No not the movie. My second blog post was about setting a ground speed record of 264 knots or 303.6 mph. The day of the record, Samantha and I had no plans for this but during preflight planning I noticed the winds would be in the 70s. We climbed up into the wind turned around and set the record.
Thursday I was looking at the weekend and thinking about flying plans. It didn't look good with 2 cold fronts coming Saturday. I started to play with some routes anyway and noticed they would have crazy high headwinds. I then pulled up the Windy app and started looking at the wind patterns.
It looked like Saturday afternoon, the winds would be 90-100 knots at 12-14 thousand North of Jacksonville. This got me thinking, if the front moved through, I could possibly launch, fly Northwest and catch a major wind.
I needed to break 73 knots for a new record. Saturday morning was rainy as predicted but I was not fooled. The front was moving and at 2 PM I headed to the airport even though it was barely VFR. By the time I had everything ready, the weather had much improved.
One area that concerned me was icing. There was an Airmet for Icing above 8000 but my study of the atmosphere showed that the cold air had not yet arrived and that I should not encounter any issues. Also the clouds were all down low so I did not intend to be in visible moisture (clouds) anywhere near the freezing level.
The final issue was turbulence. Going fast requires smooth air. My briefing had several Airmets for possible moderate turbulence in the area. There is no way to really see turbulence you have to go out and see what is really happening. So with icing and turbulence as two possible abort items, I headed out.
I left on an IFR plan and climbed to 9000. I wanted to minimize my time up high due to the lower oxygen levels. The rules say you can be between 12,500 and 14,000 up to 30 minutes. I was going to be up there much less.
Heading up the winds kept increasing but as I neared Alma, they started to drop. The models said the best winds would be at Alma at 4:00 PM, It was 3:50. I cancelled IFR so I would have freedom to maneuver. I decided to head up a few miles early and climbed to 13,500. Up there the winds were a bit less than I had seen in the climb but the wind correction angle was so great I think the computer may have mis-estimated the winds.
After stabilizing at near cruise speed I was making 254 knots level. I then pushed the nose over gently watched the speed build to the top of the green. The numbers kept increasing until I got to 298 knots or 339.25 mph. I would have liked to get to 300 but maybe another day.
Heading home there were still some clouds to get through. I had thought of this. I had filed a second flight plan from MNARD intersection to home. So after checking in with the new controller, she gave me my clearance and I pretty much descended all the way home. Not getting 300 is bittersweet but it does leave me with a new challenge.
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