Fri Jun 17, 2016 1:28 pm
#1463883
**Photos – sorry some of the photos have come out at right angles. They have been uploaded to the hosting site correctly but for some reason they have turned them 90 degrees right. I even turned them 90 degrees left, then uploaded them hoping it would normalise them, but no, it just turned them 180 degrees right! Sorry**
This is a write up of my recent VFR trip flying from Las Vegas after an 8 year hiatus from regular flying and a being pretty inexperienced pilot anyway – this was my first big challenge after taking flying back up again last year. There is a fair bit of information available online about flying in the USA and indeed on this very forum, but I hope that this can contribute a little more.
I last flew in the USA in 2005, that time from San Diego so firstly I needed to get a new ‘piggy back’ licence, this was fairly easy albeit took a few weeks. You fill in this form http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/medi ... 060-71.pdf , you then get asked to visit an FSDO office (you choose which location and it takes circa 3 weeks to process the form and get an appointment) to finalise the application. At that meeting they will issue you a temporary certificate which lasts 120 days.
I’d suggest allowing 3-4 weeks for the admin to go through before your trip based on my experience.
I wanted to fly a Cessna 182 with G1000 as that is what I fly in the UK so have some familiarly with it. When doing the search, I found that there is a lot less choice in flight schools / aircraft hire in that part of the country than there used to be 10 years ago. I guess that is down to the ‘Great Recession’ as certain parts of the press are calling it. Lots of google searches / calls / emails and I couldn’t find one for rent, however I did find a 172 with a G1000 from Monarch Sky in Henderson Executive Airport (an airfield just outside of Las Vegas).
We agreed a deal to hire it for a week exclusively and I gave them a credit card authorisation.
The trip was planned to be a holiday that involved flying rather than a flying holiday.
In preparation for the trip, I decided to take:-
o A subscription to Foreflight – this is very US based and I choose this over and above Skydemon (which I have a subscription to in the UK) as it offers more detail of US airfields, eg you can download the US airfield data plates which you don’t appear to able to do on Skydemon. It also uses the USA charts as the map background which I found useful when cross referencing to my paper charts. There are several options on subscriptions, I bought he ProPlus as it included Synthetic Vision which I thought maybe useful for Mountain Flying, however I didn’t use it at all (I found the G1000 Terrain Topography Map was fine) and also Georeferenced Plates (This wasn’t a priority for me as G1000 has this built in, but you may want to think about it if you’re flying into large tower control airfields). If I did it again, I get the 3 months basic subscription.
o Apple Airprint printer with rechargeable battery – I’m old school and like printing a PLOG. This allows my to do it no matter where I am and what I have access to. I could write it out manually (so can’t be that old school!!) but this is easier from Foreflight / Skydemon which include all enroute frequencies, VORS etc on the PLOG.
o PLB (ACR PLB-375 ResQLink+ from this thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=100059&hilit=beacon – decided now that we have kids, it would sensible to do this flying over mountainous areas and large expanse of desert. It will also be used on Europe trip in the summer.
o iPad 4 mini with Foeflight & Skydmeon & Gyronimo (a weight and balance app, more about that later) loaded. My normal iPhone 6 also with the navigation apps loaded, laptop with SD Card reader / writer to transfer flight plans from these apps to the G1000
o Handheld transceiver (Yaesu FTA-750) in case of comms failure. This also has a GPS and VOR tracking functionalityo My trusty pocket guide to Mountain Flying – I definitely recommend you read this or similar if you are planning a trip. My biggest single learn from this book was visualise the air around the mountains as if it was water and expect that as interaction with the aircraft.
Basically I wanted as easy a life as possible when flight planning and navigating and plenty of redundancy in case something went wrong. I know that some will be shaking their heads thinking that I went overboard, but this was about my own personal ability / confidence and this level of kit was right for me.
Here’s the kit:-
In order to maximise the time on holiday I decided to take a pre trip trip to Vegas to complete the FAA meeting at the FSDO and also complete the BFR (Biannual Flight Review) so that we could literally grab the keys to the plane on our actual trip and go.
During this trip the plan was to not only to do the BFR but also get some Mountain Flying and Density Altitude Training. When I flew over there in 2005 I had a few ‘interesting’ moments with both and wanted to get a better understanding of both areas.
I flew out, got into bad company on the plane with a fascinating chap who was an undercover policeman married to one of the cabin crew, and ended up drinking more than anticipated. Even with bleary eyes the next morning, the FAA issued my Temporary Airman’s Certificate on the basis of my old brown CAA licence (apparently when I ‘upgrade’ to EASA I will have to go through this process again as the license numbers have to match up, keep this in mind if you are doing similar). This lasted for 120 days so was ok to cover the actual trip.
The following day I went to the airfield to find out that the Cessna 172 G1000 has been ‘promised’ to someone else and they have put me in a DA40 – initially I was disappointed, but then saw it as an opportunity to get experience on a different type. The first thing you notice about a DA40 is that it’s small, not just from the outside but also when you get in it, having said that the wing span is slightly longer that what I’m used to. There is nowhere to put your stuff, even as you climb in, the top of the instrumental panel is at an angle so things slide off or get blown off by the wind. There is one small side pocket in the cockpit on each side but that is it. It has a joystick which is different to what I normally fly, but after a few flights I found my left arm aching, also the seat has no real padding at all, on any flight of over an hour I found it very uncomfortable (but I am an old git with a dodgy back).
DA40, N165PS
The Vegas sun is harsh on these aircraft (2005 plane)!
The DA40 cockpit:-
The BFR was fairly straight forward, we kept below the Vegas Class Bravo airspace and followed the I15 out to Jean which a town in the middle of nowhere with a disproportionality large unmanned airfield. I asked the instructor what it’s purpose was but he seemed unclear (‘stuff they don’t want to do in Henderson’, err ok), I heard a parachute drop plane on the radio, but that was it apart from us. We did several touch and go’s as I learnt the aircraft’s handling. The DA40 feels light, it floats a lot more than a 182 and I struggled on the first few circuits to get it right. It has 2 stages of flap – take off and landing. When you put the take off flap in, it gains height and is still nose high. Only when you put the landing flap in does the nose start to point down. After a few attempts I was getting my head around this. Also I found that it flares a lot easier than the 182 (where it feels like you have to pull the control column almost all the way back to try and the nose up on landing)
Pic of Jean airfield:-
After circuits we went off into the local area to do stalls in various configurations. The DA40 has amazingly benign stall characteristics, you literally pull the nose up, stall her, nose drops, she unstalls and you carry on like that all day. No sign of any wing drop. This is very reassuring given that the stall warner was pretty inaudible and I’m flying a new type.
Then disaster hits, the following day it starts raining! What are the odds of that in Vegas? So with 4 days allocated in Vegas do to flying, and the expense of an extra flight, I’m sat twiddling my thumbs in a Vegas hotel room for the rest of the pre trip trip (well at least that’s what I told the wife)
I did have to complete the following online FAA ‘ground school’ to get the BFR signed off though. The below are free to sign up for even as UK citizen and although very American, they do have some good points that I picked up around your own personal limits and the chain that can lead to incident.
https://www.faasafety.gov/WINGS/pub/acc ... d=%2022887
https://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/ALC/Cou ... spx?cID=62
https://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/ALC/Cou ... px?cID=214
Interestingly even though the BFR was a pass because it’s a ‘review’ and not a ‘test’, it goes in as Dual rather than P1/S. Not a biggie, but apparently that’s the FAA rules.
We return to Vegas a couple of weeks later and spend a week in Vegas itself – a week is too much, luckily we chose a hotel without a casino so we could escape from the craziness of it all, 4 days would have been about right. The wife did win some money, just a shame that she was playing the penny machines rather than the dollar machines!
