My body clock woke me up on Saturday at 5:30am, but I was almost too excited to sleep anyway as we were going to be heading out on an adventure to Key West in just a few hours. As I drove out of NYC and climbed up the hill on the Weehawken, NJ side of the Lincoln Tunnel river crossing, the Manhattan skyline was beautiful, crisply backlit by a golden sunrise. “This is going to be a beautiful day!” I thought to myself.
I made it to Linden (KLDJ) pretty quickly, with time to grab some breakfast and coffee. Jill arrived shortly after and then Dan. We grabbed all the gear we needed and headed inside to brief for the day. We reviewed our flight planning and weather forecasts and then filed our VFR plan and got a briefing from Flight Service.
Then came the fun of pre-heating Gigi out on the very exposed, very windy, frigid ramp. But we got the heater fired up and started pumping warm air into Gigi’s nose to warm the engine block and the oil. While Jill focused the air hose, Dan and I pre-flighted and packed Gigi. Without too much wasted time (hey, it was REALLY cold out there), we were ready to go. Dan and Jill took the front seats for the first leg, so I settled into a cozy nook behind Jill in the co-pilot’s seat.
As we taxied out, I got an annoying surprise that the replacement headset David Clark had sent me was faulty, with a constant loud electronic buzzing in my left ear when the active noise reduction (ANR) was turned on. So I left the power off—so much for listening to my ipod.
We lifted off at 9:30am into a beautiful sky. There wasn’t much turbulence at all, even though it was breezy and we’d seen pilot reports warning for it. The visibility was amazing—it wasn’t too long into the flight that we could clearly make out Philadelphia off the starboard wing and Atlantic City, silhouetted by the shimmering sea on the port wing as we cruised along at 8,500’.
We had a good tailwind on the first leg, and averaged about 168 kts as we worked our way south along the coastline of NJ, across the Delaware River and down the eastern side of Maryland. The restricted areas around Pax River NAS were “hot,” so we shifted a little further east to remain clear, joining the Victor 1 airway, an aviation “highway.”
As we started across the Chesapeake, we heard the air traffic controller talking to a flight of F-22 Raptors that were approaching from behind us on the port side. Craning our heads, we were able to spot 2 Raptors far below us, zooming along and heading straight for Langley AFB. I tried taking a few photos, but nothing came out crisp—though when you blow up the little specks on the image, you can distinctly make out that the fuzzy blobs are Raptors. Dan told the controller we wouldn’t mind if they came up to play, but they were pretty intent getting home. We watched directly below us as they landed one after the other at Langley.
At just under 3 hours flight time, we landed at Lumbarton, NC (KLBT), our first fuel stop. We gassed the plane up at the self service pumps, grabbed some lunch and sorted out minor oil filter issue. There were some great folks at LBT and we were very appreciative of their help! I swapped seats with Jill and we headed south again. To ensure the oil filter issue was resolved, we decided on a shorter 1-hour hop to Mount Pleasant Airport (KLRO), just outside Charleston, SC, so that we could land and make a quick inspection of the airplane.
At Mount Pleasant, inspection showed Gigi was happy, so we rechecked weather for the next leg and filed our flight plan. Since there was still some clouds and possible rain activity along Florida’s east coast, we actually filed a visual flight plan (VFR) to start, with an instrument flight plan (IFR) that we would pick up later in the air over Ormond Beach, FL.
We flew along the coastline of South Carolina, over Hilton Head, down through coastal Georgia (right over St. Simons Island where CAP had had a coastal patrol base during World War II), and into northeastern Florida. Humming along (Dan calls Gigi a “sectional eater” since on a long trip like this we move right through multiple sectional (map) charts), the sun started to set was we came past Jacksonville, over St. Augustine and Daytona Beach.
We picked up our IFR flight plan over Ormond Beach as scheduled and continued south as night fell. It was a crystal clear night and we could make out Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center and a couple of the shuttle launch gantries.
Not too much longer, we were able to pick out Port Saint Lucie International Airport (KFPR) our next fuel stop. We landed at about 7:30pm with a stiff breeze and some slight ground fog over the waterways. Stepping out of the plane it was COLD—about 38 degrees. It was weird with palm trees blowing in the wind in FL to be feeling 38 degrees! We donned our jackets and the line guy started fueling the plane.
It was then that Dan discovered the scratches on the prop. Having had a problem before, one of Dan’s automatic pre- and post-flight activities is checking the prop and spinner assembly. Sure enough, the spinner was not sitting right (a slight gap at the top of the spinner and no gap at the bottom) and the propeller hubs (where they go inside the spinner) showed scratch marks. And that was the end of our flying.
To say we were a bit shell shocked is an understatement—particularly Dan who thought he had finally licked this problem the last time. Here we were in FL, 1100+ miles from home, grounded. We took a few minutes to take stock of the situation and process our emotions and then started looking at options for getting home. Without too much hand-wringing, we decided to rent a car and drive the 18 hours back to NY. Brittany, the woman working the desk at Volo Aviation, knowing our plight, worked out details with Dan for his plane to be tied down and then delivered to mechanics on the field. Then she set us up with a rental car.
By 8:30pm we were on the road, grabbing some dinner on the run and heading north on I-95. We ended up driving right through the night, each of us taking a driving shift. I did a short leg and then Jill did a leg up to Ormond Beach where we refueled at a Starbucks at about 10pm. As Dan made some calls and then slept, I did the next leg until about 3:30am when we stopped in South Carolina for fuel and a rest stop. Then Dan took over for the rest of SC, NC and into VA while Jill slept in the back seat and I napped for a couple of hours until the damn body clock went off at 5:30 again. Around Richmond we got breakfast and fuel and then Jill took over the driving while I caught a nap in the backseat. Around noon we were hitting NJ and made another Starbucks pit stop.
Ironically the only real traffic we hit was after we got of I-95 in Linden, NJ and found that the southbound lanes of Routes 1 & 9 were shut because of an accident. About a mile from the airport and we were stopped dead cold! We found a back way around, but lost 30 minutes just trying to get that last mile to the airport. Sigh.
Without a doubt we had quite an adventure. And despite the pain of having to leave behind a wounded Gigi, we still managed to have some fun. But more importantly, we each celebrated our friendship with each other and this bond we share of a passion for aviation. We had actually been talking about friendship and the joy of flying that we share during our flight down. The long drive back just solidified and exemplified that bond—sharing the weight of a hardship with mutual support and a laugh or two (okay, lots of laughs)(who knew you could brush your fuzzy teeth with a super-sour gummy worm?!). So now we await the prognosis on Gigi and then figure out how to get her home. Because eventually we’re going to have to tackle this trip to Key West—it ain’t done yet!
Dan, how's Gigi? Any news?
Posted by: DJTorrente | January 20, 2010 at 05:11 PM