tonycondon
Gastons CRO (Chief Dinner Reservation Officer)
My uncle from San Diego is home for summer vacation with his 4 kids so I decided I should make a trip home to visit. Also Leah and I needed to do a few wedding things, like meet with the pastor and pick a cake.
Flew up to Estherville after work on Friday. Took off about 4 PM in a club 172, same one I flew to Gaston's. Cruising at 7000 feet we caught some nice 15-20 knot tailwinds and clear smooth skies for the trip. Leah followed along on the sectional. I followed the Magenta Line of Death and worked the handoffs from controller to controller. Landed at Estherville right at 7 PM, said hi to Paul and got some gas. Burned a measly 22.6 gallons! My dad left his pickup at the airport but I wanted to take the airplane to my other Uncle's house, about 3 miles from the airport, where he has an 1800ish foot grass strip. I had shown Leah how to get from the airport to Uncle Chuck's house from the air so she took the truck and I took the plane. I beat her
Here is my uncle's runway:
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.423409,-94.657216&spn=0.00667,0.021114&t=h&z=16
Tied down and headed out to find my uncles. They were harvesting a wheat field so we rode in the combines and helped them get everything put away as night fell.
Next morning Leah and I decided on a cake and her folks came down, we did some other wedding stuff, then back out to Chuck's farm. Had a nice visit then I gave everyone airplane rides. 8 cousins and Uncle Kevin all went up, had a grand old time.
Sunday i checked weather in the morning and it looked reasonable, clear skies in iowa and a 40% chance of storms in KS. standard summer stuff. I filed a flight plan with fltplan.com and went about the day visiting with family etc. Finally got out to Chucks and loaded everything up. Took off right at 6 PM, only 2 hours later than my proposed time! MSP Center hadn't thrown away my flight plan, yet. but they were about to. We stopped for gas in Plattsmouth, NE just south of Omaha, then took off for Wichita.
Started to get under a high cirrus deck in SE NE so I flipped on the Stormscope and it showed a bunch of strikes out in the distance when I had it on 100 or 200 mile range. They were all between 10 and 12 o'clock positions. Called Flight Watch over the Pawnee City VOR and got the 10 minute summary of what was going on down there, then queried center as to what they were seeing. Everything they were seeing precip-wise was east of our course and moving east which more or less jived with what i was seeing on the stormscope. We continued, flying over Manhattan, KS and a few other airports that I can't remember the names of. As we got closer to Wichita all the reports of precip were still off to our east, stormscope was showing clear between us and ICT and we got out from under a lower cloud deck into clearer skies. There was some storms South of Wichita that extended up to the NE for a ways that gave us a very nice lightning show as we came in. Landed right on time at 10 PM.
We had essentially no wind to a slight tailwind for most of the trip back to Wichita, although the last 30 miles it switched to a 5 or 10 kt headwind. All told we put 7.9 hrs on the hobbs, which includes about 4 or 5 local hops for rides for the cousins. The one way drive is 8.5 hrs. Airplanes really are time machines.
Flew up to Estherville after work on Friday. Took off about 4 PM in a club 172, same one I flew to Gaston's. Cruising at 7000 feet we caught some nice 15-20 knot tailwinds and clear smooth skies for the trip. Leah followed along on the sectional. I followed the Magenta Line of Death and worked the handoffs from controller to controller. Landed at Estherville right at 7 PM, said hi to Paul and got some gas. Burned a measly 22.6 gallons! My dad left his pickup at the airport but I wanted to take the airplane to my other Uncle's house, about 3 miles from the airport, where he has an 1800ish foot grass strip. I had shown Leah how to get from the airport to Uncle Chuck's house from the air so she took the truck and I took the plane. I beat her
Here is my uncle's runway:http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.423409,-94.657216&spn=0.00667,0.021114&t=h&z=16
Tied down and headed out to find my uncles. They were harvesting a wheat field so we rode in the combines and helped them get everything put away as night fell.
Next morning Leah and I decided on a cake and her folks came down, we did some other wedding stuff, then back out to Chuck's farm. Had a nice visit then I gave everyone airplane rides. 8 cousins and Uncle Kevin all went up, had a grand old time.
Sunday i checked weather in the morning and it looked reasonable, clear skies in iowa and a 40% chance of storms in KS. standard summer stuff. I filed a flight plan with fltplan.com and went about the day visiting with family etc. Finally got out to Chucks and loaded everything up. Took off right at 6 PM, only 2 hours later than my proposed time! MSP Center hadn't thrown away my flight plan, yet. but they were about to. We stopped for gas in Plattsmouth, NE just south of Omaha, then took off for Wichita.
Started to get under a high cirrus deck in SE NE so I flipped on the Stormscope and it showed a bunch of strikes out in the distance when I had it on 100 or 200 mile range. They were all between 10 and 12 o'clock positions. Called Flight Watch over the Pawnee City VOR and got the 10 minute summary of what was going on down there, then queried center as to what they were seeing. Everything they were seeing precip-wise was east of our course and moving east which more or less jived with what i was seeing on the stormscope. We continued, flying over Manhattan, KS and a few other airports that I can't remember the names of. As we got closer to Wichita all the reports of precip were still off to our east, stormscope was showing clear between us and ICT and we got out from under a lower cloud deck into clearer skies. There was some storms South of Wichita that extended up to the NE for a ways that gave us a very nice lightning show as we came in. Landed right on time at 10 PM.
We had essentially no wind to a slight tailwind for most of the trip back to Wichita, although the last 30 miles it switched to a 5 or 10 kt headwind. All told we put 7.9 hrs on the hobbs, which includes about 4 or 5 local hops for rides for the cousins. The one way drive is 8.5 hrs. Airplanes really are time machines.
