Johnny and I flew to Uvalde, Texas on Monday, 6/29. Just passing Phoenix we saw Roosevelt Lake where Charlie Wooldridge taught me to water ski back in about 1962.
The flight to Safford was 2.02 hours,
from there to Uvalde, Garner Field, was 4.2 hours. The air was smooth at 9,500 feet as far as El Paso, Texas.
Then we hit weather. Down at 7,500 feet under the clouds it was a little bumpy; we got back up for an hour or so, and then back down. We had to skirt a tiny restricted zone that I hadn’t been aware of until my GPSMAP 396 warned me. Looking very closely I was able to avoid it. It turned out to be a balloon surveillance site, but the balloon was still on the ground.
Altogether we left Bullhead City at 6:15 am and arrived at about 3:30 pm local time. It didn’t seem like an hour over two weeks…. It never fails to amaze me how big Texas is. It only takes us about 3:45 to get to El Paso, but that last two and a half hours across half the state seems to take forever. But we survived, Johnny a little worse for wear.
At Sierra Industries we were introduced to jets, turboprops, and piston engine singles and twins, all getting new engines or panels. Justine is probably the “most affordable” aircraft in the shop. Nothing like seeing million dollar aircraft getting two million dollar upgrades.
Justine was there to get auxiliary fuel tanks installed: an additional 54 gallons to the existing 84.
After the 7 hour trip back in a Comanche, (plus a stop for lunch) I started to wonder why I was doing this. One can’t stop for lunch when flying over water, I guess. At least, not if one wants to continue. It will probably be the most expensive upgrade that won’t even be visible until I top it off with fuel and look at the bill…. It does allow more flexibility in finding cheaper fuel though. Monday I bought fuel in Safford for $3.10 per gallon and Tuesday we paid $4.49 in Las Cruces because the Comanche didn’t have the range with an IFR reserve to go that far. Even more depressing was watching them dump the remaining 20 gallons I had in the plane before they started working on the tanks. We should have brought a clean can to transfer the fuel into the Comanche. Hindsight is wonderful.
While in Uvalde, Johnny and I got to see some vintage planes owned by the owner of Sierra industries. It was my first clue that I was paying too much. The second clue was the sales rep, Art Jackson’s new Hummer. These are the planes we saw:
We stayed at the new Holiday Inn Express and enjoyed swimming, playing on the computer and watching TV. Well Johnny did, I swam with him then watched TV and went to sleep. Johnny watched well past when I fell asleep saying it would help him sleep on the plane. When I asked how late he stayed up, he couldn’t remember. I am not raising a dummy.
Johnny wasn’t real enthused about the return flight as you can see.
In the air he slept all the way to Las Cruces
and even felt good enough to have a cheese burger and fries. Big mistake, he ended up bringing it home in a bag, giving it up of take-off. Luckily he slept most of the way home. Before we got to Phoenix it started to get rough at 10,000 feet so we went up to 12,000 and it got a lot smoother. The only trouble we had was getting ATC to okay our descent and had to stay at 11,000 until half way up the valley. This meant a 10,000 foot drop in ten miles. We did a lot of circling. It gave me a chance to take some pictures of the local golf courses and the airport as well as my house.
No comments:
Post a Comment