Taking my Mooney Cross Country

[marks]

My family has owned a home in Falmouth for 40 yrs and I live on the Vineyard.  My advice is to avoid 5B6 and land in Hyannis.  The runway at 5B6 is less than 2300 ft long and only 40 ft wide.  There are plenty of trees close in at each end of the runway and if there's a crosswind the air tobbles over the trees on either side.  If you have a decent SW wind as is common in the summer, then landing on 25 is fine, but if you want to make the safest decision think twice before landing at 5B6.   Good luck and fly safe.

[StinkBug]

We ended up deciding to leave a little early and made our way to El Paso last night. Visiting with rocketaviator now and will be continuing on to Austin today. Hope to meet some more Mooney folks there!

[Hank]

Happy trails to you! (It seems appropriate for how much time you're spending in Texas.)

[StinkBug]

Ok now that I'm connected on a real computer I'll drop a couple links in here for you guys. 

 

First is the facebook album where I'll be posting pics and updates along the way. Facebook is fast and easy on a cellphone so updates will probably hit there first. 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10207427114306207.1073741836.1537952674&type=3

 

 

Today we'll be heading towards Austin, landing at KHYI and hopefully meeting up with some of the caravan folk for a little formation flying. Any recommendations for things to do with one night in town?

[StinkBug]

Made it to Austin. Ended up getting a little bit of a late start as we were enjoying the company of our host last night and got some breakfast on the way out. It was a pretty bumpy ride coming out of El Paso to our fueling stop at KFST and my co-pilot started feeling some slight motion sickness so we took a fairly long break there. Nice quiet little airport, almost so quiet and old you'd think it were deserted, but as soon as we landed someone came out and helped us fuel up, and were really friendly. We ended up coming inside and chatting with them for a while. I'd totally recommend going there if only for the fuel prices. It was a very pleasant stop. 

 

We probably should have gotten going a little sooner though, cause there were some pretty good buildups moving into our flight path. We ended up needing to divert a bit to stay clear of the nasty stuff. All in all though it was a pretty good flight. We were VFR the whole way and never got any real turbulence and just a few sprinkles. That definitely made the XM subscription worth the money.

 

 

Eventually we got out of all that and landed at KHYI, picked up our rental car, checked into our hotel and headed out to meet gsxrpilot for dinner. He picked an awesome place, and a good time was had by all. Just got back from wandering around 6th street and people watching. Tomorrow, a little formation flying and then New Orleans!

 

[Hank]

Sounds like a great time! Enjoy the people watching in the Big Easy. The journey is just beginning.

[StinkBug]

Gotta love Texas, cause you sure cant forget what state you're in when you're there. Even our waffles had some texas pride goin on this morning.

 

 

Unfortunately we didn't get to do any formation work this morning, as GSXRPilot had a mechanical issue, but just before departing we did get to see a flight of Texans, a couple bombers and a P-51 take off, which was pretty cool. 

 

 

 

The flight today was nice and smooth with just a few buildups along the way. We just got to our hotel in New Orleans and are relaxing before we go out and do some damage to our livers tonight. Hopefully the hangover wont be too bad cause tomorrow we're gonna go ride around the swamps in an airboat.

 

[StinkBug]

Here's the flight track from today

 

http://www.cloudahoy.com/api/S.cgi?rbn2gsp8i8oMKQw

 

and here are the 2 from yesterday

 

http://www.cloudahoy.com/api/S.cgi?AO8bTwZ7LsC29Srm3HA

 

http://www.cloudahoy.com/api/S.cgi?puFkxmJt77LI

[carusoam]

I like the cloud ahoy data....

Best regards,

-a-

[1964-M20E]

Hey I was in the air around the same time today just after noon I was flying in from Jackson MS.

 

Heard you on the radio.  Enjoy New Orleans.

 

:)

[carl]

I was watching the live 24 radar of your flight friday at work . Pissed my boss off when he said "are you going to watch that all day "

and I said " No just till they land" 

 

AOO middle of nowhere pennsylvania, 

 

If you need anything . stop in . cell 814 650 2400  carl

[StinkBug]

Hey I was in the air around the same time today just after noon I was flying in from Jackson MS.

 

Heard you on the radio.  Enjoy New Orleans.

 

:)

 

 

That's awesome! I heard a few Mooneys on frequency today, and when we got to KNEW the ramper was like "man it's been all Mooneys and Cirrus today". Guess we're not the only ones out having fun in our birds!

[StinkBug]

I was watching the live 24 radar of your flight friday at work . Pissed my boss off when he said "are you going to watch that all day "

and I said " No just till they land" 

 

 

HAHAHAHAHA!! that's awesome. Glad we could give you something to entertain at work.

[StinkBug]

Airboat rides are fun. That is all.

 

https://www.facebook.com/dallas.ashley.3/videos/10207451871565123/?ref=notif&notif_t=video_processed

[StinkBug]

After the airboat ride we did a little urban exploration. I will not admit to trespassing, but lets just say this abandoned power plant is pretty creepy, and fascinating.

 

[N201MKTurbo]

Any pics from inside?

