Midwest and Great Lakes Autumn Adventure
| << Leg 10 - Madison, WI to Cincinnati, OH | Trip Home | 🛬 Trip End 🏠 |
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Leg Stats
- Time Enroute: 4.8 hrs
- Distance (direct): 653nm
- Distance (actual): 688nm
- Fuel Used: 46.7 gal
The weather on Saturday was beautiful VFR, with calm winds aloft and only a few clouds well above 10,000 feet. I decided that we had the range to make the long flight home all in one hop, and I filed IFR on the way to the airport in the Uber. The Cincinnati Lunken airport has the most absurd number of runway crossings I have ever seen for a GA airport, but we finally made it to the departure runway and set off for Orlando. It wasn't a very busy morning and we were on course more or less immediately.
We got to our cruising altitude of 9000 feet and I cruised out the airplane, and this time I configured it for lean-of-peak economy cruise. In my previous experimentation, I was able to achieve 9.5 gal/hr at 155 KTAS in this configuration, and we met or exceeded those numbers, ending up around 9.4 gal/hr at 160 KTAS for most of the flight. This would be the longest single leg in terms of miles and time we have made yet, and I wanted the extra endurance allowed by LOP operations for a more comfortable fuel margin at landing. My calculations turned out to be conservative, and in the end we landed with close to 2 hours of endurance remaining.
On the very long flight, we had a beautiful crossing of the (very) Smoky Mountains, and by pure coincidence directly overflew Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, TN (while they were playing UConn) and the Georgia Bulldogs stadium in Athens, GA (pregame). I entertained myself by listening to college football podcasts and watching the college football scores on my SiriusXM display, and Katherine played Stardew Valley on her Switch. As we got to Florida, we got a descent and finally encountered a bit of brief IMC, but it was nice weather overall. I got the visual approach and landed, very glad to be home after another awesome aviation adventure!
Trip Leg Navigation