We also met a rally nice couple in Vegas that invited us around to their home, he was an avid Ham Radio nut and has over 50 guns. It was fascinating to hear about his (and his friends) passion for guns, they are obsessed and it’s a real worry. There is a conspiracy theory in the States at the moment that we heard from him and several others than because Obama couldn’t change the gun laws, he got government agencies to buy up significant quantities of ammo forcing shortages and price hikes. As a result of this, he has over 1000 live rounds in his house! He keeps 3 loaded guns in his house, 1 in his bedroom, 1 in his study and 1 in his kitchen which he also showed us. It feels like an accident waiting to happen, and I’m grateful that we don’t live in that environment.
A very small selection of the guns:-
More worrying than guns is a lot of America’s support for Trump, but that is a whole different thread.
Day 1 – Henderson – Big Bear – Henderson - total flying 3:20
Due to the lack of flying on the pre trip trip, I still wanted to cover DA and Mountain Flying, so we decided that we’d take an instructor up to Big Bear City the morning of day 1, then go off on our own in the afternoon. That night we had booked into a Cowboy Ranch called Bar Ten which has it’s own airstrip.
Big Bear is has an elevation of 6752 feet above sea level! It’s pattern (American for circuit) is 7952 feet!!! Imagine that in the UK. This is bizarre compared to most of the flying that I do in the SE of England where I fly at around 2-3000 feet. It’s worth noting that they don’t use QFE in the US so you fly the circuit on QNH.
Another issue, the DA40 had gone tech – apparently it was dropping 600rpm on the left mag during the power checks the day before, I was offered an old Cherokee 6 (260) instead with a six pack. I gone from sourcing a 182 G1000 to being promised a 172 G1000 to being given a DA40 G1000 to now flying a PA32 260 six pack, ummmmm. Again looking on the positive, it would be good to refresh the old six pack scan (which is like riding a bike I found, and interestingly I found my scan better on the six pack than the g1000 in terms of time spent looking out of the window). Anyway, the wind was pretty strong but we made the call (with the instructor acting as safety pilot) that we’d go off to Big Bear.
This was a very bumpy trip (something that I would come to expect during 95% of our flights), the flight out we were fighting a real headwind, the GS was down to 65 knots at one point (it took us nearly twice as long to fly there as it back) on an 125mph IAS (Airspeed Indicator was calibrated in mph not knots). The AWOS (this is like an automated ATIS just giving you weather rather than runway information as well) gave us a wind of variable 190 – 260, 13 knots gusting 22. We came in for runway 26 which is approached over woodland, this was interesting in the gusts (it felt gustier than 9 knots and indeed a base speed of 13) we were facing. It was a tough job to keep her lined up on finals, especially flying an aircraft I didn’t know for the first time and because the AI was in mph, my perception was that everything was a lot faster (it was faster but not as fast as perhaps it felt). Rotate at 65/70 mph, best rate of clime 105mph, 90mph on final reusing to 80mph on short final. As we got closer to the ground, luck was on my side, the wind died down, allowed me to straighten her up on the rudder and land without incident (phew!). We had some lunch, it was very quiet up there and the owner of the restaurant came up to us and asked if we were that plane that just landed. Yes we said, she thought we were mad as ‘it was so windy out there’.
After lunch we took off again and started our climb over the lake at the end of the runway to gain height to clear the peak of the mountain before turning on course. As we went over the peak we hit some pretty bad turbulence that made me hit my head on the roof 3 times (moral of the story keep your belts tight) and knocked my headset off. It was bit disconcerting to say the least but that was part of what this sortie was for – to learn about Mountain Flying.
After that, the rest of the flight was bumpy but not outrageous and we ended up back in Henderson.
I asked the instructor what gap you should give between the peak of a mountain and the plane, he said 500-1000 feet, but personally I felt more comfortable with 1500-2000 feet which is what I stuck to where possible for the rest of the trip.
Other learn from this trip was around leaning for max RPM before take off, the DA40 requires you to do this when the Density Altitude is above 5000 feet (mixture rich below 5000 feet)
It was a good trip, but I’m not sure it gave me everything I was expecting from a knowledge perspective of DA & Mountain Flying.
When we got back to Henderson, the DA40 was still tech but about an hour away from being ready to go. In my (admittedly limited) experience, an hour in aviation can turn into a day or more. I called the Bar Ten Ranch to talk through the current weather at their strip, they advised that the commercial operators had cancelled all flights in the morning due to wind, so given that information and the fact the aircraft was still tech we decided to stay the night at a local hotel and head off in the morning.
Day 2 – Henderson – Lake Havasu - total flying 1:15
We arrived early at the airfield and the good news was that the DA40 was fixed and ready to go, apparently it was a fouled plug that had caused the issue and with a new plug fitted, she was ready for our adventure.
Do you wish your County Council had a Department of Aviation or even gave a **** about flying? Well Clark County do! I don’t know what their ‘business model’ is for this, but I’m pleased that they have one.
Due to the wind on Day 1, we had to fit in around the availability at the Bar Ten Ranch (they were full today) so we decided to fly to Lake Havasu. For flight planning purposes, there are several resources in the US to look at Notams / weather etc which are worth noting:-
http://aviationweather.gov/
https://skyvector.com/
1-800-WXBRIEF (where you can actually still talk to a human being)
And of course Foreflight (and Skydemon for weather)
And not forgetting that VFR in the US is performed on the semi circular rule of 0-179 Odd plus 500 and 180-359 Even plus 500
The great thing about the States is that you can request VFR Flight Following from the ground. This is a radar service that ‘follows’ you from your departure to your destination airfields. We called Henderson Ground for taxi and VFR Flight Following and were given a squawk and first frequency to call once we’d left the circuit. How easy is that?
We decided to route via EED (The Needles VOR) which is pretty much on a direct track between Henderson and Lake Havasu. The highest terrain on track was around 5700 so on odd plus 500 and incorporating my 1500-2000 feet minimum plane to peak rule we decided to fly at 7500 (avoiding the Vegas Class Bravo above on the way out, this is 5000 above Henderson rising to 6000 then 8000), but descending to 5500 after Bullhead then descending to the airfield after Needles. Lake Havasu is only 783 feet, so positively low for the area.
One weird thing on his flight was that every time we descended the G1000 MFD would duplicate the PFD wiping out the GPS map. It would last about 30 seconds then turn back to the MFD. I have no idea why this happened and it wasn’t major as we were VMC and had Foreflight running on the iPad and ofcourse the PLOG and a line of a paper chart! This was one to keep an eye on on the next flight.
We used Desert Skies as the Handling Agent (seems like the main one, there is 1 other onsite). When we landed we switched to their UNICOM frequency, they told us where to park and sent a golf buggy out to collect us with cold water. How much did this cost? Nothing, although we did upload the grand total of 8.6 gallons of fuel! And they had some fun cars to look at as well.
Lake Havasu has the old London Bridge over the lake that was bought for US $2.5 million from London when the bridge was replaced in 1968 with the current London Bridge. It was dismantled and each brick was numbered and it was then transported to Lake Havasu and re-erected, crazy! As far as I can tell the guy that bought it was a property developer that had bought a load of desert land for cheap and was using the bridge to attract people, drive land prices up and make money. He also owned an oil business and a chainsaw manufacturing business.
Lake Havasu is a ‘party town’, it attracts lots of people across the States on 2-3 day trips, think a Thomas Cook style weekend break. It is what it is, and we had fun, but it’s not somewhere you’d want to stay for any length of time. They offer lots of watersports but the heat is crazy, it was 37 degrees Celsius whilst we were there and forecast to get to over 40 the following week. We met 2 nice Mexican couples whilst out for lunch, they were married to sisters and we spent the afternoon with them chatting and doing some waterports (keep it clean!). One was a cop and the other imported car parts, they had come to the USA as toddlers and whilst their parents did low level jobs, they’d worked hard to forge careers for themselves. Unsurprisingly they didn’t support Trump.
