Coming Home: Flight of the Cessna 150

Saturday morning dawns cool and overcast.

I stand at the Southwest gate at Midland International Airport.  I am tired.  My contact lenses smart and burn my eyes.  Finally my flight instructor appears out of the metal detector.

Everything has come together.  My instructor is available this weekend; I was able to line up an inspection of the plane; I was able to buy refundable tickets on Southwest for a palatable price.

Midland to Dallas to Houston to Panama City Beach on Southwest.

Going to look at a 1967 Cessna 150.  And probably buy it, otherwise we get to buy one-ways back home again!

Inspection, look at the plane.  It's a little more beat-up and hangar-rashed than I expected, but not by much.  Overall it's pretty good.  A few minor surprises.  Josh and I get in and run the engine, see how it sounds.  It misses a lot at first and that makes me nervous, Josh says it's normal.  

This plane has flown only 10-15 hours a year for the last three years, and that's not enough.  Planes like to be flown.  1940's technology push-rod engines like to be flown.  Continental O-200, 200 cubic inches, 4-cylinders, somewhere around 100 hp.  

Taxi out onto the single runway at Tri-County airport, 1J0, outside Bonifay, Florida.  Run-up.  All seems good.  Make a radio call on the CTAF.  Full power.  With the STOL tips on this thing, we are flying at less than 35 knots.  Keep the nose down!  Build up speed, nose down!  Nose down!  Nose down!  The nose pops up like a cork, it wants to point at the sky, it wants to be in the sky!

Ground falls away.  Pine trees everywhere.  It's dusk.  The sun is setting.  It's getting cold.  A big wide rectangle around the airport, flying the pattern more or less.  Climb, descend.  Lower flaps, raise flaps.  65 knots (whoa, push the nose down), 110 knots (diving).  85 knots? Level cruising.  One pinky on the yoke.  Trim it out and it flies with the rudders only, with nothing.  So smooth and easy.  The door seals look all time-eaten but they keep the wind out.  This 150 is quiet and not too drafty.  I start to like it.  The hangar rash and scratches in the paint don't seem so bad.

Dark, we come in for a landing.  Lights on, landing lights on, headlights up on the wing.  So much going through my head, new plane, Josh with a critical eye, I land better by myself, here we go, flare, whoa are we floating?  Plop.  Like nothing, the 150 lands and squats on the ground.  The engine idles at 900 rpm, with the throttle pulled all the way back.  I keep the back pressure on the yoke and the nose is still flying, so it feels.  The 150 feels so planted once it's on the ground.

Taxi back, paperwork, money changes hands.  Bill of sale.  Cold, dark, silence.  

Now I get scared.  Dark, in an unfamiliar place, just spent a lot of money, 900 miles from home, clouds, dark.  We're about to get into a 1967 plane with our little backpacks and set off into the night, cross the swamps and forests of Florida, Alabama, Lousiana, Texas, then diagonally cross all of Texas.  At 100 mph.

The first hour or so, I feel sick to my stomach, waiting for a cylinder to blow up or a wing to fall off.  It's my plane now, so any really expensive thing that breaks is now my expense.  Gradually I relax. It's dark but the 150 is so easy to fly.  The previous owner... caretaker... called her Juliet.  Juliet, you are so steady and so easy to fly, no hands, just feet on the rudder pedals, trimmed out to stay level at 4000', above the swamps and the rivers and the bayous.

The air is smooth unlike any road.  The plane vibrates with the little O-200 engine, but it's not an unpleasant vibration.  The cabin is dark and I fly by feel, every minute switching on my flashlight to check altimeter, heading indicator and vertical speed indicator.  But I know I'm not crashing into the swamp; I can feel we're level and I can see the lights of the cities and roads below.  

Humming along for a while then we make a fuel stop in Mobile, Alabama.  We're burning a little more than expected, about 7 gallons per hour when it should be 5 or 6.  Aviation fuel (leaded) runs about $6.00 a gallon. When you own an airplane, everything else seems cheap.  Filling up my truck now seems laughable inexpensive at $3.15 a gallon -- and only 15 gallons!  

