even more. We crossed over the east-west four lane ribbon of Interstate 40 and bombed on to Monnet. Rogers was the next and last checkpoint beyond for this leg.

The Missouri border was only about twenty miles ahead. At first, I thought the Flight Service specialist might be wrong. We saw no gradual thinning of the overcast. Instead, within a few miles of the border, the overcast above us broke into pieces suddenly, as if it were running from an invisible rip-tide from the south. I gunned the engine and pulled us into a climb and we shot up through the now holy skies which rapidly turned into a wall of solid blue. I leveled us off at thirty-five hundred since we only had about forty miles to go.

I made a call to Razorback Approach, but they didn’t seem to hear it. We drilled in another ten miles and I called again; this time, they acknowledged and gave me a squawk. Rogers was landing runway 01, so we were asked to contact the tower at about ten miles out. I did so and we were cleared for a left downwind entry and then for landing.

This landing at Rogers was uneventful. We taxied over to Beaver Lake Aviation and shut down. Once again, I had landed too late to sample the food at the café.