Thanksgiving Travel (GA-Style) - KJYO-65J
This year is the first year we've taken the plane to visit the family in Georgia for Thanksgiving and I was really looking forward to avoiding spending 10+ hours on the road - one way.
As one might expect, planning for the 425 nm trip began days ahead of our expected departure of 0700 Eastern on 23 Nov. I kept track of the weather systems and it looked like the trip would not be in too much danger of icing and, in order to provide room for luggage and the dog, I offloaded 120 pounds of fuel the night of 22 Nov. I had given some thought to departing that evening, but the winds gusting well over 25 knots dispelled that notion. Still, flight plans were filed Tuesday night (using the newly re-authorized DUAT) so that wouldn't be necessary Wednesday morning.
We packed light (everybody was limited to 20 pounds of luggage - but the wife was surprised by how much she could squeeze into 20 pounds) and trundled out to the plane early Wednesday morning. Preflight found nothing awry and we loaded up the plane with luggage and passengers for an on-time departure.
Following the checklist for cold-weather starts...couple extra shots of prime, clear prop, start engine...cough, but no start. No problem. One more shot of prime, key starter again, turn over a couple times, cough, no start, puff of white exhaust floats past window. Hmmm...it's never done that before. No more prime this time, try again. No start, more exhaust smoke. Wait, this isn't exhaust.
I tell my right-seat passenger to exit the plane while my training kicks in to attempt to start the engine one more time hoping it will start and suck the flames into the engine where they belong. No joy. I reiterate to my teen-aged passenger to get out of the plane and he slowly starts unbuckling his seatbelt and working his way out of the plane. I quickly shut down electrics, pull mixture, unlatch my own belt, get out and grab the fire extinguisher - only to see the teenager still in his seat. Time for more extreme measures...
"James, there's a fire. Get out of the damned plane."
Yep. That worked. He was out of the plane in 2.8 seconds followed by the wife and dog 1.2 seconds after that. So much for avoiding panic...
I quickly confirm there's an orange glow in the cowl and I aim the extinguisher inside and pull the trigger. As I'm working to put out the fire, I happen to notice my family offloading the plane. Perhaps they don't understand the concept of fire in relative proximity to 60 gallons of high-octane aviation fuel. I quickly tell them to move away from the plane while I work to put the fire out. My wife goes to see if she can find one of the linemen while I start checking to see if I can see any further evidence of flame.
Nope. The extinguisher has done its job (after an unknown number of years waiting for just this purpose).
I begin cleaning up a bit and double-checking everything as the lineman my wife found pulls up to help out. We pulled off the top of the cowl to see what we could see and found nothing obviously burned out. Still, I (not to mention my wife) would feel better having the plane checked out by the mechanic before taking to the air. We offloaded a couple of key items (laptop, book, dog) and secured the plane until the mechanic was due to arrive an hour later.
We're obviously no longer departing on-time this day.
The mechanic showed up at the expected time and I quickly corralled him to explain the situation. He obliged us by pulling the plane into the hangar right away to start cleaning it up and seeing what damage may have been done and I went back to the lobby of the terminal building to spend quality time with the family.
A few hours later, the plane was back in service after having a new scat tube and heat-shrink for a wiring harness installed. All-in-all, the damage was very light considering what could have been and I even got kudos from the mechanics for getting the fire out quickly.
You might imagine the trepidation expressed by at least one of my passengers about getting in the plane for the trip. Still, they trusted me and the mechanics more than their fear and we loaded up once again for departure. This time the engine caught on the first try and we taxied out for departure on runway 35.
Takeoff was normal and we were soon vectored on course for our first stop in Elkin, NC (KZEF). The weather was smooth and clear, but we did have to suffer headwinds on the order of 20 knots. As we neared Roanoke, however, clouds began to appear ahead. Over to the west was clear and over to the east was clear, but where we needed to go was murky. We were cruising at 10,000 feet and the cloud deck began descending to meet us the farther south we flew. Soon I could see the ground straight down, but all else was cloudy - shortly after that it was all white.
I turned on the pitot heat and got the OK from ATC to flip over to FlightWatch for a weather update. There were no reports of icing in my area and the weather about 20 miles farther south was much better. I filed a PIREP of my current conditions and switched back to ATC and asked for 8000 feet. I didn't want to get much lower due to the hilly terrain below, but the controller wouldn't let me keep 9000 (since I was heading southwest). It wasn't too long before I could once again see the ground through the misty air straight down and the clouds dissipated another few miles south, just as advertised - with no signs of ice.
