Out Yonder

Eventually, cross country trips need to cover some new ground. While my past ones have at least been over territory that I am familiar with from the surface, this trip was into "uncharted" territory. New mountain ranges, new towns, and into Denver Center ARTCC sectors.

If flying is indeed hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, this flight may rank fairly high. We weren't in code "red", but at least orange. 99% of the flight, from Billings, over Thermopolis, and into Laramie, was uneventful. Yesterday's forecast that showed mild winds apparently wasn't good enough for the flying gods today. I looked it up this morning and saw 20 knot wind predicted for this afternoon in Laramie. Blah. That blows.

What it did do, however, was give me a nice tailwind for a good part of the trip, and while the big iron was slogging it out above 35,000 feet, begging ATC for any relief from the turbulence, I was happily cruising along at 9,500 in fairly smooth air. Just a few burbles from nearby mountains until I was about 60 miles from Laramie. Then it came apart.

I was picking up some pretty good bounces, and climbed up to 10,500 to see if that would clear it up. It was a bit better, but by this time, I was starting to need to descend. And then, the happy news on the weather report -- winds 32, gusting 40! Well, at least it was right down runway 30. I had to quickly get things squared away, since my groundspeed at this point was around 140 knots. What usually would have been a fairly liesurely descent was accelerated, and the winds weren't changing on the surface.

There was one plane flying touch and go's (!) in the wind, so I figured it couldn't be too bad. I was trying to evaluate whether I should use all, some, or none of the flaps on approach, but time was running out. I was scooting along like the dickens.

I flew one of the fastest patterns I think I've ever done, and as I got turned on final, I had to keep medium power just to keep making forward progress. To heck with the flaps. I could land at 80 knots if I had to and still be at a reasonable groundspeed. I dropped a bit in the gusts only about 1/4 mile from the runway, but still had good control, and I just kept power on, with a close eye on my airspeed and vertical speed. As I crossed the threshold, power came to idle, and I was ready to go around, since I was bobbling pretty good. I floated a bit, but touched down soft and a little fast. Enough for a couple of low hops, but keeping the nose up got me slowed down fairly quickly.

As if that weren't enough, I had to taxi at a snail's pace toward the ramp as the wind buffeted the plane and tried to weathervane me into the weeds a couple of times. I parked and shut down the engine, but still felt as if we would lift of again with the winds ripping over the field.

This was a good lesson in keeping your options open (where would I go if I couldn't land in the wind?), knowing the airplane (I was attempting a no-flap landing in a plane I had never landed in that configuration), and being ready for the unexpected (those were some fierce gusts). Luckily, it was virtually a no-crosswind condition, or things could have turned out different.

Now that all is done for the day, I can work on preparing for the flight home.