Doing my bit for Anglo / American / Mexican relationships:-
Day 3 – Lake Havasu – Bar Ten Ranch – total flying 1:10
After our aborted first attempt to get to Bar Ten, we were really looking forward to getting there today. Called them, and the wind seemed good, so off we went. Lake Havasu is an unmanned airfield so we were unable to request VFR flight following until we got airbourne. Due to the mountainous Terrain, we found you need to be over 5500-6000 feet before Flight Following can pick you up on Radar. The good news is that Foreflight will give you the frequency of the local radar service to that airfield so you can have the frequency ready to go.
It was bumpy (as always!), but a fairly uneventful flight, we routed via PGS VOR (Peach Springs), there was a 6200 peak enroute, so we decided to fly at 9500 (we could have flown at 7500, but I wanted at least 1500 feet clearance).
The best bit of the flight was flying over the Grand Canyon itself. Pic below, sorry about the poor quality, it doesn’t do it justice, but unfortunately the light was reflecting off the screen.
As we approached Bar Ten we had to go fly into ground surrounded by higher ground on all sides, and just before we started our descent we announced our intentions on the CTAF (Unmanned Airfield Traffic Radio Frequency) and a Western Cowboy voice came on, “you must our ranchers”, yep that’ll be us. And in the most casual radio exchange I’ve ever had in a plane, we agreed “to stay out of the way for 10 mins whilst a commercial took off”. We orbited above until we saw the other aircraft departing, we then went straight in for the Northern Runway (34). They like you to land S-N (slight uphill) and take of N-S. You can hardly tell there is an upslope, the chart says it’s 1%. The first 600 feet is dirt and the next 4000 feet is tarmac. This runway is narrow and I’m glad there wasn’t much of a cross wind and as I approached I was seriously concentrating as I didn’t want to be the numpty to come off the side of the runway. We managed to land with heads held high. The runway isn’t in bad condition, but it’s also not silky smooth. Think an old UK country lane.
You can see how the ground all around is higher than the strip:-
Us on finals for 34:-
This was a big highlight to the trip. It is 80 miles from the nearest tarmac road, so flying in is the only real way of getting there. It is run by Morman’s (although they don’t talk about religion at all which is a bonus!), and hence it's ‘dry’. You can take you own booze if you want, but we elected not to as it felt good to dry out a bit after Vegas and Lake Havasu. You can so horse riding, skeet (clay) shooting and ride an ATV to the rim of the canyon, oh and sleep in a wagon!
Home for the night:-
And they put on a cowboy show in the evening:-
View from the Grand Canyon rim on the ATV ride:-
I’d highly recommend this, the experience of the flying in / landing was fantastic and the ranch is a lot of fun. Take you own tie downs though as it does get windy out there and there they don’t have any. I didn’t and was worried for a period in the afternoon! I had to go down and check on the plane, luckily I escaped any movement.
Day 4 – Bar Ten Ranch – Sedona – total flying 1:20
The following day, it was time to say goodbye to “Whitmore International Airport” as Bar Ten jokingly like to call the strip.
As you can see from the topographical G1000 map display, you really are surrounded by higher ground at Bar Ten!
I leaned for highest power on the run up checks and as the density altitude was above 5000 feet, I left it there for take off. If it was below 5000 feet then on the DA40, you’d set the mixture for rich. I set my frequency ready to request Flight Following once we were above the peak and I was prepared to do climbing turns if needed to clear the higher ground. The wind was also in my favour for the N-S take off. I was worried that I may have to take off with a tail wind and this is something I have never experienced before, I was then trying to work out what is better, a tail wind and downhill or a headwind and uphill.
That’s where Gyronimo comes in. Like any app, it’s rubbish in, rubbish out, so you have to careful that the information is input correctly. I did this from the PoH before I left Henderson and got the Flying Club to double check it for me. Look how simple it makes your decision making, as a relatively low hours pilot this boosted my confidence that I was making the right call. Below you can see that even with a 10 knot tailwind, I had plenty of runway to take off
However, all was not well, during the run up checks the oil pressure went into the red and the oil pressure annunciator flagged as the RPM went above 1900. I lowered the RPM and the oil pressure lowered, then raised the RPM, the oil pressure went red again. This was a worry and I’d never had anything like this happen before. I am a complete technical noob and had no idea. Here we were stuck in an airfield, in the middle of nowhere with no engineering / help. I had made the decision to abort the flight when I thought I’d try to do the power checks one more time and then the oil pressure was in the normal range. I was split, do I stay and try and get an engineer to fly out or do I go for it now that the oil was at normal levels. I was thinking back to the MFD turning into the PFD on the previously flight and wondered if it was just a G1000 gremlin.
I made the call to go for it, it was one of the most nervous take offs I’ve ever had to do – worrying that the engine might go bang when I had to climb quickly to avoid the high ground. I had a mental plan of where I would land and what I would do if the engine did go pop at certain heights. If I had a EFATO, then there was some flat ground after the runway, that said it was covered in some vegetation so there was always the worry of flipping the aircraft and with a bubble cover canopy that opens upwards that would have made for an interesting exit (it as a read emergency door but there isn’t much space inside so getting to it in a panic would not be fun.
To enhance the ‘fun’ factor, as I have already mentioned, the runway is very narrow and has a slight kink in it. The DA40 has a castoring nosewheel and is steered using the brakes on the main wheels. Combine these 2 things with a pilot that has only had a few previous sorties with a castoring wheel set up and the worry of an EFATO then I can tell you I was pretty pleased to take off without incident. I kept a very close eye on the T’s & P’s and they all stayed in the green. Phew.
Based on what we’d read on here, the original idea was to fly to Grand Canyon West, do the Skywalk (glass walkway over the Canyon) then fly over the Canyon to Paige on the East of the Canyon. However as you see from the Grand Canyon sectional chart below, there are big (purple) areas of no fly (below 14500 feet) zones.
We decided against this and to be honest (philistine I know), we were a bit ‘Canyoned out’ in that we’d already flown over it, and driven to the rim, so we decided to fly to Sedona instead. That is the joy of a holiday like this, you can change your mind very quickly. On that note, we never booked any accommodation until we landed and we used booking.com (app downloaded onto idevice) to do it which always gave us lots of choice and often came up with good deals.
After a worrying start to the flight, the rest of the flight went well, we flew at 9500 as there was some pretty high terrain, the direct line took us over a mountain range near Williams that peaked at 9300 so we decided to take a dog leg around that rather than try to climb to 11500 without oxygen.
As flight following terminated around 15 miles out from Sedona, the operator asked if I was familiar with Sedona. Err no, should I be? He didn’t specify why I needed to be, and didn’t offer any additional insight. It did plant a seed of doubt in my mind what to expect, I knew Sedona was high (4830 feet) but I wasn’t aware of any other ‘issues’ it might have.
The AWOS has told me that the wind was 199 degrees at 21 knots, so fairly windy but pretty straight down the runway (21). The preferred runway (calm winds) is 3, but we were definitely going in on 21. I’d studied the airfield information before we left and noted that there could be strong downdrafts on the approach for 21 when it was windy, so I was mentally prepared for that.
I radioed my intentions on the CTAF and was joining overhead for 21 left hand. When you approach Sedona, it is much more beautiful that the Grand Canyon. I knew we’d made the right choice to come here. As we entered the pattern at 6000 feet on downwind, it was stunning, we had higher ground immediately to our right hand side. I was slightly in awe, we were doing a 6000 foot circuit, yet there is ground at the same level as us not that far away on the right hand side.
It was one of those moments when all the cost of flying just becomes irrelevant and you have a wow moment. I did the downwind checks and put my take off flap on at the end of downwind, turned base then final, readying myself for the downdraft. I left my landing flap off and planned to put it on on very short finals just in case I needed to power out of a downdraft and I also knew we had plenty of runway (over 5000 feet)
Approach for 21
We didn’t experience any downdrafts, but it did get a bit bumpy on finals, landing flap on and landed well, although we did use more of the runway than perhaps I normally would (well until we got to Pam Springs that is!)