We made a smooth visual approach to KZEF and was met by a lineman who happily refueled 71R while the family and I took care of nature calls. During the preflight check, I decided it was best to put some oil in the engine so I proceeded to take off the oil cap. Why is this significant? Good question.
As I took off the cap, it bumped against the opening in the cowl and I lost my grip on the cap. No problem, I thought, there's a chain connecting it to the filler neck. Only the chain was broken and I heard the cap bounce around as it found a new home somewhere below. I looked in the cowl flaps hoping to see it lying on the bottom of the cowl, but it wasn't there. I was really not looking forward to pulling off the cowl to find this wayward oil cap. One of the helpful guys at the FBO loaned me a flashlight and a set of "fingers" and I climbed up on the ladder, shined the light down the oil filler opening - and there was the oil cap sitting on a ledge between two cylinders. The "fingers" made it a snap to pull it out. Relieved I wouldn't have to dismantle the cowl for the second time in a day, I loaded up the passengers for the second leg of the flight.
Takeoff was uneventful and I turned south on course while I climbed up high enough for Atlanta Center to hear me. Every time I fly through Atlanta Center airspace around Barrett's Mountain VOR, Hickory and Charlotte, I keep wanting to ask the controller if he's the Don Brown, but I've never quite worked up the nerve. I quickly contacted ZDC and the controller gave me my squawk code and initial climb clearance. A minute later he asked if I could accept clearance direct Greenwood, SC. I confirmed I could and he said "standby while I work that out". A few minutes later he came back with even better news - direct Colliers VOR (IRQ). Having that "/G" suffix really can save routing time and distance.
The trip south from KZEF was again smooth and uneventful, but there were some pretty cool scenes of clouds and sky. IRQ came and went and Augusta Approach cleared me to descend to 3000 feet at pilot's discretion. I decided to hold altitude for a little while longer so I could set up a steady descent to Wrens (65J). Soon enough, I had the town of Wrens in sight, keyed the CTAF for pilot-controlled lighting and was rewarded with the prompt appearance of the airport beacon sending me its slow green-white staccato in the encroaching dusk.
I set up the slow descent as planned and soon after canceled IFR. Approach to 65J was uneventful and we settled in for a fair landing.
Total flight time: 4.5 hours
Total door-to-door time: 11 hours (almost to the minute)
Even with the unexpected repair time thrown in, our total time was only about 1 hour more than it would have been had we driven (with no traffic) - and I didn't have to deal with the other drivers (and we all know it's the other drivers who are the bad ones, right?).
The weekend was pleasant with comfortable temperatures and good, quality time with family. One of the highlights of the weekend was a short flight with my 4-year-old nephew. My folks had taken him to the annual air show in Augusta a couple months before and he fell in love with the planes (as most right-minded boys do :) and they had promised him I would give him a ride the next time I brought down the plane. Well, this was it and I was granted calm winds and CAVU conditions on Saturday for the occasion.
We went to the airport (a short 7-minute drive from my parents' home), loaded up, fit the headsets and fired up the engine (no more problems to report there). The excitement was uncontainable from that point on. I back-taxied out to runway 29, turned around and smoothly advanced the throttle. As the Continental's 230 horsepower began its throaty roar, I could hear the giggle over the headset - but that didn't compare to his elation as we left the ground below us.
I will definitely be signing up for EAA's Young Eagles.
The next day was our scheduled departure for home. Again, on a normal holiday visit like this I'd be dreading the upcoming 10-11 hours while packing the car early in the morning. Not this day. We arose leisurely, had a nice relaxing breakfast and lounged around for a few hours more than we could have had we driven.
Of course, I couldn't just relax the whole time as I needed to get updates on the weather and plan a route home. My plan was to simply reverse my route south which would take us from Thomson, GA (KHQU) (for a fuel stop) to KZEF again, then on to home base at Leesburg, VA (KJYO). Winds aloft predictions showed we would have a nice tailwind at 9000 feet - "nice" meaning in the neighborhood of 30 knots for most of the route home. The only significant negative factor was most of the route would be cloudy with temperatures comfortably above freezing at 9000 for the entire route home.
Soon enough, the appointed time came and we packed our few bags in the family car for the short drive to the field. Loaded up with the preflight done and we were fired up in about 20 minutes for the short hop to KHQU. Ceilings along this hop were fairly low, but high enough to allow VFR flight. For a hop this short, I preferred not to bother increasing the local ATC facility's traffic count.
