Flight to Kirksville - Part 8
This time when we taxied into Beaver Lake, a lineman was there to guide us in. Following his hand signals, I taxied us into a parking spot and shut down. He chocked the airplane as I pushed the canopy open.
“You need any gas?” he asked.
“Yep,” I replied. “Top us off, please.”
Inside the FBO as the linesman toiled, we hit the restrooms and vending machines. I found the place’s well-equipped flight planning room and checked the weather. While it was clear here, by the time we reached Longview, eight thousand foot overcast ceilings were forecast to be moving in. We weren’t going that high anyway. But I knew it was a precursor to worsening conditions. Houston was still looking pretty shaky, and it was already so late in the day we wouldn’t reach Longview until suppertime that would make a Houston arrival only possible after dark. As Connie and I joined up again, I told her I was pretty tired and we would arrive in Longview so late I might want to spend the night there. I really wanted to avoid that since the weather forecasts for getting into Houston VFR were looking even shakier over the weekend; but, at Longview, we would be only a two hour hop away and we might have a chance at making it in between lapses in bad weather. If there were any.
We manned up the Cheetah and started her up, taxiing out to runway 01 again, and taking off northbound. I was barely airborne when the tower cleared me to switch to Approach and for an “on-course” turn, so I banked us right in the climb and headed south. Crossing just west of the downtown Bentonville airport, I told approach we wanted to climb to sixty-five hundred and held the nose up to get there. We leveled off just north of Fort Smith, and I trimmed her out, pulled the power back a little to set 75% power, and then leaned to get best power. We settled in for a cruise.
It was clear here, so we could see the rugged outlines of Fort Smith and the curving snake of the Arkansas River and the Ozark mountains beyond. We listened to approach chatter with the other aircraft in the sky with us, most of them flying faster and climbing higher than we were, a fact that occasionally would make me envious. But we were cooking along just fine in the Cheetah, so I really had no complaints. I was using GPS and VOR tracking to take us once again to the Rich Mountain VOR.
We hit Rich Mountain again and jogged to the south, now pointing the nose directly at Longview even though it was an hour and a hundred miles away. Up ahead, I could see a distinct layer of grey edging toward us; and at first I wasn’t sure if it was a deep layer of fog or the telltale signs of a ceiling right at our altitude. We crept into it, and I pulled the throttle back a bit and started down, just to see what happened. I quickly realized that we had hit what appeared to be layer of fog that went all the way to the ground, though I couldn’t remember seeing such a thing before. We were still solidly VFR even though our visibility had been reduced. I still felt I could see five to seven miles, we could see the ground, and we were using flight following for collision avoidance. (We were talking to Fort Worth Center at that point.) So, I reversed our descent, climbed us back up to fifty-five, and leveled us off there since our courseline had jogged a bit east and that was technically the correct cruising altitude.
We flew over Broken Bow heading south and started seeing the lakes north of Longview when Center handed us off to East Texas Approach who told us to expect runway 13 at Longview. Just inside thirty miles out, I started an enroute descent, a gentle running downhill. I wound up leveling us off at about seventeen hundred as we made the last ten miles in and I reported the field in sight. Approach told us there was no traffic in between the airfield and us and handed us off to the tower.
I was set up for a left base to 13 underneath an overcast and graying sky. Instead of clearing me for that, the tower told me to continue straight ahead and he would call my turn. Okay. There was a Cessna shooting the approach to 13. The controller flew us past the runway threshold, allowing the Cessna to land, and then cleared me to land on 13 when I was technically positioned for a left downwind for 35. Rogering the call, I wheeled us back around, flew us over to the 13 centerline, and then used flaps and a slip to get us down flying the most whacked out approach I had in a long time.
We taxied around the airfield and made our way to KRS. Once there, I went into the flight planning room and checked the weather. There was a good chance we’d run into thunderstorms there and it certainly would be after dark when we arrived. I was also pretty tired. The thought of running marginal VFR in challenging conditions and at night when I was tired was more than I could bear. Even though it didn’t look very good for getting into Houston in the morning, I knew I’d be better equipped to handle marginal VFR flying when I was rested. Connie and I talked about the options and I decided we were going no further. We would spend the night here and see about getting to Houston in the morning.
Mike at KRS was behind the counter. He and I discussed parking the airplane for the night, especially since thunderstorms were forecast to roll sometime after midnight. He asked if we would need a car and, if so, said he could get us a good rate. And he could get us a hotel room at a Holiday Inn Express. I told him we’d appreciate whatever he could do, so he made the phone calls that set us up.
Once that was done, he fetched a van and we unloaded our bags into it; and he drove us over to the airport terminal where we rented a car from Enterprise. There was a Hertz counter there, too; but it was already closed. And Enterprise had a car we could drive one-way to Houston if needed. After a few minutes at the counter, Connie and I had our rental and took our bags out to a parking lot outside the terminal where both car agencies stored their vehicles. We found the wrong-colored car, threw in our bags, and following the directions Mike had given us, found the Holiday Inn Express without too much trouble.
