Oct 2008 - New England with NYC Hudson Flythrough!
PA, NJ, CT, RI, MA, ME, NH, VT in 4 days
Added 10/12/2008
Every year in the early fall the kids have a couple days
off of school, even though it's ridiculously close to the start of the
school year. This gives us a 4 day weekend that we can use to go
enjoy a small trip away from home. We usually wait until just
before the trip to decide on the destination, and keep it completely
weather dependent. Last year we had intended to do this trip to
see the New England states, but the weather was awful, and we instead
ended up on an ultra-fantastic trip to Vegas with the Schmidts.
This year the weather was on our side, in a big big way. The
forecast not only was accurate, but accurate for days in a row.
Two days before we left, it looked like the recent storms would clear
out just in time on Thursday for us to head to the East Coast....and
just as forecast, it did. It was also forecast to be VERY nice,
with warm temps, clear skies, and very light pressure gradients
depicted on the isobars indicating light winds. There would then
be a big storm firing up over the dakotas and Minnesota that would
approach our home area on Sunday afternoon. Well, if there was
ever a perfect forecast, with completely accurate results, this was
it. New England was to be 100% ideal flying conditions, and so
were the legs enroute in both directions! With that forecast in
hand, we quickly threw together a rough plan and headed out. No
reservations, no details...just general conceptual directions.
As we found once we got going, this trip was to be a real "flying"
vacation....not a ton of time to take in sights on the ground, but
plenty of time to see a lot of ground from the sky. We flew
leisurely, with the goal of stopping in all of the upper East Coast
states that we rarely would get the opportunity to visit without a
specific destination in mind. The kids have been keeping track
using the state quarters, on a map, of all the states they have been,
and we have the goal of seeing at least 49 of the 50 states using our
own homebuilt plane. This trip was one with a goal to add some
quarters to the map!
Day 1 - Heading to Philadelphia,
PA
For our first day of our trip, we just wanted to sleep in after a busy
week of work, and then leave and head out to Philadelphia. We
dropped off the dog and loaded the plane later in the a.m. than we
intended, but since an RV-10 can make it to the East Coast in only
4:45, it wasn't a problem for us. We started enroute flying ROP,
choosing to burn a little more fuel during break-in of our new ECI
Titan Cylinders, no longer subject to the recent SB/AD because with
nearing 400 hours on them we decided to take advantage of ECI's great
deal on getting new cylinders and just swap them out. That gave
us an engine with a completely new top end with new pistons, rings,
valves, cylinders, rocker arm shafts, and gaskets. We had just
over 15 hours on the engine before the trip and all was well, so this
trip was a good way to get some good time on the engine. We took
our usual flight past Chicago, thankful that we can still squeeze
through VFR under the class B to get the short way around the
city. The APRS track snapshot below shows our route. From
the screenshots below you can see that ROP flight gave us a comfortable
175kts TAS at 9500' (adjusted for my known -2kt airspeed static
error), on 13.8gph. The part that we didn't quite expect was that
we had a ROCKING tailwind, giving us a groundspeed of 217kts. (higher
at some points!) I began to worry that the return trip would give
us the equal and opposite headwinds. :) Even running ROP, we
would likely have enough fuel to make it almost to our destination of
Philadelphia, and once we leaned out to LOP, we definitely were able to
have at least 1 hour reserve at our destination if we flew
direct....the RV-10 has great range, especially if you are willing to
fly LOP. We decided though to take a fuel stop and plan all of
our flights based on ROP fuel burns, since we were breaking in the new
cylinders. Our fuel stop was to be KBVI...a nice airport with
college students manning the tower, where we grabbed a quick snack and
topped off.
Further into the trip you can see I pulled the red knob back to LOP
flight, and ended up about 9kts slower, at 165kts TAS and 197
groundspeed at that point...but now burning 10.1gph. I can almost
always come very close to 10gph or less on my cross country flights,
running LOP. One thing to notice is that my CHT's are warmer with
brand new cylinders, but that the temps drop dramatically during the
LOP cruise. Comparing the screenshots shows the drastic
difference. The engine actually feels smoother at LOP cruise too,
partly because it's making slightly less power.