Another, bigger plane, landing after us:-
We stayed at the Sky Ranch lodge which is a 5 minute walk from the airfield, if you stay there get a room with a view (extra 10 or so bucks) as it’s worth sitting outside with a cold beer just taking it all in. Although you are out of town, taxis are cheap and easy to get. We went for dinner at Mariposa, unfortunately I didn’t take the camera, but I can highly recommend it. The service was excellent and the food very good, but the best bit, watching the sun set on those red rocks, the different shades of light as the sun went down was magically. We met a nice couple from New Jersey who were on the table next to us, she was in recruitment and he was in waste management. My Tony Soprano jokes were a bit old hat apparently…….
Day 5 – Sedona – Palm Springs – total flying 2:35
When we got the plane the next morning (after a yummy breakfast at the airfield restaurant), I noticed an oil leak. Nightmare! Then I started linking this to my high oil pressure warning the day before and putting 2 & 2 together and getting 5. Maybe the pressure had split a tube or something. I just didn’t know.
I checked the oil, we'd used some but not an outlandish amount, so I topped it up and also wiped the oil off the fuselage so I could see if it came back on the next flight. Now, visions of a seized engine and a forced landing crept into my mind. I did the rest of the checks and all seemed ok. I knew that this was a long flight, so I kept an even more eagle eye than usual on the T’s & P’s
We routed via Drake (DRK) and Twenty Nine Palms (TNP) VORS. It’s weird that in the days of using GPS I still find myself using VORs as Nav aids, force of habit maybe or good back up in case the GPS fails, you can always tune in the VOR. Not sure which, probably a bit of both.
When flying in the this part of the USA, you fly over big swathes of nothing, literally just desert. There are also a lot of mountains. When flying in the SE of England, rightly or wrongly, I am pretty relaxed on where I might land if the donkey cuts out. In this part of the States, I was almost paranoid. I was constantly looking out of the window and picking an area, did I need to turn left, right or back. There were a few times (and luckily only a few) when there was nowhere within gliding range, you’d be going down in the mountains. I didn’t share these thoughts with my wife, but they were there. In my own plane, I’d be less worried, but this aircraft did not fill me with confidence based on my interactions with her so far.
As we approached Palm Springs, Flight Following told me the runway in use (I’d already checked the ATIS, but hey it’s still good service) and cleared me onto right base 31L then handed me over to Palm Springs tower. I love this kind of service. I switched over to Tower and was cleared to land on 31L. Now I don’t know what happened, but my landing was appalling, I had 10000 feet to play with and I seemed intent on using as much of it as possible. I flared too early and ended up floating above the runway, too high to land and I didn’t want to stall onto the runway so I trickled a little power on, but she just wouldn’t go down. If I had less runway, it would have been a go around, but I persisted and eventually landed quite smoothly.
We decided to use Signature Flight Support and were given directions by ground towards Signature, as we approached, we were marshalled in.
I checked the oil leak and it hadn’t got any worse which was a relief so we headed into the Signature building. This is obviously aimed at corporate jets, it’s filled with lots of 'free' goodies, food, drinks, sweets etc. It was very posh and our most expensive stop yet. We decided to stay 2 days, so for 2 days parking, handling charge and 21 gallons of Avgas, the bill was 221 dollars. No landing fee as such, that must have been included in the handling fee. They called us a taxi and we’re off to the hotel.
As we didn’t have to fly the next day, we decided to have a night out and let our hair down. Palm Springs is quite quiet but there are few places that you can go to. We ended up meeting a group of Marines from Twenty Nine Palms (about an hour’s drive away) who were out on the town. One of them was the designated driver which they take very seriously. Apparently they get breathalysed back at the barracks. There’s a perception about the US armed forces being shock and awe, but these guys were well mannered, intelligent and considered (they were ranks not officers). We had some great debates on world politics, the Gulf wars and the Middle East, oh ad lots of beers
The wife playing a drinking game with a US Marine. Never a good idea
Day 6 – Palm Springs – no flying
Chilling by the pool & taking the cable car up the mountain
Day 7 – Palm Springs – Lake Havasu – total flying – 1:25
Unfortunately my wife had left her passport and sun glasses back in Lake Havasu, so although we didn’t want to go back, we really had to. We had hoped to just drop into Lake Havasu, pick up said items then go onto the Mojave Air and Space Port and fly over the aircraft bone yard there. However I checked the weather and the wind was showing a 16 knot crosswind gusting 25. Down the runway, no issue, right across the runway I would be comfortable with the 16 knots cross wind, but not the gusting 25. Therefore I made the decision not to go. This is my one regret of the holiday, it was the right call based on my ability and experience in that aircraft, but in hindsight I could have flown over to see the bone yard, got a real time update on the wind then made the call to land or go somewhere else.
Anyway, we picked up the plane and taxied out to the holding point, Palm Springs is a fairly easy airport to find your way around, but just in case, it’s always handy to have the georeferenced maps:-
Holding short whilst we let one of the big boys past:-
We took off and once out of Class D airspace we started climbing turns to clear the high ground as you see from the Foreflight picture below. Flight Following reminded us to remain clear of the Class D and let him know when setting course. It took us a while as the climb performance in the heat and at this altitude was poor, but eventually we were on our way.
The flight to Lake Havasu was straightforward except we got the ‘low fuel pressure’ annunciator coming up on an intermittent basis. I checked the fuel flow, it was all good, I put the electric fuel pump on then off and it didn’t alter the fuel flow. By this time I was getting used to G1000 foibles on this aircraft so didn’t think too much about it, apart from obviously keeping an eye on the fuel flow. I have a G1000 aircraft and I have never experienced 1 issue at all, yet this thing was constantly throwing up issues, I can’t explain why. It wasn’t exactly confidence building.
A quiet night in Lake Havasu with some boat hire for a couple of hours and a nice Tapas meal (Happy Hour prices!) at Cha-Bones which I’d recommend. We then went up the high street to look at the cars, every Thursday all the local car nuts bring their pride and joy out, it’s a bit like a grown up Max Power magazine. A couple of examples:-
Day 8 – Lake Havasu – Henderson – total flying 1:05
Last day and we needed to get the plane back by lunchtime so we could make a commercial flight to San Francisco where we planned to spend the last couple of days of our holiday. The original plan for this trip was to take the plane from Henderson and leave it at SFO and pay for an instructor to collect it. Unfortunately the owner refused that idea, so we were stuck with Virgin America.
This final flight was the smoothest air conditions we’d had so far, we had a few small bumps when we crossed over a ridge but that was it. We were flying at 6500 (via Needles / EED VOR) which was the closest we’d flown to the ground all trip. The smoothness of the air gave me confidence to break my 1500 ground clearance rule. Also, the G1000 didn’t go wrong, there was no oil leak and everything went well. It was as if the plane was rubbing it in that we were coming to the end of our trip and this is what we could have won!
We approached ‘The Ridge’ which is a VRP for Henderson and radioed in for instructions (the ATIS had said runway 17R). We were cleared for a left base join for 17R and landed in calm winds and parked her up. I had mixed emotions, I was sad that that part of the trip had ended, but I would not miss that DA40.
A few final thoughts:-
Total flying time was 12:10, yes we could have done a lot more but as already explained, this was a holiday with flying rather than a flying holiday and I think we got the balance right for us.
The DA40 was ‘fun’ but it is not a plane I would like to own and in my opinion is not a touring aircraft. Yes you can tour in it as we did, but there are much better options out there (in my limited experience)
Flying in the States (well at least the area we flew in) is a lot easier than the UK, with Flight Following on tap and not much airspace to worry about.
If anyone is planning a trip and that want to ask any questions / meet up, then I’d be happy to do that although I may not have the answers! I’d strongly recommend a trip like this, it’s a lot of fun and great experience and a good way to build confidence.
