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KTUL - KHEF
I fly this leg, an easy daylight
flight in nearly perfect weather conditions from Tulsa to
Manassas, Virginia, just outside of the Washington, D.C.,
area. Pam and I leave the Sheraton in the Saturn rental car
at about 8:00 a.m. We drive to Sparks Aviation Center, the
home of the great folks at Autopilots Central, Inc., who did
the major avionics upgrade project on 982GA in the summer
of 2000. We had parked the airplane there the night before.
During the maintenance Phase
check and HF installation at Corporate Jets in Scottsdale,
someone managed to mangle the plug on the copilot's Bose-X
headset. I think maybe a seat leg ran over the plug when it
was lying on the floor. We had discovered this in Scottsdale
and thought that a temporary fix had been made. However, when
we tried the headset, we heard nothing but a horribly loud
feedback squeal. Some wires were crossed or something! We
love these comfortable, clear, noise canceling headsets and
did not relish doing the whole flight with only one for the
left seat pilot. Also, Ashley does not enjoy the bulky, head-in-a-vice
feel of the Lightspeed and Peltor sets that we have in back,
so we had installed an old lightweight Telex 750 Airman that
Tom had used in his Bonanza A36. Alas, we found that the mic
of this headset was very intermittent, seeming to have a loose
wire connection. It rarely worked, so Ashley couldn't join
into the cabin/cockpit conversation. (No! It wasn't planned!)
We dropped in on our friend Bob
Ferguson at Autopilots Central, and he had Weldon Levacy work
on the headsets while Pam and I drove to the airport Raddison
for breakfast. Weldon was able to swap the defective Bose
cord with a new one - bless him! - and found the problem with
the Telex was definitely in the mic wiring, but it could only
be repaired via a trip to the Telex factory. Well, one up,
one down.
Pat and Ashley showed up before
our scheduled departure of 10:00 a.m., and we loaded and were
taxiing out at 10:02. The clearance came as expected, via
Razor Back (AR) and Charleston (WV) VORs, for Flight Level
250. The wind was not much help, just a minor 10 - 20 knots
of push…but better than a headwind! The mighty Mississippi
River and the Smokey mountains passed by beneath and soon
we were descending in clear skies to Manassas. We got a bit
of weird vectoring before being cleared for a visual, right
base leg approach to Runway 34R. We shut down at 2:39 Eastern
Daylight Time: 3.6 hours block-to-block.
We parked at Dulles Aviation,
who quickly had our rental cars on the ramp. Pat and Ash went
on their way. They used to live in the area and have many
local friends.
Pam and I spent a couple of hours
organizing the airplane. There is one heckuva lot of stuff
when four people are planning on being gone for three months!
Finally we left the airport in our rented Mitsubishi Mirage
and drive the six miles to the Marriott Courtyard. Had dinner
at a Chicago Bar and Grill (Pizzaria Uno) a couple of blocks
away, eating outside in the lovely late evening.
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