My trip report from Rochester NY back to Seattle

[long post]

I'm reposting a 2-part trip report originally sent to the Grumman
owner's mailing list:

---- Day 1 and 2

How quickly went the 3 days that I spent with my family at Rochester
NY. On Friday 9/1 it was time for me to start my way back to the
Pacific Northwest.

Except for the last leg from Port Huron to Canandaigua, my eastbound
trip was blessed with excellent weather and most of the flying were
VFR. Heading back west things wouldn't be as simple. First there was
the Hurricane Ernesto. Although it was downgraded to a tropical
depression by then it was dumping huge amount of rain in the Carolina's
on Thursday. Fortunately Ernesto was going to help me more instead
hurting because I would depart upstate NY before the rain reaches
there, and the counter-clockwise wind pattern around the low pressure
would give me a big tailwind going westbound, a rare gift of nature.
Along my route through upper mid-west there was also a low pressure
pulling a slow moving cold front somewhere in Minnesota.

Day 1 of my trek back west was an IFR flight from Canandaigua, NY to
Midland, Michigan, followed by a VFR flight to Iron Mountain Michigan.
Unlike the IFR route along the north shore of Lake Erie where the
airspace was controlled by Cleveland Center, the flight to Midland
Michigan goes through Toronto Center's airspace. Because Canada has
privatized their air traffic control and rumors of overfly fee abounds
on Internet, I did some research and found a "Customer Guide to
Charges" on www.navcanada.ca. According to that publication, U.S.
registered aircraft weighing 3 metric ton or less are exempt from any
overflight charges as long as it's between two points of the United
States with no stop at Canada. (Because foreign registered light
planes get charges quarterly, to avoid charges means no landing in
Canada for that entire quarter)

I departed early at around 6:45 am and caught a 20 knots tailwind at
8000 feet, courtesy of Hurricane Ernesto. The IFR hand-off to and from
Toronto center was seamless. After a quick fuel stop at Midland
Michigan ($3.79/gal for 100LL) I was on my way to Iron Mountain
Michigan, again catching a good tailwind from the southeast! It was
only 11am local time when I arrived at Iron Mountain. I decided not to
push forward, and checked into the Day's Inn instead. Because it was
only about 9am at Seattle, I was able to log-in to work using the free
wireless Internet at Day's Inn and worked the rest of that day remotely
from my hotel room, saving myself a vacation day. Modern technology
really makes a techie's job flexible. There I was working and getting
paid on my laptop in a small town hotel, after flying close to 800
miles that morning in a small plane!

Day 2 of my west bound trip back home I would be challenged by the
weather system in the upper midwest. Because my route was a very
northern one it had the benefit of skirting the northern portion of the
low pressure, which means tailwind (again) and less severe weather. The
worse part of the frontal weather is usually at the southeast corner of
a low pressure. In the morning of 9/2 I tried to get going early. For
some strange reason technology was failing me and I couldn't get
through DUATS to file my IFR flight plan, which was necessary to get me
out of the Iron Mountain fog and through the rain showers towards Thief
River Falls, MN. I ended up calling Flight Service for weather
briefing and flight plan, something that just seemed inefficient and
time consuming when the exact same thing can be accomplished in less
than a third of the time on my laptop.

The first 3/4 of the flight to Thief River Falls was in clear VFR
condition above occasionally large areas of ground fog. Again,
tailwind from the southeast generated by the low pressure in southwest
Minnesota. About 80 miles from Thief River Falls I start entering
cloud decks and rain showers at 8000 feet. Slight bumpy but it wasn't
bad at all. To make my descend easy I shot an ILS to get below the
1700 foot ceiling at TVF airport.

To be honest, it was quite possible to fly that leg VFR. However doing
so would require flying at sub-optimal altitudes for my plane and
constant wondering of whether I could go another 15 miles w/o running
into instrument conditions. IFR was just much simpler. I used to joke
that IFR in a light plane can only safely go in about 20% of the
instrument weather Mother Nature can throw us. I guess I was in luck
on this trip being in late summer and a northern route, the IFR weather
was thunderstorm free and ice free below 12,000 feet.

