t0r0nad0
Pattern Altitude
One of the top 10 busiest in the country, actually...
Yesterday we took the museum's Raffle Plane - a 1957 Cessna 172 - to the Houston Airport Appreciation Day at G. Bush Intercontinental Airport (KIAH) to sell some raffle tickets. I was PIC for the 20nm flight from Houston Hobby (HOU) over to IAH, and my friend Blair, one of the other museum pilots, was the co-pilot. It was a CAVU day, but the winds were howling out of the northwest at about 17-22 kts.
We took off from runway 35 at Hobby and immediately started getting blown around. It took about a 15-deg crab angle to maintain runway heading. We were cleared to climb VFR to 3000 ft. and assigned a heading of 290. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and visibility was unrestricted with the exception of a slight smog haze over the city - if I looked hard enough I probably could have seen Austin!
So I turned on course and continued climbing while Blair (who was working the radios for me and watching for traffic) checked on with approach:
"Houston Departure, Cessna 7433-alpha, climbing through 1,000 for 3,000, assigned heading 290, landing Intercontinental."
Their response was classic: "Cessna 7433-alpha, radar contact 2 miles northwest of Hobby, 1,100... you want to LAND at Intercontinental?"
So he responded to them and they kept us on our current vector, since as one might expect, IAH tower was a little busy and didn't accept our handoff yet. So we got vectored off to the northwest, over the top of Hooks Airport (DWH), then northeast, almost to Conroe, TX (CXO), before being vectored to final for runway 26R. The winds were howling, which was evidenced by the Groundspeed readout on the GNC300 in the panel of the raffle plane. Going northwest, our airspeed was about 95kias, and our groundspeed was about 62 kts. When we turned the other way, our airspeed was the same, but our groundspeed was now 125kts.
We were cleared for a dogleg approach to runway 26R and cautioned for the 737 landing 26L and the ERJ landing 27. I slowed the airplane down and pulled the big flap handle between the seats to 10 degrees, then later to 20 degrees. I didn't want to use any more than that for the winds we had. I slowed to approach speed (70 kias) and looked at the GPS again - about 45 kts groundspeed. We got blown around a little bit on final, floated a little bit down the runway, and landed a bit left of centerline, but with a 9000ft x 150ft runway, we were well within safety limits.
Here's a video of my landing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLscIk-gcjw
In fact, when we came down to nearly a stop, we looked over and saw the 6000ft distance remaining marker on the side of the runway. We turned onto the reverse highspeed and requested taxi to the event site.
The event was very good, and we sold a good number of tickets. It helped that they gave us a prime location right in front of the hangar where people entered. Blair and I switched roles for the trip out of IAH after the event, and that proved to be just as cool. The winds had shifted more to the north (320/17) for our departure, so we were assigned runway 33L. This meant that we had to taxi from the hangar on the east side of the airport (near the tower), all the way to the west side of the airport and to the south to our departure runway. This meant that we had to taxi past the terminals, with all of the jets there (awesome to see), past the 15L approach, and between 33L and 33R on taxiway WP to get to our runway. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic at this time of day, so we didn't have to dodge any jet blasts during our taxi.
One cool thing that happened was when we were told to monitor tower, we heard a familiar voice on the radio - it was our mutual friend Clint, fellow member of the Houston Spotters forum, museum volunteer, and mostly lurker here (ATCT), though he did recently post his story of crashing a Cessna 150 on a night cross-country on this forum. He happened to be working departures on this day. Oh, another cool thing that happened during our taxi - a KLM 747 took off on 33R, which was just awesome to watch that close up.
Anyway, after about a 3-mile taxi, we got to our departure runway, did a run-up, and were cleared for takeoff with a left turnout approved. Blair took off and turned on course, and we were handed off to departure. I responded with, "Left turn to 260, going to departure on 123.8, 33-Alpha - thanks Clint!"
We headed over to West Houston Airport to take advantage of the Saturday fuel special there (only $2.94/gal yesterday!), and to drop me off. I had left my car there since it's closer to my house, and I had another event to go to with the better half last night. There was no traffic at all in the pattern there, which was a first for me at that airport, so we just made a left crosswind entry and made left traffic for runway 33. We did get bounced around a good bit on final, but Blair made a great landing. We parted ways and he took off to go back to Hobby.
It was a great experience and I had a great time flying into that airport, though I don't think I'll make a habit of it
.
Today the weather was much the same as yesterday, minus the heavy winds. Blair took the plane to Brenham, TX (11R) with a couple of volunteers to sell some tickets, and when I spoke with him, that was going well. PM me if you want more info on how to get a raffle ticket to try to win the plane yourself!
