I don’t like waking up early. Very few things willl get me out of bed before 7AM but flying and daughter graduating motivated me to be up and going at 6 AM. We needed to get moving to join her for graduation celebrations. This is the worst type of trip because we really needed to be in DC on Saturday morning, latest. Most flights if I scrub I might lose a hotel deposit but that’s about it, vacations can be rescheduled and same for meetings. Graduation is a must go.
Since it was a must go, we had backups. We could grab a commercial flight, there are many each day or even drive. It’s around an 11 hour drive so that wouldn’t be pleasant but with 2 people, not too hard. We later learned that the driving backup was not as good a plan as we thought but that's another story.
I had been watching the weather and we looked good. Even the most pessimistic forecasts were well within our go criteria. It was possible that we would have marginal VFR on arrival but that would not be an issue. The wildcard is having a mechanical issue. That’s why we went a day early and had two backup plans. In the end everything checked out and after my super early wake up, we fired up around 7:20 and taxied out.
We were soon climbing to 9000. I did notice the plane was not as peppy now that it's warmer. We had full gas and some extra luggage combined with the warmer temperatures which meant longer ground rolls and slower climbs. I have gotten used to getting to 9000 in less than 8 minutes, today it was close to 9. As usual we had a small headwind. We also had weather moving in from the West, another reason for the early departure. I had decided to grab cheap gas along the way at Rocky Mount in North Carolina. We have stopped there before and it’s a great fuel stop. Easy in and out, long runway, good approaches, cheap gas, good pumps and clean bathroom.
They have always been friendly but today as we shut down at self serve, a golf cart arrived to provide us iced waters and a ride to the restroom. We gladly took the water but turned down the ride. After sitting for 2 hours a short walk was what we needed. While I was fueling the line guy noticed a large turtle. I stayed focused on the fueling but CC wandered over for a closer look.
We are pretty good at quick turns and Flightaware showed us on the ground for 20 minutes. Not a record but pretty darn good. Climbing back to altitude takes some time but you save a bit on the descent to land. Overall a fuel stop like this costs 25 minutes and about 6 gallons of gas. Overall, this stop only saved us around $65 after accounting for the extra fuel but it made the trip a bit more comfortable. Some stops can shave up to $200 off a route.
Our arrival into Manassas was interesting. They were calling it 2000 overcast and we were given direct to BRV for the GPS 34R approach. I programmed everything and then began my briefing and double checking. Things looked good until I proceeded to check the fixes and they seemed wrong. I took a second look and realized I had loaded the 34L approach.
I reloaded the correct one and re briefed, this time everything lined up and we were ready to go. We flew the BRV transition but as we neared BRV we were given Direct HANOK and descended to 2000. HANOK is the Initial Fix and as we passed 3300 we dropped into the clouds. crossing HANOK, we tracked inbound and leveled at 2000. We were still solid IMC but as we began down the clouds parted and around 1800 the field appeared.
The final approach is not directly aligned with the runway but it’s close enough so after a slight turn we were good. I did a great job rolling the plane onto the runway. I am getting more and more greaser landings but I still am not as consistent as I was with the Bonanza. The others aren’t bad per se, just not as good. We easily made the high speed taxiway and we’re soon shutting down at the APP Jet Center. My daughter had tracked us and arrived just as we did and pulled up plane side to load our junk. After checking in we were off to begin the graduation festivities.
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