The second leg of the day was to Glasgow Montana, but first I needed to
get through the remainder of the low pressure frontal weather. For the
first 60 miles from TVF I was in some heavy rain, clouds and light
bumps at 8000 feet. However the ceiling was apparently high enough
that I was able to occasionally see the freeways below me. Then slowly
and surely, the rain subsided and clouds got thinner as I continued
westbound through North Dakota. What I gained in visibility I paid in
tailwind. As I was leaving that weather system the tailwind got weaker
by the mile. I really shouldn't be complaining much, as I enjoyed a
good tailwind from the east for the entire half of my westbound trip,
something just doesn't happen often.

IFR in the northern country, the Minneapolis center has a lot of
combined high and low altitude frequencies. Hundreds of airline
flights going through that airspace heading towards the coasts. One
thing I noticed, that the center controllers spend seemingly large
amount of time doing bookkeeping of so called "ride reports". It goes
like this: a United flight XXX says "center, I'm picking up some light
chops at FL340. How does the ride look westbound today?", or "I'm
getting some moderate here. If it's gonna be like this for the next 50
miles can I have FL370 right now??". And it goes on and on. About
half of the frequency time are spent of the "ride reports".

I also noticed some trends of radio phraseology. Some of them have
been in use in the last few years but getting more popular, like
calling 11,500 feet "eleven point five" instead of "one one thousand
five hundred", or calling radio frequency 123.55 "twenty three fifty
five". I sometimes even hear the controller say it that way, often in
additional to the official phraseology: "United xxx contact Salt Lake
Center on one two eight point six five, that's twenty eight sixty
five". Personally I like to stick to the standard way of saying
altitude, but I like the "alternative" phraseology for the radio
frequency better, because it seems to be easier to remember and read
back. There's one thing I heard for the first time, was a Citation
saying "Center, Citation blah blah blah, P D through flight level two
three zero". He literally pronounced letter P and letter D, meaning
pilot discretion. I sure hope that doesn't become a trend!

I arrived at Glasgow Montana at about 3pm local time, and this would
again be my overnight stop. Tomorrow afternoon I'll be back in
Seattle, wrapping up this big trip.

-- Last day and Epilogue

September 3rd was the last day of my trip. Seattle was only about 630
nautical miles away from Glasgow MT in great circle distance. At the
beginning of the trip being apprehensive of crossing the Rockies for
the first time I made two fuel stops between Seattle and Glasgow. Now
after flying well over 3,000 miles the last few days, I was very
confident of the range of my Grumman and my ability of flying 3+ hour
legs. The weather forecast was good for the entire western half of the
country. I decided I only need one fuel stop at Glacier Park
international airport at Kalispell, MT.

The one good thing about flying westbound in the early morning is the
lack of sun glare. The scenery was just much easier to see. From
Glasgow to the foothills of the Rockies the civilization on the ground
hugs the valley along the Milk River, and I could see a ten mile strip
of green cut through the endless expanse of semi-arid landscape.
Arriving at the Continental divide I saw a large amount smoke from wild
fire hovering at about 10,000 feet level, and the smoke looked thicker
further west. Interestingly enough the smoke in the morning sun made a
colorful backdrop of the Rockies Mountains, allowing me to take a few
very nice pictures.

The fuel stop at Glacier Park international and the 3 hour hop back to
Paine field, WA was smooth and uneventfully, if not smoky. After
thousands of miles flying away from home the last 300 miles felt like
my back yard. I touched down at my home field just past noon with one
hour timezone bonus I gained from flying westbound. As I was tieing
down the plane I felt my Grummy has became an extension of my body the
last few days. This is the way it should be. Our wonderful machines as
an extension of our bodies, taking us to far away places, full of joy
and adventure.

----------------
Epilogue

Here's the statistics of this trip faithfully recorded by my Garmin GPS
196:

Total distance: 4259.9 nm (includes an 100nm local flight taking my
sister and my niece for a ride at Rochester)

Stopped time: 1:03:13 (taxi, etc)
Moving time: 36:15:46
Total time: 37:18:59

Groundspeed Moving average: 117.5 kt
Maximum ground speed: 146.8 kt

The trip planning took place in the period of a few weeks before the
trip. One of the first thing I decided was to make two overnight stops
along the way. I have no autopilot in my plane and I think a two day
cross might be two taxing. I found the free AOPA real time flight
planner (a strip-down version of Jepperson flight planner) very useful
in this flight planning, because its ability of drawing great circle
routes. It was using that tool that I discovered that the northern
route near the Canadian border from Seattle to upper Michigan kept me
very close to the great circle route to the Northeast. Places like
Glasgow, Montana and Iron Mountain, Michigan are both within 20 miles
from the great circle route. Using that software it was then easy to
split that great circle route into roughly 3 equal sections, and
started looking for candidate towns for overnight stops.

