flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Well, I got back from my first long trip in the DA40 last night - I went to Texas for Thanksgiving and as usual took a somewhat roundabout way:
Total ended up being 20.8 hours in the book, with 12.2 night and 1.0 actual IMC. 2282 nautical miles covered along the way.
It started with a beautiful but windy VFR day in Madison. This is a great time of year to fly up here - The air is already glassy smooth, but it's still warm enough that you don't freeze any body parts together when preflighting.
A couple of hours later, I landed at K52 in Monroe City, MO and was surprised to see a cat come running out when I opened the terminal door. I called Ruth for fuel and went in search of said cat, figuring once I found the kitty door in the side of the hangar that I didn't need to worry too much about the cat being out! (I found *a* cat after fueling the airplane - A different one! I guess they have two airport cats...)
Saddled up and on my way again, I pointed towards Sherman, TX for some $3.45 100LL. However, on the way there I got a little bored... And I hadn't talked to Chip for a while... So I decided to turn about 20 degrees to the left and fly over Bentonville to see if he was around. Sure enough, his hangar door was open and his truck was parked outside, so I spiraled down, landed, and taxied up to say Hi. I even got to meet Chip's wife! I was afraid that Chip was giving up airplanes in favor of bikes after I saw his Husky for sale online and his thread here about delivering his Bonanza to a new owner. I needn't have worried, there's a beautiful 58 Baron parked in the front of his hangar now.
After about an hour of chit-chat with Chip, I left again and discovered that a layer of clouds was developing ahead, and the sun was going down so they were getting hard to see. So, I air-filed IFR with Razorback Approach, using V63 so I could stay as low as possible due to headwinds. Later, I requested and was granted direct Sherman (KSWI), but eventually Fort Worth Center put me back on V63 due to poor radar coverage at 4,000 feet. I landed in Sherman and fueled up.
Next stop was Addison. Spike was already gone to T82, but Stu picked me up and we went out for some yummy Texas BBQ at the Spring Creek BBQ near the airport. Finally, I flew a short hop over to KFTW, directly over the top of DFW at 3500 feet:
The next day, I let Troy drool all over the airplane late in the afternoon, made a quick hop to KGDJ for cheap fuel, and then filed IFR to KEFD, home of NASA's toys. I filed for direct up at 9,000 feet and figured they'd do what they wanted with me - Sure enough, near CLL I got cleared direct BLUBL for the Bluebell Two arrival. While on the arrival, ATC said they could vector me down I-10 (between IAH and HOU) if I got lower, so down I went, to 7,000 and then 5,000. I entered the clouds at about 5,300.
My next clearance was a heading of 160 departing SNDAY, and eventually 150, 120, 110, and 090 to take me down I-10. They also brought me down to 2,000 feet where I was still in the clouds and really getting rocked and rolled! I was quite thankful for the great BFR/IPC workout I'd gotten a few days before. Finally, one last vector onto the ILS 17R at Ellington and I broke out about 1,000 AGL and landed.
I did catch up with PJ for dinner on Friday - We flew up to Brenham (11R) and ate at the little on-field diner there, the Southern Flyer. Cool little 50's-themed place.
Sunday, I got up pretty early and flew to Baytown, TX for cheap fuel before heading northwest to "meat" up with Troy, Spike, Alan, et al for lunch at the Hard Eight BBQ at KSEP. Mmmmm. I formed up with Spike for a bit before we headed our separate ways, and I think he got a picture of me, but due to turbulence my passenger apparently switched my phone to video mode, so I now have a series of short videos of Spike's airplane in flight.
Heading north out of the D/FW Bravo, I got GREAT tailwinds - I actually could have made it from Fort Worth all the way back to Madison without refueling! However, I'm a cheap bastard so I stopped at David Jay Perry in Oklahoma to tank up with $3.46 100LL, and another stop in Washington, Iowa to fill the empty space for $3.73/gal. While there, a nice Cessna 340 pulled up behind me as I was swiping my card, and out hopped Dr. Brent Blue of aeromedix.com, on his way home from Maryland.
Also on the way into Washington, I decided to put my glide calculations to the test, as well as collect some data on an extended glide. I decided that I should be able to make it onto the desired runway if I arrived a mile short of the airport at pattern altitude, and calculated that with the winds aloft I'd seen, I should be able to do that if I pulled the power 20 miles from the destination. So, 20 miles out at 7500 feet, I pulled the throttle to idle, and I was able to glide all the way in to landing without adding any power. The glide angle over the ground was excellent - UNTIL I turned final (into the wind), when I made Ted's Steinway-esque glides look good - And now that I've dumped the data, after turning final I dropped 777 feet of altitude in 2959 feet of forward travel, a descent angle of a whopping 14.7º!
Finally, I flew my last leg back to Madison, and kept the power on in the descent this time - And got a nice 197 knots of groundspeed:
The winds at Madison were a bit squirrelly down low, so after doing a funky little dance in the flare on my first approach, I went around and got her down nicely on the second try.