The entire trip was basically uneventful, but very enjoyable. On
all of our legs, prior to landing at our nighttime destination, I
called the FBO and arranged a car with Enterprise, that was waiting for
us when we got there. We winged it on the hotels, just googling
for them and finding one once we arrived that met our needs. All
of the FBO's on the trip were pretty ok, and we tried to buy fuel at
almost all of them to spread the economic benefits. The FBO at
KLOM though was probably the least outgoingly "friendly" of them that
we dealt with. Not bad people, just clearly less interested in
making it easy on their customers. We ended up staying at a
nearby Doubletree suites that was a pretty nice place, and we drove the
car into downtown Philly for a Cheesesteak sandwhich at Jim's on South
Ave., and also drove across the border to New Jersey. It didn't
take much time on the Jersey side to realize we really didn't want to
be over there....so we headed back up to Philly for the night.
At the close of Day 1, we had touched the ground in 3 states, 2 of them
states that the plane had never taken us to before....PA and NJ.
APRS
Track
Chicago
ROP
Cruise
Some
airmets
LOP Cruise
These I call
"Why I'll never live in Indiana" :)
(No offense intended, of course, but man is it flat!)
I
finally found my FIX!
All smiles
Landing
KBVI
Starting
to see mountains
Nearing
the D.C. ADIZ
Yeee
Haw, 400!
Landing
KLOM - PA
Day 2 - CT, RI, MA and
Flying the NYC Hudson Corridor
When we were at the hotel on Thursday
night, I fired up my Seattle Avionics Voyager software and started to
plan my route for the following day. We wanted to end up in
Boston, and make stops in CT, RI, and MA on Friday. I have always
been pretty intimidated by the airspace around DC and NYC, only knowing
what I read in magazines...never having flown there myself. So in
making the flight plan for the following day, I didn't know what the
best concept to follow would be. I posted my plea for info to the
RV-10 list and it didn't take very long before I had a few people
feeding me some awesome information on how to deal with the NYC
airspace....everything from "Just fly over the top, it's easy", to "The
Hudson Corridor isn't that bad". After a little back and forth
with a couple of people, I was getting MUCH more comfortable with the
idea of just flying the Hudson right straight through NYC. I also
googled "flying the hudson" and ended up finding THIS
PAGE, written by a guy to whom I'll always probably feel a little
indebted to...even though I don't know him. His tips were
fantastic. I just told myself...."Airspace is depicted on the
charts, and as long as you stay in class E airspace (assuming a VFR
day), you just can't go too wrong, and there is no requirement to talk
to ANYONE."
So with that comfort level now reached, I planned a flight that would
take me North out of my departure airport of KLOM, to a nearby VOR, and
then out to the harbor coast to the south of NYC to start my Hudson
flight. This kept me clear of nearby Class D airspaces around
some local airports, and got me to the harbor without talking to a
single controller. Yes, some say you can call approach and get
flight following and clearance into class Bravo for the trip, but then
you'll be constantly warned of approaching traffic and be higher than
what you would need to be for good photos. So, I stayed
low. As of the time of this writing, 1000' keeps you below all of
the airspace directly up the center of the river. 500'
keeps you clear of the airspace as you circle the lady. So I
played it safe and dropped to 800' for most of the flight, 600' for
some of the flight, and 400-500' for my circle around the
lady. My flight plan took me straight up the Hudson, then
on to a small airport in CT for a top-off and our official CT stop,
then on to Block Island, RI to get our official RI stop in, and then on
to MA. But, we wanted to make a special stop in MA and take a run
out to Martha's Vineyard for lunch. After that it was on to
Boston for the evening.
As you can see from the 2 APRS tracking snapshots below, it was kind of
a lazy and varied path for Friday. On the NYC closeup, you can
actually see the turn around the lady as we went upriver.
