(This post is backdated, because I’m terrible at remembering to post things!)
Where am I headed to this time? Well, I’ll give you a clue: There’s not a lot to look at, other than quite a lot of trees and swamp.
I really didn’t take any pictures, because there really isn’t anything out there. For hours and hours. But sometime later, finally a landmark!
She is not a pretty river, the Mississippi… I started singing “Roll on Columbia” for a bit though, missing the big river of my homeland.
4.9 hours later it’s finally time to stop for a break. Having overflown all of Louisiana and Mississippi, I am now arriving in Troy Alabama. Spent most of the flight cruising along up at 9,500 feet, coming in towards Troy I had to duck down to get under some clouds, and then had to start dodging military helicopters! This area is a huge military training ground for hundreds of miles. Primary helicopter training, fighter training, all kinds of interesting traffic flying around out here.
In fact, on my way in, I heard regional ATC ask a military flight if they had a minute to do a low pass. The military flight said yes, at which point I started tracking them on my iPad to see what they were. When I found them they were doing 350 miles per hour, about 1500 feet off the ground. After they left the airspace my curiosity got the best of me and I asked ATC what they were. Turns out it was a flight of F-15s doing a training mission, and the tower guys wanted a little airshow. Very Top Gun, it was pretty cool!
After landing at Troy I take a look at the remaining flight, and I’ve got about 3 hours to get to my destination. I could technically make it with my remaining fuel, but without a lot of margin, so I get the tanks topped off, refill my water bottle, and back into the sky I go!
A couple minutes after takeoff I flew over KHDL, basically the far south-east corner of Alabama. I flew to Headland previously in order to help pick up a plane to bring back to Dallas for our school, and that was the furthest east I’d ever flown. So now I’m into the unknown territories!
As I came around the corner to start heading south down through Florida I ran into a weather phenomenon I was warned about: steady-state clouds form in this corner as water from the gulf rotates around over land and back out to sea again. I had to detour inland a bit in order to dodge these low-level clouds forming. (I could’ve filed a flight plan to fly right over them, but that comes with some additional difficulties and I wanted to stay VFR, so around we go!)
After that it was smooth flying all the way to Apopka, on the north west corner of Orlando. Landed straight-in to the runway, followed the person I was meeting to their hanger, and got a ride back to Orlando airport for my commercial flight home!
Hopped on a Southwest flight about 45 minutes later and headed back to Dallas! Round trip all in one day from Dallas to Orlando and back to Dallas. 7.8 hours flying to get there, about 2.5 hours to get home on one of the big-boys.
The purpose of this trip was to take one of the planes from our school back to its owner, who’s going to be using it for personal flying instead of leasing it to the school. I’ll miss that plane, its the one I did my commercial cross-countries in, and it’s a real joy to fly. A Piper Arrow is definitely up there on my list of favorite planes!
Got home just after midnight, and back up the next morning to get to back to work, another adventure successfully completed!
And at the end of it all after arriving home there are a couple of cuddly cats wondering why I’m waking them up so late at night.
