RV7 Flight home from Arizona: Part 3
The flight home from Wickenburg couldn’t have been more perfect. How often in November is the weather great for nearly 1000 miles? It happened on our way down and again on our way home.
Because daylight hours are short this time of year, and because we would lose an hour in the switch between MST and PST, we needed to leave Wickenburg as early as possible. So we got up at 5:30 am and were in the air by 7:30 am, just as the sun was coming up.
Within an hour, we were over the Grand Canyon.
When you fly over the Grand Canyon in a private airplane, they limit where you can legally fly, thus I suspect we didn’t see it where it is most glorious.
The tiny corner that we saw of the enormous canyon was amazing. You might wonder why we couldn’t fly over the more famous touristy area. We suspect the Powers that Be don’t want people flying over it willy-nilly, probably because of safety considerations but also aesthetics. If you’re on the ground, admiring the awe-inspiring qualities of the canyon, hearing a bunch of noisy airplanes flying overhead would certainly detract from the ambiance.
If we had wanted to fly over the more scenic part, we would’ve had to fly at 14,000 feet or higher, which eliminates small airplanes unless you’re carrying supplemental oxygen, as there isn’t enough oxygen at that altitude to sustain human life.
In this second picture, we’re coming in to land at St. George, Utah. It’s such a pretty area, red rock country. We’re about to fly parallel to the right side of the runway, turn and come down final.
On our flight to Arizona, we flew at 11,500–12,000 feet all the way. We flew over the tops of the mountains, eliminating the need to look for mountain passes. We did that because we had a great tail wind which boosted our speed to between 200–220 mph.
But on the flight home, we were bucking a mild headwind all the way, which reduces fuel economy and speed. So we flew lower, around 9000 feet, where the headwinds were milder.
Here’s the first mountain pass we flew over.
Our steam-guage altimeter says we’re flying at 9540 feet over the pass.
It was 10:42 am and I was getting hungry. My breakfast of steel-cut oats had apparently been fully digested.
I’d made us a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and also thrown in a couple apples and a bag of mini-carrots. There was also a bag of raw almonds and a couple of low-carb snack bars.
After feeling sick on the way to Arizona after skipping lunch (eating only a handful of mixed nuts and a square of (72% cocoa) dark chocolate), I wasn’t about to risk that on the trip back.
Between eating when I felt hungry and the smooth-as-glass air, I never felt sick at all on this flight. It was possibly the most amazing flight we’ve ever taken. Had there been more daylight hours, we both could’ve flown much longer, even after touching down at home.
So much of Nevada looks like the picture on the left. It’s barren valleys with a few endless dirt roads, and mountains here and there.
During that during that segment of the flight, which lasted for about 1.5 hours, the military owned the airspace from the ground to 40,000 feet. What does that mean? It means we were constantly looking over our shoulders, above and below us for fighter jets about to buzz us at enormous speeds.
The previous Monday, on our trip to Arizona, we’d tried several times to contact them to tell them we were flying in their airspace. No one replied. Nor did we see a single aircraft.
Our friend Stacey said it’s better not to tell them you’re flying through the MOA or they will deliberately buzz you at several hundred MPH … which would be quite frightening! It was also unnerving to need to be looking over our shoulders constantly for high-speed military aircraft. Mike decided that next time we fly to Arizona, we’ll fly an extra 40 miles, to stay out of the MOA.
Though not seeing a single military jet, we did, however, see about a dozen other aircraft over the nearly 1000 mile flight. If you’re not familiar with flying, you’re probably amazed that there were so few airplanes. But flying isn’t like driving down the road. Seeing a dozen airplanes is quite a lot.
Near Boise, a light aircraft like ours was flying perpendicular to us, at the same altitude and not terribly far away.
We were possibly on a collision course. However, he was on Flight Watch, and Flight Watch notified him of traffic (us) flying toward him. Having a clear view of each other, we gave ourselves a wide berth. Now on a new course, we were clearly not a threat to each other.
The picture of the instrument (the Dynon) at right shows a bunch of interesting things. Among them, we were flying over Boise at 9430 feet, and the OAT (Outdoor Air Temperature) was 33 degrees Fahrenheit. We needed a little cabin heat or we would’ve been quite cold.
While refueling in Elko, we discovered fog blanketing the Idaho Valley (Nampa, Boise), thus we couldn’t make our last scheduled stop before reaching home. Had it been necessary, we could’ve diverted to Mountain Home, which wasn’t fogged in. But we had plenty of fuel, so we decided to go for it. Boise is below us in the picture above, which shows clearly why we couldn’t land there.
The final picture shows Pullman, Washington, which is close to home. We arrived home at 1:30 pm PST, which means the whole flight across nearly 1000 miles, including stops in St. George, Utah and Elko, Nevada, took only seven hours. Air time was 5.5 hours.
Had we flown via commercial airline, we couldn’t have gotten home sooner, given that you need to arrive at the airport two hours before takeoff; you need to wait for your luggage afterwards and, in our case, given a 60-minute drive to the Phoenix airport and 90–minute drive home from the Spokane airport.
It was an incredible, armchair-easy flight, but it was good to be home again.
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