We've always wanted to go to Stafford since my ill fated attempt with Charles Galles a couple of years ago. We had to divert to Ada Oklahoma because of weather but found a path right back to McKinney with no adverse weather.
The thing that made us want to go to Stafford was the Stafford Museum can be found on their website. Be sure and check it out. It will certainly tell you more than my meager fingers can type about it.
The first thing about our journey was that we tried to get going fairly early. We were airborne before 9:00 AM and had some beautiful skies, and it wasn't too hot.
Just remember that if you can see an airplane in a picture, it's close. The rest of the trip was kind of boring but in aviation, boring is good. Here is one of the highlights.
Look at the outside air temp. It's August 4th and 70º. Slightly better than the 104º we had in Shreveport or the 109º we had at home 2 weeks ago. We were also at 6,500 feet.
As we pushed toward our destination, we realized that Oklahoma is pretty flat and uneventful. We flew into an area of turbulence but it started at 20,000 feet. We were safe. We also flew through a couple of MOAs that were cold.
The flight was so uneventful that when we were handed off to Ft Sill approach, we made our call in and then heard nothing for over 20 minutes. Everything seemed to functioning so we called in for a radio check. Ft Sill approach came back and said we were good. Also, we were the only aircraft in his airspace, which explained the silence.
As we got closer, we were handed off to Fort Worth Center again and then as soon as we had the field in sight, we were dropped. We entered the pattern and for the first time, I recorded our landing on my iPhone. Scott made a great landing.
When we entered the pattern and made our position reports, someone on the unicom was giving us wind speeds, direction and barometer readings. For an untowered airport, they were very on top of flight operations in their airspace. As we taxied up, we were further surprised by having a marshaller putting us right in a spot next to the FBO. Friendly can't even begin to describe the service.
Now the fun begins. Because we bought fuel, we got to tour the museum for free. Normally, it's $7. The first part is about the life of Lt. General Thomas P. Stafford. It shows his life in Weatherford and later in the military and then the space program. He was quite an impressive man.
Next you start getting into some of the hardware. There's a replica of the Wright Brothers airplane, the Bell X-1 and on and on. I'm just going to put up several of the pictures that I took and let them do the talking.
One last picture. What do you think a someone from the south and someone from Russia could find in common aboard a spacecraft? Looks like some scotch and some vodka to me.
That was a lot of pictures. This museum was named an affiliate to the Smithsonian in 2011. They have plans to expand it even more in the future. Do yourself a favor an put this on your list of places to see.
Unfortunately, we didn't get to have a crew car experience as there was a storm approaching from the west. By the time we finished, it was about 12 miles away and moving slowly right at us. We thanked everyone for a great time. The gentleman at the FBO told us that they had 5 crew cars and they were not retired police cars but retired detective cars. Unfortunately, they were all Crown Vics so I told him that is an automatic 10 point deduction. He then told me that they did have a Town Car so on our next trip there (there will be another trip), we'll see if we can get the Town Car for a better score.
So where did we go for lunch? What better place than a local casino that has an airport close by. Durant! We put in a course for KDUA in the GPS and took off. Still not much of anything interesting on the trip to Durant. We did have a bogey pop up that was close to us and heading our direction but 1,000 below us. It was a helicopter doing 125 knots.
We finally got to Durant and lost our cool morning weather. It is August after all. I haven't been in the terminal since I passed my check ride there back in 2011. At least we got to land on the actual runway today. when I was here for my check ride, the runway was closed and I had to takeoff and land on the taxiway.
Here's where we deviate from the old review of a crew car to a review of the shuttle from the casino. I didn't get to get any great pictures of the shuttle because I didn't want to be that guy that everyone was pointing at, uttering the phrase "What the hell is he taking a picture of a shuttle bus for?". But, I was that guy. The shuttle bus was built on a Ford F-350 chassis.
Once in, it was quite roomy with seating for 12 plus space for a wheelchair. On the way over we had Darlene Jesse as our driver.
On the way back, we had Don Dillard as our driver.
One thing I always bust the crew cars on is a non functioning ac. No problem in this category.
As I said before, this thing is roomy with seating for 12. The best thing is that someone else is driving and they are familiar with the area. No having to use your GPS on you phone to find a place to eat.
We got to the Choctaw Casino, we headed to Smash Burger. I didn't realize that our presence would cause everyone to rush the counter at Smash Burger. The only other explanation would be that the person working the counter needed some additional training in taking care of high volumes of customers.
Finally time to get back to McKinney and after taking on some fuel and complaining about the heat, we taxied out to runway 17 where the air temp was 102º. Since it was so short of a flight, altitude only helped bring down the temp to 93º.
All in all a great day of flying, 3.6 hours on the tach, saw a great museum, had some good food at a casino and sweated it out on the trip back. Sorry about the length but then again, not really. It was a lot to cover in a blog post. Until next time.....................
