In early July I flew east. Pretty much way east: from California to the central part of New York State (Syracuse, specifically). That might not sound like such a big deal. Even though there are no direct airline flights, it’s not hard to get to there with one plane change in Newark, Dulles, Charlotte, Chicago, or even Denver. This was COVID-19 pandemic time, though—July 2020—and I was not interested in flying the airlines.
So, I didn’t.
My mother’s in her 80s, and had been very isolated and growing more lonely since New York State locked down, in, what, March or so. She’d had meals delivered three times each week, and an aid once a week (all with proper coronavirus precautions), but she lives on her own and alone, and not exactly in the middle of a busy neighborhood. We checked in with her, and my family members called her just about every day. Still, she was lonely.
I thought I should visit.
I’m fortunate, and grateful, that I have a fabulous airplane for a trip like this. A Mooney 252 is designed to take one or two people plus some stuff a long way, fast. I’d made this trip several times before, in fact, so I knew what to generally expect, and how to plan for it. (In fact, I’ve given safety seminars for the FAA several times on making this trip.) Not that it’s a trivial thing: I’ve learned that it’s quite the contrary, a significant operation that requires a lot of planning to execute successfully.
Here’s the overall route I planned to fly, from the west coast out to the east coast.
First, there’s the weather. Most flights in light general aviation aircraft are less than a couple of hundred miles. Every leg of this trip will exceed 700 nautical miles. Every leg has the potential of spanning three or four very different weather systems. Every leg will cross different terrain, which has implications especially in emergency contingency planning.
Here’s a summary of what I do for a trip like this.
- Starting a couple of weeks out, watch the broad weather patterns. Where are the fronts, pressure systems, and storms, and what are they doing? How are they moving? Does the atmosphere seem quiet and settled, or is it very active?
- Develop a rough sense of where I want to refuel. (My airplane has about 6½ hours of fuel at my normal cruise power fuel burn. I always want to land with at least an hour’s fuel left in my tanks, taking all reasonable contingencies into account, such as needing to divert to an alternate airport if the weather at my primary airport is not good enough for a safe landing.)
- Gather the supplies and equipment for the trip. I always fly a trip like this with my camping equipment (tent, backpacking quilt and sleeping pad, food, water, cooking and eating gear as needed, camp trowel, toiletries, etc.) even if I’m planning to spend the night with friends or in a hotel or a B&B. For this trip, I knew I would be using the camping equipment since I was planning to stay at the airport. (At many little airplane airports, they’ll welcome you pitching your tent or sleeping beneath your wing.)
- Plan meals for the trip. In this case, it would be two lunches, one dinner, one breakfast. I decided I didn’t want to fuss with cooking so I left my backpacking stove home and went with crackers, cheese, mushroom jerky bars, protein bars, fruit, and müsli with milk. (I was willing to bring a small soft-sided cooler along to keep the cheese and milk cold.)
- At about two days before departure, I looked more carefully at the weather along the route: then-current and forecasts. I especially noted convective activity and the forecasts for ceilings and visibility. This allowed me to make a more concrete primary and secondary plan, along with additional backup plans (“concrete” meaning choosing specific airports). The day before departure, I reviewed these and made any necessary changes (I didn’t need any: the weather continued to follow the pattern it had been tracking).
- The day of departure, I again reviewed the weather and the forecasts.
- While en route, I reviewed the weather ahead to continue to check on and revise the plan. I have six different sources of weather in the cockpit: Sirius XM-Wx, FIS-B, a Stormscope, talking with air traffic control (generally, the Air Route Traffic Control Center), talking with Flight Service, and looking out the window.
My original plan called for a fuel stop in Torrington, Wyoming (KTOR, far eastern Wyoming) and an overnight stop (with fuel) in Monroe, Wisconsin (KEFT, south-central Wisconsin). These were both just about right on the direct route (great circle route) I would be flying, had reasonably inexpensive fuel, and had the qualities I wanted in an airport (long enough hard surface runway with an instrument approach in case of low clouds or low visibility). Both areas also had very low rates of COVID-19 infection reports. I’d stopped for fuel in Torrington before, so that was a bit of a plus since I’d had a good experience. But, it wasn’t looking like the weather in the Upper Midwest was going to cooperate: there had been and continued to be thunderstorm activity from southern Wisconsin south for a while.
I developed a backup plan of staying the night in Osceola, Wisconsin (KOEO, far western Wisconsin just over the border from Minneapolis). The fuel prices were good, the airport facilities looked good, it was in range, and it was north of the line of weather. I turned that into my primary plan during my fuel stop in Torrington.
Everything worked out just as planned. I was able to stay north of the thunderstorm activity (though I heard other pilots talking with ATC about diversions, maybe 50 miles south of my route). It was easy to get into Osceola, and the overnight there was also easy. The second leg of the day is shown below, with the weather from around the time I went through. (That rain around Minneapolis Saint Paul was a bunch further south when I actually was flying. The large thunderstorm system southeast of there, along the line from Rochester to Davenport, is what I would have had to fly around or through to reach Monroe. Had I flown around and gotten in front of the storm I would have had a nice chunk of rain showers dumping on me after I’d landed.)
Fuel, dinner, and bed ended a 1,400 nm day.
The next day dawned with some clouds, but nothing really to concern me. It was an easy flight over the Great Lakes region, Niagara Falls, and past the Finger Lakes into the Mohawk Valley in the central part of New York State. I landed at Hamilton airport (KVGC), where a long-time friend had a hangar that was, by happenstance, empty, his airplane being in the shop for regular routine inspection and maintenace.
The three legs for this trip were 4.8 hours, 3.3 hours, and 4.4 hours (12.5 hours total flight time).