We got a room on the second floor and then headed out in the car to find dinner. Longview has a lively assortment of restaurants, most of which are located on the Loop on its northern side. We spotted an Outback but were dissuaded from going there because of all the people waiting outside; we knew we’d have an hour wait, and that was more than we could bear. We stopped at Papacita’s, a Mexican restaurant we had spotted from the road. The wait was only ten minutes long, though it seemed at first like the waitress had forgotten us, and the food, when it did arrive, was average. We ate and then returned to the hotel, watching a little TV before going to bed.
I was awakened by the sound of heavy thunder at 2 a.m. It was obvious the predicted thunderstorms had found us, and I was hoping they didn’t pack any hail in their punches. I went back to sleep and awoke about seven or so to overcast skies with low running skud. The hotel offered a continental breakfast in a dining room downstairs; and as we ate it, Connie and I talked about how things were looking and what out options were. I figured if we had to leave the airplane I’d see if my friend Jim might be willing to fly me back up in his Cessna 120 to retrieve the Cheetah if I paid for his gas and gave him a few bucks extra. If not, there was a commuter airline that flew up in from Dallas once a day; I could take Southwest air to Dallas to connect up with it and then fly the Cheetah home.
In the worse case, Connie and I could drive up, but I was a five hour drive up from Houston; so that would take two full days to pull off. It was not something I wanted to do, but it was better to do something like that than tackle weather that couldn’t be handled.
So, we decided to check out of the hotel and go back to KRS. We took our bags out to the Cheetah and then asked the KRS folks to pick us up at the terminal. We turned the car back in and then went back to the pilot’s lounge where I pulled down the latest forecasts and observations. Current observations showed that the ceilings at Nagodoches and Lufkin were at about thirty-five hundred feet but they then dropped to about two thousand in the Houston Intercontinental Airport area and were about seventeen hundred over our destination, Pearland Regional. Forecasts called for those conditions to remain about the same over the next several hours with a thirty percent chance of thunderstorms and rain. The radar showed there was rain in the area but not any thunderstorm activity yet. My bet was they would build and explode a little later in the day as afternoon heating took over. But if we skedaddled, we could get back into Pearland; or, at least, it seemed like we could.
“We’re going to take a shot at it,” I told Connie. “Let’s go.”
To be continued…
“You need any gas?” he asked.
“Yep,” I replied. “Top us off, please.”
Inside the FBO as the linesman toiled, we hit the restrooms and vending machines. I found the place’s well-equipped flight planning room and checked the weather. While it was clear here, by the time we reached Longview, eight thousand foot overcast ceilings were forecast to be moving in. We weren’t going that high anyway. But I knew it was a precursor to worsening conditions. Houston was still looking pretty shaky, and it was already so late in the day we wouldn’t reach Longview until suppertime that would make a Houston arrival only possible after dark. As Connie and I joined up again, I told her I was pretty tired and we would arrive in Longview so late I might want to spend the night there. I really wanted to avoid that since the weather forecasts for getting into Houston VFR were looking even shakier over the weekend; but, at Longview, we would be only a two hour hop away and we might have a chance at making it in between lapses in bad weather. If there were any.
We manned up the Cheetah and started her up, taxiing out to runway 01 again, and taking off northbound. I was barely airborne when the tower cleared me to switch to Approach and for an “on-course” turn, so I banked us right in the climb and headed south. Crossing just west of the downtown Bentonville airport, I told approach we wanted to climb to sixty-five hundred and held the nose up to get there. We leveled off just north of Fort Smith, and I trimmed her out, pulled the power back a little to set 75% power, and then leaned to get best power. We settled in for a cruise.
It was clear here, so we could see the rugged outlines of Fort Smith and the curving snake of the Arkansas River and the Ozark mountains beyond. We listened to approach chatter with the other aircraft in the sky with us, most of them flying faster and climbing higher than we were, a fact that occasionally would make me envious. But we were cooking along just fine in the Cheetah, so I really had no complaints. I was using GPS and VOR tracking to take us once again to the Rich Mountain VOR.
We hit Rich Mountain again and jogged to the south, now pointing the nose directly at Longview even though it was an hour and a hundred miles away. Up ahead, I could see a distinct layer of grey edging toward us; and at first I wasn’t sure if it was a deep layer of fog or the telltale signs of a ceiling right at our altitude. We crept into it, and I pulled the throttle back a bit and started down, just to see what happened. I quickly realized that we had hit what appeared to be layer of fog that went all the way to the ground, though I couldn’t remember seeing such a thing before. We were still solidly VFR even though our visibility had been reduced. I still felt I could see five to seven miles, we could see the ground, and we were using flight following for collision avoidance. (We were talking to Fort Worth Center at that point.) So, I reversed our descent, climbed us back up to fifty-five, and leveled us off there since our courseline had jogged a bit east and that was technically the correct cruising altitude.
