Aviation: July 2008 Archives
I woke up early this morning (Saturday) to be at the airport by around 7am to fly to Granbury, TX for a fly-in pancake breakfast they have the last Saturday of every month at their airport. For a $3.00 donation, it's all the pancakes and sausage you can eat. So, I got out to the plane and did the pre-flight check, and was joined shortly there after by Robert, who came with me.
The flight out took about an 1 hour, 20 minutes because of a headwind just about the entire trip there. The total distance was 98 nautical miles because we had to fly around the DFW Class Bravo shelf, so, our route of flight was McKinney to Mesquite, to Lancaster, to Midloathian/Waxahachie to Granbury.
The city is nestled nicely against a really pretty lake (Lake Granbury) and seems like a nice little town. The airport is nice and the people there were friendly. We landed without too many problems (having a GPS/Transponder that displays traffic came in handy) and parked the plane on the grass in-field just off the parallel taxiway and had some good and an inexpensive food.
At around 10am, we got back in the plane and headed back the way we came and stopped at Mesquite Airport for some cheap AVgas and headed back to McKinney, arriving 15 minutes ahead of schedule aided this time by a tailwind.
... and here's a list of the places I've landed.
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Since I passed my check ride about a month ago, most... make that all of my flying has been local and giving friends the standard tour of the hinterland north of Dallas. Generally, the tour consists of taking off from KTKI and flying slightly northwest to overfly Deion Sanders' (yes, Deion Sanders the former Dallas Cowboy Cornerback) north texas estate, which is pretty much the only interesting thing to look at that far north of Dallas proper. After a couple of circuits around the Sanders estate, it's south over my house, then over to the Frisco Roughriders baseball stadium, then back to the airport. Generally, I will customize the trip for the individual and work in a flyover for their home too, if they live in the area.
Yesterday, however, was special. It was my first real cross-country flight that was not associated with meeting a requirement for my private pilot certificate. My Friend Robert and I both had the day off work and decided to go on a so called "$100 hamburger" run up to University of Oklahoma Max Westheimer Airport (KOUN) in Norman Oklahoma, to eat at a small diner next to the control tower called Ozzie's. The food was okay. It was not bad, but edible... the airport was outstanding and line service at the FBO was excellent.
On trip up to OU, we decided to use victor airways, so we took off from KTKI and flew due north until we intercepted the Victor Airway 573 at the YOGVA fix, flew that to the Ardmore VOR-TAC, then turned to Victor Airway 17 toward Oklahoma City. When we got to the WETIX fix about 15 south of Norman we turned toward the airport and landed on runway 21. We had trouble getting flight following from regional approach on our way out, so we just monitored the Dallas-Fort Worth Approach frequency and kept our eyes open. On the way back we flew direct KOUN to KSWI for some cheap AV gas before heading back to KTKI. Leaving Norman was very easy and we were able to get flight following down to KSWI.
The total flight time was 3.1 hours, counting all the time on the ground getting ready the trip took a little more than 5 hours. That included the pre-flight stuff, lunch, and our side trip to KSWI in order to refuel with much cheaper AV gas than KTKI sells. Overall, the trip was a blast! Robert and I had a lot of fun and we look forward to going on the next cross-country.