I landed and pulled up to the pumps to find the least expensive gas for my trip - holiday special of $3.15/gal. Again, to keep the weight legal, I filled the tanks to 30 gallons each giving me about a 4.5 hour range and filed my IFR flight plan to KZEF.
We climbed aboard, taxied to the runway, did the run-up checks and activated the landline link to Augusta Clearance Delivery. They gave us our initial clearance (just to the Colliers VOR (IRQ)) and gave us an immediate departure window. We didn't delay and were quickly in the air climbing through the thing low overcast layer on our way to our initial altitude. Not long after that we got clearance on course at 9000 feet.
The flight to KZEF was smooth and uneventful with most of that route between layers. However, as we neared KZEF the lower layer began "climbing". This combined with our newly assigned altitude of 6000 feet put us in the soup. KZEF does not have weather reporting capability so I was constrained to listening to nearby airports for weather. Fields to the north/west were reporting rain and low ceilings, but fields south/east were reported no precipitation and fairly high ceilings. I was hopeful KZEF was closer to the latter category.
Flying along in the clouds, I was once again thankful for maintaining proficiency with training flights as this was going to be a full approach (GPS RWY 25) in the clouds until descending on final. We broke out of the clouds a comfortable 1700 feet or so above the ground - only to discover a low fog layer below. There was virtually zero chance of finding the field or making a visual approach with that so I aborted the approach, switched back to ATC and got a clearance to Lynchburg, VA (KLYH), my alternate. Let this be a lesson: Even though the weather forecast called for high ceilings and no rain at my destination, filing an alternate (with an ILS) turned out to be a good thing.
Most of the way to KLYH was in the clouds with occasional breaks between layers. FlightWatch confirmed I could expect these conditions to persist all the way to KLYH which was reporting light rain with visibility of 2 miles and ceilings under 1000 feet. Another full approach was on the way.
The controller gradually dropped us down and vectored us to final on the ILS RWY 4 into KLYH and I smoothly captured the localizer and then the glide slope. We did break out of the clouds as expected and found the light rain definitely kept visibility to within a few miles. Still, we picked up the approach lighting in short order followed by the rest of the runway just a couple moments later. After landing and getting progressive taxi instructions to the ramp, I shut down and checked the fuel level to know how much to order. The tailwinds had indeed been kind (we made it to KLYH in just over 3 hours).
While the linemen were handling the refueling, I went inside to check weather and file the next leg of the flight. The forecast indicated continued rain and thick clouds until several miles southwest of the ADIZ with the heaviest concentration between KLYH and the Casanova VOR (CSN). To avoid the heaviest rain, I filed KLYH-MOL-LDN-KJYO. The clearance I got was KLYH-MOL-CSN-KJYO - putting me right through the heavy rain. After getting airborne I was able to negotiate my original route.
Then I got handed off to Potomac. That was one busy controller. Not only was he having to deal with the usual fun that low weather provides, the Charlottesville, VA (KCHO) ILS was out of service. There were also two planes I heard on the frequency that were having what appeared to be mechanical problems (or were trying to get into KCHO for maintenance). In any case, the controller was very busy and obviously stressed.
Shortly after getting the handoff to the next sector, we penetrated the frontal line and the clouds receded to a very high overcast with occasional mist which precipitated the LOC RWY 17 approach to KJYO. We were vectored around a bit to burn time to allow a C172 into the field ahead of us, but we picked up the lights of KJYO almost as soon as we were vectored onto the FAC.
Flight time home: 3.2 hours. Nice tailwinds considering this time included the aborted approach to KZEF and the vectors for three approaches on the way home.
Total flight time: 10.7 hours
I've posted still photos here.
Departing Leesburg, VA (KJYO) (12:16)
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Landing at Elkin, NC (KZEF) (11:12)
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Departing Elkin, NC (KZEF) (9:20)
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Landing at Thomson, GA (KHQU) (9:00)
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Departing Thomson, GA (KHQU) (11:34)
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GPS RWY 25 at Elkin, NC (KZEF) (16:57)
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ILS RWY 4 at Lynchburg, VA (KLYH) (12:25)
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Departing Lynchburg, VA (KLYH) (10:56)
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Landing at Leesburg, VA (KJYO) (6:00)
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Approaching Leesburg, VA (KJYO) (8:15)
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Trip Highlights (4:04)
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