In Flying East, and then West Again, Part 1, I went over some of the planning I do before a trip across the country in my airplane, and discussed the first three legs of the trip. Let’s continue the discussion, going more deeply into the planning, reviewing some flying around the central New York area, and finally heading back west.
I think it’s very important to maintain my flying proficiency. I can tell when I’ve not flown for a couple of weeks: things aren’t quite as sharp around the edges. Since I knew I would be in central New York for about a month, I decided to get out flying around the area to stay sharp. I picked a few airports and weaved together what I expected would be a fun flight, and included some time just to fly. I have found that if I fly stalls, steep turns, and slow flight well that my basic stick-and-rudder skills are still in good shape, and if any of those is sloppy—if I gain or loose too much altitude in a steep turn (45º bank, 360º turn, roll out and do the same in the opposite direction), if my altitude or heading wander in slow flight (call it 3-5 KIAS above stall speed, sometimes well into the pre-stall burble), or if my stall recovery is not crisp—then I need to keep working on the maneuvers and hone them. (If I can’t hone them well enough myself, there’s something deeper wrong and I better get flying with an instructor!)
I did the air work on my way to Nader (N66), flying over toward Cooperstown and Otsego Lake in the process, dodging some clouds, then continued past Otisco Lake and Skaneateles Lake to land at Skaneateles airport (6B9, almost on the lake), over Marcellus and past Syracuse University to take some quick aerial pictures for a colleague who went to SU, then a 360 around my high school alma mater for some more photo work, and finally over Cazenovia Lake and back to Hamilton. The flight accomplished everything I wanted.
A week or two later, I flew a friend to the Chicago to pick up his airplane following some maintenance. That got me back flying in the air traffic control system. (The only communications I had with ATC in the previous flight was to get permission from Syracuse Approach to fly over the University.)
As my time in Syracuse wound down I started looking to the west. Ideally, where did I want to spend the night? Where did I want to refuel? How many fuel stops did I expect?
How are the weather patterns likely to affect my desired route?
The weather looked like it was cooperating all the way across the country. I always look toward contingency planning, but if the weather’s looking good the contingency planning is easier.
The most expensive part of any flight is the climb. It costs time and it costs fuel. I’ll normally climb the Mooney 252 between 110 and 115 knots indicated airspeed, burning about 23 gallons per hour. In cruise, I’ll see 130-145 knots indicated at 10-11.5 gph, depending on power setting and altitude. (True airspeed in cruise at my normal cruise altitudes of 15,000-25,000′ runs 165-200 knots.) You might think you’ll gain back all that time and fuel you spend climbing when you descend, but the Three Laws of Thermodynamics dictate otherwise: you never gain back everything it cost you to climb to altitude.
Since climbing is so expensive, the less of it you do the better. How does this apply to flight planning? Find a fuel stop at a high altitude airport. I won’t choose an otherwise inappropriate airport, nor one that’s waaaay out of the way, nor one that might otherwise be inhospitable or undesirable. In the case of this trip, it turned out that Lake County Airport in Leadville, Colorado (KLXV, with a brand spanking new runway and ramp!) was an otherwise pretty good looking fuel stop. Unless the winds were very different from forecast, I could make KLXV with one fuel stop, there was a reasonable chance of making it home from KLXV non-stop, fuel price was reasonable, the runway length and width were more than adequate, there’s an instrument approach to the airport in case the weather goes down, there are okay alternates not too far away, and—germane to this discussion—the airport elevation is 9.933 feet, the highest in not just the US but in North America, too. (For the record, it appears to be the 27th highest airport in the world.
If you compare refueling at KLXV with refueling at, for example, Denver (KDEN, 5,433 feet), you’ll find out that in the Mooney the cost is really not very much. You’ll gain perhaps 10 minutes and 4 gallons by refueling at KLXV rather than KDEN. But, gosh, it sure felt good to plan my overnight and refueling stop at Leadville!
So, I did.
Where else to refuel? Somewhere the middle of the trip to Leadville from central New York. I found Belle Plaine, Iowa to be pretty appealing, given its location, fuel price, and probable low traffic.
The three legs home were 745 nm, 660 nm, and 752 nm, for a total of 2,158 nm. The “direct” route (great circle route) is 2,138 nm, so my choice of fuel stops added only 20 nm to the trip. Not too bad. (The irony: those 20 nm are all because of the choice of Leadville for my overnight stop. This diversion contributed, say, 5 minutes to the flight [KLXV is up a valley, so you have to fly to the head of the valley and then turn into the valley, rather than just going directly west-southwest to the airport from Belle Plaine]. This ate up half the time I saved by not having to climb that extra distance! I didn’t care: it was the fun of choosing Leadville that really mattered.)
The rest of the bits of the trip? Belle Plaine (KTZT) was a great fuel stop. No one was there (so no concerns about exposure to SARS-CoV-2)! It was easy to find and get to (and from) the fuel pump, the terminal was open, the rest room was clean. Not only did the winds allow me to hit my planned stops, not only did they let me get from KLXV home non-stop (752 nm westbound), but for the first time ever I saw over 200 knots ground speed in level flight westbound. (I’ve often seen that eastbound. In fact, at altitude [25,000′ is my typical long haul cruise altitude eastbound], 200 knots ground speed is pretty routine. Westbound is a different story, though, because westbound is normally into the wind, often 20-40 knots at altitude.)
The wind forecasts made it easy to choose an altitude for the last leg, especially. For the first leg, I knew I wanted to be high enough that I could glide back to shore from the middle of Lake Michigan. Take a look at the picture of the great circle route between Hamilton and Belle Plaine: it goes right over Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan is cold: figure maybe 15ºC (60ºF) in the middle of summer, if you’re lucky. You’re not going to last very long in water that cold before hypothermia becomes a serious problem. I had thought this through once before, also for a westbound leg across the country, and knew that 20,000′ would let me glide to shore following an engine failure at the most distant point I would be. I filed for and flew at 20,000′ (and the engine did not fail). I filed for 22,000′ for the flight to Leadville The winds were such that my overall time en route was the about same from 16,000′ to 22,000′, and 22,000′ provided more space between me and the Rockies, so I took 22,000′. I was only getting about 150 knots ground speed, but that’s what I expected.
Oh, and that overnight stop in Leadville? Phenomenal! I slept under the wing of the airplane, and fell asleep gazing at the planets and stars. Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way, the Summer Triangle, Cygnus, Cassiopeia, Arcturus and Boötes, Spica, the Big and Little Dippers, Delphinus.
* The Three Laws of Thermodynamics. You can’t win. You can’t break even. You can’t get out of the game. The details are left as an exercise for the interested reader.