A "flat lander" would like to fly from Florida to California.

FloridaPilot

FloridaPilot

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To fly an airplane to a buyer, (Not me personally). What is the safest way to get there in the airplane without it being too difficult. I didn't want to hijack a previous thread.


Trip is from KSPG to KSDM


Thank you!
 
Follow roads.

What are you flying?
 
I did that exact route as a complete noob after purchasing my plane in Florida and flew it home to CA. After Dallas tracked I-40 but was making a stop in Vegas. Easy Peasy.

Got to learn about Destiny Altitude first hand at a high altitude field in New Mexico on a hot day after a top off...was within performance numbers but was eye opener for sure when you are used to 1000' fpm climbs!...other then that is was a normal XC trip.

Having Foreflight and ABD-B receiver on board with real time information easily shaved a day off my trip by being able to adjust for weather conditions in real time. Had planned to track I-10 out of FL but weather pushed me up to northern GA before heading west.
 
mtuomi said:
Just follow I-10, take a left after Blythe.
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A little simpler, follow I-10 to Casa Grande AZ (between Tucson and Phoenix), then hang a left to follow I-8 all the way to San Diego. I-8 grazes the R-areas around Yuma, so you might need to parallel it a couple of miles to the north.
 
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For my ELP to BLH leg I initially planned V94 to stay out of all the various airspace in AZ. The convective activity had other ideas. There weren't any developed thunderstorms, but plenty of showers to dodge visually and with ADS-B weather for longer range planning. My biggest regret was I didn't have my Oxygen tank and was stuck under the layer about 8500. If I had Oxygen I would have been at 12,500+ and just navigating around the buildups with a much smoother ride. I am Instrument rated, but made that leg VFR for easier course changes. Of course ATC in that region is plenty understanding of the need to alter course. For SDM you could just do V66 to V317. Which, of course, is just I8
 
Great thread and timely! I have to start planning a similar trip in the Fall to bring my plane back from Florida. Hopefully DA won't be too much of an issue in the Fall weather (and perhaps winds/turbulence won't be too much of a factor.)

What would be a "reasonable" time to fly each leg of the trip? Would a 4-5 hour per day cadence make sense? Or is it possible to eek-out an 8 hour flight day? I know a lot of this would depend on turbulence, WX, etc... but for planning purposes, would be good to know!
 
chartbundle said:
For my ELP to BLH leg I initially planned V94 to stay out of all the various airspace in AZ.
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Ask ABQ center after the Tuscon approach hand off and BEFORE the PHX controllers (worst in the world) if you can get a clearance through the restricted areas. I had one california trip on a July 4th with moderate to severe storms all across a line from PHX to Blythe. Controller offered a re-route through all the "R" areas to Yuma then north which got me around that activity. It also helped that he had huge sectors he was covering low altitude and I was practically his only traffic from Deming NM to the California border:)
 
rtk11 said:
Great thread and timely! I have to start planning a similar trip in the Fall to bring my plane back from Florida. Hopefully DA won't be too much of an issue in the Fall weather (and perhaps winds/turbulence won't be too much of a factor.)

What would be a "reasonable" time to fly each leg of the trip? Would a 4-5 hour per day cadence make sense? Or is it possible to eek-out an 8 hour flight day? I know a lot of this would depend on turbulence, WX, etc... but for planning purposes, would be good to know!
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Shoot for two 4 hours legs, checking weather after the first leg or have a meal. I'd try to time it to go through most of the desert before 1pm. We get massive buildups in the late afternoon this time of year. If you choose the I-10 route, DON'T mess with pm flying unless severe clear after 12pm local (or option below). You'll have the border eliminating all of your escape south alternates. On the plus side from El Paso westbound, you can hit an airport about every 30-45 minutes allowing you to get as far as possible then hunker down before the storms arrive.
 
You're gonna have headwinds. But you are going to gain an hour when you cross the timezone, so the day will be longer if you have the stamina. I like two 3 1/2 hour legs per day. Then an airport with a hotel that will come pick you up.
 
rtk11 said:
What would be a "reasonable" time to fly each leg of the trip? Would a 4-5 hour per day cadence make sense? Or is it possible to eek-out an 8 hour flight day? I know a lot of this would depend on turbulence, WX, etc... but for planning purposes, would be good to know!
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We did it in 2.5 days and 21 hours on the Hobbs in a 182 coast to coast even with some diversions for storms and grounded a bit for weather (which ended up just being an extended lunch stop). Day one was FL to Dallas area, day 2 was TX to Las Vegas, Day 3 Vegas to CA. Could have actually pushed home that second night but had planned a night in Vegas.

We had time to spare built into the trip just in case, but we were on a ferry mission to get back home, not a sightseeing trek

Personal endurance in addition to external forces will dictate your hours per day...but with a cooler filled with snacks and drinks we stopped every 3-4 hours for fuel and grabbed a crew car to the local recommended eatery at meal time and we were moving sunrise to almost sunset without issue.

I flight planned each leg and stop, but rarely did we actually land at any of my planned stops. We just made it up as we went and adjusted accordingly depending on how we felt and real time conditions. Just landing at random Podunk airports across the country to see what was in store for us was the highlight of the trip.
 
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If your route crosses high mountain ranges, if the winds at ridge-top level are above 20 kts, it's best to wait for calmer winds, in order to avoid unmanageable downdrafts and turbulence. It's also best to cross the mountains in daylight.
 