Take the FBO car to get some food, I need a break.  Back in the 150, another two hours.  Crossing Louisiana now; just north of Biloxi, Gulfport.  Right across the north end of Lake Ponchatrain, the black, black waters looking so smooth below us.  The lights of cars on the causeway stretching away to the south.

I've never been here before!  But I'm here now, about all this dark wilderness.  Above it just like looking at a map.  We are here but we are not here -- we are floating by over it all!  And we can see it all!

In the darkness, without knowing, we cross the Mississippi River.  11:30 PM.  We touch down in Lafayette, Louisiana.  Clouds tonight; more clouds ahead.  Weather does not look good.  We are tired.  Taxi to hotel in Lafayette.

Lafayette seems a nice town; a college town and an oil town.  But we dropped in here out of the sky; I have no context.  We are just in Lafayette and then we are gone, over it, looking down at the college and all the neat houses and perfect streets and blue swimming pools.  At each place we drop in for fuel, the transition from the sky to the ground is abrupt, like popping a bubble, POP, you're near the ground.  When you're at 3,000' the ground isn't real.

Sunday morning.  Josh wants to sleep in, we get a late start.  FBO guy picks us up from the hotel and brings us to Lafayette Regional, a class D with commercial planes.  POP, we're in the air and heading west.  Low clouds; we start at 2500' then down to 2000' then 1000'.  Not a comfortable altitude; not much room for error.  Weather closes in.  Texas is just ahead.  Over Lake Charles, over Orange, now over Beaumont.  Houston Approach is telling us we're not IFR, we can't continue, there is a wall of clouds...

The 150 sits now in Beaumont, TX, on the ramp.  Just waiting.  We could not get out of Beaumont on Sunday in the little 150.  I had to be at work on Monday.  We tried to fly out of Beaumont on a commercial flight, but couldn't get seats from Houston to Midland.  Sundays are a popular time to fly that route.  Relunctantly, I walk over to the Avis car rental booth...  it's only an 11 hour drive back to Midland.

And we make it back by 2 am.  Plenty of time to get a few hours of sleep and get to work.

To Be Continued...

Just another (above-the) Valley Sunday

My iPhone alarm sounds at 6:00 am, just like a normal workday.  I get up and take a shower and get dressed.  Then I hop in the convertible and drive to Odessa in the chilly pre-dawn.  I pull into the gate at Schlemeyer Airport just as Josh walks across the tarmac toward the FBO.  I park on the grass, grab my flight bag and follow him into the building.  The Cessna 210 is waiting, cozy in its hangar, tanks full of fuel.  With very little delay we strap in and fire up the engine.  We get the weather info and I back-taxi down runway 2-0, turn around for a quick run-up, and off we go.  Full power, pull back, pick up speed, feel the controls get mushy, lift-off, push forward, keep the nose down, keep climbing but keep your speed up.

Daybreak in Odessa

Cessna 210 panel

In the sky, the wind is brutal, 40 knots out of the west, and we fly directly into it.  Up and out of Odessa, at 6500' over the edge of the Llano Estacado, dotted with little white windmills and over Kermit Dunes.  We follow the Texas-New Mexico line east, over Red Bluff Reservoir and the winding Pecos River, a shining silver band wriggling across the desert. The Delaware Basin, otherwise desolate, dotted with rigs, lights on in the morning, twinkling stars of industry, shining 24 hours a day.  This is Concho territory, and I spot several rigs but am not sure which ones are ours -- my area is typically farther to the north, just inside New Mexico.  Travelling due east at about 150 knots indicated, our groundspeed hovers around 100 knots.  The terrain rises up dramatically as we approach the foothills of Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan, at the south end of the Guadalupe Mountains.  GP is of course the highest point in Texas.  Up comes the terrain and it becomes quite interesting, with lots of good-sized hills, deep canyons, and sinkholes around the toe of the Guadalupes.

Guadalupe Peak and El Capitan, Texas

Wider shot showing the lenticular clouds developed over the Guads.

