I bought the plane when I had only flown 80hrs. That’s not a lot of experience, but it’s not terrible. I have a friend who bought his at nearly the exact same time, right when he finished his private pilot certification. I wish I had the nerve and confidence to buy it when I first flew it, which was after only ten hours of flying. I knew it was a great plane, and I would have had that much more time in the plane rather than in creaky old Cherokee planes from the 1970s. Ah well, hindsight is so sharp, isn’t it?

I was a first plane buyer, and a lot of the people I talk who did the same thing say they might have bought a used plane if they knew more. Well, technically, I did buy a used plane, since it had 115hrs on the Hobbs meter and was a demonstrator for the dealer. So the worst depreciation had already happened (that initial thirty thousand dollar drop from brand new to a little used).

This is the text that Diamond sent me to approve, which I did. I actually talked a little more about particular competitor’s models and what I thought of them. And, as is typical with me, I was much more long-winded. It is already tightened up. From this text Diamond’s marketing department pulled three quotes. They are using one in the DA40 brochure and two in their all-around brochure for the Diamond fleet in general.

I wonder if anyone that reads a quote in the brochure will think to google my name and DA40. (Right now this blog is the eighth link down. I don’t think many people click that far down.)

My DA40 gets me to my Las Vegas building projects much faster from my Santa Monica architecture studio than the airlines: while the flight time is about 2 hours, vs. 45 minutes via Southwest, door-to-door time is much shorter, as I take off from an airport close to home, and land at a GA airport closer to my projects. [I have a post comparing one of my first trips, I’ve gotten faster though.]

One of the key factors in flying for me is to get a different perspective from the air. The DA40’s great visibility is one of its great selling points. As an architect, I am very visual – and in the DA40 I have great visibility all around, forwards, upward and downward in front of the wing. Seeing the Rockies, the corn fields in Kansas, the huge thunderstorms in Missouri, or the New York skyline out of the DA40 bubble canopy made a recent trip I took across the US in my plane was particularly memorable.

Last summer, I flew from LA to the East Coast and back in my DA40. It was a great way to make many different stops, to see places, and visit friends and family. I took a friend or family member with me for the long cross-country, then had my wife and two sons join me in Boston. The DA40 is so capable – especially with the G1000 cockpit – that I felt totally comfortable flying into a lot of unfamiliar airports, including landing at Boston’s Logan airport. It was a really cool experience to be vectored right with the big airliners, and even being #12 for takeoff in the conga line with eleven huge passenger jets was a thrill.

On long cross-country trips, the cockpit capability makes all the difference. For instance, I was flying from Albuquerque, NM to Topeka, KS – and had to circumnavigate thunderstorms all along the way. With the XM weather, I could see that a cell as 20 nm away, and moving away from me, so I could decide to fly around it, and in which direction. Plus, I can zoom out and pan, and see with the range rings which airports are possible stops after a two or three hour leg. The situational awareness is just so comforting – I don’t think I would feel comfortable doing these longer trips in unfamiliar areas without the DA40’s capabilities.

With my DA40’s capable cockpit, flight planning has become much faster. When I first bough my plane (I had 80 hours then), I would flight plan each trip in detail, with many way points. Now, with the G1000, I know that I can do a lot more quality decision making and planning on the fly, versus spending hours on the ground doing in depth planning, some of which will become irrelevant as soon as I am aloft.

As a designer, I knew I wanted a modern, composite aircraft – there were too many things just wrong from a design perspective with the old-style aluminum aircraft I trained in. I understand new materials – and composites make much more sense to me than aluminum. Frankly, I don’t think I am competent to assess metal fatigue on an older aircraft! [That last sentence was from relating how when I took one lesson in a Cessna 172 the CFI walked me around and said I should check each rivet for safety. As if I could tell whether a rivet was air worthy or not.]

I sat in a lot of planes before making my decision. My DA40 feels a lot like a European sports car. You know how when you sit in a Porsche, when you touch a part, it’s over designed, like someone really paid attention to all the details, down to the font used on the speedometer. I feel my Diamond is like that: someone really put a lot of thought in it, and started with a new idea, where each piece feels well considered and thought out.

A key factor in my decision for the DA40 was low-speed handling. I am very safety conscious, subscribe to the NTSB Reporter, and I understand that the thing that kills lower-time pilots most frequently is a stall-spin accident in the traffic pattern. You have so much to do, it’s easy to get distracted, and before you know it, a wing drops and you are on the ground. The DA40 flies so well at slow speeds – mine stalls at 47kts – that I feel I always have such a good margin of safety. That was very important to me, as I bought the plane when I had only 80 hours. [I am pretty sure that I discussed the difference between descending under a ‘chute or in a full stall in the DA40.]

I totally, wholeheartedly see the DA40 as the best first choice for all new pilots. When you get started, you need a plane you can safely train in, and your typical missions are a few hundred miles. The DA40 is definitely the best plane for a pilot’s first 500 hours. [I wish they had used this quote. It’s really what I use in person to encourage new pilots to select the plane.]

The insurance rates I got quoted on the DA40 were much lower than on competitors’ products. Diamond’s safety record is really good, and the insurance companies recognize that in their rates.

The DA40’s outstanding fuel burn was a key factor in my decision, and still is. When I fly back and forth between LA and Las Vegas, I often see 8 gph at 130 kts. That’s difficult to touch with anything else – the DA40 is really a very efficient machine.

Whenever someone not used to personal aviation sees my DA40, they are very surprised by its shape. They really think it looks like a plane of the future – and of course, the glass cockpit reinforces that.

The easy access to the back is important to me. I have two boys, ages 9 and 11, who travel with me in the plane a lot. With the separate rear door, it’s really easy to load and unload them into the DA40’s back seat – much easier than in some other planes I looked at, where I would need to fold the front seats forward, which can be a hassle with kneeboards, headsets etc to deal with. [I told long stories of getting them in and out of the Cherokees we rented.]

We only had the plane for ten days when we decided to take a family trip up to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. My parents were out at Catalina Island and after lunch I ran some groceries out to them. Then we picked the boys up from elementary school and zipped down to the airport.

The weather for Monterey was predicted to be clear until 8pm, after that fog was meant to roll in. We took off a little bit before 4pm, so I figured we’d make it up there around six, a good two hour margin before the fog bank closed in. I was still learning about weather.

I had thoroughly planned the flight. I had a list of fourteen waypoints for the flight up. I had an alternate airport (KSNS: Salinas) and even knew the FBO that I would be using at the alternate airport. I had spent hours planning the route, looking at the mountain ridges and the weather at each airport. I knew the altitude we’d fly and which airports we would glide to if there were any problems. I had the rental car arranged at the FBO in Monterey. I knew that if we had to use our alternate there were rental cars there as well.

This would be the furthest north along the coast that I had flown (Fresno was just a couple miles further north, but it was in the central valley), so it was some unknown territory. So… more research. A lot of studying of the charts and considering the terrain. I learned how the central valley  was separated from the coastal plane, how we would duck inland to a smaller valley between the coast (where San Simeon is) and a set of hills that separated it from the central valley. In my head, over and over, I flew the route.

We took off from Santa Monica. It took a little longer to load the plane than I had thought because we had some luggage for the overnight. Finally, we were rolling down the runway, angling into the sky and turning north for the climb over the Santa Monica mountains.

The boys watched the scenery for a while and then, as usual on any trip more than twenty minutes, asked if they could play their game boys. It was getting too dark to read so we said that was fine. Nell and I watched the scenery unfold beneath the plane. The coastal communities of Ventura, Montecito, and Santa Barbara followed by the wine country outposts of Santa Ynez, Santa Maria and San Luis Obispo. We turned and flew over Paso Robles, where I took my check ride to allow me to fly us on this trip. As we started up the next little valley and flew over King City I changed frequencies from Los Angeles Center to Norcal Approach.

“One Romeo Delta the last few flights into Monterey went missed. Do you want to fly to the airport, or do you want to just land at your alternate?”

“Uh, you mean Monterey is IFR?”

“Affirmative. Do you have an alternate?”