The Hudson turned out to be my personal highlight of the trip....it's
something that I think every pilot who is skilled and comfortable in
their plane should do before some day if/when the airspace
closes. Well worth the trip! You just self-announce your
positions as you fly up the river, just like landing at a non-towered
airport, and then fly smooth and well. We also read the chart
closely to get to know the suggested reporting points, and wrote them
on a list so that we could remember to call them out as we flew
along. It went off without a hitch. Yes, there are lots of
planes and helicopters along the river, but everyone plays by the same
rules and if everyone does their job, it should be plenty comfortable
and safe.....just like flying in to OSH.
The shots below that look further away from the buildings and statue
were taken with a wide angle lens....so we are actually closer than it
appears.
Empire
State
The
Intrepid - Museum
Verrazano
Narrows Bridge
Ellis
Island
Empire
State
The
Intrepid - Museum
George
Washington Bridge
Tappan
Zee Bridge
Sing
Sing Prison
Landing
KSNC - CT
Approaching
Block Island, RI
Landing
KBID - RI
Approaching
Martha's Vineyard
Landing
KMVY - MA
Martha's
Vineyard
Mass.
tree colors
Landing
KOWD - MA
Driving
"the Big Dig"
Day 3 - ME, NH, VT -
BEAUTIFUL Country!
For day 3, the goal was to get some miles on and basically just
do some sightseeing. We wanted to see the Maine shorline, and
travel somewhere that we could get down to a harbor. Turned out a
little tougher than we thought without doing a longer flight than we
wanted. We needed something where we could get a courtesy car and
get down and back within a couple hours for sure. Portland Maine
turned out to be our best bet. We took off out of Boston hoping
to get class Bravo clearance to fly over the city, but an RV-10 moves
so fast and it was busy enough that there just wasn't enough time to
get the clearance before we were North of the city, and we turned on
course towards the shorline. Flying up the shorline we saw the
many bays and beaches of Maine and Mass. as we went Northward.
Very beautiful country along the way. Once on the ground at
Portland, the friendly staff at the FBO gave us their courtesy car for
a while and we went down to the old harbor for a bite. This would
be a good place to go to spend more time.
Taking off out of Portland we tracked North for another 25 miles or so,
allowing us to see the many inlets in the shorline in that
direction. If you're a boating enthusiast like I am, you would
LOVE that area. It reminds me a lot of Isle Royale, 20 miles offshore
from the Canada/Minnesota North shore of Lake Superior....very
beautiful. Portland approach seemed to think our flight plan was
very strange when we told them we just wanted a Northbound departure
for sightseeing. I didn't really care to get flight following or
file a plan...just wanted to fly around, but they really seemed
interested in finding out our destination and keeping track of us as we
flew, so I told them Laconia, NH and that REALLY confused them.
"Hey, if you're going to Laconia, why would you want to go North?"
:) I guess they don't expect people to just fly around
looking at cool scenery.
Laconia is an absolutely beautiful area, with lakes that are hard to
compare to. Living in the Wisconsin/Minnesota area where we're
proud of our lakes, I'd have to say that some of these lakes in New
Hampshire just seem to kick butt over what we have here. The
Laconia area is especially beautiful. A warning about Laconia
though...if you're getting fuel, you're not going to park at the main
terminal...they buried their self-serve fuel wayyyyyyyy down the end of
an old closed runway. No big deal but it saves you 50 cents a
gallon to go there.
Leaving Laconia we circled the airport one more time and headed for
Vermont for our official stop there. We flew along some mountains
for a while, going back and forth as to what airport we wanted to land
at. Prior to departing for the day, my main concern was I just
wanted a paved strip. But as we flew and winds got into the mid
teens, I was thinking I should find a strip into the winds as
well. Finally deciding against better judgement, I figured I
should at least TRY to check out my first original planned strip...4V8,
Mount Snow Vermont, which is 1900+ ft long. As it's at a higher
elevation, the trees there were way into or passing peak color, making
the flight gorgeous. We flew by the ski hill on our way downwind
to land, and as we came in I could see that it would be a piece of
cake. There were other planes there, hanging out on the ramp and
people were watching us approach. We parked for a while and got
out to talk to some nice people who had landed with a Murphy Rebel
floatplane, just relaxing for a bit before we left.
