Sunday, June 03, 2012

Beach Blitz

Mary woke up this morning feeling pretty good so we decided to make a day of it at the beach.  I called for fuel, we locked up the house and headed to the plane.  What a shock, 08Romeo had to be wondering what was up. Two days in a row he is flying.....yeah yeah, I hear ya.
I completed the pre-flight including checking and sumping fuel.  Aeroways has screwed up my last two fuel orders, one was short ten gallons and the other overfilled by at least ten. It really didn't matter but on the real hot days I like to keep the load as light as possible.
Ready to cross the C&D Canal
I filed for OXB just to get some work in the system and picked up the clearance with Wilmington. We soon launched and enjoyed a really smooth ride, hands in my laps once trimmed out. Mary and I were jammin' to the oldies then some country, a fun ride.
Dover downs on race day, The monster mile!!
Ocean City  and the Isle of Wight
Dover handed me off to Washington Center, that was odd and not the normal routine. That didn't last long as Wash handed me off to the typical Patuxent Approach.  I asked for GPS RWY 32 and was cleared after a few vectors. Approach gave me the cancel speech so I was thinking they wanted me to cancel. At that point I was on the downwind, a bit wide, but I was headed out over the water nine more miles for the IAF GOBYO.  I continued on for another mile or so and then once solid feet wet I canceled with approach. I made a left base turn then a turn to final that had me just over three miles out. I announced on CTAF and made a nice landing in gusty winds.
4 mile final rwy 32 KOXB

Our Motor Home
We secured the plane and walked out to our airport car, the Cabrio. The cover had blown off so we needed some clamps to secure it this afternoon.  We tossed in our bags and headed to the motor home. We had some breakfast then changed and headed into Ocean City. Parking wasn't bad now that the holiday crowd was gone so we found a great spot and walked a short distance to the beach. 
I guess we broiled out there for 3 hours or so then called it a day. It's only 4 1/2 miles back to our motor home so it was a quick dash and change for the flight home. I had to self serve fuel today since OXB was having a problem with the 100LL fuel truck.  I finished up and taxied out for the ride home. I headed on my planed course that I had filed; KOXB ATR DQO KILG.  I guess I was 10 south of ATR when I called Dover approach to pick up my clearance for Wilmington. I was cleared direct from my present position and cleared to 5000 feet.
Watching the rain move towards Wilmington
It's here! We covered and secured as this moved in
Dover handed me off to Philly and I was told to expect the visual for runway two seven. Mary and I were watching rain move south and the Nexrad was painting rain mixed with some yellows and red cells. I just wanted to beat the rain to my tie down. I was cleared number two to land behind a Cessna doing touch and goes, I really kept the speed up and the Cessna was asked to cut the base turn a bit earlier to accommodate my arrival. I made a nice landing in very gusty winds planting the right main first and riding it out before the left main and nose followed, it was sweet.

6 comments:

Chris said...

Always great to end on a good note - beating the weather and a sweet landing to boot! Nice!

Diggerdavid said...

You are so spoiled! A whole weekend of flying! I've had a whole weekend of crawling around on my knees and hands cutting carpet! Oh my!

Gary said...

Chris, I get lucky once in a while! Sitting through thunder and a light show along with pouring rain. I'm glad we headed home early.

Dave, yeah, but the new carpet will look great! The sore joints feel better after a few days off.

Dan said...

Do you have a fuel totalizer or dip the tanks after the previous flight? How do you know how much to ask the FBO to add? I usually just get top-offs, but as we are getting into hotter days I will probably do some more fueling by quantity.

Gary said...

Dan, The Sundowner has two noticable marks for fueling. There is the tab then the slot (above the tab). Tabs are 15 gallons a tank and the slots are 20 a side. Top off would put me at 59 gallons but there is no reason to carry all that around in the summer heat trying to climb.

Sometims I will ask for tabs plus x amount per tank and sometimes slots plus x number of gallons to get me to the load I need or want to eliminate fueling at a destination. Delaware gives you .23 a gallon back at the end of the year with a motor fuel tax rebate.

Dan said...

Cool. The Cardinal only has one set of "tabs" (actually a line of holes at the bottom of a filler neck that extends into the tank). They are pretty hard to see. Worse, if you pull the nozzle up enough to see the level and continue pumping there is a lot of splashback. So you have to pump/check/pump/check/etc. I've heard a lot of line folk don't get the fueling right if you tell them fill to the tabs (or fill to the tabs when you ask for a top off...).

I guess the best way to prevent over/under fueling is to dip the tanks so you can give them an exact number of gallons to uplift.