“Uh, yes, One Romeo Delta will change our destination to Salinas.” Since that was already programmed into the GPS as a waypoint on the flight plan we would just start our descent early and land there. The FBO that I had picked out there was voted one of the best in the country. How could you beat that?

“Roger, One Romeo Delta. You should be fine getting into Salinas, the last three planes made it in on the ILS approach without a problem.”

“Approach?”

“Affirmative. You are instrument rated?”

“Oh. No. One Romeo Delta is VFR only. Where should we go?”

“One moment.” I studied the chart on the MFD, but I couldn’t see which airport would make the most sense. If the fog had rolled in on the coast covering Monterey (apparently tightly enough that even commercial flights on the instrument approach were not making it in) AND Salinas, what would make sense? Palo Alto? Go back to Paso Robles? I needed to plan more alternates. The controller came back, “One Romeo Delta, you can land at Hollister.”

“Ah, thanks. Do you have an identifier for Hollister?” I didn’t see it on the list of nearest airports that I popped up with a single key press. Nell was complaining that we should have left sooner and we would have avoided this problem, but of course that wasn’t true, the fog was in sooner than forecast by a lot.

“One Rome Delta, Hollister is three, Oscar, seven.” I plugged that in and thanked him. He passed me off to another controller as we tuned and descended over a ridge into the area around Santa Cruz. Hollister is a tiny airport. It has a lot of glider, ultra-light and sky diving activity. Not at night, but in general. It was night, so I had my little flashlight out and I read up on the airport in my airport guide. I set up to enter the pattern and land on the calm wind runway, but I was high and fast. I was self-announcing on the CTAF and I announced that I was going around. I told Nell not to worry, that I had just come in with a little ground-shyness and that we’d be landing in just a couple minutes.

We rolled out onto the taxiway lit along its centerline with the beautiful blue lights. We were the only aircraft moving on the field and since it was now 7pm everything was dark and closed. We taxied over to the fuel depot and shut down. I filled the plane, since I have that rule about topping off if I’m going to fly more than twenty minutes.

Nell and I discussed options and I said I’d check to see if we could get a rental car brought to the airport to just drive over to Monterey. I figured in the morning I’d drive back and hop the plane to the correct airport. I wandered around for a while until I found a couple guys in a hanger working on a fighter jet (that’s a common toy for dot-com wealthies). They let me borrow a yellow pages. I called a few rental car places, then a few hotels, and gave up. I went back and talked with Nell and the boys. The boys were hungry and Nell was tired of trying to overcome the obstacles to getting to Monterey. They all wanted to just go home and try again on another weekend.

I saddled them up. The boys were disappointed, but already talking about where they might eat back in Santa Monica. I self-announced all our taxi movements on the dark field, made sure the runway lights were at high-intensity and did another careful run-up to check the engine. I set up our flight plan home, and turned on the terrain shading on the moving map of the MFD. I knew that between me and the next valley over was a 3,500ft ridge. I was nearly at sea level and the plane (easily) climbs at about 750fpm. I’d need five minutes of climbing to clear it, and that looked good, but in the dark I was really glad to have the terrain shading to tell me that we were above it. Very comforting.

As we left the Hollister area I tuned in NorCal approach to get flight following back to Santa Monica. ATC gave me a code and just as I made it over the ridge I heard him talking to a Cessna that was trying to get into Salinas. They were VFR-only and when the controller said Salinas was still IFR they said, “What about Monterey?” and the controller said, “That’s Special VFR now, do you want to change your destination?” They did.

“This is One Romeo Delta, we’d like to change our destination too.”

“From Santa Monica to Monterey?” Affirmative. “One Romeo Delta, turn to a heading of two-four-zero, we’ll vector you to Monterey.” The airport was really hard to find in the dark because it is hidden behind some hills, but I trusted the Garmin (and ATC) that we were headed in the right direction. When I hadn’t yet spotted the airport the NorCal controller said, “I’ll have them turn the lights up to high intensity, but remind them to turn them down when you’ve landed.” Boom. There was the airport, all aglow. When I had turned off the runway (after quite a nice landing) and mentioned that they should turn it back to low intensity the tower said, “We already have.” I guess they get complaints from the neighbors.

It was great to finally get there. We had a nice dinner, collapsed in our hotel and made one of what have become regular visits to the great Monterey Aquarium. Since then there have been two major improvements to our aviation experience which would have changed the trip: we now have XM weather in the plane, so we would have known sooner about the fog. Maybe we would have landed at Paso Robles for a nice dinner, maybe we would have stopped at San Luis Obispo and stayed at The Madonna Inn for the night and flown the rest of the way in the morning. I am also instrument rated now, so I could land at Salinas.

But it was a great first trip in the plane: a good distance, a good destination, and a good demonstration of the sort of variables involved in this sort of travel.

0. It’s not about getting there.

If you want to get from Los Angeles (or, really, Long Beach) to Boston, take JetBlue. They are fast, efficient, comfortable, have bathrooms on the plane and you can watch television while you cross the country in less time than it takes the little plane to cross Texas. For the longer trip in the little plane, remember that James Taylor sang, “The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.”

There are a lot of things that can go wrong as we traipse across this great land. We can get stuck beneath a line of stubborn thunderstorms that won’t move along. (In general, in the summertime, there is a continuous line of thunderstorms drawn north to south up the country. It moves across the country west to east. Sometimes more than one line is moving at a time. These are high-energy serious storms and you avoid them even if you are on JetBlue.) We can have mechanical problems and although I have driven across the country in vehicles that suffered from one malady or anything I have never flown a plane any significant distance if there was even the slightest thing wrong with it. There’s no percentage it. You just have to enjoy where you are for a little while longer. Maybe you had some bad shrimp at the last stop, or you’ve got motion sickness that keeps you on terra firma for a few hours. See what birds might be native to the area. Do a photo essay on the planes at this particular airport or the particular portions of your luggage visible in the packed plane.

It’s enough to be on your way
It’s enough to cover ground

We’ll have iPods, so we can actually listen to JT sing as we cross the plains.

1. Don’t worry about the money.

Aviation is an expensive hobby. Unless you are somehow getting paid to do it (you teach flying, you fly for a commercial concern, you do aerial photography), you only fly when you have some disposable income. It’s like skiing, collecting art, playing golf or racing cars that way. There are going to be a lot of factors involved in the decisions you make as you fly across a continent, and I keep cost near the bottom of the list.

That doesn’t mean I ignore it, but if I am looking at where to stop next I am not worrying about whether the gas is sixty cents more a gallon at the larger airport (where I might be more comfortable flying in at night: big airport, big lights). If I run the tanks dry sixty cents a gallon is a little over twenty dollars and if I feel safer landing at the bigger field I can’t worry about twenty dollars. I do look at the cost of things and if the FBO recommends two possible hotels I look at their prices and consider their features. Do I need a pool for $125 a night, or can I make do without one for $95 a night?

A friend of mine (who has flown across the country more times than I have) said that his interest in aviation introduced him to more cheap motels than he had ever stayed in before. It is a huge luxury to be able to fly in a little plane, and sometimes you balance that with some Motel 6 and Airport Inn nights.

In general, the people you are meeting are making minimum wage. If a crewmember at an FBO is especially helpful, tip him. Ten dollars is almost definitely more than he is making in an hour. Certainly work to keep a smile on your face, because you are the one climbing out of your own plane on a week-long vacation and he’s the one sweating in the sun to wave you into your parking place.

2. Pick a minimum on-the-ground time.

On the long trip that Bob and I took from Santa Monica up to the San Juan Islands (and back) we made one major miscalculation: on one of our stops we didn’t spend enough time out of the plane. That meant that on the next long leg it was if the leg were joined with the previous one and we had been in the plane for six hours continuously. Since we are both over forty it meant that we hobbled from the plane into the FBO on our next stop and we couldn’t stay on the ground long enough to recover.

We swore on the trip West that we wouldn’t make that same mistake again. We set a minimum-on-ground time of forty-five minutes. In general, the fastest you could get back in the air is probably fifteen minutes (pee while the truck is fueling the plane, pay, pre-flight and fire back up). I’ve done that (and faster when I didn’t need the fuel) on short trips. It is something to avoid on these longer trips.