Yesterday we took the museum's Raffle Plane - a 1957 Cessna 172 - to the Houston Airport Appreciation Day at G. Bush Intercontinental Airport (KIAH) to sell some raffle tickets. I was PIC for the 20nm flight from Houston Hobby (HOU) over to IAH, and my friend Blair, one of the other museum pilots, was the co-pilot. It was a CAVU day, but the winds were howling out of the northwest at about 17-22 kts.
We took off from runway 35 at Hobby and immediately started getting blown around. It took about a 15-deg crab angle to maintain runway heading. We were cleared to climb VFR to 3000 ft. and assigned a heading of 290. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and visibility was unrestricted with the exception of a slight smog haze over the city - if I looked hard enough I probably could have seen Austin!
So I turned on course and continued climbing while Blair (who was working the radios for me and watching for traffic) checked on with approach:
"Houston Departure, Cessna 7433-alpha, climbing through 1,000 for 3,000, assigned heading 290, landing Intercontinental."
Their response was classic: "Cessna 7433-alpha, radar contact 2 miles northwest of Hobby, 1,100... you want to LAND at Intercontinental?"
So he responded to them and they kept us on our current vector, since as one might expect, IAH tower was a little busy and didn't accept our handoff yet. So we got vectored off to the northwest, over the top of Hooks Airport (DWH), then northeast, almost to Conroe, TX (CXO), before being vectored to final for runway 26R. The winds were howling, which was evidenced by the Groundspeed readout on the GNC300 in the panel of the raffle plane. Going northwest, our airspeed was about 95kias, and our groundspeed was about 62 kts. When we turned the other way, our airspeed was the same, but our groundspeed was now 125kts.
We were cleared for a dogleg approach to runway 26R and cautioned for the 737 landing 26L and the ERJ landing 27. I slowed the airplane down and pulled the big flap handle between the seats to 10 degrees, then later to 20 degrees. I didn't want to use any more than that for the winds we had. I slowed to approach speed (70 kias) and looked at the GPS again - about 45 kts groundspeed. We got blown around a little bit on final, floated a little bit down the runway, and landed a bit left of centerline, but with a 9000ft x 150ft runway, we were well within safety limits.
Here's a video of my landing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLscIk-gcjw
In fact, when we came down to nearly a stop, we looked over and saw the 6000ft distance remaining marker on the side of the runway. We turned onto the reverse highspeed and requested taxi to the event site.
The event was very good, and we sold a good number of tickets. It helped that they gave us a prime location right in front of the hangar where people entered. Blair and I switched roles for the trip out of IAH after the event, and that proved to be just as cool. The winds had shifted more to the north (320/17) for our departure, so we were assigned runway 33L. This meant that we had to taxi from the hangar on the east side of the airport (near the tower), all the way to the west side of the airport and to the south to our departure runway. This meant that we had to taxi past the terminals, with all of the jets there (awesome to see), past the 15L approach, and between 33L and 33R on taxiway WP to get to our runway. Fortunately, there wasn't much traffic at this time of day, so we didn't have to dodge any jet blasts during our taxi.
One cool thing that happened was when we were told to monitor tower, we heard a familiar voice on the radio - it was our mutual friend Clint, fellow member of the Houston Spotters forum, museum volunteer, and mostly lurker here (ATCT), though he did recently post his story of crashing a Cessna 150 on a night cross-country on this forum. He happened to be working departures on this day. Oh, another cool thing that happened during our taxi - a KLM 747 took off on 33R, which was just awesome to watch that close up.
Anyway, after about a 3-mile taxi, we got to our departure runway, did a run-up, and were cleared for takeoff with a left turnout approved. Blair took off and turned on course, and we were handed off to departure. I responded with, "Left turn to 260, going to departure on 123.8, 33-Alpha - thanks Clint!"
We headed over to West Houston Airport to take advantage of the Saturday fuel special there (only $2.94/gal yesterday!), and to drop me off. I had left my car there since it's closer to my house, and I had another event to go to with the better half last night. There was no traffic at all in the pattern there, which was a first for me at that airport, so we just made a left crosswind entry and made left traffic for runway 33. We did get bounced around a good bit on final, but Blair made a great landing. We parted ways and he took off to go back to Hobby.
It was a great experience and I had a great time flying into that airport, though I don't think I'll make a habit of it
.Today the weather was much the same as yesterday, minus the heavy winds. Blair took the plane to Brenham, TX (11R) with a couple of volunteers to sell some tickets, and when I spoke with him, that was going well. PM me if you want more info on how to get a raffle ticket to try to win the plane yourself!