Past the Guads, eye-to-eye with them at 7000', with the early-morning sun from behind us.  Over the Broke-Off fault zone like it's the edge of the Earth, dropped away below us.  Now we are much higher above the ground, and over the Dell City bolson.

Passing over the escarpment

Dell City bolson / salt flats.  In the down-dropped block west of the Guads and Broke-off Mountains

Now past the Guads, we look back at them (northwest) and see the Broke-off Mountains and the west face of Guadalupe Peak.

Dell City is visible to the north, among the big green crop circles.  Just off Dell City are the very impressive Dell City volcanoes, which you can see from another angle in a recent blog about our visit to the Queen, NM area.  Same volcanoes.

Volcanoes near Dell City, TX

Lots of cool geology, rocks.  Eschewing the auto-pilot, I hand-fly the entire way so don't get as many snaps as usual, try to soak in the view.  Many things we look forward to are a little dissapointing.  This trip, not so.  This flight is everything I thought it would be times five.  There is more topography than I expected, and we can see everything from the air.  Places you can't go on the ground without trespassing...  Following is a series of shots taken just a few seconds apart.  Although we are fighting a 35-knot headwind, we still moving along quickly: 115 mph groundspeed.

Hueco Tanks -- State Park, but is it accessible?

We continue west over the Hueco Mountains and got a great view of Hueco Tanks.  Then over the empty plain NE of El Paso.  Hop over the Franklin Mountains, see the trails down there in Franklin Mountains State Park, skirt the Organ Mountains and swoop down over the Rio Grande... and we're in Las Cruces, NM.

Las Cruces airport, looking east at the Franklin Mountains

The flight back to Odessa is just as scenic.  As we crest the Franklin Mountains, we see a developing lenticular cloud just ahead, and surf over the top of it.  With a 40+ knot tailwind, we make 200+ knots groundspeed.  Everything passes by much more quickly.  In a flash, we're back in Midland... but the trip isn't over.  After a 10-minute break to wait for a few passengers, we climb aboard another plane.  This one is much, much faster, and sports two turboprop engines: it's a Piper Cheyenne.

Piper Cheyenne on the ground in Odessa




Piper Cheyenne cockpit view from the right (co-pilot) seat

This thing has some power.  Josh as the controls, we fly from Odessa to San Antonio in a flash, with that same tailwind pushing us eastward.  Only an hour to SA, then a 5-hour layover.  After landing and dropping our passengers at Million Air FBO, we pick up a courtesy car.  Josh tosses me the key fob and we get into the brand-new BMW 535i.  Now, I'm not really a big fan of the 5-series, but what a car.  To drive one around a bit, for free, with no salesman watching your every move -- priceless.  If only I could figure out the shift lever.  It is more complicated than anything I saw in the Cheyenne.

Piper Cheyenne, ready to depart the ramp in San Antonio

During the day the winds aloft kept up, and shifted slightly to the north.  On our way home we experience a 40-knot crosswind with only a 5-knot headwind component.  The ride home is smooth and uneventful.  On the ground, I feel tired.  How does Josh do this almost every day?

That's a lot of flying for one day.

Lessons learned:

1. I love flying slow and really close to the ground, so I can see things (rocks)
2. Commercial/corporate aviation is not for me.  They fly too high and too fast.  Where's the fun in that, unless you're doing loops and rolls?
3. I love flying even more than I thought I did.
4. There's a whole lot of world out there to see.

Oh wait... I know the last one already.

My new project

Seeking Contributing Editors...

www.west-texas.info OR www.se-nm.info point to:

www.Trans-Pecos-Outdoors-Guide.info

Road Rating System

The following Road Rating system is used on this blog.  It roughly parallels the climbing world's Yosemite Decimal System.

Class 1: Corvette. Paved or very good graded dirt or gravel roads. Suitable for any highway-legal vehicle.

Class 2: Toyota Camry. Gravel or dirt road with some rocks, bumps and/or washboard.  Suitable for any normal-clearance passenger vehicle.

Class 3: Subaru Forester.  Rough gravel, dirt or rock road with bumps, steps or water crossing that make it challenging for typical passenger cars, and better suited for light-duty SUVs with at least medium ground clearance.