3. Research where you are landing.

This past weekend I spoke to a pilot who had flown his Socata Trinidad across the country right after getting his certificate. He had his wife and daughter in the plane and hopped from one little field in North Carolina to another. When he was touching down on the second field it felt wrong. The plane was speeding up on the runway, even though he had cut the power. He put the power back in, and decided to go around. The trees were taller than he thought and he wound up shearing the wings from the plane and dropping it into a field. Everyone walked away.

He said the major lesson was: know where you are landing. He hadn’t checked “the little green book” and the runway had a significant slope to it. No one landed the direction he was trying to land. (I carry a little brown book. I carry the little green book, too, but the little brown book is easier to read.) Before I land I know the layout of the airport, I know the runways (lengths, widths, surfaces). I know which is the “calm wind” runway (where I am meant to land if there is no wind). I know the terrain around the airport as best I can. I try to learn what sort of airport it is by the businesses listed in my little directory, but that’s not always accurate.

Originally, Adam and I flew over a lot of unfamiliar airports so that we could check things out from directly above. I’ve done this a couple times if the runway was short (up at Oceano, for instance), but in general I found it didn’t gather the information I had hoped for. Planning the pattern entry, knowing the assigned runway, and being VERY up for the landing are the things that make the difference. We did tend to use a “sterile cockpit” rule, which meant that there was no talking about things unrelated to the landing and airport once we were within fifteen miles (about five minutes) of the airport.

4. Plan ahead, as much as you can.

In the morning, I would open my laptop and check Weathermeister. Drawing a line between our current location and our ultimate destination I would look at the latest radar weather maps and the projected weather along that course. I knew I wasn’t going to make it the whole way (usually), but it was good to get the long view. The radar shows precipitation, so if I needed to adjust our route that morning (toward a thinner part of the line, because as they dissipate there are holes in the line you can (carefully) fly through). On the computer I can easily get the names of the airports or navigation aids I want to add to the route.

At each stop during the day, I would check the weather again. And there’s weather (via XM satellites) in the plane, so we have updates that way. Mostly we’re watching for thunderstorms (which aviation weather reports refer to as “convective activity”). Cloud cover over the airports is no longer the issue is was before my instrument rating. I watch the wind speed at the various airports up ahead, because high crosswinds can make a landing trickier, and high winds over hills can mean a bumpy ride for your passengers.

In the morning I have also looked ahead to the first probably landing spot and checked the reviews of the various FBO’s on the field. I’ll look at a couple different airports of different sizes and see if there are any restaurants or spots that people have identified as “not to be missed.” I hate to miss those.

But, that sort of planning isn’t really that helpful. The truth is that in a little plane the distances from stop-to-stop are pretty small and the distance is greatly affected by the winds aloft, along with anything that forces a detour. Flying West we though we would fly from Springfield, Illinois directly to Manhattan, Kansas, but we had to detour way, way south around a line of thunder storms. That meant we stopped at Columbia, Missouri and let the storms drench the plane (and the winds push it against its tie down straps) on the ground, rather than take our chances in the sky.

On our next trip across I hope to have some additional help planning stops, figuring that there might be some points of interest that are of interest to the non-flying passengers.

5. Three strikes and you stay on the ground. Have your own rules.

General Aviation is a bunch of regulations from the government and then there are the rules that pilots make up for themselves. The government says you can’t plan a flight in VFR conditions without a half hour fuel reserve. That makes me nervous. I won’t do that. My rule is simpler: if the flight is more than twenty minutes, fill the tanks to full. Land after three hours, which means I’ve only burn three quarters of the fuel on board. With this rule I have only three times come even close to the dashed range ring on my moving map that represents the beginning of my reserve fuel.

Pilots tend to group those sort of rules into a set they call “personal minimums.” Friends of mine always used oxygen within ten miles of the airport, even at sea level, because it sharpened their thinking and improved their night vision. A friend of Adam’s won’t talk to anyone while he is doing a pre-flight inspection of the airplane because twice while he was talking to someone he missed things. I now have a no-Cheetos rule in the plane. Well, okay, that’s different.

The point is that before starting out on a long trip, you should have some rules that you set out and that you stay within. I was unwillingly to fly within twenty miles of precipitation if there were thunderstorms forecast. And, in fact, I stayed away from clouds in general on those days. Make some sound decisions ahead of time, and don’t stray outside the boundaries you set. Many, many pilots (and passengers) are dead because the pilot went against their gut, because they were convinced, “I’ll just push it this one time,” or “That looks clear enough through that pass.” It’s impossible to know if pushing the envelope that one time is going to work out and it is very tempting. Just remove the temptation.

The three strikes rule isn’t one I follow, but I have heard it from a couple sources. You keep track as you start your day of things going wrong and if it hits three you don’t fly. Lost the key to the plane, that’s one. Forgot to leave the hotel room key at the front desk, that’s two. One of the tires is flat, that’s three. No flying for the day. I would have too difficult a time deciding if something was a strike or not, so that’s not a good rule for me, but feel free to use it yourself.

On the half hour fuel reserve: the FAA regulation does work. A friend was flying across the country and selecting his landing spot by the dashed line on his range ring. One leg, west bound, he made it to Goodland, Kansas (a field I have landed at myself). He didn’t see any planes in the pattern and figured it was just a quiet day. He announced on CTAF his arrival in the area and his various reporting points in the pattern. It was only as he got a little closer to the ground he saw the big white X’s on the runway and the trucks doing work. The airport was closed. He pressed the Nearest button on the G1000 and flew to Cheyenne, just twenty-four nautical miles away.

I hope if you fly across you’ll keep a blog of your adventures. I’m never going to get to do it often enough myself, and I would enjoy flying vicariously through some of you.

FBO (I’ve started a glossary!) stands for Fixed Base Operator. So, unlike a charter operator, which could just own a plane and land places to grab passengers, an FBO has at least one location that is fixed to a particular airfield. They vary wildly in the services they provide. I like both ends of the spectrum. Sometimes I am the little guy visiting the huge, jet-ready FBO, and I get all the luxury that the private-jet crowd is used to even thought I am in a little bug-smasher. Other FBOs are geared toward the learning-to-fly crowd (and, indeed, offer instruction and rental planes) and it can feel like you’ve stepped back into the 1950s when you walk in (the flight training business is not very lucrative). I like walking into those, since it feels like so many pilots have stood on the same worn carpets talking about flying. Adam and I learned at a small flight school, so they also feel familiar all the way back to my student pilot days.

These are the FBOs I visited during August 2007 as Adam and I flew across the country (and Bob and I flew back). Some of the details of these visits are found in other blog entries as well, but I wanted to have all of the FBOs for that summer in one place. I might be stopping at those places again this year.

Going East

KSEZ: Sedona, AZ – Sedona Airport Restaurant
Red Rock Aviation fueled the plane while we ate lunch in the restaurant. I can’t really review a fuel truck (um, it showed up?), but the food was edible on the field. Sometimes it isn’t, and when you are doing the sort of flying we were you don’t really have a choice. It’s just burgers and fries, but they were appetizing instead of grey and tasteless.

KABQ: Albuquerque, NM – Bode Aviation (Seven Bar)
We wound up being stuck here for a couple days while they repaired the plane and the FBO could not have been friendlier. While their mechanics were working on the plane we were allowed to use the conference room, the WiFi, the shuttle to and from a nearby hotel or eatery. They had free popcorn and bottled water. Although their business is clearly Eclipse customers and clients, and large charter jets, they never had a problem helping us out. They were so nice it affected my choice of FBO when we were heading back west and saw their Farmington, NM location.

KICT: Wichita, KS – Yingling
It was voted the best FBO in the country. We were dog-tired when we arrived, because we had pushed on until the tanks were at reserve. We were trying to make up for the time we lost being stuck at ABQ. They let us leave our battery charger plugged in while we went to dinner. They suggested a great steak joint and let us borrow the crew car. The place is very new, clean and they have computers for you to check the weather. We called ahead to get a hotel room in St. Louis.

