We left for BACFest today - Crystal (MIC) to Nashville (MQY actually) in one hop thanks to a good tail wind, those 60 gallon tanks and the new FP-5L and UBG-16. Without the UBG-16 she wouldn't have been leaned out to 8 gph and without the FP-5L I wouldn't have had the confidence to burn off 47 of those gallons.
Itinerary for the rest of the week is:
Nashville -> Melbourne, FL on Sunday
Melbourne, FL -> KCRE Wednesday
KCRE -> FFA (?) -> Somewhere in Indiana Saturday
Indiana -> KMIC Sunday
And of course something has to go wrong. The transponder started reporting hokey altitudes 1/2 way to Nashville, it was like it was doing stairs - up to 17000, 20000 or more and back down to reality for a while. Normal altimeter was fine, so not a static line problem. Given the GTX327 is less than 2 years old I'll peg the 7 year old ACK encoder is going tits up. Of course our trip plans have us traversing airspace like ATL, MCO and ORD...
It was a nice day for why the IFR ticket is nice. We snuck out of town marginal VFR because runway closure at MSP has traffic all dorked up and GA routed to hell and back. 40 minutes down in the murk at 2500, then picked up our IFR in Rochester and climbed to 7000, and was just on top of a solid layer of stratus, like riding in a boat. It was shelving up a bit, so requrested 9000, which left us with another 10-15kts of push (we did 135-150 ground all the way to Nashville). First 200 miles was to ourselves at FL9 above a bright, white flat layer. Crossed another 80nm of looser stratus right before sunset. Got a bit slamdunked by Nashville Approach (Fort Campbell approach tends to leave you high) but the UBG-16 showed shock cooling was managed at 20 or less (10 or less most of the time) so did ok.
Earlier as we approached our optional fuel stop our FP-5L said we were good so told KC center we had another IFR clearance to pick up for our 2nd leg. Things normally end up airway routing as you head south due to terrain and traffic - but KC center asked if direct Smyrna was okay - boom, basically 3LF direct MQY - 280nm as straight as I could fly without an Otto - via 3 centers, 2 Tracons and a Rapcon. No big deal for you westerners but not too common East of the Mississippi and Ohio. You can see our path under N7930L on flightaware.com up till it drops off at Fort Campbell.
Anyway - see you guys in 4-5 days - probably Mode Cless unless is starts behaving. 626nm and counting...
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