I missed the endurance question... My KBAZ to KLPC trip was supposed to be right around 8 flight hours... Due to winds it ended up being 9.8(KBAZ 3.6 KELP 3.7 KBLH 2.5 KLPC) flight hours and, according to the GPS around 10.5 airport to airport hours. It sucked... it really really sucked... it sucked a lot, 3.7 in continuous light-moderate over NM/AZ sucked. The only thing that made it tolerable was that chasing the sun meant I was still landing in daytime. I have no plans to repeat that, ever. Lots of snacks, lots of water, music and auto-pilot when I wasn't getting beaten up by turbulence.
 
Two legs per day sounds like a good pace. When I flew to Osh from SoCal a couple weeks ago, I did three legs of about 3 hours, 15 minutes each to end up in Carroll, Iowa. Loooooong day! Like chartbundle, I was bucking light to moderate chop all through AZ/NM (with a touch of tailwind, though), so that stint seemed like 5 hours by itself. It's the one trip where I regretted not fitting autopilot!

On the way back, we chose to stop in Dalhart, TX (in the Panhandle) so we could depart 0-dark-early to get to Winslow AZ before 9 a.m. Even so, we probably put an extra 0.7 on the Hobbs jinking around T-storms. It was a fantastic experience...my longest trip before that was a flight from SoCal to Chandler, AZ.
 
James331 said:
Follow roads.

What are you flying?
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Cessna P206 B 1960ish (I'm not flying this trip but it seems like a fun ride). They just got a Century 3 Autopilot installed for the trip, Only one way.
 
I'm also a flatlander from the Northeast, and did a slightly more northerly route than that in the other direction a few years ago (at least through the rockies). The route I took was a line between Bakersfield, Flagstaff, and Albuquerque stopping in Las Vegas (a slight detour) and Albuquerque. I found that 4 hours a day through the high terrain (I was flying at 11,500) was all that I could manage. Also, although the regs don't require it I really wish I'd taken oxygen for the flight. It might be less of an issue for those that live on higher ground, but I think that was the reason that I kept the days short in the mountains. I was too tired for a second leg after 4 hours. That wasn't the case on the "flatland" legs.

Early starts in the morning help to beat the full heat of the day, and improve climb performance :)
 
Good news; you can fly coast to coast and retain your flatlander claim!
 
If you follow I-10 you don't need to get very high. Just be sure to cross New Mexico early in the day if you're going before October

Gary
 
GaryV said:
If you follow I-10 you don't need to get very high. Just be sure to cross New Mexico early in the day if you're going before October

Gary
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I suspect that Floridians may have a different definition of "very high" from you or me.
 
Walboy said:
Edited to add: for some reason, I like stopping at Fort Stockton, Texas. Not a whole lot there, but a good way to break up West Texas with a stop. They used to have a worn out Dodge Durango Police vehicle for a courtesy car. Deming NM is also a good stop.
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Or, Pecos, TX (PEQ). Last time passing through there were brisket tacos is the fridge. Good chit.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
Well, there's not a lot of this:


View attachment 55450
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I guess members of Reba McEntire's band got killed smashing into flat land east of San Diego.

OtayMtn.jpg
 
I guess members of Reba McEntire's band got killed smashing into flat land east of San Diego.

I was based at SDM for a few months before we moved to AZ. We took a trip up Otay Mt to the wreck site. Very sobering. 50-60 feet more and they would have missed. Bits and pieces still litter the ground.
 
pmanton said:
I guess members of Reba McEntire's band got killed smashing into flat land east of San Diego.

I was based at SDM for a few months before we moved to AZ. We took a trip up Otay Mt to the wreck site. Very sobering. 50-60 feet more and they would have missed. Bits and pieces still litter the ground.
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Seems like so many crashes are like that. A friend of mine hit a mountain in Alaska, 90 feet below the top. The terrain is described as rapid rising to vertical. Most of the pieces of the plane was 70 feet below and 50 feet behind the point of impact.
 
Zeldman said:
Seems like so many crashes are like that. A friend of mine hit a mountain in Alaska, 90 feet below the top. The terrain is described as rapid rising to vertical. Most of the pieces of the plane was 70 feet below and 50 feet behind the point of impact.
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Reba's band was delayed after a concert, and the IFR flight plan had gone stale before the HS125 could depart. The crew decided to depart VFR, and stay low to avoid the nearby San Diego Class B shelf. Any number of bad decisions there.

In 1977 a Lear 24 carrying Frank Sinatra's mother took off from Palm Springs. Despite a departure clearance calling for a right turn, the airplane continued straight ahead into a 10,000' ridge near Mt. San Gorgonio, about 20 miles away from KPSP (elev. 464'). Ironically, the Sinatra crash site was close to that of the F-4C Phantom II piloted by Dean Martin's son ten years later.
 
pmanton said:
I guess members of Reba McEntire's band got killed smashing into flat land east of San Diego.

I was based at SDM for a few months before we moved to AZ. We took a trip up Otay Mt to the wreck site. Very sobering. 50-60 feet more and they would have missed. Bits and pieces still litter the ground.
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Night VFR requires careful planning!
 
A P210?? Just climb into the flight levels, and go Direct Enter Enter. Don't forget to get gas along the way.
 
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