KSTL: St. Louis, MS – Signature Flight Support
They are definitely set up for the charter jet crowd. We were the only little plane on the ramp (although we did arrive after midnight). They shuttled us two and from the hotel, they suggested the hotel to begin with (and it was a nice place to spend a night after a long flight). The plane was ready and fueled when we returned.

I69: Batavia, OH – Sporty’s
They didn’t have any real food. That was a disappointment. They teach flying, and they are fairly isolated, so you would think that they would have a little café or something. No such luck. They were friendly enough, though, and it was nice to visit in person a place from which we had ordered so many mail order goodies.

KFDK: Frederick, MD – Landmark Aviation
The were only FBO on the field, as far as we could tell. They had a mix of clients, but they were definitely upscale. They were very friendly and hustled to fill the plane when we told them it was a quick turn.

KSFZ: Pawtucket, RI – Landmark Aviation
A tiny airport and the only FBO I could identify. It’s where JFK, Jr. learned to fly. He told them, “You’re going to be famous for having taught me to fly.” Oops. I parked right in the way of everything (since I couldn’t find a marked transient area), and bothered them on their night line and they were very nice about it. They fueled the plane while I was asleep and didn’t mind when I showed up first thing in the morning. I look forward to seeing them again.

KBOS: Boston, MA – Signature Flight Support
This is as fancy as it gets. The sleep rooms that Nell and the boys used (they arrived at 6am, I landed at about 8:30am) were totally blacked out. They had sumptuous leather recliners and soft fleecy blankets to sleep with. Dexter still talks about wanting to spend more nights there. It is the only FBO at one of the countries largest airports. The most powerful people in the country pop in and out of here on their Gulfstream jets to grab a weekend at The Vineyard or The Cape. We were, needless to say, the only piston single on the entire field, let alone on the ramp at Signature. They were SO nice to us. It was a drag to have to through security to get out to our plane (if I wanted a gun on the plane, wouldn’t I have flown in with it and left it out there?), but this IS the airport where the 9.11 terrorists took off from.

East Coast Travel

KCON: Concord, NH – Concord Aviation Services
The only choice, as far as I could tell on the web, for renting a car and so forth. Next time it will be tempting to drop Nell here, let her rent a car and meet me at the smaller field closer to Pleasant Lake. I liked the FBO a lot (they said they would wait to top off the tanks, since the temperature fluctuations could result in some lost fuel), but I think the drive to the lake could be shorter.

KBED: Bedford, MA – Signature Flight Support
Not nearly as fancy as Logan’s version, but certainly effective for our quick little visit (one night). They had snacks for the boys when we departed for the wilds of the North, and they had taken care of the plane while we were away. I wish they had some sort of shuttle service to Cambridge or a rail line that went into Cambridge. I guess I wish Cambridge had an airport.

YTZ: Toronto, ON – Porter Aviation
These were some of the friendliest people on our trip. At the same time we landed a fellow landed in his twelve-seat, twin-jet powered helicopters and stepped into his waiting limo. I felt that I had just as good service as he did. It was the only choice (it’s a tiny airport on an island next to the city), but it was great.

NK4: Parry Sound, ON – Terminal Services, Pilot Shop
Welcome to the north woods of Canada! Super friendly, relaxed as can be, and they knew people I knew who flew into the same airport. They helped get the plane tied down on some grass, with some tires as anchors (a first). Fuel was self-serve, which I took care of when I returned and had Adam to help me. Wicked wind shear on take off. The pilot shop was really helpful with Canadian charts.

YXU: London, ON – Katana Café, Diamond Factory
I wish we had planned this better somehow. We were too late for the café by the time we returned from our factory tour, so we didn’t really get to enjoy what looked like a great menu. There should be more signage about where people need to go if they are there to tour the factory. The factory tour itself was a thrill.

KBUF: Buffalo, NY – Prior Aviation
I just parked on the ramp for a moment while I cleared customs. I popped in to use the restroom and grab some free popcorn. They were very nice. They clearly cater to large jet charters rather than the little guys like me, but couldn’t have been friendlier.

KHTO: East Hampton, NY – Sound Aircraft Services
I was stupid about parking in the dark. I called at 11:30pm to make sure I put the plane in the right place and the guy who answered seemed like he was going to go out and get it tied down properly, but he didn’t. They were extremely friendly when I called on the phone to extend our stay. Obviously, Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Spielberg and the rest all park their Gulfstreams there and I am small potatoes for them, but they were really helpful.

KHPN: White Plains, NY – Panorama Flight Service
We dropped in totally unannounced and they were effective, if brusque, calling us a cab and dealing with tying the plane down for a couple nights. When I returned to pick it up they barely had a moment to run my credit card. One of the few places where I felt like I didn’t have a big enough plane to get their attention. Apparently it is the better choice for little planes on the field, but I wish there were another.

KBDR: Bridgeport, CT – Three Wings Aviation
They did an oil change and all sorts of little inspection things for me so that I felt good about making the flight back across the country with the plane. They finished on time and shuttled me to the train station to get back to Manhattan. I would certainly visit them again. The FBO seemed dwarfed by the maintenance operation, but it looks like they do some serious charter and flight school work.

KAVP: Wilkes-Barre, PA – First Flight
Very professional and attentive. I just tied up, topped off and they arranged a rental car for the one night I was in town. They were incredibly quick checking in and out, which was appreciated at both ends.

Returning West

KCMH: Columbus, OH – Million Air
A surprisingly large and luxurious FBO with the largest lobby and passenger waiting are I’ve been in. I think they do some large charters out of here. It was a bit of a ghost town and we had no problem borrowing the crew car. They were efficient, if a little distracted. They seemed surprise to get a drop-in customer. I bet most little planes stop at littler airports nearby.

KCMI: Champaign, IL – Flight Star
There seemed to be some sort of aviation college associated with the field. I couldn’t quite figure it out. The FBO was very high tech and they were dealing with a couple charter jets as I was tying down. There were more charter jet pilots inside (so there must have been a hanger full of charter jets somewhere), and the whole place had a very professional-pilot vibe. We booked our hotel in Springfield, calculated as our next stop, hung around for our minimum ground time and booked out of there. Everyone was pleasant and professional, but probably recognized us as customers who probably would not be coming through again.

KSPI: Springfield, IL – First Class Air
The Land of Lincoln! And Lincoln’s FBO! Well, everyone was a little on the older side, at least, but they could not have been more helpful. They arranged for a free ride to the hotel, made sure we were entirely properly tied down, and treated us like we’d be moving to the area soon. They had a lot of aviation knowledge behind that desk and it made me wish I could have brought some of it with me on our next leg.

KCOU: Columbia, MS – Central Missouri Aviation
We had to land, there was a thunderstorm front rolling through. We topped off, although that wasn’t really necessary, and they were happy to have us in their break room and waiting area until the storms passed. It looked more like a flight school than a place for the charter jets to pick up passengers, but that wasn’t a surprise given the size of the airport.

3JC: Junction City, KS – Kansas Air Center
Due to a sleeping ATC tower operator, we pressed on to this alternate field to refuel. The FBO was clearly a maintenance depot, but they were helpful fueling and checking the plane.

KMHK: Manhattan, KS – Kansas Air Center
Since we fueled at their other location they waved the ramp fee, helped us tie down and let us have the crew car. They talked with us about local knowledge of the airport, where we were flying to next, and what to look out for. Definitely a professional outfit, but used to dealing with enough little guys that we weren’t a surprise.

KGLD: Goodland, KS – Butterfly Aviation
One of my favorite stops. Butterfly is a throwback to another era. They were extremely helpful with the plane. Their facilities are a little older (they have a great map with Goodland in the center and a weighted string for figuring the range to other places), but they had WiFi and it was comfortable enough.

KCOS: Colorado Springs, CO – Cutter Aviation
We were staying around the corner, so they were happy to shuttle us there and pick us up in the morning. They had just changed hands, so the place was in some disarray, but they handled the plane professionally and treated us like real customers at an airport where we must have been one of the smallest planes they had dealt with recently.