We flew over Broken Bow heading south and started seeing the lakes north of Longview when Center handed us off to East Texas Approach who told us to expect runway 13 at Longview. Just inside thirty miles out, I started an enroute descent, a gentle running downhill. I wound up leveling us off at about seventeen hundred as we made the last ten miles in and I reported the field in sight. Approach told us there was no traffic in between the airfield and us and handed us off to the tower.
I was set up for a left base to 13 underneath an overcast and graying sky. Instead of clearing me for that, the tower told me to continue straight ahead and he would call my turn. Okay. There was a Cessna shooting the approach to 13. The controller flew us past the runway threshold, allowing the Cessna to land, and then cleared me to land on 13 when I was technically positioned for a left downwind for 35. Rogering the call, I wheeled us back around, flew us over to the 13 centerline, and then used flaps and a slip to get us down flying the most whacked out approach I had in a long time.
We taxied around the airfield and made our way to KRS. Once there, I went into the flight planning room and checked the weather. There was a good chance we’d run into thunderstorms there and it certainly would be after dark when we arrived. I was also pretty tired. The thought of running marginal VFR in challenging conditions and at night when I was tired was more than I could bear. Even though it didn’t look very good for getting into Houston in the morning, I knew I’d be better equipped to handle marginal VFR flying when I was rested. Connie and I talked about the options and I decided we were going no further. We would spend the night here and see about getting to Houston in the morning.
Mike at KRS was behind the counter. He and I discussed parking the airplane for the night, especially since thunderstorms were forecast to roll sometime after midnight. He asked if we would need a car and, if so, said he could get us a good rate. And he could get us a hotel room at a Holiday Inn Express. I told him we’d appreciate whatever he could do, so he made the phone calls that set us up.
Once that was done, he fetched a van and we unloaded our bags into it; and he drove us over to the airport terminal where we rented a car from Enterprise. There was a Hertz counter there, too; but it was already closed. And Enterprise had a car we could drive one-way to Houston if needed. After a few minutes at the counter, Connie and I had our rental and took our bags out to a parking lot outside the terminal where both car agencies stored their vehicles. We found the wrong-colored car, threw in our bags, and following the directions Mike had given us, found the Holiday Inn Express without too much trouble.
We got a room on the second floor and then headed out in the car to find dinner. Longview has a lively assortment of restaurants, most of which are located on the Loop on its northern side. We spotted an Outback but were dissuaded from going there because of all the people waiting outside; we knew we’d have an hour wait, and that was more than we could bear. We stopped at Papacita’s, a Mexican restaurant we had spotted from the road. The wait was only ten minutes long, though it seemed at first like the waitress had forgotten us, and the food, when it did arrive, was average. We ate and then returned to the hotel, watching a little TV before going to bed.
I was awakened by the sound of heavy thunder at 2 a.m. It was obvious the predicted thunderstorms had found us, and I was hoping they didn’t pack any hail in their punches. I went back to sleep and awoke about seven or so to overcast skies with low running skud. The hotel offered a continental breakfast in a dining room downstairs; and as we ate it, Connie and I talked about how things were looking and what out options were. I figured if we had to leave the airplane I’d see if my friend Jim might be willing to fly me back up in his Cessna 120 to retrieve the Cheetah if I paid for his gas and gave him a few bucks extra. If not, there was a commuter airline that flew up in from Dallas once a day; I could take Southwest air to Dallas to connect up with it and then fly the Cheetah home.
In the worse case, Connie and I could drive up, but I was a five hour drive up from Houston; so that would take two full days to pull off. It was not something I wanted to do, but it was better to do something like that than tackle weather that couldn’t be handled.
So, we decided to check out of the hotel and go back to KRS. We took our bags out to the Cheetah and then asked the KRS folks to pick us up at the terminal. We turned the car back in and then went back to the pilot’s lounge where I pulled down the latest forecasts and observations. Current observations showed that the ceilings at Nagodoches and Lufkin were at about thirty-five hundred feet but they then dropped to about two thousand in the Houston Intercontinental Airport area and were about seventeen hundred over our destination, Pearland Regional. Forecasts called for those conditions to remain about the same over the next several hours with a thirty percent chance of thunderstorms and rain. The radar showed there was rain in the area but not any thunderstorm activity yet. My bet was they would build and explode a little later in the day as afternoon heating took over. But if we skedaddled, we could get back into Pearland; or, at least, it seemed like we could.
“We’re going to take a shot at it,” I told Connie. “Let’s go.”
To be continued…
posted by Andy Foster at 1:32 PM
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