Class 4: 4WD Pickup or SUV. Very rough or otherwise challenging rock or dirt road typically requiring one or more of the following: 4WD, high clearance, off-road tires, slow speed and basic off-road driving skills.  May include deep ruts, high steps, cambered roadways, large loose rocks, and/or significant water crossings.

Class 5: "Wheeling" Jeep, etc. Class 5 can be broken out into subclasses: 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 and so on.  All Class 5 roads are suitable for high-clearance, 4WD vehicles with off-road tires.  Driving with lesser equipped vehicles may be possible, but damage to the vehicle is much more likely, and off-road driving skill and road-building skills are likely to be required.

There are several factors that make a road challenging.  Where one of these is a major contributor to a road rating, it is listed after the class rating.

• Loose rocks
• Rock steps
• Mud (includes slippery clay)
• Ruts
• Sand
• Steep (climbs or descents)
• Exposure (as in rock climbing, exposure to what appears to be a long drop)
• Water crossing
• Obstacles (e.g. fallen logs)

Ess Cave

Who needs sleep?  Never mind I stayed up until 2:30 am looking at planes for sale on trade-a-plane.com.  Never mind I had to get up at 7:30.  Ben arrived at 8 am and we tossed a few things in the Tacoma and headed south.

South of Midland on 349 is nothing too interesting until you come into Rankin.  Straight ahead you see a large mesa as you descend a hill into town, with ramshackle cool old buildings on either side.  Now the scenery begins.  This is the western edge of the Edwards Plateau, where the mesas are capped with this Cretaceous limestone as far as you can see.  

To the topography-starved geologist, these look like pretty substantial mountains.  Ben and I drooled a lot on our windows as we drove through this pretty desert country.  Castle Gap, which I flew over just a few weeks ago in the Cessna 162.

Mesas.  Mmmmmmm.

Nice bike ride/motorcycle territory.

Ooooooo!

Iraan, TX

We made it into Iraan, when I pulled out the sketch maps.  Whoops, we went past our junction about three miles back.

Camp Ess

A bit of driving around on oil lease roads and we found the crew.  Bill was the only guy I knew.  Everyone else were pilots.  I've never seen so many pilots in one place.  Most of them flew for pipeline companies.

Gorgeous desert.

This area appears to cover an old, shallow oilfield.  Lots of itty-bitty pumping units.

Rocks.  Not caliche.  Real, actual, 70-million-year-old rocks.

Close-up of a rock!

The cave itself was nice enough.  After an hour or so of milling around, we entered the cave and climbed down a little awkward 30-foot drop.  After than the cave was mostly on one level.  We visited Hercules and the end of the cave where climbing ropes dangle down from an upper level.  Ess Cave was known locally as "party cave" before being gated; it was filled with a bunch of junk.  There is a lot of spray paint and damage to formations, but it's still really cool and nicely decorated.  My expectations were low, and this cave exceeded them nicely.

Back to Midland, about 1:20 drive.  A nice little cave but next time I'll camp overnight, do the cave and be out and home by noon.

View Ess Cave, Iraan, Texas in a larger map

An Evening spent Flying over the West Texas Desert

This evening we rented a Cessna 172xp from FlightSource at Schlemeyer Airport in Odessa, TX. At the airport I met up with Josh, my instructor, and our two passengers for the evening, Debi and Tonia. We decided to head west and see Monahans Sand Dunes, and then over to Wink Sink (and smaller Sink), then back to Midland to overfly my house and Ben and Tonia's new home.  Debi served as photographer, so 100% of the included pictures are hers.  Refer to the map below for our detailed route.  Google tells me it was 175 miles!  We flew it in 1.5 hours of engine-on time, so probably closer to 1.3 of air time.  Averaging around 135 mph ground speed.  At one point in a descent, we reached an airspeed of 140 knots, about 161 mph (airspeed, but there wasn't much wind, so very close to ground speed).

View Sightseeing October 2011 in a larger map

Preflighting the plane.  I think this is an early 1980s aircraft based on the placement of the landing lights. (Ed-- they stopped making them in 1981).

