ET's Info-Stew

I had planned to use today's scheduled flight time to continue preparation for my bi-annual flight review which I have scheduled for Wednesday. But after yesterday's flight I felt the practice would be overkill, so I decided to just cancel the flight. When I said this to Jenny she said that maybe the two of us could go up together. So I went through the task of coming of with and planning a flight. I decided to take somewhat of an ambitious approach and fly north up to the Greeley airport (KGXY). Since the direct path between Centennial Airport (KAPA) and KGXY is Denver class B airspace I knew I'd have a challenge ahead. I decided to rely heavily upon my GPS to help me identify landmarks, and I'm very happy I did.

Flipping over the Denver VFR terminal chart I found VFR flyways on the west side of the airspace, and that was the basis for my route. The flight up had me going near the Chatfield Reservoir then heading north. I had to stay west of I-25 which was easy enough to do. The about half-way up my path had me going through a sliver of the Rocky Mountain (KBJC) class D airspace, so I called them up as asked for a transition. The gap between I-25 and the eastern edge of the class D airspace is less than a mile wide, but apparently I was in that gap because the tower informed me that I was clear of their airspace and could change frequencies if I wanted.

On the approach to the Greeley airport things got interesting. Everyone was landing on runway 9 even though the wind heavily favored runway 34. But not wanting to disrupt the flow of traffic I decided to give it a shot. I entered the left downwind for runway 9 just as I saw another aircraft ahead of me on downwind. We were a little bit close, and so I slowed down. At this point the wind was almost directly off the left at 13 knots, which meant a 10 knot crosswind. I didn't fly my pattern too precisely and I ended up way downwind of the centerline on final. It turns out, though, that that was a good thing. The aircraft in front of me was still on the runway when I was 1/2 mile out, so I called a go around. But my deviation from centerline allowed me to extend the gap between us and by the time I was back on centerline, the runway was clear. So I changed my call and said I was going to land.

It had been a long time since I've executed a crosswind landing and here I was attempting a stiff 10-knot almost direct crosswind. Apparently I got really focused because I executed it very well, and it was a nice gently landing. We cleared the runway and headed toward the terminal, parked, shut down, and went inside.

We were surprised to find a little airport restaurant inside the terminal and since neither of us had eaten hardly anything, we decided to sit down. My sausage, egg and cheese bagel was excellent and Jenny enjoyed her biscuits and gravy, but I started getting worried about the time. We were scheduled to have the plane back at 11am and when we got our food it was already past 10am! So we ate fast and I got the plane ready to go on the return flight quickly.

The flight back had us flying to the Colln NDB then to the Longmont, then south along the VFR flyway to Chatfield Reservoir. The flight went well, but there was a lot of turbulence along the way. There was a noticeably large jolt at one point that had me reducing my airspeed quite a bit. I made the call to Centennial at Chatfield with the wind coming directly from the north they wanted me to call mid-field west of I-25. I didn't want to call too early, so I waited until I was 2-3 miles out before I planned to make the call. Unfortunately the radio got super busy especially thanks to a Cessna several miles to the south. I couldn't call mid-field until after crossing I-25, when I already pushed my way into the downwind leg. Thinking back, the right move would have been to turn downwind west of I-25 in case I was cutting off someone on the downwind leg.

The approach and landing was very good, one of my smoothest landings yet. We taxied, shut down, tied everything up, and paid. The 2.1 hour flight was almost $200. But I got to see things I hadn't been able to see yet, like Invesco field, downtown Denver, and Red Rocks. We got the plane in at 11:30am which is a bummer because it turns out someone wanted to fly it between 11am and 1pm. I hope that person got to fly. I got the plane filled up as a courtesy, but I still want to apologize. Unfortunately I don't have any way to contact that person.