My experience with a 1300nm XC in my J

[cwaters]

I recently flew over 1300nm across the country in my Mooney M20J.  I really appreciate all the advice and guidance from everyone.

I recently moved to Colorado for work and needed to relocate my plane with me. Until now my longest trip had been 450nm so this nearly tripled my longest XC to date and would cover two days. A trip of this size required a lot of planning and caused me a lot of concern. I was going to fly this trip in 3 legs over 2 days. The first day was going to be MRB to Springfield, Ohio after flying into Washington-Dulles on a united flight. The second day would be from Springfield to Colorado Springs with a stop in Lincoln, Nebraska for fuel and lunch. I spent countless hours leading up to the trip analyzing weather, NOTAMS, various airports and alternative flight paths/airports. Route, Altitude, and fuel consumption took up most of the planning. I decided to study up on some engine operations and run the engine lean of peak rather than rich of peak as I have until now. Good news is I had 10 hours of flight time to dial in my procedure. I ended up running about 25 deg lean of peak and burning about 8.5 gph while cruising about 150kts over the ground since I didn't have a hard headwind until the last leg. 

The trip started at the Denver Airport with a United flight to Washington Dulles. I got a great ride in a Glasair III from an east coast pilot buddy who picked my up at one of the GA FBOs. What a beast of a plane that Glasair is. “Cleared for takeoff runway 01C” and the trip was off. We flew up to MRB and without much hesitation I loaded up and got Leg1 underway to SGH to bed down for the night. The air was smooth as butter at 8,000 ft and the views were beautiful. This 273 nm leg got the XC underway.

Day 2 started with a 4hr 600nm leg to Lincoln, Nebraska a class C airport with a wonderful FOB, Duncan Aviation. Departing Springfield, I overflew the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Area B facilities and the Air Force Museum. Having spent a year and a half at WPAFB before moving to Virginia it was great to fly over the base again. This leg was wonderful again, more low fuel burn and smooth skies. Headwinds here were below 10 kts and only a handful of distant clouds to break up the clear skies. Landing at Lincoln was a little sporty with high gust factor but lucky it was nearly right down the runway.

Day 2 continued with the final leg after lunch, a 387nm trip to Colorado Springs. With the high winds at Lincoln Mel the Mooney jumped off the ground and climbed like it was afraid of the runway. Leg 3 was going to prove to be the most challenging leg of the journey with strong 30kt headwinds my progress was slowed and added turbulence to the ride, I guess my luck had finally run out after 7 hrs of super smooth cruising. About half way to my destination a line of storms developed out of nowhere and rapidly, ATC was vectoring people left and right trying to stay ahead of the storm. I got bounced around in some moderate turbulence for a little while and had pretty strong up and down drafts, enough to request a 1000ft block altitude, while diverting left and right of course to avoid buildups and going through light precipitation. After getting through this weather “fun” I had to plan the landing at COS. ADSB weather showed a 22-32kts crosswind. This was well above my personal max but on an 11k or 13.5k ft runway each 150ft wide I was willing to make the approach and try it then divert should I not feel comfortable with it. As I got closer to COS I got word the airport was closed due to a wildfire and all inbound flights were being diverted to either Denver or Pueblo. I decided to divert to Pueblo since the winds were nearly right down the runway and it was getting to be a long day. As I got close to PUB I got vectored for 26L pattern. I was getting blown around with the vectors and finally just asked for the RNAV 26L and a close IAF. Weather was VMC with great visibility but I was at the end of a long day and the sun was in my eyes on approach I felt it was safer to shoot the approach and trust the instruments the whole way in to short final at 500ft.

Pueblo turned out to be a great airport, several military aircraft including a T-6 and a few helos on the ramp and making approaches. The FBO had free water, hotdogs, and ice cream. The fuel prices were to be expected but a super nice and helpful crew.

Since the trip was so close but still so far away I had to return to PUB to get my plane and complete the trip to Colorado Springs. I reached out to a huge network of pilot groups such as this one and found another Mooney driver that was nearby and wanted to fly. He came down to COS and picked me up. We got to meet some great Navy pilots there on their way to the California coast (a 1.5 hr flight for them) they were taking their F-18s out right after us and got to wait and watch his mighty Mooney take off. It was a rather bumpy ride down to PUB but the scenery was amazing. PUB was super busy with training traffic this might have been part of the USAF Initial Flight Training program that is based at Pueblo. After a long wait on the ground I got cleared to start my 15 min trip to my final destination.

 

This was the longest trip of my flying time and took a lot of work to make happen from all the planning to the great help from the group here. I learned a lot along the way and ran into several new situations. I gained a few lessons learned from this trip. ATC is not perfect they are people too. By going to four larger airports new to me I ran into a few situations where I was unfamiliar with the area or airfield. Flying out of Lincoln, Nebraska and Pueblo, Colorado I was given a taxi instruction I was unfamiliar with and requested a progressive taxi. Ground was happy to help and got me rolling in the right direction. Being unfamiliar with the area surrounding an airport is also not something to be afraid of telling ATC. Springs approach told me to overfly and an area I had no idea where it was in relation to me and was a local reference. Letting ATC know I was unfamiliar with the area resulted in the controller saying ‘no problem, I’ll give you vectors to the pattern entry’.

Other lessons:

-          You can never be overprepared

-          10 min of planning can help you avoid an hour of hard flying

-          Know your limits, push them safely to expand but have a backup option and don’t be afraid to divert or pressured to make your original plan work out

-          Never be embarrassed to tell ATC you need help with something

-          Sometimes weather just happens, use your resources to try and avoid the worst of it

-          Don’t get into planning paralysis, you can only plan so far with any flight and at some point you have to start the flight and use your training  

I wouldn’t have been nearly as confident in the trip without the support of this group. I feel like this trip expanded my horizons as a pilot and pushed me to grow in ways I hadn’t thought of before. I am really looking forward to making more trips similar to this one in the future and keeping you all updated as I do.

[N9405V]

Always be prepared for the weather to change. My last flight the forecast at my destination was clear and light winds. When I got there I had to shot an approach through a dust storm and winds were 35 gusting to 53 straight down the runway. That normally 2 hour flight ended up being 3.5 hours of the most miserable, bumpy flying I’ve ever done.

Great write up!


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[cwaters]

On 5/16/2022 at 8:03 AM, N9405V said:

Always be prepared for the weather to change. My last flight the forecast at my destination was clear and light winds. When I got there I had to shot an approach through a dust storm and winds were 35 gusting to 53 straight down the runway. That normally 2 hour flight ended up being 3.5 hours of the most miserable, bumpy flying I’ve ever done.

Great write up!I


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I'll cheers to that, my last leg was not supposed to have anything more than some 30 kts headwinds and just take a long time (compared to no winds) but turned out to be a rough ride with block altitude and deviation as needed