Airplanes and Flying
2006 Osh Kosh / Airventure Trip Report
I had a hard time imagining what this trip would be like when Yvette suggested that we go. It was about a year ago that I told her about Osh Kosh being the Mecca for aviation buffs. Even now I don't have very much experience with very long cross country flights. Most of my flying is for the purpose of gathering test data or chasing pancakes around Arizona in blue CAVU.
Earlier this year I started to get serious about it and slowly started preparing. I ordered maps and studied various possible routes through unfamiliar territory. In March/April, I completed the annual condition inspection and knew we would be ready for long distance cruising. What little free time I had in June and early July I spent writing up flight plans and programming the routes into my GPS, getting it ready for navigation.
I also knew in the back of my mind that we would probably be running into weather. You have to understand that as a pilot that learned to fly in Arizona, and that only normally flies during nearly perfect weather (about 300 days of the year!), one tends to get spoiled. The worst weather I had been in prior to this was when we had 3 mile visibility in San Diego during a fly-in last fall. I had to mentally prepare myself to deal with the possibility that there was going to be something in the sky other than blue and that we might have to have multiple contingency plans.
Catching an extremely high pressure, short fused task at work just before the trip didn't help either. I spent almost no time in the two weeks prior to leaving on planning. Fortunately I had done just about everything I could beforehand and it was just a matter of glancing over the maps for a refresher.
Record setting heat around the country is also not a big motivator to leave the cool comfort of an air conditioned home. The days leading up to our departure were no exception. Los Angeles was busy setting a record high, and Phoenix was getting a solid 110+ degrees on a regular basis.
On Friday night I was down at the airport loading up the plane with our baggage. We have a small carry-on type firm sided case and a duffel bag for clothes, two sleeping bags, a tent, my flight bag full of maps and flying accessories, two fold up bag chairs, an Aero bed (of course), two backpacks, a tool bag, a set of tie downs and a couple of small stuff sacks with miscellaneous junk. Every single cubic inch of baggage compartment was taken up by something. In fact, the two chairs were kind of laying on top of everything above the level of the seats. Packed to capacity. I decided to remove the ballast weight from under the tail to lighten the load and preserve the CG since we had so much baggage. With two people, full fuel and full baggage, we were going to be right at the flight tested limits of the airplane as far as weight goes.
The route of flight I decided on was:
KGYR ->
KAEG ->
KDHT ->
KHUT ->
K89 ->
KBMI ->
KOSH
That's Goodyear, AZ; Double Eagle II in Albuquerque, NM; Dalhart, TX;
Hutchinson, KS; Macon, MO; Bloomington, IL; Osh Kosh, WI.
That put all of the legs at around 2+ hours, with one leg at just over 3 hours. This would give us the opportunity to make rest stops every 2-3 hours and keep plenty of fuel for contingency planning. That plan also included staying in Bloomington for a couple of days to visit friends and family.
KGYR to KAEG
We got an early start Saturday (07/22) morning. After departing Goodyear at about 7am, we headed northeast to the Arizona high country, then almost directly east to our first stop at Double Eagle II just outside of Albuquerque, NM.
It was here we hit our first glitch. KAEG has no tower, so I was self announcing from about 10 miles away. After an uneventful landing and taxi over to the self serve pumps, someone came over to us and said "We were trying to get you on the radio. The airport is closed."
I hate that strange sinking feeling like I just did something wrong without knowing it. There was no message on the AWOS, nor was there a message on the automated advisory, nor did I ever hear another person on the radio while I was in the pattern.
It turns out that a load of fuel was being delivered to the airport just moments earlier. The truck driver apparently tried to make a turn, caught a curb and flipped the tanker (with 5,000 gallons of fuel in it) onto its back. Police and Hazmat folks were busy foaming the area and trying to figure out what to do with the truck. They did not want to lift the truck with a crane to flip it upright for fear of breaking the tank and spilling all the fuel. They also could not empty the tank because the delivery system is gravity fed and gravity was now pointed in the wrong direction. As a result, they closed the road and the runways. Nobody was going anywhere, so we went to the local cafe to sit it out.
KAEG to KDHT
Having suffered a two hour delay in New Mexico, I knew the timetable was blown for the day, so after a pleasant flight over to Dalhart, TX, we sat in the cafe there and thought about what to do for a midpoint stopover.
We decided to stay over in Hutchinson, KS which was our next stop. After getting a FSS briefing, we were off again.
