N7049R: In Its New Home At KTKI
The last time I posted, it was about my trip to California to look at a perspective airplane for purchase. On Tuesday, May 5, my aircraft partner and I closed escrow and Cessna 7049R became ours. The next task was to get the airplane from Livermore, CA (KLVK) to McKinney, TX (KTKI).
We were a bit pressed for time because of the fact that I was tagged, just last week, to go out to Beale AFB, CA (KBAB) for work. Because of this, I had to leave on an American Airlines flight out to Sacramento on Sunday afternoon. Also, it was looking like we would have to dodge the weather as we got closer to the DFW area.
The original plan was to do the flight in two days, first flying from Livermore, CA (KLVK) to El Paso, TX (KELP), staying overnight and leaving early, early in the morning to get from El Paso to McKinney. As it turned out, we were making such good time during the day and were feeling so good physically, that we decided to continue flying all the way back to McKinney in one day. This worked out on a number of levels, not the least of which was my time crunch. Also, the bad weather that would have shut us down was moving easterly, out of the DFW area. We all wanted to get home to sleep in our own beds. For me, it would be the last time in a couple of weeks I would be able to.
So, we flew out on American Airlines, Friday afternoon (May 7), arriving at about 5pm local time and made our way to the hotel near KLVK and then went to check out our plane, which was arleady parked on the ramp with transient parking. We actually fueled it up and re-parked it so we would be ready to go right away. We all awoke (my partner, my flight instructor, and me) before 5am the next morning to get ready and to get some breakfast at the local IHOP and then headed out to the airport to pre-flight the plane and embark. After all that we were wheels up (literally... it's a retractable gear aircraft) at exactly 7:03am and made it to Blythe, CA (KBLH) 3 hours and 1 minute later.
After a 40 minute break, during which we topped off the fuel tanks and stretching our legs... along with a quick bathroom break, we were off, this time with my partner, Ben in command. From KBLH to KELP. The flight was more or less uneventful, but very scenic as we started flying over some really nice sized mountains, we arrived at KELP in almost the exact amount of time as the flight to KBLH. The climb out was interesting. We were at max weight with full fuel and it was starting to warm up in the California desert. It took us awhile to get to our assigned altitude (11,000 feet MSL). As the day grew later and the mountains more rugged over Arizona and New Mexico, the air was quite a bit choppier. The autopilot did a great job of maintaining our altitude within a couple of hundred feet and staying on course.
After landing at KELP, we took a lunch break. The line service people at the FBO were great. They gave us a ride to the closest Subway sandwich shop and waited for us while we ate. Meanwhile, they filled the fuel tanks and tied down the airplane. We ate and then went back to the FBO to visit the restroom and plan our final leg. Originally, we were going to stop in Big Spring, TX to switch, but we wanted to get home and when we discovered, that because of a nice tailwind, we could make it in about 3 and a half hours, we went ahead and scrapped the stop in Big Spring. It had been crappy all day in the DFW area where the forecast was chance of isolated thunderstorms, but other than the ceilings being low there wasn't much meteorological activity. The thunderstorms in the area were staying pretty much to the north and east of KTKI and were moving eastward, so we decided to go ahead and take off. In any event, we had XM weather on board, so we could always decide to land before getting to Dallas if the conditions changed. Again, I was in command and we took off out of KELP I found out what it meant to fly high and hot. It was over 90° Fahrenheit at the airport in the late afternoon, which yielded a density altitide about 3000 feet above the field elevation. In a typical Cessna Skyhawk, with a 160hp engine, this would spell trouble, but with our airplane and it's 235hp engine and turbo charger, it should not be a problem. That's relatively speaking, of course. We were able to rotate in short order at 55knots, but had trouble climbing. So, I kept the nose low, got the gear and the 10° of flaps for takeoff up, to build some speed before pulling back on the elevator. We were near the end of the runway when the plane just started to lifting away from the ground. After that, we enjoyed a nice 700-1000 foot per minute climb to 11,000 feet, riding thermals up the entire way. Of course, it didn't hurt that we had the throttle at 31 inches of manifold pressure for the entire climb either. We burned a little more fuel than normally we would normally, but I think, under the circumstances, that's okay. Normally, after initial climbout, you want to settle into a cruise climb at 25 inches of manifold pressure. However, getting up to 11,000 as fast as possible was more critical on this occasion.... and we got there in from about 3900 feet (our takeoff elevation) in about 10 minutes. Try to do that in a C172!
Overall the flight was pretty simple. We stayed on victor airways and were instructed to use the KNEAD5 arrival by Air Traffic Control. After passing Abilene, TX we encountered the cloud cover that was causing the IMC conditions in the DFW area. We flew over the tops for awhile and then were instructed to descend as we grew closer to DFW Class Bravo airspace. When we hit 4000 feet, we were "in the soup" for the last 45 minutes of the flight. Again, with the autopilot, this was an easy task, however, I still kept my instrument scan going, just in case anything went wrong. The wind dictated that we would need to land on runway 35 at KTKI, however, we were not equipped with a valid GPS approach database. So we were instructed to use the ILS17 approach and then circle to land on runway 35 after breaking through the clouds. It was quite a good feeling as we descended to see, first the PAPI for runway 17, then the runway lights, at about 1100 feet, allowing us to get into the pattern and make a visual approach to 35. We landed and let the plane roll out without using too much braking and taxied her back to her new home, Hangar 212.
