Shreveport Downtown - KDTN

Sorry for the length of this one. It was an adventure.

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.

I guess I should let you know that Texas gets hot in July and today being July 1 was no exception. I got a big bag of ice for the ice cooler Scott has, battery was charged and after what we considered a fine piece of engineering, we were ready to go. OAT when we got our takeoff clearance was 102º. Even with the water cooler, it's hard to over come any temp above 100º.

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.

 We saw that they were a little bigger than they appeared further out.

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!

McAlester Oklahoma KMLC

It's been a while since I've had anything to post. Too many real life issues have been getting in the way of my desire to fly but just when I though all hope was lost, my friend Scott saves the day. He called last night and said that he wanted to fly somewhere. Anywhere, and he let me pick. I wanted to fly somewhere I had never been, so McAlester Regional it was. It's in a small town in Southeastern Oklahoma. We were in the 100s yesterday but had a cool front come through last night so our highs will only be in the low 90s today. This morning was broken at 5500 so we gave it a shot. By the time we crossed the Red Fiver, it was nothing but blue skies.

We finally got to McAlester and found some interesting terrain surrounding the airport. We landed on runway 02 and had to dive in to the runway because of a large hill on the approach end. Likewise, there was another big hill off of the departure end of 02. Once there, we found that they had a crew car! Maybe another Crown Victoria? Not this time. We had a red Oldsmobile Alero. This is a new one for us. Breathtaking, yes?

Aside for the obvious, I was a little concerned about the previous condition of the last one to park it.  I really hope that it wasn't a fellow pilot. It also looks like there was a fire in the door for the fuel filler neck. I can't understand what all of that black is. Our 2 tone red Oldsmobile had a few other tricks up its sleeve for us. When we opened the doors, it wasn't too bad. It had a little trash like a Starbucks Frappuccino can and some paper. I'm still waiting for the day I find a condom in a crew car. The A/C didn't work (surprise) and in order to roll down the driver side window, you had to lock all of the other windows first. In order to roll down the other windows, you had to unlock the windows. And of course, the Service Engine Soon light was on. After we started it, nothing blew up or was drastically smoking.

We headed into town to find "What About Bob", a local restaurant that popped up on Google Maps. 

It was actually pretty good. We each had 2 eggs, sausage or bacon, hash browns and 4 pieces of toast or biscuits and gravy for $6.50. Not too shabby!

All in all, the car wasn't horrible but I was concerned about the fuel door. We made it back in and started our preflight and headed home. I'll leave you with some pictures of our scenery on hte way back home to McKinney.

Stay tuned for other adventures.

Back to Llano

It's been about 7 years since I've been to Llano. Larry, the airport manager has retired but it is still as good of an airport as you'd ever want to visit. I can't say enough about the how good the service is there. Roy is the man there now and he is awesome! So if you're headed there for some Cooper's BBQ, bring him back a sweet tea. He'll really appreciate it.

Llano is a great little place to visit. They have a great porch filled with rocking chairs, for those not in too much of a hurry. Roy will come out and greet you in his golf cart and help you with anything you need.

Now for the crew cars. I only got a picture of one of the Crown Victorias. They have 2. Number 1 has a working passenger door. They also have a Suburban and a passenger van. No one goes hungry here.

As far as Crown Vics go, it was very clean and the A/C worked.

 I also found out that Llano is the deer capital of texas, or so they say. When we took off to the south, there were several deer stands very close to the airport. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, just stating some facts.

Of course we were there for BBQ! So off into town we went. This was Scott's first time there and he soon found out why I like this place so much.

That's 3 ribs and a nice chunk of brisket. You have to get the brisket dunked. This was some of the most tender brisket that I've ever put in my mouth. We both had to bring home some for the wives, if we wanted to maintain our status of sleeping in our own bed.

When we got back, it was starting to get busy as another Cirrus, a Meridian and a King Air had arrived and when we were getting fuel, a Grumman Tiger landed and taxied over.

So now it's time to head back to soggy North Texas. I hope it won't be another 7 years before I come back.