Date: Wednesday, October 3, 2001, 1:41:56 PM Subject: Six landings at six airports in 19.7 hrs Howdy all, This Sunday, I learned that a great aunt had finally passed away (after an extended bout with Alzheimer's) so I had to get to the funeral on Tuesday. I checked on commercial flights, and the best I could get was a flight from SBA to DEN, then wait 3 hours for the connection from DEN to WDG (Woodring), in Enid, OK. Total travel time was about 7.5 hours, and, taking into account the mandatory "2 hours before departure" requirement, amounted to almost ten hours of personal time to get from Santa Barbara to Enid. So, considering the round trip total, this amounted to about 15 hours of travel time, and 20 hours of personal time allocated to the trip. So, I checked the weather, planned the flight, and flew my Cherokee 6-300, from Santa Barbara to Enid, Oklahoma. Of course, I programmed the Garmin GNS530 with the routes, and let the S-Tec S55 autopilot manage the flight, to relieve the tedium of holding a constant course and altitude for almost 10 hours. I also used the intervening waypoint VORs as backups, in case both GPS units fail. The route and actual times to Enid was: SBA -> INW (Winslow, AZ) [4.3 hrs] -> LVS (Las Vegas, NM) [2.5 hrs] -> WDG (Woodring apt, Enid, OK). [2.9 hrs] The actual times were greater than the estimated times because the actual winds were much stronger than predicted in the WX forecasts. From the GPS winds calculator page, there were some segments where I had 35-40 kt headwinds, at 10,500 MSL. I really enjoyed viewing the large canyons in northern Arizona, before Winslow. Not quite as large as Grand Canyon, of course, but still quite impressive. I flew right over Meteor Crater. It's a pretty impressive sight from air (even more so as a tourist). As you approach it, you see this large pockmark in the middle of an otherwise flat piece of land -- and, as soon as you realize what it is, you instinctively look up and scan the skies looking for the next one that going to come down, someday. Seeing the meteor's impact site gives you a sense of the age and geological history of the earth, and how tiny and fragile is the human history in comparison. On the flight from Winslow to Enid, there is not much to see except wide open spaces. In northern Texas and western Oklahoma, the ground is covered with hundreds of square sections, filled with medium and large-sized green crop circles, determined by the favorite irrigation method. On these longer flights without a lot of visually interesting sights, I found it really handy to have an FM radio on my panel. The auto-program button was very useful, as every two hundred miles or so, I had to find the next set of clear FM stations. Listening to ATC for flight following is only entertaining up to a point. :^) I much prefer listening to classic rock-n-roll music to keep me alert. As I left Winslow, the sun was setting, and there were long shadows on the ground. It is interesting to watch your own plane's shadow fly across the landscape below you. As I flew over the mountains east of Santa Fe (SAF), which has quite a high altitude, is was a very strange feeling to be so high in the air, at 9500 - 10500 ft. MSL, and still be so low AGL (500 - 1000 ft. AGL). Perhaps, those of you with a lot of mountain flying experience are past this already, but I found it to be strange. The last hour of the outbound flight was in darkness, landing around 8:30pm CDT. Vance AFB was shut down, and so, too, was its airspace -- so I didn't have to worry about flying the 1000 ft. corridor over Vance. On my nighttime approach into Enid, I was able to enjoy watching the moon rise -- from a small arc on the horizon, becoming the large moon just above the horizon, to a spectacular full moon in the sky. The bright moon is a very beautiful sight, on a clear night sky. The next morning was the funeral. Even though funerals can be emotionally trying times, the reverend who spoke at my aunt's services, gave a mostly celebratory account of her life. It was with a very uplifting feeling that most of us left the services -- we were glad to have known Aunt Maggie, glad to have been part of her world, and we were encouraged to leave and try to do as well as she did or better with our own lives. I was able to catch up with my relatives. One of my cousins, Tony, is a former US Marines Harrier pilot, and is now a pilot for Northwestern Airlines. Tony's wife, Felicia, is a former United attendant now-turned-CFI, working out of a small airport near Tulsa, OK. For their honeymoon several years ago, they had rented a C172 and flew it from Tulsa to California and back over unpopulated areas, at 1000 ft. AGL. I guess Tony's perspective is that he enjoys flying, but wanted to see things up close (unlike when he's flying his 737s). After the funeral, lunch reception that followed, and getting reacquainted with all my relatives, it was time to leave for my return flight back to California. The route back was similar, but not exactly the same because: I was leaving at about 4pm CDT, which required that my fuel stops be larger ones that stay open until 10pm or 11pm. The route and times back were: WDG (Enid) -> SAF (Santa Fe, NM) [3.8 hrs] -> PRC (Prescott, AZ) [2.5 hrs] -> SBA (Santa Barbara, CA) [3.5 hrs] Some things I learned on the flight back: * flying westerly in the afternoon is NOT a good way to see things; looking into a setting sun is not fun, and just highlights all the tiny scratches in your acrylic windshield. * It's a good idea to wear sunblock when flying in direct sunlight; neither the windshield nor the pilot's window blocks UV very well (if at all). * nighttime flying over unpopulated areas is really, really boring -- there's nothing to look at. Thank God for the FM radio! * moonlit night flying can be very pretty -- after I got passed the high cirrus clouds over northern Texas, and into New Mexico, the moon became visible. * Santa Fe is a very pretty airport. The Santa Fe Jet Center has a very aesthetically pleasing architecture style (matching the regional Indian styles). It has a nice woman managing it, too. There were a number of "Santa Fe Catalogs" lying about, and from my quick scan, it finally became apparent to me that Santa Fe is something of an "artist colony", not too dissimilar from Sedona. * each landing is different. I rolled the landing at Santa Fe. One second, I was in a stabilized glide onto the runway, and the next, I was rolling on the runway. However, at Prescott, I bounced the landing: I flared and stalled about 3-4 inches above the runway, hit the runway and bounced back up, and then recovered into a barely okay landing. Don't know why, exactly -- maybe because rny 21L at Prescott at 9pm is really, really dark -- there is almost no surrounding light, except the little blue taxi lights on the taxiway alongside. * Prescott seemed to have have quite a collection of airplanes; someday, I'll come back in the daytime, when I can see them more clearly. My arrival into SBA occurred in the form of an ILS 7 approach. Since I was arriving at midnight, the airport was closed, and there was no one in the sky to keep me company, except that ATC fellow at Los Angeles Center, at 119.05. ATC cleared me for the ILS 7 approach. So, I flew a GPS-fed-autopilot-guided approach into SBA rny 7, assumed controls at about 200 feet AGL, and then landed without any bump at all. It was one of those landings where there is an infinitesimally small amount of time between flying and not-flying (rolling on the ground), during which you are not quite sure when you actually touched down. After the Prescott Captain Kangaroo landing, I felt better. Whew! Six landings at six airports in four different states in 19.7 hours is my current personal maximum. I hope that I don't have an occasion to exceed this, except possibly in a much faster, roomier, more comfortable airplane! (you know, like a King Air! :^) I also just did my bit to help General Aviation recover from its current economic doldrums, by contributing to the income of at least five different FBOs. Hope you all get to fly soon or some more! -- Best regards, Alan K. Stebbens , N4184R, PA32-300, SBA