KFMN: Farmington, NM – Seven Bar Aviation
They topped us off and we paced in their waiting room for our set minimum ground time. They had comfortable chairs and WiFi and enough interest that there is probably a stream of little planes through here. I think the other FBO on the field had better reviews, but we stuck with Seven Bar since they were so nice to us at ABQ.

In the grey bag is an Apple iBook. That was for the boys once we reached the East coast, so that they could watch movies. It came in handy.

The item with the handle is the Aviator oxygen generator, which I’ve written about before. These are not yet readily available commercially, but when they are I think I will mount one semi-permanently in the back for long trips. Having oxygen at night helps your night vision and being on oxygen always keeps you sharper.

There are a bunch of sun hats there on the left. And in the plane I had half a dozen sunscreens that stuck to the windows with suction cups.

The red plaid NCIS package is a picnic blanket with a water-resistant side and a nice flannel side. It seemed like a good thing to be carrying in case we wound up having lunch next to the plane on a remote field. Note that one third of the luggage organizer is filled with snacks (and various medications like Advil and Visine). There’s nothing like Pringles at thirteen thousand feet.

In a plastic bag just above the NCIS blanket is the manual fuel gauge that came with the plane. It has a slot for the leading edge of the wing and a little hose that you connect to the drain from the tank. Then you see just how many gallons you have remaining. (The factory ships this with a glass tube to see the fuel next to the graduations. That shattered. My friend Art replaced it with plastic tubing.) The G1000 has a fuel totalizer: you tell it you filled the tanks and it keeps track of exactly what has flowed to the engine, so I guess the fuel gauge is for when you’ve forgotten to reset the totalizer.

The grey and orange rectangles are Thermarest lumbar pillows for the pilot and co-pilot, who are both over forty and have learned to be kind to their backs.

Next up, some items in this group are packed so they are a little harder to reach. In the AOPA bag (free with my membership!) are the maintenance logs and the Pilot Operating Handbook for the plane (including the installed avionics). Those are required to be in the plane by law. The navy blue bag beneath that is a cheat. It’s a $99 toolkit from Sporty’s. Ultimately, I should learn exactly what tools are necessary for the sort of maintenance I can perform on my own, and get good versions of those tools. This is a general, emergency set of tools, which was a good idea for our trip.

In the stuff sack is a down jacket for the times that I forget to bring proper attire in the plane. It’s been incredibly useful the two times I have had to pull it out. A cold pilot doesn’t do a thorough pre-flight and will miss things he listens to on the radio.

The IFR Atlas was kept in the pocket in the back of the pilot’s seat and includes all of the low altitude charts for the entire country. For a hundred bucks, that was impossible to beat.

Third group, stuffed in various places. A bag of water bottles (and an emergency Coca Cola). Four life jackets from Sporty’s. Maybe those wouldn’t be used as we flew over the Rockies and the plains, but the truth is that if you have to put down in an emergency your chances of survival are better on water than land (I guess it’s smooth and level), so it’s good to have your floaties ready. Look for lakes, ponds and reservoirs. The red metal chocks were good because they didn’t damage the wheel pants (some FBOs have chocks that are too big for the little space left by the wheel pants). They were bad because they didn’t keep the plane from rolling away.

There is a small storage space under the main luggage area. It is a pain in the ass to get to. (There’s a cargo net to keep the luggage from jumping around in turbulence. It is attached with six belts. To get to the storage area you have to remove the net, remove the luggage on top, tip the back seats forward (which means emptying the back seats of luggage and people), unsnap a strap and then lift the door.) I figured if I needed four quarts of oil for an engine that only holds eight, we would be emptying the plane anyway. And the tow bar isn’t really necessary, Adam and I could wheel the plane around with one of us on each wingtip. I also put the toolkit down in this space.

That was it. Our packing was very efficient for all of this gear, but then when we loaded Adam in Torrance we just shoved everything he had in on top of it. In Albuquerque we had some time and re-packed our luggage and this equipment so that it all worked really well. I rolled out of my spot at KSMO and left behind my custom chocks (held in place with silicon caulk) for almost a month. I hope to make it a yearly pilgrimage East and refine this list of equipment on each trip.

The ride up through the eastern portion of Kansas was a real game of storm dodging. Kansas City Center was extremely helpful. There was another line of heavy precipitation headed our way, but we were half an hour ahead of it. We were headed for Manhattan, Kansas, which calls itself “The Little Apple.” So cute.

When we were within fifteen miles, Center told us to switch frequencies to the tower. We did, since I had already listened to the ATIS on another frequency. As the plane trundled down a slope to pattern altitude (two thousand feet), I checked in with the tower. “Manhattan tower, Diamondstar niner seven one romeo delta inbound with oscar.” I always wait a little before talking on a frequency, because I hate interrupting. It was quiet. After my transmission I wait a little longer than you might on a telephone because you can’t tell if you have the attention of the person on the other end.

Dead silence. That happens sometimes, even at my home field. The controller is on the phone or on the ground frequency and misses the call. So I make the call a second time, identical to the first. Then I wait again. Three minutes with no response and, unfortunately, we are about to enter Class Delta airspace around an airport without being identified and speaking with a controller. That’s a violation, so I pull back on the control and the plane hops up and over the airspace.

I try the ground frequency, since we are directly over the airport. There’s no answer there, either. As we glide over, and I try the tower again, I look down at the airport. There’s no activity at all. I check the Airport Guide again (I had already looked at all the detail for the airport, that’s standard as we fly into a new place), but the airport is meant to be open. I switch back to Center’s frequency and give them a holler. They are right there, so my radio must be okay. But they are busy and don’t seem to really register my complaint that no one is answering at Manhattan tower.

We need fuel. Not desperately, but that’s one of the things that keeps us bouncing onto the ground rather than just continuing a long flight across the plains. The plane can fly about five hundred forty miles on a tank of fuel and we have gone a little over two hundred. So we’re not worried, but that’s the next order of business. So I press the NRST button to find the nearest airport with fuel. It’s a little over ten miles away and we are descending to land in less than five minutes. I announce our intention to land on the CTAF, worried that my radio is working only intermittently or only for Center frequencies. The airport is dead quiet.

This is a really little community airport where we’ve landed on the one paved runway and the two which intersect it are grass. We taxi over and park on the ramp. A fellow comes out with a fuel truck and tops us off. I explain the Manhattan tower situation and he sort of shrugs. He works at an airport that doesn’t have a tower at all, so the vagaries of all that control and personnel… obviously not something he cares a lot about.

Since I am worried about the radios he agrees to stand in the little terminal building (unmanned otherwise) and listen (it is equipped with a speaker system which broadcasts the CTAF audio so that passengers waiting for an incoming plane can hear it arriving and announcing itself). After I start up and do a “Radio check, radio check,” he runs out with a thumbs up. Well, that’s good. I always think it’s my fault at first.

So, fueled up, radio working, we take off and head back to Manhattan. As we depart tiny Freeman Field in Junction City, I point out to Bob that there’s a McDonald’s within walking distance of the field. I say that if we can’t land and lunch at Manhattan we’ll come back and stroll into town. He agrees.

On the 9.9 nautical mile trip back to Manhattan I talked to Center. I explain that we couldn’t get anyone to answer on the tower frequency and the controller says he’ll give them a try on the telephone. He comes back in a minute and says he can’t reach anyone either. We’ve made it to the field at this point and I try a few times on the tower and ground frequencies. Finally, someone answers on the ground frequency, but only to say, “Aircraft calling Manhattan, keep trying, I know they’re up there.”

So we circle the field, just above the controlled airspace. There is no motion below. I was doing steep banked turns about a point, but Bob pointed out that his stomach was empty and churning in a tight spin wasn’t helping. So we flattened out and started flying triangles. After some more consultation with Center we gave them the phone number for one of the FBOs on the field. Center called the FBO to learn that there was nothing anyone KNEW about that should keep the tower from answering. The controller came back and said, “I can’t really tell you what to do, you’re pilot-in-command, but I admit we’re pretty curious now what might be happening down there.“ My favorite thing is that the Center controller I was talking to said, “If you do get on the ground and over to the tower, it would be great to check on them. The code on the tower door is… (silence) well, it’s usually open.“ I came really close to getting him to say the little three digit code for a secure installation over an open frequency.