[N201MKTurbo]

Go have BBQ at "The Joint"

[rbridges]

How did NO look. I haven't been there since Katrina.

[StinkBug]

Any pics from inside?

 

There are many many pictures of the inside. I will not admit to taking any of them as that would be admitting to breaking in. 

 

Here's one I found on the net though

[StinkBug]

How did NO look. I haven't been there since Katrina.

 

Honestly I didn't think it looked all that much different from a lot of big older cities, at least it looked similar to the rougher parts of many others anyways. There's a lot of new, and there's a good amount of abandoned and crumbling. I find abandoned structures really interesting though, so maybe I'm less shocked by that than many people. With the exception of the things that have obviously been built since Katrina it's dirty, and rough and shows it's hardships, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. NOLA honestly has never been at the top of my vacation list, and it only made it onto this trip because we needed a stopping point and I had never been there. Yesterday ended up being one of the most awesome days I've had in years however. 

[N201MKTurbo]

My wife and I go there for Jazz Fest for the last few years. We land at Slidel. An old guy there told us "Katrina washed a lot of bad out of NO" I think he is right. It is a lot nicer then it used to be. We always have a good time!

[StinkBug]

Today was an adventure. Last night before bed we spent a lot of time studying weather forecasts and trying to figure out if we were gonna be able to get out of "Nawlins" and we figured that our only shot would be to start out early. Alarm went off at 4am, and we were at the airport by 5. It was pouring rain the whole time, but the forecast showed that there was one big cell moving over the city and it would be clearing by our 6am departure time. Sure enough the rain stopped and the radar picture was looking pretty good for our route, aside from some junk right at the start. So just after first light we got up in the air, and before making it very far at all the XM weather started lighting up with cells. Where the hell did all this come from? We ended up deviating way south of our course, out over the gulf before turning back north to shoot through a corridor between sets of storms. We couldn't keep going east cause some MOA's were going hot, and the only way out was north, and it worked perfect. I had climbed all the way up to 15000', which was really about 18k DA, and my little C was doing pretty good. We did spend about 2 hours in IMC, but it was surprisingly smooth. Then my buddy mentioned something about the wing, and I looked out to find traces of ice on the leading edge. Immediately made the call and got down to 13 where all was good with the world.

 

A little while later I noticed him nodding off in the passenger seat, which seemed a little unusual. I questioned him about it, and asked if he was feeling ok, if he wanted the O2, etc. but he swore he was fine and the finger tip oximeter was showing pretty good numbers for him. I was on Oxygen the whole time and feeling great. About an hour later he turned to me and said he wasn't feeling well and asked for the oxygen. He was so out of it I had to help him get it on. I had warned him about hypoxia, but obviously he didn't take it that seriously because he kept on saying he felt fine and didn't need it......until he really needed it. Thankfully once he got hooked up to the bottle everything got better and he gained a new respect for altitude. 

 

That was most of the excitement for the day. We're now in Marathon, FL enjoying the humidity and giant lizards. 

 

[N201MKTurbo]

Now you are a real cross country pilot!

Good job!

[gsengle]

Sounds like how these things often go... Although the more similar adventures I have the more conservative I get, I respect Mother Nature!

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[Marauder]

Today was an adventure. Last night before bed we spent a lot of time studying weather forecasts and trying to figure out if we were gonna be able to get out of "Nawlins" and we figured that our only shot would be to start out early. Alarm went off at 4am, and we were at the airport by 5. It was pouring rain the whole time, but the forecast showed that there was one big cell moving over the city and it would be clearing by our 6am departure time. Sure enough the rain stopped and the radar picture was looking pretty good for our route, aside from some junk right at the start. So just after first light we got up in the air, and before making it very far at all the XM weather started lighting up with cells. Where the hell did all this come from? We ended up deviating way south of our course, out over the gulf before turning back north to shoot through a corridor between sets of storms. We couldn't keep going east cause some MOA's were going hot, and the only way out was north, and it worked perfect. I had climbed all the way up to 15000', which was really about 18k DA, and my little C was doing pretty good. We did spend about 2 hours in IMC, but it was surprisingly smooth. Then my buddy mentioned something about the wing, and I looked out to find traces of ice on the leading edge. Immediately made the call and got down to 13 where all was good with the world.

A little while later I noticed him nodding off in the passenger seat, which seemed a little unusual. I questioned him about it, and asked if he was feeling ok, if he wanted the O2, etc. but he swore he was fine and the finger tip oximeter was showing pretty good numbers for him. I was on Oxygen the whole time and feeling great. About an hour later he turned to me and said he wasn't feeling well and asked for the oxygen. He was so out of it I had to help him get it on. I had warned him about hypoxia, but obviously he didn't take it that seriously because he kept on saying he felt fine and didn't need it......until he really needed it. Thankfully once he got hooked up to the bottle everything got better and he gained a new respect for altitude.

That was most of the excitement for the day. We're now in Marathon, FL enjoying the humidity and giant lizards.

Nice flight. I looked up your FlightAware. Long day... Quick question for you. I see another MooneySpace member posts using the N number you have in your profile. You have a partner or just a run of the mill split personality thing going on?

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