To Chapel Hill, North Carolina for a Wedding

As I type this Audrey and I are at the Mariott Courtyard in Chapel Hill in northwestern North Carolina, where we flew up this morning on Trixie. Very easy flight!


Our friends Ed and Joan Rigel had a daughter getting married in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (a 5-6 hour drive), so we decided to fly. We loaded up Trix and had an easy "short field" takeoff and turned to a heading of 79 for a projected 2:30 flight to Chapel Hill. The flight was easy. We steadily climbed to 7,500 feet to get over the mountains and the heat (yep, projected to get in the high 90's today on the ground), and as soon as we crossed 6,000 feet it really cooled off. I leveled off at 7,500 and was headed just a bit north of Greenville Spartanburg and just west of Charlotte. (If you click on the flight planning printout you can see some of the detail.)

About 40 miles from the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport (GSP) I called them on the radio and got flight following to Chapel Hill. They gave me a code to squawk on our transponder, and eventually I showed up on their radar. It became pretty clear from our ground speed that we had a slight tailwind- huzzah! As you can see from the photo I took of myself in the cockpit (Audrey was doing crossword puzzles while I flew), we were flying into the morning sun. Down below it was hot, humid and very hazy. But up here it was nice and cool. Greenville-Spartanburg handed us off to Charlotte, who cleared me on through their airspace with no vectors. Yeah! We passed west of the airport, and we had a Delta jet fly below us (!!) lining up on the runway for a landing, as well as other traffic passing above us.

Sure beats driving six hours and arriving pooped! By 10:55 AM I called Greensboro and asked permission to descend. "Permission granted, radar services terminated, squawk VFR." (Hey, that was pretty easy.) So I started my descent checklist- mixture full rich, carb heat on, etc, then killed the altitude control on the autopilot and throttled back to 2,000 RPM. Nice, easy descent starting at 28 miles out. I changed to 123MHz for IGX, tuned their weather. Winds favoring runway 27, making for a landing back to the west with a moderate right crosswind.

My crosswind landing was mediocre at best. Audrey, of course, got the whole thing on her video camera- including both bounces! (I told her she could tell her friends she'd had three landings in Chapel Hill.) We back-taxied, exited the runway and parked to get in line for fuel. Took the bags up the terminal, and I filled Trixie back up with $103 in fuel- probably the same or less than if we had driven~! Total flying time: 2:22 from hanger to tiedown. Got these nice pictures of Audrey GRINNING getting out of the airplane (always a good sign!) and in front of the little admin building.


Wedding in Chapel Hill was great- plus we ran into our friends Lane and Becky Bridges from back home, who told us their drive took SEVEN hours and cost them $120 in fuel. So flying was definitely an improvement. Went out to dinner with Lane and Becky after the reception- then back to the hotel to crash.

(Added the next day: Sunday evening)

Church in Cary was nice. The service ran long, and the building was hot, but the worship was thoughtful, meaningful and interesting. We were able to leave at noon; we got lunch, refueled the rental car and drove to the airport, where we turned in the car and paid the $10 tiedown fee.

Had a long, hot and kind of bumpy flight home. It was 100 degrees in Chapel Hill when we took off, and right after we took off we called RDU on the radio, who gave us a transponder code to squawk. We climbed to 6500, above the clouds, and RDU handed us over to Greensboro, who eventually handed us over to Charlotte. Smooth sailing, right? Well, no. Charlotte ATC had us drop down to 4,500 feet, then vectored us south, turned us back southwest and flew us next to downtown, before turning us back west and directly over the Charlotte airport (way cool!). It was nice flying over the airport, but it added 10 more minutes of flying.

Unfortunately, on the return trip we had varying headwinds and the 3:10 hour flight was tiring. Charlotte handed us to Greer (SC), who let us climb back to 6500 feet where it was cooler. Greer handed us off eventually to Atlanta. As soon as we crossed into Georgia, ATC (air traffic control) warned us about a plane climbing into our airspace- we saw them and didn't even have to change course. Thank goodness for ATC! Soon enough it was time to descend, where we came down right over Yonah Mountain (which I have hiked up at least 15 times). Was great flying over it! I turned a bit south, lined up over Dahlonega and landed on runway 33. THIS time I did my landing right. "Nice landing" from Audrey. ("Whew" thought I.)