We took 3 states off the list today. Delaware was 25, New Jersey 24 and Pennsylvania 23. We got a early start today and were on the road by 9. We had topped off our Prius rental the day before and had only put about 60 miles on it since. We stopped to top it again before returning it and it took less than a gallon.
It was quite fuel efficient but not very quiet. I just need to figure out how to get the same fuel efficiency in the Baron. Departing Salisbury we had an important task. We had sightseed Delaware but had no landing, so we did a quick one at Delaware Coastal airport. Once that formality was completed, we headed Northeast to cross the mouth of the Delaware Bay.
It was fun to look down and see where we had been the day before. We also saw Delaware’s wind turbine. Crossing the water we went feet dry over Cape May and proceeded North up the Jersey Shore. I did this flight VFR which is odd for me when we are outside our local area. I had a reason though, in the busy airspace it made it easier. We also wanted to stay low to sightsee.
We had a great view of Atlantic City from just offshore at 1300 feet. We then proceeded North a bit to avoid airspace and headed for Central Jersey airport. 47N is a pretty tight airport. Trees at both ends and on paper 3500x50 feet. Practically it was 3100 with the over-run because of the displace threshold. I have been practicing and easily made the turn off at 2000 feet.
We had come to Jersey for lunch which meant parking for a few hours. We were directed to transient parking but all that was left was a tight space in the corner. This meant spinning around and shutting down pretty far from the space. To make things worse the space was uphill and when we got out the plane wanted to roll forward.
We got some chocks under the wheels and I enlisted the help of my friend to push the plane uphill. The parking job was not my best but the plane was out of the way and not blocking any other aircraft. Once secured we headed to lunch. We had a good time catching up and ate way too much including some very good mousse cake.
Our friend dropped us off at the airport and we prepped the plane for the flight to Harrisburg. It's not enough to be able to squeeze into an airport, you need to get out too. We effectively had 3300' of pavement for departure. The book said it would take us 1470' to reach lift off, if I had an on runway abort it would take 2950' to accelerate and stop worst case. In theory, once you lift off, the test pilots have proven that the plane will climb if you immediately feather the bad engine. The calculate distance to reach 50' was 4700'.
That's the perfect world and today the airport fence was at 3500' and the trees start at 3900' No they may not all be 50' but you start to see this is pretty tight. I am also not a test pilot so I likely won't be as sharp and quick as the book assumptions. This means if I have an engine fail before liftoff I have enough room to stop. I am confident that once the gear is started up, which happens around 25-30' and after I have accelerated a bit more, I will be able to safely climb out on one engine.
Looking at the computer data, we took 1450' to hit rotation speed, right on book prediction. It took 4 seconds to reach 100 knots (Blue line - best rate of climb single engine) and we had travelled 2075'. What this meant is that there were about 2 seconds during the departure where losing an engine would have likely resulted in damaging the plane on the abort.
I had looked at all these numbers before attempting the field. While I have trained hard to be able to consistently land consistently in a short distance, with a light twin the departure requirements almost always exceed the arrival. The biggest thing you can do to stack the deck in your favor is to be lighter. I had arrived in Jersey with about half tanks which meant buying more expensive fuel in Pennsylvania for the first leg home. I love to score cheap gas but I love to be safe more.
The trip to Pennsylvania after the departure was beautiful. The sky was blue and cloudless and I elected to go VFR again at 4500. The weather has been very good but we did have to suck up a 20 knot headwind most of the way and a good bit of turbulence. This was a harbinger of things to come. Our arrival into Harrisburg was easy as I was vectored behind a regional jet for a long straight in.
We flew 2 dots high on the glide slope to stay above his wake and touched down after his touchdown point. It’s a 10,000 foot runway so plenty of room. The FBO is Avflight, the same as we visited in Durango and the service was excellent again. Our car was even waiting for us, a Camry this time which we did not love but was better than the Prius.
No comments:
Post a Comment