Woke up to a warm but great weather day. We looked at the map and decided to take a run to the West Coast, of Florida to see if the water really was a different color. Our destination was Cedar Key. This is a sleepy little community just is South of the Panhandle. It basically gets ignored until there is a Hurricane, then every new station and the weather channel descend upon it to try and get blown away.
Today we had blue skies and light surface winds. At altitude the winds were 20-30 knots but this was not much of an issue as the decrease in speed would only add a few minutes.
Cedar Key is a short runway. We typically fly off 4000 feet of pavement but use runways as short as 2600 feet. Cedar Key is 2355 feet. This is not as bad as it sounds as the approaches are clear and the ends of the runway are displaced so you have an bit of extra margin.
When using shorter fields it is best to consult the planes manual to double check performance. The book says that we would need 700 feet to land and 800 feet to depart. To get this performance you need to fly the book speeds exactly though.
Landing this means being at 67 knots at 50 feet and departing it means lifting off at 67 knots. In our case I knew our numbers would be a bit higher as I targeted 75 knots at 50 feet on approach and we lifted off at 70 knots. You can see short final above and our departure below.
The extra speed did not make a great difference. We touched down just past the end of the runway and easily decelerated. The book calls for using the brakes to get the stated performance as well but since we had plenty of room, I let the plane slow down without brakes. After Cedar key we stopped by Palatka for some fuel and noticed that we had happened to hit almost every bug in Florida. Upon returning to the hangar we spent twice as long as normal wiping down the plane.
On the last leg my trusty co-pilot handled the plane for a bit before making me get back to work.
Today we had blue skies and light surface winds. At altitude the winds were 20-30 knots but this was not much of an issue as the decrease in speed would only add a few minutes.
Cedar Key is a short runway. We typically fly off 4000 feet of pavement but use runways as short as 2600 feet. Cedar Key is 2355 feet. This is not as bad as it sounds as the approaches are clear and the ends of the runway are displaced so you have an bit of extra margin.
When using shorter fields it is best to consult the planes manual to double check performance. The book says that we would need 700 feet to land and 800 feet to depart. To get this performance you need to fly the book speeds exactly though.
Landing this means being at 67 knots at 50 feet and departing it means lifting off at 67 knots. In our case I knew our numbers would be a bit higher as I targeted 75 knots at 50 feet on approach and we lifted off at 70 knots. You can see short final above and our departure below.
The extra speed did not make a great difference. We touched down just past the end of the runway and easily decelerated. The book calls for using the brakes to get the stated performance as well but since we had plenty of room, I let the plane slow down without brakes. After Cedar key we stopped by Palatka for some fuel and noticed that we had happened to hit almost every bug in Florida. Upon returning to the hangar we spent twice as long as normal wiping down the plane.
On the last leg my trusty co-pilot handled the plane for a bit before making me get back to work.
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