I’ve seen too many movies. I assumed that the tower had been taken over by those guys that are always after Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Or that the personnel opened their FAA forms that arrived in the mail and inhaled a handful of cyanide powder. You know, something dramatic. So I am guessing at all these wild scenarios, but I finally just decide we need to get it on the ground. I treat the tower frequency as a CTAF and announce my position and intentions. The Center controllers know what I am going to do, so I figure if they are guiding anyone in they will point me out. And no one can enter the airspace around the airport without speaking on frequency first. I feel a little covered.

I announce my position over half a dozen times as I enter the pattern, make my turns and line up for a landing. It was a smooth landing, and we turn off at the first taxiway to get to the FBO that has the best reviews. Just as we made the turned onto the ramp area the ground frequency answered one of my many position announcements with, “Diamondstar one romeo delta, taxi as requested.” I acknowledged and replied that Kansas City Center wanted them to give a call on the land line. There was a pause and then, “Uh, thanks.”

Best reviews, yes, but the FBO had no loaner car, no way to get a rental car over to them… really they were a shop for their usual customers. So we had to get back in the plane and taxi to the other FBO. I thought at first they were going to hit us up for a ramp fee, but I realized it was another branch of the place we had gotten fuel at over in Junction City. Once I mentioned it, the guy helping us tie down became much more friendly and gave us the crew car and directions to the lunch area.

McDonalds was the only option in the Little Apple. That was a disappointment. On the way back to the airport we took the longer, larger road route and discovered some fancier chains. The important thing is that while we were wolfing out hot-n-salty fried protein shapes the line of thunderstorms swept through the town. There were some high winds and I was glad we had tied down securely.

Back at the airport we planned the next leg (up to Goodland, KS, where a friend of mine once planned a fuel stop and arrived in the traffic pattern only to realize that the field was closed, one of those times you realize why you plan a fuel reserve). We waited for a little bit more clearing of the clouds and calm of the winds and then saddled up.

The tower had a different voice when we spoke to them on the ground and then tower frequencies. I’m still trying to figure out where to send a note to the FAA. Another pilot on the field said that the same thing had happened to him and he had walked over to the tower and climbed the steps to find the controller watching a movie on her laptop.

Goodland didn’t have a tower.

I was involved in trying to find the way off the field to my ride, and involved in herding the boys with their luggage. I didn’t remember the gust lock. That probably contributed to my problem. Also, if the tail looks low in the following photograph that’s because there’s a bunch of stuff in there for the cross-the-country: the oxygen machine, approach books, and the propeller lock (unused, but illegal not to have if you are in Massachusetts overnight).

There were thirty knot winds that night. When I returned to to the airport the next morning to check in and make sure it was an okay spot to park the plane, it was in the position in the photograph. The wind had probably pushed the tail down and allowed the nose wheel to jump the chock. Then the airplane weather-vaned, turning on its castoring nose gear into the wind as much as it could.

Directly out of frame to the left are three more planes. This could have been a VERY costly mistake to make. I fired up and taxied into the wind into the adjacent spot. I have a great set of tie down straps in the plane.

I chocked both mains and tied it down tight. I installed the gust lock. The wind was blowing hard enough to take my baseball cap off. I had talked to a guy at the FBO the night I parked, at 11pm. He made it sound like he was going to go check on the plane and get it properly secured. I should have taken the fifteen minutes in the pitch black to get it tied down. The wind shifted ninety degrees that night and picked more than twenty knots.

They say piloting is the art of trading your luck until you have enough experience that you don’t need the luck. I was lucky that night. Not with the thunderstorms, that was all airmanship and hard work, good planning and crisp communications with ATC. I was lucky my six figure investment didn’t careen into a couple other six-figure items and make us all unhappy.Tie it down.

There was weather.

It’s amazing how being instrument rated changes my feeling toward the weather. It becomes all about staying comfortable, rather than worrying about “getting there.” When weather would get a little unfriendly before I had a way to fly into a cloud, I would worry about pressing on to get as many miles as I could toward my destination before I was forced to stop. Now I think about icing, turbulence, lightning… things that can really ruin your day. I make sure those risk factors are low, and then I concern myself with the comfort of my passengers. If the next morning it is only going to be cloudy, that will be a better time to fly.

We were looking at a two and a half hour flight. The boys had been good all day (enough adventures for another blog entry), but they were a little tired of traveling. It was seven thirty at night by the time the customs officer was finished with us and I was able to close the plane up. I got them each a little bag of popcorn at the FBO (all FBOs have popcorn) and I set up the iBook for them to watch a movie. They picked out Lilo and Stitch and I said that once we were at cruise altitude they could fire it up.

My plan was to fly pretty direct from Buffalo to the East Hampton airport. It was a little over three hundred nautical miles. The radar on my laptop showed some thunderstorms moving across upstate New York, over Ithaca and heading southeast toward New York City. I knew that if I needed to I could put down anywhere in New York or Pennsylvania, get a cheap hotel and spend the night. I had also researched Caldwell, NJ, a small airport near New York City, and knew that I could land there, get a car service into Manhattan and stay at my parents’ loft for the night. We had options.

There were a lot of Jetblue flights waiting in Buffalo to return to JFK. They were experiencing considerable delays. That meant that JFK, on the south shore of the western end of Long Island, was being slammed by storms heavy enough to stop the major airlines from landing. That wasn’t a good sign.

Right after we launched, the weather was a little different than reported. It was a lower ceiling than I had hoped and the broken layer was really an overcast layer. Instead of cruising at 9,500 feet we’d be two thousand feet lower at 7,500. That was fine, it’s not like there were any significant mountains between us and East Hampton. In fact, compared to the west coast, the east coast didn’t offer any mountains to worry about at all.

We had a tremendous tail wind. It was always more than twenty-five knots and often thirty-two. As we leveled out to cruise, the XM weather updated my NextRAD images and I saw the wing of storms ahead of us. I also saw the long, thin line of thunderstorms that were sitting directly over Long Island.

The set nearer me meant that I would have to head south, further into Pennsylvania, to continue east. The thin line over Long Island meant that we would not be making it out to the Hamptons this evening. I took a moment to switch to the boys’ headsets and let them know. They were mostly interested in whether they could start the movie (yes) and where the water bottles were, since they had already started in on the popcorn. But they were disappointed that we wouldn’t make it to Freddie’s, a little less so when I said we’d fly out the following morning.

I turned my attention back to navigating around the storms.

Look at the radar image. That was an hour or so after we landed. You can see the set of storms that was pounding Long Island. The radar shows precipitation in color: blue is negligible, light green is minor, yellow is heavy and red is extreme. I don’t know what it is like to be in yellow or red. I’ve flown through a little light green and it was tap-tap-tapping on the canopy and was blown back in lines over the windows. It doesn’t interfere much with your enjoyment of moving through the sky. I would think that the heavy and extreme would make it difficult to hear and would include with some significant movement of air up and down.

That’s the real danger of thunderstorms. The movement of the air inside (and around) the storm can be swift, fierce and powerful. It is not uncommon for small planes to report descents and ascents of several thousand feet per minute. If you are being pressed down by the wind the trick become steering out of it before you meet some part of the hard, hard earth below. Occasionally a small plane will fly into a storm, become totally disoriented, and in an attempt to control the plane the pilot will tear the wings off. So we stay away from thunderstorms.

On the moving map I had in the plane, where I am watching an often-updated picture similar to that radar image here on this entry, I keep the plane at least twenty miles from anything green. The NextRAD is not instant (the most I have seen it delayed was eighteen minutes) and the storms are moving at about the speed of the wind. So we’re being chased by a 32kt wind, in eighteen minutes the storm can be ten miles closer than my picture shows. If I stay twenty away, I’ll never be in it. I’m also looking out the window all the time, so I should see a storm visually. I listen to ATC and they will talk to me about areas of heavy precipitation and reports that other pilots have made on the route ahead of me.

