gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
Tuesday I flew the my Baron to a small airport near Tulsa where it's now undergoing an engine transplant. The owner of the engine shop involved had agreed to loan me his Baron to use while mine's in the shop and I flew that back home later in the day. But his plane has no IFR GPS, the autopilot won't hold altitude and barely follows the course guidance from the onboard VFR GPS. It has no EGT let alone an engine monitor, the air vents are stuck open (probabably not a problem that far south). There's no HSI, no altitude alerter, no fuel totalizer, no electric trim, no clearance recorder, no MFD with XM Wx, and half the panel lights don't work, but at least it flies OK.
Since I didn't have an IFR GPS I filed along airways (which added about 50 miles to the 500 nm trip. I did bring along a borrowed GPS496 and had that as well as the panel mounted GPS programmed for the route. Of course, as soon as I contacted Tulsa Approach after takeoff I was given a slight re-route and fumbled that badly. Normally I'd do a quick search on my GNS480 for the first new waypoint in the re-route and set that in as a Direct-To flight target but I couldn't find anything nearby that sounded like a match. Of course I hadn't gotten out the charts so when the controller said to just intercept V131 I couldn't find that either since the panel GPS didn't display airways (it's probably something the 496 could display but that wasn't set up to show them either). I also managed to leave my writing tablet in my backpack sitting on the floor and had to resort to scribbling on the scrap of paper I'd written my original flight plan on.
Once I got switched to Kansas City Center I was able to negotiate a psuedo direct leg to the Topeka VOR I'd put in the plan to avoid the KC Class B (turned out the victor airway pretty much went straight there anyway) but later when I was getting close to TOP my attempt to repeat the trick for the path beyond Topeka appeared to end up with me getting what sounded a lot like a RNAV direct clearance. I also had some trouble picking up on the unfamiliar N number letting ATC call me twice a couple of times. All's well that ends well and I managed to complete the flight without wandering very far off course/altitude or running out of fuel but I was glad that most of the flight was in VMC.
I'll sure be glad to get my own plane back though.
Since I didn't have an IFR GPS I filed along airways (which added about 50 miles to the 500 nm trip. I did bring along a borrowed GPS496 and had that as well as the panel mounted GPS programmed for the route. Of course, as soon as I contacted Tulsa Approach after takeoff I was given a slight re-route and fumbled that badly. Normally I'd do a quick search on my GNS480 for the first new waypoint in the re-route and set that in as a Direct-To flight target but I couldn't find anything nearby that sounded like a match. Of course I hadn't gotten out the charts so when the controller said to just intercept V131 I couldn't find that either since the panel GPS didn't display airways (it's probably something the 496 could display but that wasn't set up to show them either). I also managed to leave my writing tablet in my backpack sitting on the floor and had to resort to scribbling on the scrap of paper I'd written my original flight plan on.
Once I got switched to Kansas City Center I was able to negotiate a psuedo direct leg to the Topeka VOR I'd put in the plan to avoid the KC Class B (turned out the victor airway pretty much went straight there anyway) but later when I was getting close to TOP my attempt to repeat the trick for the path beyond Topeka appeared to end up with me getting what sounded a lot like a RNAV direct clearance. I also had some trouble picking up on the unfamiliar N number letting ATC call me twice a couple of times. All's well that ends well and I managed to complete the flight without wandering very far off course/altitude or running out of fuel but I was glad that most of the flight was in VMC.
I'll sure be glad to get my own plane back though.