Leaving Mount Snow, we climbed higher for this leg, getting high above
the mountains in North Central New York, enroute to Harrisburg,
PA...just past our final vacation spot...Hershey, PA. We thought
that after a trip of mainly flying enjoyment, the kids would like a
stop at the Hershey attractions for some chocolate.
Passing
Boston
Various
photos of flying up the Maine coast
Shrub's
Maine Home
Landing
KPWM - ME
North
of Portland Maine
Landing
KLCI - NH
Mt.
Snow VT
Landing
4V8 - VT
Passing
over Hershey
Landing
KCXY - PA
Day 4 - Hershey PA, and
heading Home
Here we were already on our final day of vacation, with
weather still great where we were, but storms flowing into nearby
Minnesota giving us our expected concern for the flight home. We
took a leisurely morning going to Cocolate World at Hershey, which was
interesting. It's not a huge attraction unless you're going to ride the
rides at the theme park, but it's a nice stop for a couple hours if you
just want to pop in. Loaded with a hefty bag of chocolate, we
climbed aboard for our 4:45 expected trip home. We can make the
trip running LOP on one tank with reserves, but we have a favorite fuel
stop where prices are usually more reasonable...KOXI - Knox, IN which
gives us a good letdown also as we approach Chicago so we can fly under
the class Bravo there. We topped of and flew by the windy city
again...where we saw a bunch of planes and tons of boats out on this
beautiful day. Turning on course towards home North of Chicago we
climbed to 8,500' and got above a widely scattered area...our first
clouds of the trip. Then they started to thicken a bit, but still
had large gaps, filled with a bit of haze. You could tell we were
getting closer and closer to the approaching weather, but a check of
the METARS and TAF's via WSI ensured that we had nothing to worry
about. A short time later we were fueled back up, and pushed back
into our hangar.
Chocolate
world - Hershey
Landing
KOXI - IN
Passing Chicago Again
First
clouds - MSN, WI
Above the scattered
Landing KLUM - WI
More
states added
I haven't calculated our Trips overall time but it looks like
it's just over 17 hours of flying for 4 days. In an RV-10 this
isn't tiring in the slightest...it's very comfortable and you could fly
much more than that...probably 9-12 hours per day and still be
comfortable. The kids got home and filled their US quarter map
with more quarters, and we were home in plenty of time to relax,
unpack, and even watch a show before bed.
Along the trip it was very interesting to be greeted by people at the
various airports out East. Surprisingly almost nobody at any FBO
acted like they'd ever seen an
RV-10 before. Most were amazed at how nice the RV-10 looks, the
kids in the tower at KBVI were amazed to hear an "experimental" calling
them as we approached and they saw us on radar doing over 180Kts.
We had multiple times where ground or tower controllers inquired about
our plane as we taxiied, curious as to either what it was, or what kind
of performance it gets. Apparently there hasn't been much for
RV-10 traffic out in the North East yet, but we gave the controllers
there a good intro. We did see something else that was pretty
cool on this trip...3 times!....party balloons. Yes, 3 times as
we cruised around there were either single mylar party balloons, or in
one case a big bundle of colored balloons, floating by as we whizzed
through the air. You always wonder what happens to those things
when you let them go. I don't know how we had 3 encounters in one
weekend, but it was something I sure didn't expect.
Below is our rough flight plan, drawn out in Voyager after the trip's
completion. It doesn't show all of our little curves and detours
as we checked out the sights, but it does show a general view of the
area that we covered on th trip. The holes left in our U.S.
Coverage are Alaska, and the central South, and mid-atlantic states,
which we'll be trying to hit over the next couple years. It
doesn't take long to pile on the states when you're flying an
RV-10....here we took in 10 state stops, 8 of them new, in just 4
days. One huge thing that gave me warm fuzzies too was having a
great tailwind all the way out, and most of the way back as well.
It's always better when the winds are at your tail!