Scott & Tanya Card RV9A build log (N4822C)

The weather forecast wasn’t looking so great, and we thought about scrapping the trip since we are weather wimps. Fortunately, we decided to move on and head to Santa Teresa on Friday. The trip out was easy and uneventful until turning base at Pecos for fuel. When, poof, out comes the carb heat cable in Scott’s hand. Oops - that’s not good. We fueled, pulled off the cowl, and grabbed the travel tool bag. The cable actually broke off in the fitting. Scott adjusted the assembly, and we were off to LOE. Just no carb heat for the rest of the trip.

We arrived at Dona Ana airport about noon local time. Of course, then starts the RVating social weekend. Scott had to go check out the new GRT EFIS in Paul’s plane. I started handing out cookies. Within a couple of hours, I had dispensed about 4 dozen cookies. A pretty good start.

We met up with some Texas friends and made lots of new ones. We are definitely going to have to plan some trips to visit these great folks.

Saturday morning brought some rain, but it moved on by late morning. Scott took another RV-9A builder on a short motivation flight. They had a great trip. The microbrew truck wasn’t in attendance this year, so we arrived with our own beverages Saturday night. The RV group was able to raise many more thousands of dollars for the local charities. We only had about half the number of folks in attendance but only came a couple thousand dollars short of last year. We munched on some BBQ, made a quick stop for ice cream on the way back to the hotel, and then headed off for an early bed time.

We got up Sunday, looked at the weather, and realized we weren’t going anywhere for a little while. We wandered over to the cracker barrel for a final breakfast. That bought us some higher ceilings, and we headed out to the airport. The ramp had cleared out pretty well by the time we got to the airport. We dumped the rental car (for a $25, well-worth-it fee), and headed for home.

Scott has some words to add from this part of the trip…

Scott’s Wisdom:

Our adventure continued after LOE on the trip home.

We’re learning new things every time we fly! Many thanks to the 4 ship behind Alex for the pireps of VFR between Pecos and Wink. We were and are very appreciative of those reports. I’ve never been one for getting trapped above the clouds in clear air so we started the run below. After passing the convective stuff on radar, we dropped down through a hole and started the hard work. Two pilots calculating heading and distance to the best OUT as we pressed forward each couple of minutes. Our trip quickly went from “this sucks”, to “Uhhh….”, just northeast of Fort Stockton. The solid ceiling got lower and lower with some very light precip. We did a little bit of recon around each side of the rabbit hole but found no good path. Tanya gets full credit for being the first to voice that she was ready to turn around. It was a very wise call. We executed our latest OUT just east of Rankin (49F) and turned back to Upton (E48). The weather still sucked there, but this was an immediate “Time Out, wheels on the ground”.

There is absolutely nothing in Upton, no fuel, no phone number, no people, no shelter… Not the place to be stuck, but the runway was paved. After visiting the nearest bush, we (and I do mean WE) began our strategy session. I can’t tell you how many times we told each other “There aren’t any problems here, the OUTs are working, and the wheels are on the ground.”

I called the nearest ASOS at Fort Stockton which was our next stop along our retreat path and that exit was still available with over 2k’ scattered, and winds gusting over 30kts. Of course, all this burns fuel so that became an important component. We fired up and launched for Fort Stockton (FST) which was only about 20 minutes away. After landing back at FST, it was like coming off of the moon, back to civilization with a few blue skies, people, and the golden juice. We fueled up, tied the plane down, and went in to the weather computer for more analysis. After agreeing that we would be happy to stay here at FST at the nearest INN if need be, the weather picture made the answer quickly clear. We’re going on top! Duh!

Remember, I predicated that I’m not a big fan of getting stuck on top, but we had a clear way up, and now had great weather data in front of us that we would absolutely be able to get down on the other side after about 160mi.. Way safer than the previous plan. So we launched from FST with full fuel (can’t stress that part enough), plenty of data, and a new plan. Blue skies above allowed us an immediate elevator ride to over the top of a solid layer for the next 1.3hrs. We almost doubled our ground speed in the smooth air above. Super easy the whole way home. We’re learning.

It has been talked about a number of times how important it is to have good viable OUTs when traveling by RV but I don’t remember anybody with so few hours as us showing just how useful that concept is and how it can not only salvage a trip, but also preserve your bacon. Hopefully this is a helpful example of a set of pilots learning as we go.

fyi, if you look at our APRS track from this flight, it does NOT tell the story correctly at all as we were too low for the exciting parts. It doesn’t show any of the shenanigans we went through looking for better weather and back tracking. The time stamps are correct though.

Just to be clear as the scary stories begin to accumulate, they do not correlate to our trip. We didn’t fly into anything unsafe, illegal, and always were certain of the turn-around plan for wheels on the ground within just a few minutes. The plan worked and it is amazing the added clarity of analysis that can be accomplished when the brain is sitting on the ground compared to in the cockpit.