In late September, Chris and I begin the process of closing up our summer home in Bigfork MT and plan our trip south to Carlsbad CA located on the coast in North San Diego County.  We’ve been escaping the Montana winters by heading south for eleven years now and eight of those “heading souths”  involved a long two or three day drive.  Do you know how boring driving the same 1500 mile route on I-15 from Montana to Southern California can be?  Very boring after eleven years!  However, for the past three years we now FLY!

Montana Home

N1189Y

One of the joys of owning a general aviation airplane is the ability to cover long distances in a shorter and more enjoyable time, than driving.  Rather than spending 24 hours of drive time on the interstate, we now make the trip in our Cessna T182T, N1189Y, or better know by the locals as Dorothy.  Flying Dorothy from our home base at Kalispell City Airport in Kalispell, MT (S27) to the McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad, CA (KCRQ) involves only 3 cross country flight legs of approximately 3 hours each.  For those reading this post who have no clue about Dorothy or our flying, please read my earlier posts in this blog, My Flying Adventures.

Our route of flight from NW Montana to North County San Diego is usually dependent upon the weather. Do we go west over Idaho, Washington and Oregon and then down through central California or do we go over eastern Idaho, over Salt Lake City, southern Utah, Las Vegas and then into California?   N1189Y is certified for IFR flight and is configured with the Garmin G1000 glass cockpit, Garmin GFC700 auto pilot and WAAS capable.  I hold an instrument rating and am current.  For my non-pilot readers, I apologize for those technical details.

Leaving Montana in late September, early October, can be problematic with weather forecasts of snow, low freezing levels, freezing rain and fairly thick cloud layers.  Even though N1189Y and I can fly in IMC, we still avoid those more serious weather issues.

Due to a winter weather system approaching NW Montana from the Seattle area around our departure time this past September, we decided our first day’s route would be from Kalispell – Missoula MT – Dillon MT – DuBois ID  and overnight in Pocatello ID (KPIH).  This would be the east and south routing and we would avoid the oncoming nasty weather from the west.  On our trips south, we always file an IFR flight plan even though most of the flight will be in VMC.  On this particular departure, we had to climb through a solid overcast to get on top at our planned cruise altitude of 15000 feet.  N1189Y is a turbocharged 182 with onboard oxygen and a service ceiling of 20000 feet.  Once on top and until we were over the MSO VOR and able to make a more easterly heading, we were flying into a 55 knot quartering headwind with a very slow groundspeed.  But boy, when those head winds turned into a 55 knot tailwind it was a great ride with our speed over the ground approaching 200 knots.  Unfortunately though, because of the high Rocky Mountains between Missoula and Dillon MT, that 55 knot tailwind created some uncomfortable turbulence and mountain wave surfing.

Our overnight in Pocatello is always at the same motel, it used to be a Holiday Inn, but recently became a Clarion Inn.  The motel provides free transportation to and from the airport and has a great restaurant on site.  The FBO at the airport, The “AvCenter” is a first class facility and also provides a discounted room rate for the motel.

Our  route the next day took us over Salt lake City Class B airspace, once again on an IFR flight plan with a lunch and refueling stop at the Cedar City UT airport (KCDC).  Weather from Pocatello to Cedar City was fine, but the Cedar City ASOS was reporting surface winds of 17 knots gusting to 25 at our ETA.  The Cedar City airport elevation is a little over 5600 feet MSL and the ASOS was reporting a 90 F temperature.  So, density altitude was also a consideration along with the gusty surface winds.  Landing was uneventful and as there is no restaurant on the field at Cedar City, we enjoyed the box lunch brought along from the motel restaurant in Pocatello.

During my weather flight planning for the Pocatello/Carlsbad leg, I learned a Convective Sigmet was issued for isolated thunderstorms in southwest Utah and southeast Nevada, basically between Cedar City UT and Las Vegas NV – our planned route of flight.  On the ground at Cedar City and checking weather radar websites these isolated thunderstorms could be seen.  Standing outside the FBO we could also see the cumulus cloud activity building across our direction of flight.

XM Wx

Even though we departed Cedar City for Carlsbad on an IFR flight plan it was mostly VMC and the cumulus clouds were easily detected.  N1189Y receives XM NEXRAD weather on its MFD display and it assisted me in adjusting our course to avoid the buildups.  On our route from Cedar City, it was necessary for me to ask Las Vegas Center for multiple deviations around the building cumulus clouds – along with all the airline traffic arriving at and departing from Las Vegas McCarran International Airport.  It was interesting to listen in on all the airline pilot requests to deviate around the building storms.

The photo above shows the XM NEXRAD Weather display in our cockpit as we climbed en route from the Cedar City airport.  The white  line with several GPS fixes around St. George UT was our planned course from the Cedar City VOR to the Mormon Mesa VOR east of Las Vegas.  N1189Y is displayed as a plane icon and the magenta line shows the beginning of our deviation to the north away from our planned white course line to avoid the large green and yellow build-up shown to the south.

After several re-routes by Center due to the Las Vegas traffic and weather the remainder of the trip into California was uneventful.

It’s always a treat after leaving the mountains of Montana and on final approach to runway 24 at Carlsbad (KCRQ) to be able to see the sparkling Pacific Ocean just to the west.