This is a write up of my recent VFR trip flying from Las Vegas after an 8 year hiatus from regular flying and a being pretty inexperienced pilot anyway – this was my first big challenge after taking flying back up again last year. There is a fair bit of information available online about flying in the USA and indeed on this very forum, but I hope that this can contribute a little more.
I last flew in the USA in 2005, that time from San Diego so firstly I needed to get a new ‘piggy back’ licence, this was fairly easy albeit took a few weeks. You fill in this form http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/medi ... 060-71.pdf , you then get asked to visit an FSDO office (you choose which location and it takes circa 3 weeks to process the form and get an appointment) to finalise the application. At that meeting they will issue you a temporary certificate which lasts 120 days.
I’d suggest allowing 3-4 weeks for the admin to go through before your trip based on my experience.
I wanted to fly a Cessna 182 with G1000 as that is what I fly in the UK so have some familiarly with it. When doing the search, I found that there is a lot less choice in flight schools / aircraft hire in that part of the country than there used to be 10 years ago. I guess that is down to the ‘Great Recession’ as certain parts of the press are calling it. Lots of google searches / calls / emails and I couldn’t find one for rent, however I did find a 172 with a G1000 from Monarch Sky in Henderson Executive Airport (an airfield just outside of Las Vegas).
We agreed a deal to hire it for a week exclusively and I gave them a credit card authorisation.
The trip was planned to be a holiday that involved flying rather than a flying holiday.
In preparation for the trip, I decided to take:-
o A subscription to Foreflight – this is very US based and I choose this over and above Skydemon (which I have a subscription to in the UK) as it offers more detail of US airfields, eg you can download the US airfield data plates which you don’t appear to able to do on Skydemon. It also uses the USA charts as the map background which I found useful when cross referencing to my paper charts. There are several options on subscriptions, I bought he ProPlus as it included Synthetic Vision which I thought maybe useful for Mountain Flying, however I didn’t use it at all (I found the G1000 Terrain Topography Map was fine) and also Georeferenced Plates (This wasn’t a priority for me as G1000 has this built in, but you may want to think about it if you’re flying into large tower control airfields). If I did it again, I get the 3 months basic subscription.
o Apple Airprint printer with rechargeable battery – I’m old school and like printing a PLOG. This allows my to do it no matter where I am and what I have access to. I could write it out manually (so can’t be that old school!!) but this is easier from Foreflight / Skydemon which include all enroute frequencies, VORS etc on the PLOG.
o PLB (ACR PLB-375 ResQLink+ from this thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=100059&hilit=beacon – decided now that we have kids, it would sensible to do this flying over mountainous areas and large expanse of desert. It will also be used on Europe trip in the summer.
o iPad 4 mini with Foeflight & Skydmeon & Gyronimo (a weight and balance app, more about that later) loaded. My normal iPhone 6 also with the navigation apps loaded, laptop with SD Card reader / writer to transfer flight plans from these apps to the G1000
o Handheld transceiver (Yaesu FTA-750) in case of comms failure. This also has a GPS and VOR tracking functionalityo My trusty pocket guide to Mountain Flying – I definitely recommend you read this or similar if you are planning a trip. My biggest single learn from this book was visualise the air around the mountains as if it was water and expect that as interaction with the aircraft.
Basically I wanted as easy a life as possible when flight planning and navigating and plenty of redundancy in case something went wrong. I know that some will be shaking their heads thinking that I went overboard, but this was about my own personal ability / confidence and this level of kit was right for me.
Here’s the kit:-
In order to maximise the time on holiday I decided to take a pre trip trip to Vegas to complete the FAA meeting at the FSDO and also complete the BFR (Biannual Flight Review) so that we could literally grab the keys to the plane on our actual trip and go.
During this trip the plan was to not only to do the BFR but also get some Mountain Flying and Density Altitude Training. When I flew over there in 2005 I had a few ‘interesting’ moments with both and wanted to get a better understanding of both areas.
I flew out, got into bad company on the plane with a fascinating chap who was an undercover policeman married to one of the cabin crew, and ended up drinking more than anticipated. Even with bleary eyes the next morning, the FAA issued my Temporary Airman’s Certificate on the basis of my old brown CAA licence (apparently when I ‘upgrade’ to EASA I will have to go through this process again as the license numbers have to match up, keep this in mind if you are doing similar). This lasted for 120 days so was ok to cover the actual trip.
The following day I went to the airfield to find out that the Cessna 172 G1000 has been ‘promised’ to someone else and they have put me in a DA40 – initially I was disappointed, but then saw it as an opportunity to get experience on a different type. The first thing you notice about a DA40 is that it’s small, not just from the outside but also when you get in it, having said that the wing span is slightly longer that what I’m used to. There is nowhere to put your stuff, even as you climb in, the top of the instrumental panel is at an angle so things slide off or get blown off by the wind. There is one small side pocket in the cockpit on each side but that is it. It has a joystick which is different to what I normally fly, but after a few flights I found my left arm aching, also the seat has no real padding at all, on any flight of over an hour I found it very uncomfortable (but I am an old git with a dodgy back).
DA40, N165PS
The Vegas sun is harsh on these aircraft (2005 plane)!
The DA40 cockpit:-
The BFR was fairly straight forward, we kept below the Vegas Class Bravo airspace and followed the I15 out to Jean which a town in the middle of nowhere with a disproportionality large unmanned airfield. I asked the instructor what it’s purpose was but he seemed unclear (‘stuff they don’t want to do in Henderson’, err ok), I heard a parachute drop plane on the radio, but that was it apart from us. We did several touch and go’s as I learnt the aircraft’s handling. The DA40 feels light, it floats a lot more than a 182 and I struggled on the first few circuits to get it right. It has 2 stages of flap – take off and landing. When you put the take off flap in, it gains height and is still nose high. Only when you put the landing flap in does the nose start to point down. After a few attempts I was getting my head around this. Also I found that it flares a lot easier than the 182 (where it feels like you have to pull the control column almost all the way back to try and the nose up on landing)
Pic of Jean airfield:-
After circuits we went off into the local area to do stalls in various configurations. The DA40 has amazingly benign stall characteristics, you literally pull the nose up, stall her, nose drops, she unstalls and you carry on like that all day. No sign of any wing drop. This is very reassuring given that the stall warner was pretty inaudible and I’m flying a new type.
Then disaster hits, the following day it starts raining! What are the odds of that in Vegas? So with 4 days allocated in Vegas do to flying, and the expense of an extra flight, I’m sat twiddling my thumbs in a Vegas hotel room for the rest of the pre trip trip (well at least that’s what I told the wife)
I did have to complete the following online FAA ‘ground school’ to get the BFR signed off though. The below are free to sign up for even as UK citizen and although very American, they do have some good points that I picked up around your own personal limits and the chain that can lead to incident.
https://www.faasafety.gov/WINGS/pub/acc ... d=%2022887
https://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/ALC/Cou ... spx?cID=62
https://www.faasafety.gov/gslac/ALC/Cou ... px?cID=214
Interestingly even though the BFR was a pass because it’s a ‘review’ and not a ‘test’, it goes in as Dual rather than P1/S. Not a biggie, but apparently that’s the FAA rules.
We return to Vegas a couple of weeks later and spend a week in Vegas itself – a week is too much, luckily we chose a hotel without a casino so we could escape from the craziness of it all, 4 days would have been about right. The wife did win some money, just a shame that she was playing the penny machines rather than the dollar machines!
We also met a rally nice couple in Vegas that invited us around to their home, he was an avid Ham Radio nut and has over 50 guns. It was fascinating to hear about his (and his friends) passion for guns, they are obsessed and it’s a real worry. There is a conspiracy theory in the States at the moment that we heard from him and several others than because Obama couldn’t change the gun laws, he got government agencies to buy up significant quantities of ammo forcing shortages and price hikes. As a result of this, he has over 1000 live rounds in his house! He keeps 3 loaded guns in his house, 1 in his bedroom, 1 in his study and 1 in his kitchen which he also showed us. It feels like an accident waiting to happen, and I’m grateful that we don’t live in that environment.
