The wife and I try to make it a point to find some place to fly almost every weekend, knowing that half the time we'll get weathered out or something else will come up that keeps us from going. Such was the case for the previous two weekends when stormy weather kept us from going to two local fly-ins. We were keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would hold up for our trip to North Carolina to visit my sister Melissa this past weekend. The weather did hold up and we had a great trip!
You can read about the entire trip on our website here and you can see the nearly 200 photo's the wife took here
Here is a brief trip report which included many 'firsts' for us!
We departetd OWI Friday morning with full tanks and headed for Paris, TN which was just over two hours away and was a good stopping point to stretch and use the restroom. We climbed to 8,500 and picked up flight following. We had a wonderfull tailwind with ground speeds averaging about 172 knots at 2420 RPM. After a quick stop in Paris we continued on to Franlin, NC our final destination for this trip. Franklin is nestled in a valley of the Appalachian Mountains and this was our first mountain flying experience. As we descended out of 9500 on approach to landing we picked up quite a bit of turbulence coming off the mountains and made the right hand traffic on to runway 25 with mountains everywhere around us.
We spent the rest of the weekend with my sister checking out local waterfalls, shopping, and visiting the Appalachian Trail.
We departed Sunday morning and flew non-stop from 1A5 (Franklin) to KLXT (Lee's Summit) where the EAA chapter was BBQ'ng. The flight was 570 miles and took us just under 4.5 hours. After a bite to eat and some socializing we headed home.
The 'firsts' on this trip included:
We put 10.6 hours on the hobbs for this trip. By air it was about 4.5 hours flying each way... by land this would have taken 17 hours one way! We would have never made this trip by car.
Those of us who are flying know the power of the RV to take us places and see so many things. Those of you who are still building.. I hope the story and pictures will keep you motivated.
You can read about the entire trip on our website here and you can see the nearly 200 photo's the wife took here
Here is a brief trip report which included many 'firsts' for us!
We departetd OWI Friday morning with full tanks and headed for Paris, TN which was just over two hours away and was a good stopping point to stretch and use the restroom. We climbed to 8,500 and picked up flight following. We had a wonderfull tailwind with ground speeds averaging about 172 knots at 2420 RPM. After a quick stop in Paris we continued on to Franlin, NC our final destination for this trip. Franklin is nestled in a valley of the Appalachian Mountains and this was our first mountain flying experience. As we descended out of 9500 on approach to landing we picked up quite a bit of turbulence coming off the mountains and made the right hand traffic on to runway 25 with mountains everywhere around us.
We spent the rest of the weekend with my sister checking out local waterfalls, shopping, and visiting the Appalachian Trail.
We departed Sunday morning and flew non-stop from 1A5 (Franklin) to KLXT (Lee's Summit) where the EAA chapter was BBQ'ng. The flight was 570 miles and took us just under 4.5 hours. After a bite to eat and some socializing we headed home.
The 'firsts' on this trip included:
- Farthest flight east
- Longest trip (~1200 miles total.)
- Longest non-stop leg/time (570 miles, 4.5 hours)
- First taste of mountain flying
We put 10.6 hours on the hobbs for this trip. By air it was about 4.5 hours flying each way... by land this would have taken 17 hours one way! We would have never made this trip by car.
Those of us who are flying know the power of the RV to take us places and see so many things. Those of you who are still building.. I hope the story and pictures will keep you motivated.
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