KDHT to KHUT
Now this was an interesting airport. KHUT has three runways which all overlap in a triangular formation. It turns out that I have never flown into an airport with so many active runways, and boy was I confused as to what runway was what. With no familiarity of landmarks or airport configuration, it was really tricky for me to keep all the runway numbers and our heading in sync. It wasn't until I was about half a mile out before I figured out I was lining up on the wrong runway and made a turn to correct. The good thing is that I didn't need much of a turn to line up on downwind the to the correct runway. Good practice, but trial by fire is not for aviation activities.
Here again we were brought in by a lineman for parking. After topping us off, he was kind enough to call a local hotel and cab for us.
We stayed overnight at the Grand Prairie Hotel. Interesting place - it has a water park inside of it. Probably a good thing if you have kids. If you just want peace and quiet however, go elsewhere. The wild, unsupervised children were running around the hotel screaming and playing ball until 10:30pm when I called the front desk to complain. They sent a couple of goons down to flush out the children and turn all the lights out and finally it was quiet.
The next morning was Sunday and we had a rude surprise. There is no cab service on Sunday. The FBO only had one guy there, so they couldn't give us a ride either. Fortunately, the somewhat understaffed hotel did happen to have someone available to give us a ride. For a moment, we were thinking about how long a walk it would be back to the airport.
KHUT to K89
The next day while approaching K89 in Macon, MO, my first thought was "Oops, I made a mistake." I picked this airport from the map just because it was on the way to our destination in a straight line from where we departed at a good distance to have a fuel stop.
We got there and it just looked like a tiny little private strip. According to the AFD they had fuel, so I landed there and taxied over to the building. I was a little concerned because it looked like the fuel pumps were dug up or something.
They were in the process of upgrading the fuel pumps, which is why things were dug up, but they were working and we topped off. They offered us a car if wanted to go get some food, but we declined since we were relatively close to our destination for the day. Landing here was definitely NOT a mistake and in fact it added to our log of cool experiences during this trip.
K89 to KBMI
Bloomington, IL is an interesting little town. The folks are friendly and everything has that slower, small town pace that is just relaxing. The airport is a class D with two good sized runways. On one side there is a passenger terminal for commercial ops. On the other side of the ramp is the GA parking and FBO, Image Air.
This is another funny case of thinking that I was in the wrong place. It looks like the GA part of the airport is abandoned or something. There is a lot of grass growing out of the concrete, and there were very few planes parked outside. Again, looks can be deceiving. We were marshalled in by the linemen and provided with good, friendly service. They brought us a luggage cart for all our junk, and offered help at every step. Good place with great people.
I had tried very hard to memorize as much of the information about the different runways and approaches as possible from the NOTAM. I wrote down some notes about frequencies and drew some pictures to highlight important items.
I carefully flew in at 1,800 MSL and 90 Kts a few miles away from Ripon. I have to say that I never saw anything on the ground that looked like the pictures in the NOTAM. The GPS arrival alarm for RIPON went off and I never even saw the railroad tracks. Not seeing any other airplanes either, I S-turned a bit and started heading toward Fiske. Finally, I spotted the first orange spot on the railroad tracks and knew I was in the right place. At this point, the Fiske controllers were saying that anyone not yet at RIPON needed to hold for 30 minutes, and everyone else should proceed in quickly. I found a Cessna to follow in and everyone was again told to step up the pace. I opened the throttle to 130 Kts and blazed into Fiske. We were told to expect runway 18 using the north approach and I matched speed with the Cessna which was about half a mile ahead of me.
I switched to the north tower frequency and started looking for landmarks to figure out how to set up the approach. I was trying to listen for instructions meant for me and never exactly received a runway assignment (there is an 18L and an 18R). It looked to me like all hell breaking loose. I was told to follow the Cessna which was lining up on 18L. Below, I saw a Cherokee changing from 18L to 18R. Finally, crossing 09/27 we were told "White RV land on Pink Dot". The only pink dot was on 18R so I changed lanes and pointed down for landing.
There was a pretty stiff breeze blowing - 10 Kts with gusts to 17 and not exactly down the runway. I brought it down kinda squirrelly at first, keeping my eye on the Cherokee that touched down on the blue dot. He was directed twice to exit the runway because I was coming up on him and he was rolling closer to the pink dot. He turned off onto the grass and I skimmed just above the pink dot and dropped it onto the runway. I rolled out a bit long because we were so heavy and took an intersection off the runway and another right turn onto the grass. I regret not having swiveled my head around for a better look at the grounds - I would have loved to see the big picture. Yvette was equally as nervous and forgot to take a picture.