A very small selection of the guns:-
More worrying than guns is a lot of America’s support for Trump, but that is a whole different thread.
Day 1 – Henderson – Big Bear – Henderson - total flying 3:20
Due to the lack of flying on the pre trip trip, I still wanted to cover DA and Mountain Flying, so we decided that we’d take an instructor up to Big Bear City the morning of day 1, then go off on our own in the afternoon. That night we had booked into a Cowboy Ranch called Bar Ten which has it’s own airstrip.
Big Bear is has an elevation of 6752 feet above sea level! It’s pattern (American for circuit) is 7952 feet!!! Imagine that in the UK. This is bizarre compared to most of the flying that I do in the SE of England where I fly at around 2-3000 feet. It’s worth noting that they don’t use QFE in the US so you fly the circuit on QNH.
Another issue, the DA40 had gone tech – apparently it was dropping 600rpm on the left mag during the power checks the day before, I was offered an old Cherokee 6 (260) instead with a six pack. I gone from sourcing a 182 G1000 to being promised a 172 G1000 to being given a DA40 G1000 to now flying a PA32 260 six pack, ummmmm. Again looking on the positive, it would be good to refresh the old six pack scan (which is like riding a bike I found, and interestingly I found my scan better on the six pack than the g1000 in terms of time spent looking out of the window). Anyway, the wind was pretty strong but we made the call (with the instructor acting as safety pilot) that we’d go off to Big Bear.
This was a very bumpy trip (something that I would come to expect during 95% of our flights), the flight out we were fighting a real headwind, the GS was down to 65 knots at one point (it took us nearly twice as long to fly there as it back) on an 125mph IAS (Airspeed Indicator was calibrated in mph not knots). The AWOS (this is like an automated ATIS just giving you weather rather than runway information as well) gave us a wind of variable 190 – 260, 13 knots gusting 22. We came in for runway 26 which is approached over woodland, this was interesting in the gusts (it felt gustier than 9 knots and indeed a base speed of 13) we were facing. It was a tough job to keep her lined up on finals, especially flying an aircraft I didn’t know for the first time and because the AI was in mph, my perception was that everything was a lot faster (it was faster but not as fast as perhaps it felt). Rotate at 65/70 mph, best rate of clime 105mph, 90mph on final reusing to 80mph on short final. As we got closer to the ground, luck was on my side, the wind died down, allowed me to straighten her up on the rudder and land without incident (phew!). We had some lunch, it was very quiet up there and the owner of the restaurant came up to us and asked if we were that plane that just landed. Yes we said, she thought we were mad as ‘it was so windy out there’.
After lunch we took off again and started our climb over the lake at the end of the runway to gain height to clear the peak of the mountain before turning on course. As we went over the peak we hit some pretty bad turbulence that made me hit my head on the roof 3 times (moral of the story keep your belts tight) and knocked my headset off. It was bit disconcerting to say the least but that was part of what this sortie was for – to learn about Mountain Flying.
After that, the rest of the flight was bumpy but not outrageous and we ended up back in Henderson.
I asked the instructor what gap you should give between the peak of a mountain and the plane, he said 500-1000 feet, but personally I felt more comfortable with 1500-2000 feet which is what I stuck to where possible for the rest of the trip.
Other learn from this trip was around leaning for max RPM before take off, the DA40 requires you to do this when the Density Altitude is above 5000 feet (mixture rich below 5000 feet)
It was a good trip, but I’m not sure it gave me everything I was expecting from a knowledge perspective of DA & Mountain Flying.
When we got back to Henderson, the DA40 was still tech but about an hour away from being ready to go. In my (admittedly limited) experience, an hour in aviation can turn into a day or more. I called the Bar Ten Ranch to talk through the current weather at their strip, they advised that the commercial operators had cancelled all flights in the morning due to wind, so given that information and the fact the aircraft was still tech we decided to stay the night at a local hotel and head off in the morning.
Day 2 – Henderson – Lake Havasu - total flying 1:15
We arrived early at the airfield and the good news was that the DA40 was fixed and ready to go, apparently it was a fouled plug that had caused the issue and with a new plug fitted, she was ready for our adventure.
Do you wish your County Council had a Department of Aviation or even gave a **** about flying? Well Clark County do! I don’t know what their ‘business model’ is for this, but I’m pleased that they have one.
Due to the wind on Day 1, we had to fit in around the availability at the Bar Ten Ranch (they were full today) so we decided to fly to Lake Havasu. For flight planning purposes, there are several resources in the US to look at Notams / weather etc which are worth noting:-
http://aviationweather.gov/
https://skyvector.com/
1-800-WXBRIEF (where you can actually still talk to a human being)
And of course Foreflight (and Skydemon for weather)
And not forgetting that VFR in the US is performed on the semi circular rule of 0-179 Odd plus 500 and 180-359 Even plus 500
The great thing about the States is that you can request VFR Flight Following from the ground. This is a radar service that ‘follows’ you from your departure to your destination airfields. We called Henderson Ground for taxi and VFR Flight Following and were given a squawk and first frequency to call once we’d left the circuit. How easy is that?
We decided to route via EED (The Needles VOR) which is pretty much on a direct track between Henderson and Lake Havasu. The highest terrain on track was around 5700 so on odd plus 500 and incorporating my 1500-2000 feet minimum plane to peak rule we decided to fly at 7500 (avoiding the Vegas Class Bravo above on the way out, this is 5000 above Henderson rising to 6000 then 8000), but descending to 5500 after Bullhead then descending to the airfield after Needles. Lake Havasu is only 783 feet, so positively low for the area.
One weird thing on his flight was that every time we descended the G1000 MFD would duplicate the PFD wiping out the GPS map. It would last about 30 seconds then turn back to the MFD. I have no idea why this happened and it wasn’t major as we were VMC and had Foreflight running on the iPad and ofcourse the PLOG and a line of a paper chart! This was one to keep an eye on on the next flight.
We used Desert Skies as the Handling Agent (seems like the main one, there is 1 other onsite). When we landed we switched to their UNICOM frequency, they told us where to park and sent a golf buggy out to collect us with cold water. How much did this cost? Nothing, although we did upload the grand total of 8.6 gallons of fuel! And they had some fun cars to look at as well.
Lake Havasu has the old London Bridge over the lake that was bought for US $2.5 million from London when the bridge was replaced in 1968 with the current London Bridge. It was dismantled and each brick was numbered and it was then transported to Lake Havasu and re-erected, crazy! As far as I can tell the guy that bought it was a property developer that had bought a load of desert land for cheap and was using the bridge to attract people, drive land prices up and make money. He also owned an oil business and a chainsaw manufacturing business.
Lake Havasu is a ‘party town’, it attracts lots of people across the States on 2-3 day trips, think a Thomas Cook style weekend break. It is what it is, and we had fun, but it’s not somewhere you’d want to stay for any length of time. They offer lots of watersports but the heat is crazy, it was 37 degrees Celsius whilst we were there and forecast to get to over 40 the following week. We met 2 nice Mexican couples whilst out for lunch, they were married to sisters and we spent the afternoon with them chatting and doing some waterports (keep it clean!). One was a cop and the other imported car parts, they had come to the USA as toddlers and whilst their parents did low level jobs, they’d worked hard to forge careers for themselves. Unsurprisingly they didn’t support Trump.
