Higher, Faster, Further

I looked up at the sky as we pack the airplane.  The local weather station was reporting CLR - no clouds below 10 thousand feet - but I can definitely see some moving in.  I'm concerned about the system moving in from the west, threatening to ground me here.  We've finished our last job, just days before Christmas, and I've got clearance to fly the airplane home.  Basically across the entire continental US - over a 1600 nautical mile trip.  The airplane is dangerously close to timing out for maintenance and leaving me stuck somewhere waiting for an inspection, but I have an ace up my sleeve - or more accurately a stroke of good luck.  High up there's winds sweeping eastward at 40+ knots - and I have the oxygen, the performance, and the weather to get me up there.

A half hour later I shake the hands of my coworkers who've dropped me off and are driving out to catch an airline flight, and I'm on my own.  I fire up both engines and wave as I taxi out.  I can see further to the south some mountain ridges are obscured by cloud, but to the east things look ok - not that I can see far.  This airport is sitting right in the valley of two 14,000 ft mountain ridges.  The weather reports look ok though.  There was an AIRMET warning of a small section to the east with IFR conditions, but I can divert to the south and go around it if I run into anything too bad.

Ten minutes later my Navajo is pointed skywards.  I love cold weather performance.  I'm getting 1000 fpm at full gross weight.  Even though she's climbing like a homesick angel, I still have to fly parallel to the mountain ridge for a several minutes to get high enough to turn eastward and cross over.  I finally crest the ridge going through 13,000 ft, turn on my supplemental oxygen and also for the first time get a good look at the weather ahead.  It looks good now, and even better ahead.  Through 15,000 ft and well clear of the mountains I give Salt Lake Centre a call on the radio and request flight following.

The airplane's pitch sensitivity today is annoyingly twitchy, a side effect of loading the airplane with an aft-ward centre of gravity (but still within limits).  I make a mental note to move some cargo to the nose compartment for my next leg to make it easier on myself.  Theoretically since the tailplane is exerting a downward force - in opposition to the wing - the more aft the centre of gravity, the less opposing force is required to balance the aircraft and a higher cruise speed can be achieved.  But I'm doubtful that it makes a difference of more than a few knots, and I'd rather not have to constantly re-trim a twitchy airplane.

Leveling off at 17,500 ft, I lean out the mixtures and switch to the outboard fuel tanks.  They should last me 2.3 hours at my planned cruise power setting.  The climb up to this altitude burned a lot of fuel and took twenty minutes.  I do a quick calculation to see how much I burned and how much I now have left and mark it down on my kneeboard.  That 20 minute climb burned an equivalent of 46 minutes of fuel at cruise power, but it should pay off.  I'm now cruising at 202 kts groundspeed, and I expect stronger winds the further east I go.

I cross some very tall snowy mountain peaks below me and snap a picture on my phone.  They're still impressive even though I'm several thousand feet above the highest ridges, but not nearly as intimidating as surveying in and around them down low.  I also can't help but snap pictures of the groundspeed readout on the Garmin 430 each time it slowly ticks up as the stronger and stronger winds whisk me along faster and faster.

Salt Lake Center hands me off to Denver Center and I start getting shuffled through their frequencies.  The gps map shows me approaching the general area of where we did another survey previously in the year, right in the heart of the Colorado Rockies.  The town we stayed in had a ski-hill which I was dying to go snowboarding on, but it was too early in the year.  The visual of the ski slope would be a dead giveaway to confirm where it was, but I can't find it.  I eventually realize that its quite a few miles south of me, and it only looked close on the gps map because I had it zoomed way out.  Bummer.  Its always kind of fun to fly into or by places you've been before and think you'll never see again.

Its lunch time, and the in-flight meal today is cold pizza from last night's dinner and a slosh of powerade that I left in the plane from the last flight.  This actually beats out most of my in-flight meals which more often consist of a bag of peanuts, or nothing at all.  Before long flights I'm usually stuck in 'flight planning' mode, and often forget entirely to think about what I'm going to eat.

Its about time to switch the fuel tanks again back to the mains.  They didn't run dry before the expected 2.3 hours (but were pretty darn close according to the fuel gauges), which confirms my expected fuel burn of 32 gph, and with a bit of arithmetic also verifies that the fuel remaining in the main tanks will last me the rest of the flight with a healthy 1 hour of reserve fuel.  Its always good to double check your fuel burns and never take any fuel flow gauge or book figures at face value.

By now the rocky mountains have gradually leveled out into the flat farmland of Nebraska.  Not much to see now.

Three hours into the flight and I'm holding a steady 228 kts groundspeed - the highest I've ever seen as a pilot.  I think I saw 210 kts in the Twin Comanche once way back when, and that was down at 3000 ft when I picked up a low level jet stream flying from London to Brantford.  That flight was pretty cool.

An hour out from my destination now and start prepping for the descent and landing.  I review the airport frequencies, runway diagram, and do a quick calculation of when I need to start my descent.  My destination airport is just over 1000' feet elevation, so that's 16,500' I'll need to let down by.  A 750 fpm descent (any faster is uncomfortable on the ears) will mean I'll have to start letting down with no less than 22 minutes to go, but I add a few more minutes fudge factor because I'll certainly be going faster when I push the nose down which will mean a descent is needed even sooner.

Denver Center hands me off to Minneapolis Center, who then eventually switches me to over to my destination's Approach Control.  I'm well into the descent now, slowly pulling back the power bit by bit to give the engines a nice slow cool-down and prevent shock cooling, and also because I need to start thinking about slowing down.  I'm still doing well over 152 knots indicated airspeed, which is my maximum for lowering the first notch of flaps, and I'll need those to slow me down even further.  Approach finally hands me off to the Tower, which asks if I have information 'Whiskey' (the current automated advisory for airport weather and other pertinent terminal information) and then immediately clears me to land for runway 13.  Its a slow day when you get cleared to land and you're still 10 miles out.  I touch down in the light winds and taxi in.  Eight hundred and sixty nautical miles in 4.2 hours - not too shabby if I do say so myself.  Halfway home.