I relied very heavily on the comment section of Airnav.com when picking
the overnight stops. Two things are most important when picking those
stop: local transportation and the cost/quality of hotel. The
approximate cost of hotel can be easily determined right on
airnav.com's hotel reservation section, and also on http://hotels.com.
When I was checking out a town for its suitability of an overnight stop
I also used http://maps.google.com to see the location of the hotels
relative to the airport on a map, just in case I would have to walk.
Another useful thing is to check out ahead of the time is whether
there's a taxi company in town. Again, maps.google.com is an excellent
source. Among all the local transportation options nothing is better
than a courtesy car provided by the airport. Unfortunately the
knowledge of courtesy car seems to be passed in a word-of-mouth
fashion. Sometimes it'll be mentioned on the comment section of
Airnav.com, and sometimes even on the discussion board of several
aviation Usenet groups under rec.aviation. Again, use Google search
and Google newsgroup search. Someone (maybe me) ought to make a map
showing all the airports in the country with courtesy cars!

Fuel price is the #1 criteria when I pick the fuel stops. Airnav.com
has a fuel planning section that can plan a route for various fuel
savings. However I found that inadequate because I really want to see
those routes on a map. What I ended up doing was using the AOPA flight
planner to draw a great circle route for the one-day segment after I
chose the overnight stop, pick an airport somewhere near the middle of
the route, and go to airnav.com and do a "local fuel price report" that
shows all the fuel prices within 25nm of that point. When I get that
list I go to www.runwayfinder.com and visually see where those airports
are located in relationship to my reference point in the middle of the
route. An ideal fuel stop should add very little extra distance to
the great circle route (assuming VFR). Sometimes I will need to be
mindful that a 40c/gallon saving will be pointless if I had to burn 3
gallons of extra fuel to get there, because it sits too far away from
the planned route.

Because airnav.com adds such a value to trip planning like this, I
always update the fuel price with them and add comments to the airports
when I find something new there, like the availability of a courtesy
car.

Weather is always a major concern for a trip in a small plane. I
considered myself extremely lucky that I didn't have any weather delays
and all the weather I encountered was well within the ability of my
plane and myself, including the few hours of instrument weather (hand
flying) and the two instrument approaches I flew. When I planned the
trip however, I planned an extra day as a buffer for the weather
delays, and I also let my boss at work know ahead of time that I might
not be able to return to work as planned if I have to wait out a
serious weather system for a few days. This also goes back to the
picking of overnight stops. If the town I'm staying has good ground
transportation and nice and inexpensive hotels, a weather delay of a
day or two would just be a lot more pleasant.

One of the detail that I thought about was food during the fuel stop.
Because the fuel stops are planned around fuel prices, there's likely
no restaurant at that airport. Going in town for lunch would just be
too time consuming, not to mention the need of ground transportation.
I brought a small cooler with me and sandwich making materials. The
cooler can be filled with ice at the hotels. A can of Spam meat makes
a nice emergency ration w/o any need of refrigeration. Not to mention
the empty spam can can be used to repair wing skins if I have a bird
strike :-)

One thing I found extraordinary useful was a laptop computer with Wi-Fi
wireless network capability. In the two hotels I stayed both had free
wireless Internet access. These days free wireless Internet access
seems to be widely available even among hotels in very rural areas.
Flight planning and weather briefing are just much easier and
comprehensive with a computer. To prepare for the possibility of not
having a high speed Internet access from the hotel, I also opened a
pre-paid dial-up Internet access account with Budget dial-up
(http://www.budgetdialup.com/). With this I'm guaranteed Internet
access anywhere I stay.

I hope this information is useful to anyone who's contemplating making
a long trip him/herself. I welcome all the suggestions, because now I
can't wait to do my next one :-)