Doing my bit for Anglo / American / Mexican relationships:-
Day 3 – Lake Havasu – Bar Ten Ranch – total flying 1:10
After our aborted first attempt to get to Bar Ten, we were really looking forward to getting there today. Called them, and the wind seemed good, so off we went. Lake Havasu is an unmanned airfield so we were unable to request VFR flight following until we got airbourne. Due to the mountainous Terrain, we found you need to be over 5500-6000 feet before Flight Following can pick you up on Radar. The good news is that Foreflight will give you the frequency of the local radar service to that airfield so you can have the frequency ready to go.
It was bumpy (as always!), but a fairly uneventful flight, we routed via PGS VOR (Peach Springs), there was a 6200 peak enroute, so we decided to fly at 9500 (we could have flown at 7500, but I wanted at least 1500 feet clearance).
The best bit of the flight was flying over the Grand Canyon itself. Pic below, sorry about the poor quality, it doesn’t do it justice, but unfortunately the light was reflecting off the screen.
As we approached Bar Ten we had to go fly into ground surrounded by higher ground on all sides, and just before we started our descent we announced our intentions on the CTAF (Unmanned Airfield Traffic Radio Frequency) and a Western Cowboy voice came on, “you must our ranchers”, yep that’ll be us. And in the most casual radio exchange I’ve ever had in a plane, we agreed “to stay out of the way for 10 mins whilst a commercial took off”. We orbited above until we saw the other aircraft departing, we then went straight in for the Northern Runway (34). They like you to land S-N (slight uphill) and take of N-S. You can hardly tell there is an upslope, the chart says it’s 1%. The first 600 feet is dirt and the next 4000 feet is tarmac. This runway is narrow and I’m glad there wasn’t much of a cross wind and as I approached I was seriously concentrating as I didn’t want to be the numpty to come off the side of the runway. We managed to land with heads held high. The runway isn’t in bad condition, but it’s also not silky smooth. Think an old UK country lane.
You can see how the ground all around is higher than the strip:-
Us on finals for 34:-
This was a big highlight to the trip. It is 80 miles from the nearest tarmac road, so flying in is the only real way of getting there. It is run by Morman’s (although they don’t talk about religion at all which is a bonus!), and hence it's ‘dry’. You can take you own booze if you want, but we elected not to as it felt good to dry out a bit after Vegas and Lake Havasu. You can so horse riding, skeet (clay) shooting and ride an ATV to the rim of the canyon, oh and sleep in a wagon!
Home for the night:-
And they put on a cowboy show in the evening:-
View from the Grand Canyon rim on the ATV ride:-
I’d highly recommend this, the experience of the flying in / landing was fantastic and the ranch is a lot of fun. Take you own tie downs though as it does get windy out there and there they don’t have any. I didn’t and was worried for a period in the afternoon! I had to go down and check on the plane, luckily I escaped any movement.
Day 4 – Bar Ten Ranch – Sedona – total flying 1:20
The following day, it was time to say goodbye to “Whitmore International Airport” as Bar Ten jokingly like to call the strip.
As you can see from the topographical G1000 map display, you really are surrounded by higher ground at Bar Ten!
I leaned for highest power on the run up checks and as the density altitude was above 5000 feet, I left it there for take off. If it was below 5000 feet then on the DA40, you’d set the mixture for rich. I set my frequency ready to request Flight Following once we were above the peak and I was prepared to do climbing turns if needed to clear the higher ground. The wind was also in my favour for the N-S take off. I was worried that I may have to take off with a tail wind and this is something I have never experienced before, I was then trying to work out what is better, a tail wind and downhill or a headwind and uphill.
That’s where Gyronimo comes in. Like any app, it’s rubbish in, rubbish out, so you have to careful that the information is input correctly. I did this from the PoH before I left Henderson and got the Flying Club to double check it for me. Look how simple it makes your decision making, as a relatively low hours pilot this boosted my confidence that I was making the right call. Below you can see that even with a 10 knot tailwind, I had plenty of runway to take off
However, all was not well, during the run up checks the oil pressure went into the red and the oil pressure annunciator flagged as the RPM went above 1900. I lowered the RPM and the oil pressure lowered, then raised the RPM, the oil pressure went red again. This was a worry and I’d never had anything like this happen before. I am a complete technical noob and had no idea. Here we were stuck in an airfield, in the middle of nowhere with no engineering / help. I had made the decision to abort the flight when I thought I’d try to do the power checks one more time and then the oil pressure was in the normal range. I was split, do I stay and try and get an engineer to fly out or do I go for it now that the oil was at normal levels. I was thinking back to the MFD turning into the PFD on the previously flight and wondered if it was just a G1000 gremlin.
I made the call to go for it, it was one of the most nervous take offs I’ve ever had to do – worrying that the engine might go bang when I had to climb quickly to avoid the high ground. I had a mental plan of where I would land and what I would do if the engine did go pop at certain heights. If I had a EFATO, then there was some flat ground after the runway, that said it was covered in some vegetation so there was always the worry of flipping the aircraft and with a bubble cover canopy that opens upwards that would have made for an interesting exit (it as a read emergency door but there isn’t much space inside so getting to it in a panic would not be fun.
To enhance the ‘fun’ factor, as I have already mentioned, the runway is very narrow and has a slight kink in it. The DA40 has a castoring nosewheel and is steered using the brakes on the main wheels. Combine these 2 things with a pilot that has only had a few previous sorties with a castoring wheel set up and the worry of an EFATO then I can tell you I was pretty pleased to take off without incident. I kept a very close eye on the T’s & P’s and they all stayed in the green. Phew.
Based on what we’d read on here, the original idea was to fly to Grand Canyon West, do the Skywalk (glass walkway over the Canyon) then fly over the Canyon to Paige on the East of the Canyon. However as you see from the Grand Canyon sectional chart below, there are big (purple) areas of no fly (below 14500 feet) zones.
We decided against this and to be honest (philistine I know), we were a bit ‘Canyoned out’ in that we’d already flown over it, and driven to the rim, so we decided to fly to Sedona instead. That is the joy of a holiday like this, you can change your mind very quickly. On that note, we never booked any accommodation until we landed and we used booking.com (app downloaded onto idevice) to do it which always gave us lots of choice and often came up with good deals.
After a worrying start to the flight, the rest of the flight went well, we flew at 9500 as there was some pretty high terrain, the direct line took us over a mountain range near Williams that peaked at 9300 so we decided to take a dog leg around that rather than try to climb to 11500 without oxygen.
As flight following terminated around 15 miles out from Sedona, the operator asked if I was familiar with Sedona. Err no, should I be? He didn’t specify why I needed to be, and didn’t offer any additional insight. It did plant a seed of doubt in my mind what to expect, I knew Sedona was high (4830 feet) but I wasn’t aware of any other ‘issues’ it might have.
The AWOS has told me that the wind was 199 degrees at 21 knots, so fairly windy but pretty straight down the runway (21). The preferred runway (calm winds) is 3, but we were definitely going in on 21. I’d studied the airfield information before we left and noted that there could be strong downdrafts on the approach for 21 when it was windy, so I was mentally prepared for that.
I radioed my intentions on the CTAF and was joining overhead for 21 left hand. When you approach Sedona, it is much more beautiful that the Grand Canyon. I knew we’d made the right choice to come here. As we entered the pattern at 6000 feet on downwind, it was stunning, we had higher ground immediately to our right hand side. I was slightly in awe, we were doing a 6000 foot circuit, yet there is ground at the same level as us not that far away on the right hand side.
It was one of those moments when all the cost of flying just becomes irrelevant and you have a wow moment. I did the downwind checks and put my take off flap on at the end of downwind, turned base then final, readying myself for the downdraft. I left my landing flap off and planned to put it on on very short finals just in case I needed to power out of a downdraft and I also knew we had plenty of runway (over 5000 feet)
Approach for 21
We didn’t experience any downdrafts, but it did get a bit bumpy on finals, landing flap on and landed well, although we did use more of the runway than perhaps I normally would (well until we got to Pam Springs that is!)