All in all, an excellent trip - And I'm now up to a little over 50 hours in type on the DA40.
Total ended up being 20.8 hours in the book, with 12.2 night and 1.0 actual IMC. 2282 nautical miles covered along the way.
It started with a beautiful but windy VFR day in Madison. This is a great time of year to fly up here - The air is already glassy smooth, but it's still warm enough that you don't freeze any body parts together when preflighting.
A couple of hours later, I landed at K52 in Monroe City, MO and was surprised to see a cat come running out when I opened the terminal door. I called Ruth for fuel and went in search of said cat, figuring once I found the kitty door in the side of the hangar that I didn't need to worry too much about the cat being out! (I found *a* cat after fueling the airplane - A different one! I guess they have two airport cats...)
Saddled up and on my way again, I pointed towards Sherman, TX for some $3.45 100LL. However, on the way there I got a little bored... And I hadn't talked to Chip for a while... So I decided to turn about 20 degrees to the left and fly over Bentonville to see if he was around. Sure enough, his hangar door was open and his truck was parked outside, so I spiraled down, landed, and taxied up to say Hi. I even got to meet Chip's wife! I was afraid that Chip was giving up airplanes in favor of bikes after I saw his Husky for sale online and his thread here about delivering his Bonanza to a new owner. I needn't have worried, there's a beautiful 58 Baron parked in the front of his hangar now.
After about an hour of chit-chat with Chip, I left again and discovered that a layer of clouds was developing ahead, and the sun was going down so they were getting hard to see. So, I air-filed IFR with Razorback Approach, using V63 so I could stay as low as possible due to headwinds. Later, I requested and was granted direct Sherman (KSWI), but eventually Fort Worth Center put me back on V63 due to poor radar coverage at 4,000 feet. I landed in Sherman and fueled up.
Next stop was Addison. Spike was already gone to T82, but Stu picked me up and we went out for some yummy Texas BBQ at the Spring Creek BBQ near the airport. Finally, I flew a short hop over to KFTW, directly over the top of DFW at 3500 feet:
The next day, I let Troy drool all over the airplane late in the afternoon, made a quick hop to KGDJ for cheap fuel, and then filed IFR to KEFD, home of NASA's toys. I filed for direct up at 9,000 feet and figured they'd do what they wanted with me - Sure enough, near CLL I got cleared direct BLUBL for the Bluebell Two arrival. While on the arrival, ATC said they could vector me down I-10 (between IAH and HOU) if I got lower, so down I went, to 7,000 and then 5,000. I entered the clouds at about 5,300.
My next clearance was a heading of 160 departing SNDAY, and eventually 150, 120, 110, and 090 to take me down I-10. They also brought me down to 2,000 feet where I was still in the clouds and really getting rocked and rolled! I was quite thankful for the great BFR/IPC workout I'd gotten a few days before. Finally, one last vector onto the ILS 17R at Ellington and I broke out about 1,000 AGL and landed.
I did catch up with PJ for dinner on Friday - We flew up to Brenham (11R) and ate at the little on-field diner there, the Southern Flyer. Cool little 50's-themed place.
Sunday, I got up pretty early and flew to Baytown, TX for cheap fuel before heading northwest to "meat" up with Troy, Spike, Alan, et al for lunch at the Hard Eight BBQ at KSEP. Mmmmm. I formed up with Spike for a bit before we headed our separate ways, and I think he got a picture of me, but due to turbulence my passenger apparently switched my phone to video mode, so I now have a series of short videos of Spike's airplane in flight.
Heading north out of the D/FW Bravo, I got GREAT tailwinds - I actually could have made it from Fort Worth all the way back to Madison without refueling! However, I'm a cheap bastard so I stopped at David Jay Perry in Oklahoma to tank up with $3.46 100LL, and another stop in Washington, Iowa to fill the empty space for $3.73/gal. While there, a nice Cessna 340 pulled up behind me as I was swiping my card, and out hopped Dr. Brent Blue of aeromedix.com, on his way home from Maryland.
Also on the way into Washington, I decided to put my glide calculations to the test, as well as collect some data on an extended glide. I decided that I should be able to make it onto the desired runway if I arrived a mile short of the airport at pattern altitude, and calculated that with the winds aloft I'd seen, I should be able to do that if I pulled the power 20 miles from the destination. So, 20 miles out at 7500 feet, I pulled the throttle to idle, and I was able to glide all the way in to landing without adding any power. The glide angle over the ground was excellent - UNTIL I turned final (into the wind), when I made Ted's Steinway-esque glides look good - And now that I've dumped the data, after turning final I dropped 777 feet of altitude in 2959 feet of forward travel, a descent angle of a whopping 14.7º!
Finally, I flew my last leg back to Madison, and kept the power on in the descent this time - And got a nice 197 knots of groundspeed:
The winds at Madison were a bit squirrelly down low, so after doing a funky little dance in the flare on my first approach, I went around and got her down nicely on the second try.
All in all, an excellent trip - And I'm now up to a little over 50 hours in type on the DA40.
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