The fact that we even made this flight is a miracle. The original plan was to get up and meet at 7:30 AM and head to Wiley Post KPWA just north of Oklahoma City. If there was any weather problems, our backup was Shreveport Downtown KDTN. I got up at 6:30 and looked at the weather, after some coffee, of course. Everything was marginal and trending toward IFR. It was either go back to bed, which was tempting but I already had coffee, or kill some time and watch the weather. We decided that if we would launch later, it would be Shreveport Downtown even though we had marginal VFR (Shreveport Regional, 6.9 miles away), VFR (Shreveport Downtown) or IFR (Barksdale AFB, 4.8 miles away).
After a couple of visits to the dog park and my trusty cell phone, we saw that conditions got much better. Now we had a 1:30 PM meet up time.
If you have been following the news lately, you probably heard that there is a lot of dust from the Sahara Desert that has made its way to our little slice of heaven. It is no lie. I haven't seen visibility this bad in .................. ever. Here are some shots of how bad our visibility was. At least we had our trusty ice cooler!
We also had another thing that was in our favor, this leg. We had a 25 knot tail wind! We we doing 164 knots. How bad was this going to effect our return trip?
So we finally got to Shreveport and was greeted by a line serviceman named Jeff, who helped us chock the wheels and see how much fuel we needed. Tubreaux Aviation was awesome. You'll see how awesome in a bit.
Now for what we came here for! The creaux car! Not exactly. We came for some food. But because transportation is needed to get the food, we have the creaux car.
Hold all of the calls. We have a winner! This is the best crew car we've ever had. A Nissan Pathfinder!
We can finally go get some grub in style and comfort. The A/C actually worked. This gets an extra 10 points for not being a Crowne Vic.
Now for the food. We were told about this awesome place that had great seafood called Marilynn's Place. It is an old gas station that has been made into a restaurant. My mouth was watering as young lady behind the desk was describing it. GET ME TO THE FOOD! So we set out. It was about an 8 mile drive to this place of seafood satisfaction. So we pull up to this.
They neglected to tell us that they close early on Sunday. We've had this happen on several occasions where half of the town shuts down on Sunday. Being the dedicated travelers that we are, it was Yelp! to the rescue. We were already hungry for seafood so we looked and came up with another highly rated seafood place called Crawdaddy's Kitchen. How can you go wrong with a name like that? The Pathfinder peddled us quickly and cooly to Crawdaddy's Kitchen.
The food here was awesome! They had everything from alligator to boudain to crawfish to shrimp. Scott told me that he judges a place by their Po-Boys. I'm in complete agreement. He got the crawfish Po-Boy and I got a shrimp Po-Boy. We walked out having fulfilled our mission on the ground. Our next mission was to get home. Once again, the Pathfinder was an delight to ride in. It was smooth, quiet and did I mention the A/C? We got back to Shreveport Downtown and began our preflight and was really wanting to get out of there, Being July1, it felt a little hotter than when we got there.
Now we're ready to go and it was stupid hot. It wasn't until we got more ice for the ice cooler and were ready to go that we found out how hot. I didn't get a picture because I saw sweating so much that my eyes were burning. It was 106 OAT. The poor ice cooler was earning its money until 1,500 feet when the battery died. That wasn't the only thing.
We climbed up and the haze was way worse than when we come in. There were places on our route back that had less than 7 statute miles of visibility. We could only climb to 4,500 feet because if we went to 6,500, we wouldn't be able to see the ground and when you are a VFR pilot, that is a no no. The camera doesn't make it look as bad as it was.
Remember that great tailwind we had? Now is the time that it comes back to haunt you. We now have a cabin that was 84º, the ice cooler bit the dust and were going a lot slower. How slow?
Long gone is the nice flight into Shreveport where we have nice cool temps.
Do you think it should end here? I wish. Now were starting to see weather near our destination. I do have to say that having ADSB in is unbelievable. Sure enough, I see a small cell to the north of McKinney. Luckily for us, it was moving away from our path. As we got closer we could see the tops.
Finally, our last jab to the ribs came as we were handed off from DFW approach to McKinney tower. We reported in at the Hwy 380 bridge at Lake Lavon and were given clearance to land. Winds 120@12. So we make a long base entry and turn final and are high so Scott pushes the nose over and gets the verbal spanking about sink rate so he makes his correction. When we're coming in over the numbers, we start chewing up runway like crazy. I know we had a lot of energy to bleed off but when we touched down, we were screaming across the ground. That was not 75 to 80 knots. When we finally got off, at B4, we looked at the wind sock and it was coming from 360 at 10 - 12 knots. We had a 12 knot tailwind and came in hot. I was ready for the moment I could drink a nice cold adult beverage but that was not in the cards. I was too dehydrated so I drank 3 32 ounce bottles of water instead.
One last thing. As we were wiping down the airplane, we found this on the leading edge of everything. There is a thin brown line across the leading edge. All of that dust will effect your flying. Make sure that your air filter is working properly.
Until next time, check out the fine folks at Crawdaddy's Kitchen and Tubreaux Aviation and enjoy the Pathfinder!