Another, bigger plane, landing after us:-
We stayed at the Sky Ranch lodge which is a 5 minute walk from the airfield, if you stay there get a room with a view (extra 10 or so bucks) as it’s worth sitting outside with a cold beer just taking it all in. Although you are out of town, taxis are cheap and easy to get. We went for dinner at Mariposa, unfortunately I didn’t take the camera, but I can highly recommend it. The service was excellent and the food very good, but the best bit, watching the sun set on those red rocks, the different shades of light as the sun went down was magically. We met a nice couple from New Jersey who were on the table next to us, she was in recruitment and he was in waste management. My Tony Soprano jokes were a bit old hat apparently…….
Day 5 – Sedona – Palm Springs – total flying 2:35
When we got the plane the next morning (after a yummy breakfast at the airfield restaurant), I noticed an oil leak. Nightmare! Then I started linking this to my high oil pressure warning the day before and putting 2 & 2 together and getting 5. Maybe the pressure had split a tube or something. I just didn’t know.
I checked the oil, we'd used some but not an outlandish amount, so I topped it up and also wiped the oil off the fuselage so I could see if it came back on the next flight. Now, visions of a seized engine and a forced landing crept into my mind. I did the rest of the checks and all seemed ok. I knew that this was a long flight, so I kept an even more eagle eye than usual on the T’s & P’s
We routed via Drake (DRK) and Twenty Nine Palms (TNP) VORS. It’s weird that in the days of using GPS I still find myself using VORs as Nav aids, force of habit maybe or good back up in case the GPS fails, you can always tune in the VOR. Not sure which, probably a bit of both.
When flying in the this part of the USA, you fly over big swathes of nothing, literally just desert. There are also a lot of mountains. When flying in the SE of England, rightly or wrongly, I am pretty relaxed on where I might land if the donkey cuts out. In this part of the States, I was almost paranoid. I was constantly looking out of the window and picking an area, did I need to turn left, right or back. There were a few times (and luckily only a few) when there was nowhere within gliding range, you’d be going down in the mountains. I didn’t share these thoughts with my wife, but they were there. In my own plane, I’d be less worried, but this aircraft did not fill me with confidence based on my interactions with her so far.
As we approached Palm Springs, Flight Following told me the runway in use (I’d already checked the ATIS, but hey it’s still good service) and cleared me onto right base 31L then handed me over to Palm Springs tower. I love this kind of service. I switched over to Tower and was cleared to land on 31L. Now I don’t know what happened, but my landing was appalling, I had 10000 feet to play with and I seemed intent on using as much of it as possible. I flared too early and ended up floating above the runway, too high to land and I didn’t want to stall onto the runway so I trickled a little power on, but she just wouldn’t go down. If I had less runway, it would have been a go around, but I persisted and eventually landed quite smoothly.
We decided to use Signature Flight Support and were given directions by ground towards Signature, as we approached, we were marshalled in.
I checked the oil leak and it hadn’t got any worse which was a relief so we headed into the Signature building. This is obviously aimed at corporate jets, it’s filled with lots of 'free' goodies, food, drinks, sweets etc. It was very posh and our most expensive stop yet. We decided to stay 2 days, so for 2 days parking, handling charge and 21 gallons of Avgas, the bill was 221 dollars. No landing fee as such, that must have been included in the handling fee. They called us a taxi and we’re off to the hotel.
As we didn’t have to fly the next day, we decided to have a night out and let our hair down. Palm Springs is quite quiet but there are few places that you can go to. We ended up meeting a group of Marines from Twenty Nine Palms (about an hour’s drive away) who were out on the town. One of them was the designated driver which they take very seriously. Apparently they get breathalysed back at the barracks. There’s a perception about the US armed forces being shock and awe, but these guys were well mannered, intelligent and considered (they were ranks not officers). We had some great debates on world politics, the Gulf wars and the Middle East, oh ad lots of beers
The wife playing a drinking game with a US Marine. Never a good idea
Day 6 – Palm Springs – no flying
Chilling by the pool & taking the cable car up the mountain
Day 7 – Palm Springs – Lake Havasu – total flying – 1:25
Unfortunately my wife had left her passport and sun glasses back in Lake Havasu, so although we didn’t want to go back, we really had to. We had hoped to just drop into Lake Havasu, pick up said items then go onto the Mojave Air and Space Port and fly over the aircraft bone yard there. However I checked the weather and the wind was showing a 16 knot crosswind gusting 25. Down the runway, no issue, right across the runway I would be comfortable with the 16 knots cross wind, but not the gusting 25. Therefore I made the decision not to go. This is my one regret of the holiday, it was the right call based on my ability and experience in that aircraft, but in hindsight I could have flown over to see the bone yard, got a real time update on the wind then made the call to land or go somewhere else.
Anyway, we picked up the plane and taxied out to the holding point, Palm Springs is a fairly easy airport to find your way around, but just in case, it’s always handy to have the georeferenced maps:-
Holding short whilst we let one of the big boys past:-
We took off and once out of Class D airspace we started climbing turns to clear the high ground as you see from the Foreflight picture below. Flight Following reminded us to remain clear of the Class D and let him know when setting course. It took us a while as the climb performance in the heat and at this altitude was poor, but eventually we were on our way.
The flight to Lake Havasu was straightforward except we got the ‘low fuel pressure’ annunciator coming up on an intermittent basis. I checked the fuel flow, it was all good, I put the electric fuel pump on then off and it didn’t alter the fuel flow. By this time I was getting used to G1000 foibles on this aircraft so didn’t think too much about it, apart from obviously keeping an eye on the fuel flow. I have a G1000 aircraft and I have never experienced 1 issue at all, yet this thing was constantly throwing up issues, I can’t explain why. It wasn’t exactly confidence building.
A quiet night in Lake Havasu with some boat hire for a couple of hours and a nice Tapas meal (Happy Hour prices!) at Cha-Bones which I’d recommend. We then went up the high street to look at the cars, every Thursday all the local car nuts bring their pride and joy out, it’s a bit like a grown up Max Power magazine. A couple of examples:-
Day 8 – Lake Havasu – Henderson – total flying 1:05
Last day and we needed to get the plane back by lunchtime so we could make a commercial flight to San Francisco where we planned to spend the last couple of days of our holiday. The original plan for this trip was to take the plane from Henderson and leave it at SFO and pay for an instructor to collect it. Unfortunately the owner refused that idea, so we were stuck with Virgin America.
This final flight was the smoothest air conditions we’d had so far, we had a few small bumps when we crossed over a ridge but that was it. We were flying at 6500 (via Needles / EED VOR) which was the closest we’d flown to the ground all trip. The smoothness of the air gave me confidence to break my 1500 ground clearance rule. Also, the G1000 didn’t go wrong, there was no oil leak and everything went well. It was as if the plane was rubbing it in that we were coming to the end of our trip and this is what we could have won!
We approached ‘The Ridge’ which is a VRP for Henderson and radioed in for instructions (the ATIS had said runway 17R). We were cleared for a left base join for 17R and landed in calm winds and parked her up. I had mixed emotions, I was sad that that part of the trip had ended, but I would not miss that DA40.
A few final thoughts:-
Total flying time was 12:10, yes we could have done a lot more but as already explained, this was a holiday with flying rather than a flying holiday and I think we got the balance right for us.
The DA40 was ‘fun’ but it is not a plane I would like to own and in my opinion is not a touring aircraft. Yes you can tour in it as we did, but there are much better options out there (in my limited experience)
Flying in the States (well at least the area we flew in) is a lot easier than the UK, with Flight Following on tap and not much airspace to worry about.
If anyone is planning a trip and that want to ask any questions / meet up, then I’d be happy to do that although I may not have the answers! I’d strongly recommend a trip like this, it’s a lot of fun and great experience and a good way to build confidence.
Jason
You can take the boy out of the council, but you'll never take the council out of the boy.
You can take the boy out of the council, but you'll never take the council out of the boy.
FLYER Club Member
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