I was up at 6 am and out of the house by 7. It was nice weather here, but not in Florida, which posed us a problem on fuel. We had me, Ethan, his wife, and their three children on board, plus their bags, all of which he weighed. But where the weather goes bad, it gave us a problem on getting in a fuel stop, plus we needed more fuel than we would have if it was nice VFR because we had to have enough to shoot an approach and go elsewhere if need be. So...we had to stop even more frequently. Our first stop was the longest, we went to Athens, Georgia, powered back and leaned out for max efficiency, which slowed us down. Landed, got some gas, took right back off and headed into IFR. Our next stop was Gainsville, Florida, where it was around 500' overcast. Shot the RNAV into there, broke out, landed, added gas. Took back off and went to Marco Island, FL. They weren't reporting ceilings, so we set up for the ILS inbound. A Falcon came on unicom while we were up and asked us to report the bases to him because they were on the approach next/behind us and wanted to know the ceilings. It was plenty, we broke out at 800', passed that on, canceled our IFR so ATC wouldn't put him in a hold and would let him commence the approach, landed, and the whole ramp was jam packed with jets. I mean...nose to tail, packed with jets. That is one swanky, bougie (as the kids say) place. We were finally here! It was now 3 pm and we'd left just after 8 am. That's a long day already, but wait, there's more!
We drove into town and ate at a really nice seafood place on the water. Blackened grouper sandwiches, coconut shrimp, coconut rice, crabcake sandwich, all of it. Good stuff, man, nice ambiance. I hadn't eaten all day, so I was well past needing some food. We hadn't originally expected it to take this long, ya know?
They took me back to the airplane, and they headed off for vacation, and I loaded back up and fired back up, this time full of fuel (mostly). I skipped northern Florida and went straight up to the Atlanta area, landing at "Gwinnet County", northside of Atlanta. The main difference was it's on the edge of Atlanta, vs Athens which is a ways away, so it got suddenly Atlanta busy with unfamiliar waypoints. They gave me an arrival, and then gave me a VNAV to a waypoint that wasn't ON that arrival, and I was tired, and I was like.........so finally I keyed up, and because it's Atlanta and busy and I'm now feeling like a piston pounder interloper, I said "I apologize for this, but I'm gonna need some clarification". Don't want to bust something in a Class B airspace or I'll have bigger problems than making controllers annoyed. But on the way there, I learned that the line guy in FL didn't top off the wing locker tank, he only put about 12 gallons in there. So I was shorter than I expected, but still came in at reserves. I get to Gwinnet, and tell them to top all five tanks. I specified. Two tips, two wing tanks, and one wing locker. He comes in, and says it took 121 gallons. I had kept track, so I knew it should have been 141 gallons. He didn't get that wing locker tank. But if I hadn't tracked it (and I don't always), there would have been no other way to know that really. There's no fuel gauge for the wing locker tank. You can't look in and see it, or feel it. The only thing you can know, is if you turn the fuel transfer pump on, if the light stays on, the tank is dry. If it goes out, there is SOME fuel in there, but you don't know how much. That's why I didn't know the Florida guy shorted me 8 gallons until I'd pumped the fuel in and the light came on early and that was it. Somebody could find themselves short of fuel if they relied on that 20 gallons and it wasn't there. But it was late, and I did the calculations, and I could make it to Frankfort, which was VFR, without that 20 gallons, and be fine, so I didn't make him go back out and fill it up.
The weather was great from Georgia back to home, and I landed back at Frankfort at 10:30 pm. Got everything together and put away, and then had an hour drive home, getting back in the door at 11:45 pm. So. Left the house at 7 am, got back at almost midnight, had 11.1 hours of sitting in the seat flight time, two instrument approaches, several re-routes and busy airspace, a little bit of weather, a lot of fuel management, and five legs. And one tasty fresh seafood sandwich as compensation. ;)
Jason C. in the helicopter hovering on the ramp at Frankfort at sunrise.
Moving out of the weather and into the clear.
The sun just starting to go down
Me in the trailing edge of a long day.
Atlanta over there, with a sunset and a star
Gwinnet Airport at Atlanta
More Atlanta
Indy at night...
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