Now that our work and visit at Pecan Plantation is drawing to a close, it is time for the next phase of the Garaggio Ez Victory Tour. Traveling around the country in a light airplane requires me to be very flexible with my plans, especially with the winter/early spring weather. Times, dates, and locations are all subject to change. The plan after Pecan was to make it to Phoenix. This time the weather was perfect along the way.
There are two major goals for Betty going to Phoenix. The first and most important is to give some special rides. The second is to be pre-positioned ahead of time for the trip to Elliott Seguin’s Mojave Experimental Fly-in. It will be much easier to be able to make the trip from Phoenix (Approximately 300 miles) with my work schedule and weather than it would be to make the trip all in one shot from Minneapolis (Approximately 1300 miles).
Tuesday morning Dick and I installed Betty’s roll over structure and got everything back together. By about 11 Betty and I were ready to re-fuel and launch for the day’s trip to Phoenix. Unfortunately, and not for lack of trying, I was unable to find someone to ride along in the back seat. I am always looking for a back seater, as these experiences and sights are way more fun that way and should be shared with others. But with the flexible and often changing schedule that can be difficult.
We were ready to launch before noon, and as is usual practice, I circled around and “waived” goodbye to Dick, Howard, Doug, and the rest of the Pecan gang. Then climbed out and headed for Carlsbad, NM. The flight was very enjoyable, and the ceiling and visibility were unrestricted except for a short 20 mile stretch just west of Dyes Air Force Base. There was some smog or smoke around there that reduced visibility. The most interesting things to see on this leg was the B1 bombers on the ramp at Dyes, and all of the wind turbine power generators in west Texas. There must have been thousands of them. The leg was 2.6 hours from start up to shutdown. Carlsbad (KCNM) was chosen for its inexpensive fuel. It was a pretty nice airport with friendly people.
From Carlsbad my routing was first direct to El Paso to avoid the White Sands Missile Range restricted airspace. From El Paso, I headed west direct to Tuscon, AZ. I could have gone direct to Phoenix, but the terrain along this route was lower, and it provided for a more scenic routing. From Tuscon it was up the valley and around the east side of the Phoenix Class B airspace. Since I was going this way, I orbited Grammy and Grandpa’s house. I could see Grammy on the patio and rocked my wings to say hello. Then I headed west to Deer Valley Airport, where the airplane is going to be based for the next few weeks. Including the extra distance for the routing and sight seeing, the leg took me 3.3 hours. That made a total of 5.9 hours from Ft. Worth to Phoenix. I can highly recommend the routing, it was a very scenic flight and I never got bored of the view.
If you look under the canard tip above, that is the aircraft bone yard at Davis Mothan Air Force Base.
Betty tucked in with her new hangar mate for the next few weeks.
I do have some go pro video of these legs of the victory tour. I still have to edit it, so I will get that onto the blog next.
Victory Tour Summary to Date
| KSGS KOSH KSGS KSLN 0TX1 KCNM KDVT | 1,995 Nautical Miles |
