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Leg 1, KSDL - KTUL
As indicated, Pam won the toss
to fly this leg. We taxi out of Corporate Jets at Scottsdale
at 0050 UTC (the abbreviation for Coordinated Universal Time,
or Greenwich Mean Time, Zulu time, for you old-timers), that
equates to 5:50 p.m., Mountain Standard Time. (Remember, Arizona
is one of the rare states that does not observe Daylight Savings
Time. Well, would you want to save daylight when it is 110
degrees plus?)
"N982GA is cleared to Tulsa via
the Banyo 3 departure, St. Johns transition, as filed. Maintain
5,000 feet. Expect flight level 250 with three minutes after
departure. Departure control frequency will be 120.7. Squawk
0724." This is what we had expected and the "as filed" portion
is merely direct to Tulsa. After holding in the runup area
while other inbound and outbound IFR traffic are accommodated,
we are finally rolling at 0105Z. Once Phoenix departure has
established radar contact they give us a left turn to 220
degrees. This soon followed by a right turn, the long way
around, to 070 degrees. In all the years of flying from Scottsdale,
neither Pam nor I have ever received this weird sequence of
turns and we are provided no voluntary explanation by ATC.
Then we are told to join the Phoenix 034 degree radial to
Eagul intersection, the normal progression of the departure
procedure. At 13,000 feet we are handed off the Albuquerque
Center and they clear us right up to FL250. At the time, however,
we are just beneath a rather nasty-looking dark overhanging
layer, so Pam elects to delay the climb for a few miles. We
hit a few sharp bumps, and I use my friend Leon Boyd's one-liner
that "It's rougher than a stucco bathtub!" The bumps don't
last long, and the thunderstorms that had been building on
our route have melted away rapidly as the sun has set.
Still more than 50 miles from
St. John's ATC tells us to go direct to Kingfisher VOR (IFI),
then direct to Tulsa. For you pilots, the initial magnetic
course for this 600+ nm leg is 064 degrees. Due to the nature
of great circle navigation and changes in magnetic variation,
this straight line end up being a course of nearly 080 as
we near IFI.
The sun sets quickly, and we
are rewarded with a stunning moon rise about an hour later.
The nearly full moon is about 5 degrees to the right of our
nose and it comes up between layers of black, silver-lined,
clouds. Gorgeous!
We pass through some clouds briefly,
but long enough to activate all of the ice-protection items.
We use these 12 items whenever we are in any visible moisture
with an Outside Air Temperature (OAT) of 5 degrees Celsius
or below: Two Engine Auto-Ignition switches, Two Engine Ice
Vane switches, Pilot and Copilot Windshield Anti-Ice switches,
a single Propeller Deice switch (that heats both props alternately),
two Pitot Heat switches, two Fuel Vent Heat switches, and
a single Stall Warning Heat switch. Extension of the Ice Vanes,
and the resultant loss of ram air recovery in the cowling,
leads to a power loss that cost us about 15 knots of true
airspeed. Too bad, but something we must abide when in the
occasional icing conditions.
We enjoy our catered lunches,
now turned into dinners, that were made by the great folks
at the new D'Atri's restaurant at the Scottsdale terminal
building. If you Scottsdale and Phoenix folks haven't tried
D'Atri's yet, get to it! You will not be disappointed! Jan
and John and their staff have a wonderful operation, but all
of the terminal construction activity has made their location
harder to find than it already is…not exactly being on a main
road. And then, to compound their challenges, airport traffic
has fallen off drastically in the weeks after September 11.
I want to see them succeed. Please, put them on your must
try" list!
Now that it is dark, I reach
down and rotate the Radar Altimeter's Decision Height (DH)
" bug" to its highest possible setting: 2,000 feet AGL. My
old friend, Rod Rodriguez, a super Beechcraft salesman who
used to work from the Van Nuys office, taught me this trick
nearly thirty years ago. It is a cheap "Ground Proximity Warning"
system. Namely, if the DH light illuminates, it lets you know
that terra firma is within 2,000 feet of your airplane. If
you are descending and the light makes sense, fine: Now is
a good time to set the DH bug for the approach. On the other
hand, if the light comes on unexpectedly, it provides one
more chance that the accident chain can be broken before another
CFIT accident occurs. (CFIT: Controlled Flight Into Terrain,
the leading cause of death while flying IFR.) This little
trick may well have saved my life one dark night in Arizona.
Thanks, Rod!
While on the subject of tricks,
maybe I should also mention that Pam and I always pull the
left and right "Fuel Transfer" circuit breakers (CBs) until
we burn the main tanks down a couple of hundred pounds. Even
though Beech says it shouldn't happen, I am 100% convinced
that a slight amount of fuel is pumped overboard in most BE-200s
(and E90s, F90s, A100s, B100s, 300s, and 350s) if this technique
is not followed. If you transfer fuel from the auxes to the
mains while the mains are still full, instead of the excess
returning to the aux as it is designed to do, more commonly
some of it exits via the vent system.
Also, I recently have questioned
why I arm the Engine Auto-Ignition switches when in icing
conditions while flying above FL200, 20,000 feet. Like everyone
else, I do it because Beech (Raytheon, now) says to do it.
Just in case the engine flames out, auto-ignition should cause
a relight. However, it has recently dawned on me that the
top of the windmilling airstart relight envelope is 20,000
feet. The few times in King Air training when I have observed
windmilling starts up in the high "teens," I have been surprised
how much hotter the engine starts as compared to the starts
that are done down lower, in thicker air that provides more
cooling. I am starting to think that I wouldn't want
that sucker to try to relight in very thin air!
If Ice Vanes are used without
fail, as they should be, the chance of a flameout is zero
and hence whether Auto-Ignition is armed or not is a moot
point. Still…why am I still arming it up high? Old habits
- even ones that don't make sense - are hard to break!
All clouds dissipate and we have
wonderful, clear, night views of Amarillo, Oklahoma City,
and then Tulsa. It is late when we descend into Tulsa, and
Approach, Tower, and Ground control duties are all being handled
by one coordinator on tower frequency. Our flight time is
3.3 hours; the block time is 3.6. We are in the chocks at
Sparks Aviation Center at 11:28 p.m., and are soon off to
the Sheraton Hotel. Bed feels mighty good after this long,
frustrating, day. The Adventure has begun!
On Our Way at Last! |
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