Utah College Tour Flight

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bruceh
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Joined: Sun Apr 06, 2008 11:11 pm
Location: Ramona, CA
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Utah College Tour Flight

Post by bruceh »

I took Thursday and Friday off from work to fly my youngest daughter out to Logan, UT to visit Utah State, and then down to Salt Lake to visit Univ. of Utah for tours of potential Grad schools. She wants to pursue a Doctorate of Audiology, and there are only a few schools out west that offer this program.

We flew out non-stop from Ramona to Logan. It was exactly 4 hours and I landed with 1.5 hours of fuel left. Burning 6.5 gallons per hour at LOP and getting around 147-150 Kts TAS. We had a good tailwind most of the way.

This was my longest ever single leg flight. We got airborne at 5:15am just as it was getting light out. We lost an hour going east. Wheels down in Logan at about 10:15am. We had prearranged for the use of the courtesy car. Got the red carpet treatment and they brought the car out to the airplane for us. We had some food, then did the tour and straight back to the airport. From there we flew down to Bountiful Skypark and picked up a rental car for the night. We stayed in Salt Lake and did some sightseeing, then had the next college tour at noon the next day.

The flight back took another 4 hours. We hit the afternoon hot and bumpy air (it was 97 degrees in SLC). I hand flew most of the way back since the autopilot was struggling with all of the up and down drafts. We didn't get any smooth air until we passed Saint George, UT. On the way back we hit some rain in the mountains south of Palm Springs. Landed at 5:15pm and then went out with the rest of the family for a nice dinner.

It is great to finally be doing what I had always imagined doing with this airplane. Getting out and flying places. Tomorrow the wife and I are heading for Santa Fe, NM for a mini-vacation, with a stop at Monument Valley on the way back. I'm hoping for good flying weather!

Trip photos are here.
Bruce Hill
RV-9A N5771H flying over 1100 hours!
Build Log at http://www.overthehills.com/RV-9A-Project
Blog at https://flyingoverthehills.wordpress.com/
EAA Tech Counselor, A&P

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