As I ducked south around the fatter line of storms, I started to make my way east to KCDW (Caldwell). That was a waypoint on my journey out over the island. It was pretty clear that we weren’t going anywhere near Long Island, though. Not with all those storms covering it. I talked to ATC and asked how their picture looked. The very friendly controller said, “You’re not going to make it past New York City tonight. You’re the one up there flying the plane, but I’d say you should just take it as far east as you can tonight and set it down.” I told him to change our destination to Caldwell and he said that seemed like a good idea.

We were getting bounced around. We were over the hills of western Pennsylvania and as the thirty knots of wind whistled over them they created waves of turbulence well past the seven thousand five hundred foot altitude we occupied. I kept the list of nearest airports up on the main display in front of me. I tightened my seatbelt so that a particularly sharp bump wouldn’t bang my head against the canopy. (There’s an amazing story about a pipeline pilot who was knocked out that way and survived the crash.) Whenever there was a series of particularly hard jolts I would glance at the nearest airport and figure how soon I would be on the ground. Then it would quiet down a little. I flew by hand because the autopilot doesn’t iron out the turbulence the way a human pilot can.

As we came abeam of Scranton it calmed considerably (there’s a valley there, fewer hills for the wind to make bumps over). Just before it calmed there was a long string of bumps and I looked in the back seat to check on the boys. In the pitch black of the stormy night, as they were bounced through the sky on the shoulders of the wind running over the hills, their faces were lit by the light of the laptop’s screen and Rudy’s teeth flashed white as he laughed. They were both in hysterics over the antics of Stitch, the out-of-control alien adopted by a little Hawaiian girl. I couldn’t ask for better passengers.

The flight was quiet now and it was only the visuals that were frightening. From sixty miles away I could see the huge storm over Teterboro airport, and at a similar distance storms over Newark airport and Elizabeth, NJ. Monstrous flashes of lightning would light up a third of the horizon. There was no thunder audible over the engine, wind noise and headset, but the light show was more than just impressive.

The controller called from Scranton approach. “How is the ride?” I couldn’t complain, thirty knots of tailwind and a smooth sky. “Okay, checking in because winds were clam here ten minutes ago and we just had a squall line pass through. Fifty knots of wind gusting to sixty.” Well, that would be exciting. What direction was the squall line heading? “We couldn’t tell, it was just screaming from all directions.” Very professional, thanks. We buzzed onward into western New Jersey.

The controller started vectoring me for the landing at Caldwell. I picked up the ATIS at the field and had the airport marked in my little Airport Guide. I started my descent. As I leveled out at 3,500 feet, closing the distance a little more to KCDW, I checked the weather page on the secondary display one more time. I couldn’t believe it, the line of storms had all blown out to sea. I confirmed with the controller, “It looks like we could fly direct from our present position to KHTO, the East Hampton airport. Is that right?” Let me look, he radios back. Yes, it has all blown clear. What would you like to do? “One Romeo Delta would like to change our destination to Hotel Tango Oscar.” He cleared us into the class Bravo airspace around La Guardia and I quickly plotted a course along the northern edge of Long Island.

We flew over the Hudson and I pointed out the George Washington Bridge to the boys. They returned to their movie. When I had clicked over to their headphones to explain that we WERE going to make it to Freddie’s party after all, a cheer had gone up from the back seat. Now they just wanted to get there.

Right after the rain, the air is really clear. That made for a gorgeous evening peering at the lights of the Island. The moon wasn’t up yet, and the water was dark, so the coast was the outline of the glittering lights against the blackness of the Sound. As we traveled east the lights were more scattered until there were large sections of what must still be farmland. I studied my Airport Guide, planned my descent, and began monitoring the common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF) at HTO, our destination.

The controller let us go when we are ten miles from the airport and I started announcing our position. I flew over the airport first to orient myself and checked out the surroundings. It was all flat land. There were three runways, but only one had lights on it for a night landing. That’s fine, because the wind was nearly calm and it doesn’t matter which direction we land.

Directly over the airport there was a flash of brown in the lights of the plane and a thump. I’d hit a bird, but none of it showed up on the windscreen. I focused on getting the plane onto the ground. (Later, Adam explained that it was probably a swift, known to sleep on the wing. I was a little surprised that there is anything to run into at 3,500 feet at 10:30pm on a dark night.)

I self-announced in the pattern, lined up for a very stabilized approach, and landed smoothly on runway two-eight. The three runways made a triangle and I had to taxi backward on runway two-two to get to the ramp and the FBO. As the plane pivoted the landing and taxi lights pinned two deer standing on the centerline, staring.

The airport is deserted. My bother-in-law was on the way to pick us up, but there were no lights at all on the ramp. I had the little diagram from my Airport Guide, so I THINK I know where the terminal is. I sat for a moment after the engine stopped and gathered myself. It had been a little more than two and a half hours from Buffalo, close to three hundred fifty miles that in a car would have taken eight and a half hours without any traffic and clear weather. It had been a constant test of strategic navigation, risk management and airmanship.

We climbed out. The boys were great helping with their bags and trooping about looking for a way off the field. I put the little metal chocks under the nose wheel, hoped that I was not parked in a bad spot, and followed them to the softly lit terminal.

That being said, I am not very conspicuous in my consumption. We have had an electric car since GM’s wonderful EV1 was first available. Now Nell drives a Rav4 from Toyota that is also entirely electric. She’s put 46,000 miles on it, the equivalent of something like twenty-five hundred gallons of gas. (Yes, fuel is burned somewhere to provide the electricity to charge the car, but we charge at night, taking advantage of generating capacity that otherwise goes to waste.) She’s been driving electric for over eight years. Our second car is a Prius. (Yes, I would like to get a Tesla. They aren’t delivering them yet.)

So maybe it is odd that I enjoy flying so much with so little guilt. I really do feel that there are so few people flying that it just doesn’t matter. When I first was looking into buying our plane I worked out the fuel we’d burn going to visit land we had in the desert. It turned out to be about what our minivan (it was pre-Prius) would burn for the same trip. I would love to have an electric, or hybrid, airplane, but they aren’t around yet. I am happy that we have one of the more fuel-efficient models out there, but I still had a lot of explaining to do at dinner parties where we were all kicking our collective Prius tires.

Now I have a sticker. That’s so much easier.

Al Gore jets about the country giving his little “the world is ending, the world is ending” talk with slides. (“The World is Ending” is a typical religious message, obviously.) So he complains about greenhouse gases and then climbs onto a private jet to get to the next city or to get back to his ten thousand square foot home.

He claims his life is carbon neutral.

I researched it. My life is not carbon neutral and I don’t intend to make it that way. We live in a fairly modest home in a suburban fabric in the sprawl of Los Angeles. I can do more just by helping my neighbors adjust their sprinklers (which I’ve done) than in any amount I shorten my shower by. The plane, though, is easy to make carbon neutral, thus changing the usual cocktail conversation.

I went to Carbon Neutral Plane and joined up. I told them how many hours I flew in 2007 and they neutralized me for the last quarter. I also projected what we would fly in 2008 and they took care of that as well. They take the number of hours you fly, use 10.5 gallons per hour (considerably more than our plane burns) and they purchase carbon offsets on the Chicago Climate Exchange. (I’d like to see the CCX operate a little differently, but that’s a separate blog entry. Really, a separate blog. I’d even like the charge for neutrality to be built into the cost of the fuel, but that’s a blog I have no interest in starting.)

Nell pointed out this quote in the New York Times:

During Stevens’s first years on the court, he sometimes commuted to Florida in an unusual way: as the pilot of his own private plane. “My secret ambition was to get Gerry Ford to take a ride in my airplane,” he said. “Any plane that contains the president becomes Air Force One,” Stevens explained, so “I would be able to call the tower and say, ‘This is Air Force One!’

I wonder what designation I could get if I could get Al Gore on board N971RD. Air Force Two Alpha? Air Force Point Niner, since he was almost the president?

It was a long trip across the country to the east coast, and even though it was exciting and exhilarating, I was exhausted by the time I flew the last two hours twenty minutes solo from Maryland up to my sister’s place in Rhode Island. That was a Friday, August 3. It was a great arrival, because my sister, Brett, and her husband, Dave, weren’t sure I was going to make it. (I told them that it was possible that weather would force me down in New Jersey and that meant I would just spend the night in the city.) So they told my niece, Willa, and nephew, Jasper, that they were just going to the airport to watch the planes. Willa and Jasper are seven and four, when disappointment is a little more acute.

