LEG 5 - PA-28 Warrior - New Orleans, LA (KNEW) - Beaumont, TX (KBPT)
So to recap, as I work my way through my real life logbook in an attempt to fly all of the types I have in there on the way to Pago Pago:
LEG 1 - Cessna 152 - Gastonia, NC (KAKH) - Mountain Air, NC (2NCO)
LEG 2 - Cessna 172 - Mountain Air, NC (2NC0) - Andrews-Murphy, NC (KRHP)
LEG 3 - Cessna 182 - Andrews-Murphy, NC (KRHP) - Tyndall AFB, FL (KPAM)
LEG 4 - T-34 Mentor - Tyndall AFB, FL (KPAM) - New Orleans, LA (KNEW)
So the fifth plane making an appearance in my logbook occurs a few years after my first solo flight and check outs in the 152 and 172. I scaled back my flying significantly while I was in college due to the expense and the discovery of beer and girls. While I would occasionally rent a plane and do some casual flying, it wouldn’t be until I graduated from college and found myself pumping gas on the flight line at North Myrtle Beach airport (KCRE) just after graduation. Each pay period, I’d deduct a little money from my check for rent and drinking, then sign my check back over to the FBO to put into renting planes and earning my Instrument, Commercial, Multi, CFI, and CFII ratings.
So it was April 20, 1994 when I got checked out in one of the FBO rental fleets Piper PA-28 Warriors N215SA. After having mostly just flown Cessna high wings over the previous few years (amassing a whopping total of 160 hours to this point), the low wing Warrior just seemed like a really airplaney feeling airplane.
Off we go from New Orleans, and keeping with the hurricane visitation theme I have going on during this Christmas Flight so far, I’m hopping two hours west to Beaumont, TX - a location I visited in real life last year during the Hurricane Harvey evacuations after Beaumont’s power and drinking water distribution systems were put under water by severe flooding.
TheVFlyteAir Cherokees are simply awesome, and take me back to those single engine Warrior days where I flew up and down coastal North and South Carolina taking in the sights, building hours toward my 250 hour Commercial license requirement…
It is a bit of a murky day, with weather coming in off the Gulf and marginal VFR conditions toward Texas. Just after takeoff, I fly over the Mississippi River and take a glance toward downtown New Orleans…most recently the scene of the crime of the slaying of my Philadelphia Eagles. I believe I can still see feathers and blood down there…
The VFlyteAir “classic” Cherokee is fun to fly - and I’m lucky in that it has an autopilot, something the Cherokees I flew back in the early 90s did not have (nor GPS…even Loran C was out of the realm of cost effectiveness back then!)…
I did a batch build of about 12 tiles via Ortho4XP (thanks @fearlessfrog - I keep coming back to your guide!) and it only took about an hour and a half. The tiles covered New Orleans to Houston…
Coming up on the weather toward the end of the flight. Not bad…just some light rain and turbulence, and no icing of course this far south and at 4,500’…
Approaching Beaumont, it is easy to see why these Gulf Coast areas are so prone to damage and surge from hurricanes. They are just all swampy already. Throw in 10 or 15’ of additional water on top of that and, well…there is just nowhere for it to go…
After about two hours of flying I turn in for Beaumont, Texas. It looks better in the sim than it did in real life. The pall of the burning chemical plant, the dozens of rescue helicopters, and the buzz of many dozens of fixed wing air ambulance planes was missing. I’m sure Beaumont is largely back on its feet a full year after Harvey…but I’m sure they keep a nervous eye towards the Gulf each late summer.
So in five legs, I’ve only knocked out a bit over 700 miles in my journey from North Carolina to Pago Pago with 712nm flown and 5,162nm remaining. Obviously as I work through my logbook, these light trainers have shorter legs, so we’ll start to pick up miles as we find some other planes that I was checked out in. So hang in there!