The walk-around

Looking at damage to the strut covers, which are non-structural

Josh, right.  Me, left.  Engine start procedure.

Just after take off

A little after take off, looking east toward the stadium in northern Odessa

Making a radio transmission as we depart the Schlemeyer area.

Drilling pads!  West Texas oil country.

Stabilized dunes.

We took off from KODO and headed west and southwest, angling toward I-20 which I know leads to the south end of the Monahans dunes.  I was surprised to see large area of stabilized dunes, where there is little sand movement due to vegetation cover.  Now I realize the dunes cover a much, much larger area than I previously thought.  I think these are post-Pleistocene features, created when the Pecos shrank from a major river to a minor one and the area dried up, freeing up a lot of sand to blow east with the prevailing winds.  I just ordered a publication from the Texas BEG about the dunes, we'll see if it answers my questions.  Otherwise I might have to team up with Malcolm and do some dune research.

As we continued west and neared the town of Monahans, TX, we saw some open dune areas.  I was impressed at how linear the dune ridge tops area.  Why is this dune still mobile, while surrounding areas are vegetation-stabilized?

This is one feature I observed in semi-stabilized dunes.  Plants tend to grow on the dune margins, where they are closer to the water table and can take root in the more stable sand.  As the edges of a dune stabilize, the center part blows out, creating a depression in the center of a raised, vegetated area.

Monahans State Park and I-20, looking east

The park came up on us quickly and I tried to slow the plane down as we descended to take a closer look.  I didn't hand the plane off to Josh, so I didn't get to look at the dunes too much as we were about 700' AGL, going pretty slow.  But Debi got some great pictures and Tonia hopefully some great views.  The sun angle was just about perfect, as I was hoping, and I flew west of the dune so Debi could shoot east over them.

Active dune areas near I-20

Main active dune area.  You can see the campground and the main "day use" 

parking area to the right of the campground.

The north end of the dune field, I think out of the state park at this point.

"Bush islands".  We observe these when on the ground.  A bushy plant takes hold and the sand may blow away from around it, except directly under the bush.  They look cool from the air!

A semi-buried oil pipeline crossing the dunes.

Oilfield!

After passing north of the dunes I angled off to the west to find the town of Wink.  I knew it was southwest of Kermit, near where I go dune riding.  It's so easy to look at Google maps in your office, but much harder when you're in the air, flying into the setting sun, trying to find a tiny West Texas town.  With Josh's help (via the GPS), I identified Wink and Kermit in the distance.  I flew right ahead where I thought I needed to go and suddenly the main Wink Sink appeared a mile or so ahead of us!

Wink Sink.  Formed around 1980 (?).  Look it up elsewhere -- anyway, it's a recent feature.

Around 200-250' deep from rim to base of the water.  Notice the circles -- what made them?  Something that was here before the Sink formed!  Answer in the comments section...

Debi got some nice shots of Wink Sink

Josh took the plane and I looked at the window as we did some 

steep turns around the larger Sink (there are two).

Neat shot of Tonia and the Wink Sink!

The smaller, older sink.  Note vegetation on the sink rims.

I probably shouldn't be looking the backseat while piloting the plane...

It started to get dark outside and we turned back toward Odessa, went past Odessa to Midland, staying clear of Midland International to the north (our transmitter was flaking, 

or their approach control was ignoring us)

172xp tail

Great sunset with crescent moon, but no appropriate camera equipment to capture it.

In Midland we flew over my house.  We could see our Halloween lights outside.  Then we went along the loop and down Midkiff and did a few circles above the new Davis home in central Midland.  Then off along Andrew's highway to downtown, around downtown to the south, north over Midland again and back to KODO.  Our passengers were not bored (a common problem) and they seemed to have enjoyed themselves.  

Apparently the only real scary moment for the passengers was as we turned to final approach, when the inside wing was blocking my view of our landing runway, and I verbalized "I can't see the runway...".  As a student pilot, I'm used to saying anything to Josh, to keep him informed of what I'm thinking.  A habit I need to break to make passengers more comfortable (less scared).