MikeAdminSpring Baseball Season
March in Vermont where the days are short, the winds are cold, the water is all frozen and the snow continues to fly. After four months of winter, we were more than ready for a break. On top of the cold, we were missing the kids having not seen them seen Christmas. The solution lies in the might RV10 time machine. Russell’s spring baseball trip to Florida made for a great excuse to challenge ourselves with a little cross country flying and escape to a sunny warm climate.
The passage of the cold front provided decently clear sky but also brought with it winds from the southwest about 30kts slowing our travel. The trip to OKV, Winchester took about 2:45 a little longer than normal but not terrible. The flight down was relatively simple with smooth air and limited traffic. We were able to cruise at 8K and while it was hazy, we had decent visibility as we transitioned from the white snow and ice of the north country to the brown mid-Atlantic states. The airplane flew great the autopilot did most of the work on the flight down. The only mechanical squawk was the cylinder #2 EGT spiking about 30 minutes from Winchester. Based on experience we knew this meant the wire on the electronic ignition system had worked itself free and needed to be reattached. A five-minute ramp repair at Winchester corrected this issue for the rest of the trip.
Winchester Airport was its normal accommodating turn around, thought we did have to deal with a failed self-service fuel pump. Once we got the attendant out to the pump and he verified that it was the machine and not the operator they were more than happy to fuel us from the truck at the self-serve rate, $4.80 per gallon.
Departing Winchester our planned destination was Augusta GA, because it makes a great stop in case, we have an issue and need to spend the night since Robert lives there but also fuel prices were very reasonable at $4.80 per gallon. But as we progressed down along our IFR flight plan toward Augusta the weather just didn’t improve as forecast. While the ceilings certainly were workable at 800 Overcast the weather east of Augusta was much improved with VFR conditions. After being vectored east around Charlotte’s traffic corridor, it didn’t make sense to travel back west into the weather. If we had time to stop and visit Robert, we would have done it for sure, but we were pushing to make it to Winter Haven by 1700 to ensure the FBO was still manned, and we could pick up our rental car. With these factors in consideration, we ended up changing our destination to AQX, Allendale SC. Allendale had even cheaper fuel, $4.30 a gallon and was the location of one of my greatest FBO experiences. My first year flying the RV10 to Florida I stopped in Allendale on the return leg spent the night in Allendale having a wonderful Italian meal in this very rural former plantation town.
Climbing out of Allendale we picked our way through a wall of clouds VFR and picked up our IFR clearance to Winter Haven after we were on top at 10,000. The leg from SC to FL was the shortest with a planned duration of about 2:20. After we crossed the boarder into FL the cloud deck began to break up and we were able to see both the Atlantic and the Gulf for a short period before we began our decent. As we started down, we were amazed at the number of horse farms and racetracks, clearly the area north of Gainesville is horse country.
As we approached Winter Haven the controller directed us to fly to Lakeland, home of the Sun-and-Fun airshow and then on to the Winter Haven airport. While we would have enjoyed seeing Lakeland Airport from the air after 9 hours in the plane, we were not disappointed when the controller cleared us direct to the airport. The direct route took us past the Lake Myrtle Baseball complex where we would be watching the WPI Engineers play their first spring baseball game the next day.
After picking out the runway from amongst all the housing we came in for the break on runway 11, landed and taxied into the FBO. The FBO guy was great met us at the plane and giving Jaimie a golf cart ride to our rental car. After a quick unload to the airplane into the rental car we attached the control locks and put on the cover. With our faithful steed safely put to bed we were very happy to head to our affordable and nice if slightly dated Howard Johnson’s hotel. We capped the day with a very nice seafood dinner and cold beer on the docks at the Twisted Prop prior to returning the hotel for a quick swim before collapsing in our beds.
This was the most aggressive trip Jaimie and I have attempted as a crew with three legs two of which approached three hours but with some prior planed dehydration, strong snack planning and access to the on-board entertainment system the trip was enjoyable and efficient.
