Go West, Young Man!

On Tuesday, we headed West across the great continent. Des Moines, Iowa was the destination....just a short 546NM away. I pulled up the weather progs the day before, and the winds aloft forecast for the day was between 20-30kts headwind, directly on the nose. Well, that's not too bad.....make 135KTAS, cover ground at 110-115KTs, and we're good to go. Unfortunately, immediately after takeoff in Coshocton, we were at 2500ft, and the winds were already 27Kts. It was shaping up to be a long day. Visibility was awesome under a low broken layer...clouds at about 2200ft above the terra firma, and I could see bright blue sky through the clouds. We stopped in Columbus at KOSU to pick up Jack, and then we were on our way across Indiana. It was a beautiful day for flying - awesome visibility, but unfortunately I didn't get any photos because I was hand-flying most of the way. The air was turbulent, and winds were stronger than forecasted (35kts!) This meant that I would barely make that fuel stop, scheduled for the $3.73 100LL at Washington, IA. I played with the gas and the prop settings, trying to find the optimal combination of speed and feed and finally settled on 2300RPM, 24in of manifold pressure. That combo bought me about 135KTAS, which gave way to about 100-105kts on the ground. I have to admit that it was a little unnevering as the G1000 range ring shrunk to zero and I started to eat into the 45minute reserve.

So, here's the internal logic - I've never had the fuel that low in the DA40 before, but knowing that the fuel situation was critical, I took extreme care to switch tanks at regular 5gal intervals, then at 2.5gal intervals under 20gals. I also had carefully kept track of flight time, so I knew that I had 5 hours of fuel on board when I left Coshocton, and I was only 4 hours into the trip. Assuming that 10gal/hr would be the fuel burn (I was acutally only burning about 9-9.3gal/hr), I knew that I had plenty of gas. When I landed at Washington, IA (KAWG - see photo to the left), I had about 8 gals left in the tanks. Winds were 25kts, right down Runway 31. I landed, and probably stopped that airplane in about 500ft. It was definitely a short-field landing.

During this trip, we made our way over the patchwork quilt of fertile farmland stretching across Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. It's really incredible to think about how much God has blessed this land with fertile topsoil. I don't even think that I could conprehend how much food and food-growing potential I flew over during the 6 hrs I was in the air. The combination of the soil, the lakes, the winds, the water. It is truly the breadbasket for the world, and you get a picture of that when you fly for hours and all you see is fields of grain. The few things that broke up the endless landscape of farms was the occasional town, and the mighty Mississippi river. The photo here was taken just south of Muscatine, IA, looking south towards the confluence of the Iowa River and the Mississippi. That's a lot of water flowing into the ocean!
As you can see, the air was extremely clear over the Plains - Even from 2500ft, the lone skyscraper of Des Moines, IA came into view from about 60NM away. Crazy, huh? Approach into Des Moines was fairly straightforward, but I had to give an approaching Lear some room. We parked at Elliott Aviation, which was a really nice FBO, with free parking, a great lobby, and helpful line workers. After our meetings were over, the flight out took us over the very muddy Red Rock Reservoir, and I managed to snap this photo of the dam that keeps this water bottled up for all those Iowans. Winds on the way back were much better - about 20kts tailwind - and the skies were even more clear!

Grand Lake St. Mary's from 11,500ft

An edible oil refinery in Sydney, OH - Hello, Cargill!

Crossing over Tuttle Crossing and I-270 on 5 mile final into Runway 9L at Don Scott. Clear, huh?