Pilotage

Mark R. Twombly is a writer and editor who has been flying for 35 years. He lives in Florida.

South Florida is one of the best regions in the country to be a pilot, thanks to great weather, plenty of airports, two coasts within an hour's flight of each other, and close proximity to offshore island-hopping adventures. Still, this Florida flatlander looks for excuses to fly where the local pilots spell terrain with an M and a D, as in mountains and desert.

An excuse presented itself recently in the form of AOPA Expo 2002 in Palm Springs, California, and a scuba-industry show in Las Vegas just prior to Expo. Doug, one of my airplane partners, also was going to both events, so we talked about flying ourselves. Then Rick, our third partner, said he'd like to go just for the flying. Done! We'd take the Twin Comanche.

The only problem was that Doug, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, had possession of the airplane. Rick and I would have to airline up from Florida, and the three of us would leave from Kansas City.

Light airplanes usually cannot compete with the airlines on long trips. However, the out-of-pocket cost (fuel, and $40 an hour to cover scheduled maintenance and reserves) to fly ourselves Kansas City/Las Vegas/Palm Springs/Kansas City would only be about $480 each. And since we could fly direct — no hub-and-spoke connections like on the airlines — it wouldn't take much more time, if any. The Twin Comanche would be an efficient choice. Rick and I arrived in Kansas City the afternoon before the planned departure for Las Vegas. This gave us plenty of time to prepare.

One of the things I enjoy about flying in the West is the flight-planning challenge. Back East it's usually possible to fly a direct Great Circle course and know that there will be a convenient airport below when it's time to stop for fuel. Not so in the wide-open spaces out West.

The route was dictated by the desire to break up the 1,000-nm distance into three roughly equivalent legs, which meant stopping at two airports en route to refuel. Our planning also had to take in two objectives central to long cross-country flying in a light aircraft: Finding cheap gas and a good lunch. It took several hours of Web surfing, consulting charts, and telephoning to find and verify information, but we finally emerged with a plan.

That left one key question, which went unanswered until just before we climbed in the airplane the next morning: Who gets the first leg? Rick won the coin toss. I would be second in the PIC rotation, and Doug would bring us into Vegas.

We departed in good weather only a few minutes behind schedule. The gentle rolling hills of eastern Kansas gave way to flat, post-harvest plains that prevailed until our first stop in Woodward, Oklahoma, just east of the Gage VOR. The attendant topped the tanks with $1.89-a-gallon avgas, and then it was my turn to fly.

The flight plan from Woodward called for a westerly course over rapidly rising terrain, and breaching the Front Range in northern New Mexico. Some pesky clouds and virga were hanging around the Cimarron VOR, but once clear we had the big picture of the task ahead.

Doug worked the radios and navigated while I flew. With no oxygen aboard we were restricted to a maximum sustained cruise altitude of 12,500 feet msl. That was below the highest cumulo-granite peaks, but enough to pop over the ridgeline between them.

The discussion about altitude restrictions provided Doug, who is a flight instructor, with an entrée to grill his captive partners about various FAA rules and regulations, and Twin Comanche systems and operating procedures. That set the pattern for the remainder of the trip — pop quizzes at inopportune times. It was the longest flight review I've had.

We picked up Highway 38 and followed it up the mountainside to the Red River Ski Area and a narrow pass in the ridge. After that it was all downhill to our next discount gas — the self-fueling pump at Starbase Durango.

Abandoning any pretense of efficiency, we got back in the airplane and flew 35 miles southwest to Señor Peppers, on the field at Farmington, New Mexico. They had just taken down the buffet, so we ordered off the menu. Rick, who had been saying all morning that he was still full from our steak dinner the night before and wouldn't be eating lunch, got the special. Only later did he reveal that Mexican food and his stomach are not on friendly terms.

Farmington is at 5,500 feet msl, and at full throttle and rpm the Twin Comanche's two 160-hp engines were only making about 75-percent power. The takeoff roll was long and the initial climb shallow. Serious density altitude — there's another phenomenon we Florida fliers don't experience, even in the worst summer heat.

The last leg was the most scenic. Ship Rock, Monument Valley, Lake Powell, Marble Canyon Dam, Lake Mead, and the bare, gray hills peculiar to Nevada. We skirted south of the new Las Vegas Nascar racetrack and Nellis Air Force Base, and landed at North Las Vegas.

The touchdown on Runway 12 was the best I've ever experienced in a Twin Comanche — the nose held high while the main wheels contacted the asphalt with no discernable bump or complaint. Unfortunately, I experienced it from the back seat. Doug was flying, and he had raised the bar. Rick and I performed respectably after that, but never quite measured up to the lofty new standard for landings.

Three days later Rick was the PIC for the short flight south to Expo, landing at Desert Resorts Regional Airport (Thermal). In Florida there are many airports, including my home field, where the elevation is measured in mere tens of feet above sea level. They have nothing over Thermal, where the altimeter reads less than zero (minus 114 feet msl).

Following an excellent Expo, we departed Thermal on an IFR flight plan intending to fly to Gallup, New Mexico. For the first time on the trip we encountered weather.

Cumulus clouds over the mountains north and east of Phoenix were beginning to tower. We couldn't climb very high, nor descend very low, as long as the cloud bases licked at the peaks. So, we jinked — right, then left, then right again around the bigger buildups. Fortunately, the Stormscope remained clear of lightning bogies. I flew while Doug navigated. He advised a descent and an early landing in Show Low, but once below the bases we continued on to St. John's in eastern Arizona.

Doug took the next leg, east to Albuquerque, then northeast to Liberal, Kansas, which was blanketed with a low overcast. The low, flat undercast stayed with us on the last leg. It covered all of Kansas, muffling the lights of Wichita like the soft glow of a flashlight beneath a child's comforter.

Kansas City popped into view about 700 feet agl on the glideslope. We landed and taxied to the ramp, seven days and 17.5 flight hours after leaving it. From soaring mountains and fantastic geologic formations to high-country airports and below-sea-level runways, I'd had my Western fix.