On Wednesday somebody screwed up and it rained like hell at about 4:30pm. We had just gotten back to the plane to do some last minute organizing before wandering over to the RV BBQ and dove into the tent when the rain hit. The good news is that it didn't last long, and we had perfectly clear skies the rest of the night. Actually saw stars for the first time since we were there.
We happened to be standing right next to the food when Bob announced they were open for business, so we grabbed a plate and got started. The food line quickly grew into a huge mass of RV people. I have the feeling a lot more showed up than were expected though.
The highly skilled Bar-B-Que technicians kept the food and beer flowing as best they could. Bob made several trips to the local WalMart to restock during the night.
I waited a very long time until there were less than ten people in the line before going up for seconds. When the people around me said they were still waiting for firsts, I jumped out of the line since it looked like supplies were running dangerously low.
After three days of walking and carrying a backpack in the hot sun, my back and feet finally gave up and said "You're on your own" so we left early. Thankfully we got a ride all the way back to the Fly-mart and had a short hobble back to the plane.
On Thursday we went over to the Aces Cafe to fuel up, then over to the registration desk to check out and finally over to the FSS to get a briefing. The sky was clear and I wasn't expecting an Airmet to cover southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois. We were warned of marginal VFR weather and VFR was not recommended for at least another hour. Since I knew we wouldn't be ready to hit the sky for at least an hour, that wasn't a big deal.
We headed back to the airplane and pulled up the tie downs. I pulled the plane out and went looking for a lineman to lead us out of the maze. There is some rule about not starting the engine without adult supervision, so we had to wait about 20 minutes before a guy on a scooter came over to help.
Taxi out was as uneventful as it could be for Osh Kosh. We followed a P-51 all the way to the opposite corner of the airfield to depart 36L. Arrivals were coming in hot and heavy into 36R and on 09/27. As soon as the P-51 was off, we were told to expedite taking off so I pushed the throttle up and blasted off. As soon as we hit a safe altitude and were abeam the tower I made the right turn as published in the NOTAM and we said goodbye to the happiest place on Earth for aviation enthusiasts.
I decided I was up to the challenge, so we climbed to 8,500 and proceeded south over the cloud layer. There was a lot of haze up there, and visibility was 5 to 10 miles. What I thought was an overcast was actually pretty broken, and it was reassuring to know the ground was down there. At about 10 miles north of Pontiac however, it turned solid for a while. Crossing the fingers must have helped because there was again a breakup about 25 miles north of Bloomington. I dove down through a hole and went all the way to 2,500 to get under the clouds again. We came into KBMI and within minutes of parking, we had a brief downpour. The very hospitable FBO guys brought out the luggage cart, fuel truck and an umbrella. I enthusiastically said "Yes" to hangar space since we were going to stay a couple of days.
Interestingly, we were the only airplane on the ramp. There were a handful of other planes already in the hangar. Smaller, less busy airports are the only way to go for these kinds of trips. The service can't be beat and everyone is friendly and eager to help.
A few days after we returned, I got a very nice letter from Image Air thanking me for the business. "Your welcome, and we'll be back!"
KBMI to K89 to KHUT
Pretty much just following our reversed course, we topped off again in Macon, MO and went on to Hutchinson, KS.
Expecting to hit the restaurant on the airport, we were disappointed to find it closed. What the hell is it about this place on Sunday? Not returning here again. As a consolation, the FBO gave us a ride to the nearest Subway to get food. The soda fountain was screwed up, and I think Yvette got ill from the Chipolte sandwich.
KHUT to KDHT
I had hoped to make it all the way home in one day, however Yvette had had just about enough and insisted that we stay over. So, the FBO guys took us into beautiful downtown Dalhart where we stayed at the Best Western.
You wouldn't think there would be a lot of train activity at 2am, but in Dalhart I guess the trains never sleep. And they cross the road in front of the hotel, so they were blowing the horns all night.
KDHT to KGYR
Next morning, I headed back to the airport and got my weather briefing. There was a bunch of activity near Albuquerque, NM and all over the eastern third of Arizona. It was quite an adventure trying to find holes in the clouds all the way home. It was over, under, around and every which way to avoid tall clouds and rain.
I decided to skip the Double Eagle stop and push through to Goodyear, AZ. The weather was really bad, and it wasn't easy getting through. Finally got back to the Bartlett Dam area and dove through a hole in the layers at 5,000 and made as straight a line as I could to land at KGYR.
Home again.