It was a Friday evening. The FBO and terminal were closed at the tiny North Central State airport (KSFZ), so they had to stand outside the chain link peering in. At seven thirty on a Friday there weren’t a lot of planes coming in. Maybe none. Then they thought they saw one, flying past the airport. So they waited. Finally a little white plane taxied out from behind the building. They didn’t get to see it land, but there it was. It shut down and a guy climbed out. Brett called over, “Can we come look at your plane, sir?” The pilot in a baseball cap and sunglasses said, “Sure,” and wandered over to the gate. Willa and Jasper kept staring at the plane and it was only when the pilot kneeled down in front of them that they realized it was their uncle!

I took them up (minus Dave) for a quick trip around the pattern. I wanted to fly them over their house, which was probably only five minutes away, but I was too tired to feel safe. Jasper sat in the right seat and held the control stick a little, but mostly he was overwhelmed by the experience of even being up close to a little plane.

I chocked and locked the plane. I was happy to be in the passenger seat while Dave drove us back to their place in Providence, stopping to order a pizza. I felt like I had at the end of long cross country drives: dazed and stunned that I had made the transition from one coast to another, pushing through thousands of miles between. I talked to Nell a couple times. She was in the Jetblue terminal in Long Beach getting ready to get on a red eye to Boston with the boys. I told her how to call the FBO at Logan, and where I would meet them to fly them up to Concord, New Hampshire. She convinced me that I didn’t need to be there when they landed (6am), but that they would just collapse in the quiet rooms at the FBO (Signature) and see me when I got there a little after 8am. (We couldn’t land in Concord, NH before 9am because the car rental was not available until then.)

I slept the sleep of the dead on the third floor of Brett and Dave’s house and early the next morning Dave drove me back to the field, stopping at a great bakery to get some early morning fuel for the West coasters. The FBO at KSFZ is where JFK Jr. learned to fly: fame, or perhaps infamy. They were really helpful and friendly about getting the plane fueled and the fact that I had parked it in totally the wrong spot the night before when no one was there.

It is thirty-five nautical miles to Boston’s Logan airport. Sixteen minutes of flight time. I took off around 7:45am and it took me about double that time since I was vectored around a little, even as I entered the airspace from the west. The controller probably regularly dealt with little planes off of SFZ attempting to transition through the airspace to get out to Martha’s Vineyard and the other beach islands off the Massachusetts coast.

Logan is a busy airport. They have over eleven hundred operations per day. An operation is either a takeoff or a landing. So they are pounding planes onto the runways and slinging them back off. During a busy time there are planes lined up over the Atlantic, all space two miles apart, sliding down to hit the parallel runways of two-two-left and two-two-right. Since they don’t operate much at night, they are probably landing and launching a plane every ninety seconds.

The controller said, “N971RD, radar identified and cleared into the Class Bravo. Say destination.” Landing Logan. “Diamondstar one romeo delta, did you say you were landing Logan?” Affirmative, and we have delta. (That’s the automated weather observation, which I’ve now listened to on another frequency.) “One romeo delta, roger. Continue this heading for now, what’s your type?” One romeo delta is a delta-alpha-four-zero slant golf. (Tiny plane but has at least GPS for navigation. “Roger, ah, you probably will be more comfortable if we don’t send you out over the water, correct?” Affirmative. “Okay, standby for a series of vectors, we’ll bring you in over the land.”

So, although a little surprised, they were being helpful. That was a relief. It was hazy that early in the morning, and I was glad they were giving me headings to steer rather than trusting that I knew where the “gas tank” was, or the “Blue Hills Observatory” (both are VFR reporting points on the Terminal Area Chart for Logan and if you are flying in the area you are expected to be familiar with them. “Familiar with” and “able to pick them out of the haze” were two different things. Even with the airport only two miles away and the size of a small town I had trouble spotting the runway I was meant to land on (two-two-left). “Diamondstar one romeo delta is there something wrong with the visibility from your altitude or do you have the field in sight?” Oh, oh, there it is. It was so huge it was disorienting. I was also painfully aware that I was in the space belonging to huge planes in a big hurry, so I didn’t want to somehow turn my downwind approach leg right in a spot that would make it hard for a commercial airliner to get onto, or off of, the ground. I flew downwind on the west side of the airport, turned base for two-two-left and flew across two-two-right’s approach.

I landed fast (so that I could get out of the way of whatever larger plane needed the tarmac next) and turned off neatly where the controller directed me. That put me on the ten thousand foot long runway three-three left which they were using as a taxiway that morning. I rolled to the general aviation area, served by the single FBO on the field, Signature Flight Service. I parked among all of the huge business jets (and took a photo). These were almost all charters awaiting their well-heeled clients, to fly out to the Vineyard, down to Miami or over to the Hamptons. As far as I could tell, N971RD was the only single-engine plane on the entire airfield. (The statistics bear that out, since only eight per cent of Logan’s traffic is general aviation and it’s certainly almost all charter jets.)

Once I was parked I re-sorted the luggage so that the approach plates I needed for flying across the country were stowed way in the rear of the extended baggage compartment (with the spare park plugs, extra blankets, maintenance log…). I walked into the luxurious lounge of the FBO and checked in. They said that Nell and the boys were asleep in the quiet rooms. (For charter jets the pilots often have to bring the plane in late at night and spend the night. Or they have to bring it in early in the morning and spend the day waiting.) The FBO can’t offer accommodations because then they would be a hotel. Instead, they have quiet rooms. They put in a recliner which folds flat and let you darken the room. They give you a nice soft blanket. Dexter, months later, still talked about “that nice place we slept when we first got to Boston.” I don’t think Nell was quite as comfortable, but they had fresh coffee for her to sip while I got their luggage packed into the plane.

The boys were thrilled to be traveling. They gobbled their chocolate croissants and cinnamon twists and happily packed up into the back seat. We fired up and talked to Logan clearance. They gave us simple VFR instructions for getting out of the airspace and told us to “monitor ground.” That means you are meant to just tune in to the frequency and wait for them to call you. We waited ten minutes with the engine turning, so I called clearance again and asked if I should check in on ground and they poked the ground controller, who asked us to taxi out on kilo, hold short at november. I read back the instructions and started us out.

Nell asked if it was scary landing at the big airport and how the flight was. Just as I was saying it as pretty much a regular airport we stopped at our intersection and around the corner came a huge American Airlines 747 Jumbo Jet. For a moment we were nose to nose with them, and then they turned right and swept past us toward the departure end of the runway. Nell laughed. Then another huge plane came around the corner, a British Airways jet. The ground controller asked, “British Airways five-one-four, can you hold for the prop plane at november?” Affirmative. So the huge commercial, probably cross-Atlantic flight stopped short while I advanced the throttle a little and goosed us into the intersection for a left turn. Nell said it sounded like the controller gave the word “prop” a little twist so it seemed like we weren’t a real plane at all.

We joined the “conga line,” the procession of large passenger jets that wiggled along the taxiways of the airport until the departure end of their runway. I did my run up twisted to the side while the American Airlines flight thundered forward and up into the sky. I made one of my only mistakes at the airport when I asked if I was cleared for two-two-left and the controller said impatiently, “Two-two-right, one romeo delta.”

As we turned out on the centerline Nell looked ahead and said, “Is there enough runway for you?” It seemed like a lot (It’s over a mile and a half long), but the truth was that it was twenty-two hundred feet shorter than the runway I had landed on. We were in the air before we reached the thousand foot markers, but I dutifully flew the runway heading until we were a thousand feet off the departure end and turned to my assigned heading.

It was a glorious sunrise view of the Boston skyline. And then we flew over Cambridge, so Nell could look down and say, “I can see my dorm from here!” I looked into the back seat and the boys were also enjoying the view. It had been a long trip to get here, but now we were really on vacation, using the plane to hop around New England, with the first stop being New Hampshire and a week on Pleasant Lake.