New Ride

Hanging out in Philadelphia

Bens Beard

Ice Landing

I flew from Benson to Philadelphia over the last two days with 4 stops. I had amazingly good tailwinds that kept my groundspeed at 170 kts the whole way there. That's not bad since my airplane only does 125 kts normally.

My route took me through Borger Texas (KBGD) just north of Amarillo. It is a community that is based on refining oil and mining coal. It smells a little like long beach. We got airplane gas there for $2.75 per gallon, which is $0.75 less than the cheapest gas that I've gotten in a year.

Stop #2 was Springfield MO where we spent the night. There we got to see first hand the devastation of the Ice storms that hit the area a few weeks ago. People there had to live in sub freezing conditions for up to 3 weeks!

The tailwinds continued today as we headed off to Hamilton, Ohio (just a few miles north of Cincinnati) This is where I had my first experience landing on ice. I had some trouble picking out the airport since the runway was still covered with ice. GPS really helped out today. The landing was softer than normal since the snow gives a little. Braking action on the runway was pretty good, I was able to lock up the wheels and slide around a little bit just for fun. The rudder helps me control the slide up until I'm about 20 miles per hour.

The final stop was Philadelphia, we had real good weather the whole way. The only clouds that I hit were in southwestern PA, and they were really thin.

Jud (my photographer) came along with me. Krystle will come out here next month during her spring break. I'm going to be in Philadelphia over the next two months to get trained up in the Cessna 310 and build hours for insurance.

Meteor Crater in Arizona