Welcome onboard @BierRunner, and what better way to join Mudspike in style than by joining our Christmas trek bandwagon - good work!
I had a couple more flights in the Bell 407 - it’s a nice little helicopter! Quick to start and very agile. The first leg was a short hop south along the Yakima river canyon from Bowers airfield to Yakima.
No willing passengers were to be found. I didn’t blame them.
The canyon run was short but sweet. The weather forecast showed deteriorating visibility, but I got to Yakima before it became an issue.
Parked up at Yakima.
From Yakima, I flew east to the Tri-Cities airport, where I’d jump into something with longer legs.
My route followed the southern side of Rattlesnake Hills, more or less all the way to Pasco, my destination. I hoped for no engine trouble, as I definitely wasn’t wearing snake-resistant footwear…I obviously had white loafers on to match my 80’s baller helicopter.
Arriving to Pasco.
Tri-Cities (KPSC) - Louis Armstrong New Orleans (KMSY)
My next leg was a long one. I had thought about flying a bit more in Washington state, as I had a couple more XP11 aircraft I really wanted to have try out…but alas, it is 7th of December and I needed to get going.
I got myself a nice IFR plan right across the continent.
For this flight, I had real time and real weather on. The winds were relatively benign, 7kt northerly, so I took off with a slight quartering tailwind, figured it would be okay, and so it was…using runway 12 set me up better for the first waypoint than a taking off into the wind would have.
I hand flew the initial climb and captured the radial out, then levelled out at 5,000 ft for a minute to set up the autopilot for the climb before switching the navigation over to the Delco INS.
After the brief altitude hold, I set up the AP for an IAS climb to my eventual cruise altitude, 33k ft or so. At least so far the INS distances matched the VOR beacons, so I was reasonably confident the INS was taking us the right way.
I first broke out of the overcast at around 12k ft, but I had further layers of cloud much further up too.
Each of the jets was guzzling 3,800 pounds per hour on the climb…good thing I brought full fuel. All the engine instruments showed no issues, so that was good. Interestingly, the right wing tank had a bit more fuel than the left, despite similar consumption on both…the APU fuel usage on the ground, perhaps, unsure.
The sun was setting as I settled in for the long cruise.
Once at altitude, I took out the E6B and started spinning some fuel flow and range numbers. The engines were now sipping a more moderate 2,200 PPH per engine, which gave me over 6 hours of flight time considering all the fuel I brought. I checked the INS for a ground speed estimate to see how far that would take me.
536 knots over ground?! Considering I was cruising at M0.75, that’s not the number I expected…I flicked the instrument over to the wind side to find out what was going on.
A 110-knot tailwind? I take it. I wasn’t going to run out of fuel anyway, but I had heaps of buffer now. Handy.
As I got closer to New Orleans, I spent a bit of time working out an approach. One of these days I’ll learn to do these things properly, but in the meantime it makes for an interesting time in the cockpit.
I opted to fly in via the Fighting Tiger VOR, track the 135 radial for 28NM and turn towards RQR VOR, hopefully catch the RWY 11 localizer somewhere along the way.
It mostly worked out that way. The night was cloudy with a bit of rain, but it looked as though I should be able to sight the airport fairly early.
I was still quite amazed when the runway turned out to be where I hoped it would!
That was a very rewarding flight. A fairly long leg with lots of waypoints - I had to cycle new ones into the INS along the way - and a night time approach, which mostly went the way I envisioned.
I’m sure it wasn’t by the book, but I was pleased that I managed to use the INS and radio navigation well enough to get to a point 1,700 NM away. 
.