A Texas Hello

My brother Bill and I arrived in Houston Tuesday, January 21 about 6:30pm; very pretty at night.  The flight was uneventful for the most part.  We departed from Tomahawk, WI around 11AM Monday morning after installing a new battery and fueling the plane.  The temperature was in the single digits on the ground and well below zero at altitude.  The coldest I noticed was negative 14.  The sky was clear and we even had a tail wind component.  After 1-hour of misery, we landed in Lacrosse, WI to warm up mainly our feet.  The plane has a heater, but it was not enough to heat the drafty cabin.  Immediately upon departing from Lacrosse, the radiator boiled over and we returned to Lacrosse were I removed some of the shielding from the outside radiator; which means that the heater would produce even less heat for the remainder of the flight.  We stopped every 30-minutes or so to warm up until we arrived at Pella, Iowa where we stayed for the night.  I have been to Pella airport in the past; very friendly FBO, they put my plane in a heated hanger for the night and gave us a courtesy car so that we could get to the hotel.  Also in Pella, we met up with my friends Derek and Ann (and their little girl Olivia) for dinner and a house tour.  We went to Wal-Mart and picked up some foot warmers for the next day.  The first day’s progress was not good as we were supposed to make it to Guthry, OK, but it is about all we could do considering the conditions.  It would mean lots of flying on Tuesday as to stay between weather systems.

We departed Pella for a 4-hour, boring flight over Missouri and Oklahoma to some scary little town in Ok.  Temperatures were in the teens when we departed, but the foot warmers did the trick and we were comfortable.  The sky was clear for the first three and a half hours.  It was interesting to see a very sharp snow line in northern Missouri.  The line was very well defined (within 3-miles) from snow on the north side to no snow on the south side.  By the way, there was more snow in Iowa and Missouri than there was in Wisconsin.  We borrowed a car in OK; that is what they called it, and went into to town for lunch.  We were told to leave the car running or we would not get it started again; ok...  The temperatures were now in the high 40's and it felt like summer.  We took some more tape off of the oil cooler to compensate for warmer air temperatures, fueled up and attempted a departure.  Upon starting the Rotax, it was evident that something was out of adjustment; the engine would not idle smoothly.  We shut down, looked in the cowl and found one of the clamps on the carburetor crossover tube was loose causing an intake leak.  We tightened everything up and departed for the final leg of the flight.  The first few hours of this leg were the most challenging, as we had to scud-run the west edge of the Ozarks as a direct flight over the center of the Ozarks would not offer viable passage.  The visibility was under 10, but it was still pretty.  There were 100-mile stretches of no airports and very little civilization; kind of scary.  There were places to land, but where would you walk to?  As we crossed into Texas and flew across the proverbial cold front, the sky cleared, the wind shifted to the west and we were able to turn off the cabin heat as the outside temperature jumped to 60-degrees.  We were lucky to have tail winds up to this point.  Prior to landing at Hooks in Houston, we watched a nice sunset through the haze as we passed over Lake Conroe.  Traffic was quite heavy at Hooks as there were two small jets, two helicopters and a few small planes doing pattern work as I made my direct approach on 17R.  When we exited the plane in Houston, it was 70 degrees and by this time, our feet felt like they were burning as the foot warmers were still going strong.  

The total flight time was about 11-hours, however due to weather we were not able to fly direct, but we did have tail winds most of the way; so 11-hours is probably about the best we could have expected.  Our average ground speed was 112mph, Min was 100mph and the max was 135mph.  Average cruising altitude was 4,500MSL, Low 1,100MSL and high 7000 MSL.  The CD player (including some of Howard Smith's music) made the adventure a pleasant one.  The plane performed well and with minor adjustments along the way, all engine temperatures remained normal throughout the flight, despite the changing OAT.
Lou Landucci