Pensacola to Roswell

[LPO Beck]

Next week my Primary squadron is going on det to Roswell, NM. A few of us RI guys are going to finish out the syllabus by flying a 6 leg trip to deliver extra airplanes. We will fly 3 legs the first day and RON in Austin, TX. Then the last 3 to Roswell the next day.

Any suggestions on interesting places to shoot some approaches and gas up and/or get lunch in between?

 

[LPO Beck]

...Actually, we don't even have to RON in Austin. I've just heard it's a good time.

 

[Moc1Sig]

lake charles chennault (CWF), alexandria (AEX), austin, college station, lubbock, acadiana (ARA). anywhere that has a millionare FBO, in gulfport they gave us a C-class with 40 miles on it, the other car was a 5 series. lake charles has shimp poboys for a dollar with gas and a giant freezer full of ice cream sandwiches, fountain drinks, and maybe a movie theator.... not sure never was there long enough to check it all out.

 

[MIDNJAC]

How long are the legs you can fly? I'd throw out a bump for Ellington Field, as well as Lake Charles.....not sure how well those are on your route, but I'd think pretty close. Both have good FBO's, are very mil friendly, and are near or can provide good food. If you haven't been there before, Ellington has a pretty substantial "mil only" portion of their building which was pretty cool last time I was there about 5 years ago.

 

[Space_Monkey11]

...Actually, we don't even have to RON in Austin. I've just heard it's a good time.

LPO Beck love your name I've guess you've did you SAPR training I can almost quote that whole video.

 

[croakerfish]

Definitely CWF and don't miss Austin either. I did my cross country there in primary and it was a blast.

 

[LPO Beck]

My rough idea so far.

Leg 1: North Whiting - Alexandria
Leg 2: Alexandria - delay Baton Rouge - Lake Charles
Leg 3: Lake Charles - delay Ellington - Austin (RON)

Day Two

Leg 1: Austin - delay Waco - NAS Forth Worth
Leg 2: NAS Forth Worth - Amarillo
Leg 3: Amarillo - delay Lubbock - Roswell (Checkride and last flight in Primary)

I would definitely like to stop at Ellington so might have to change things up to make that happen. That military only FBO deal sounds cool.

@MIDNJAC - I've heard (student grapevine) we can do about 450nm. But headed west with practice approaches along the way I'm sticking to more like 300nm.

 

[MIDNJAC]

If you have any time on deck in Ft Worth, the Lockheed factory is worth a visit. Classmatte and I went there when we were driving from Corpus to Meridian to start advanced. Cool folks, he had a friend who was working as an junior engineer there who was our "in", but I think they do tours for folks as well. Got to see the keel being laid for the very first F-35C "air-vehicle #1" at the time, and saw a bunch of the F-22 line as well.

 

[KODAK]

We are out of the way (by a lot) but consider Tullahoma TN - closest airfield to the Jack Daniels Distillery..

 

[LPO Beck]

That's awesome. It would be nice to snoop around at each stop. Something I didn't really consider at first, but have now been reminded, we can only stop at places that have contract fuel and no ramp fees. NASFW should be no problem, but a few others might have to get chopped off that list.

@KODAK, I originally wanted to go North. Something in TN (was thinking Nashville), then St. Louis (hometown), maybe KC then head for New Mexico. Winter weather will more than likely keep us out of the Midwest though.

 

[ARAMP1]

Shoot "The Widowmaker" on the way in. 200 KIAS until established on the inbound course.

 

[wlawr005]

Baseops.net has a link to airports with contract fuel. Waco and El Paso both have it, we stop there on the way to El Sweato. OKC is also good routing.

 

[ea6bflyr]

You might want to contact the Austin FBO directly. When we tried to RONx2, they wanted to charge us all kinds of fees.....

 

[joe dirt]

The Hi ILS coming into KROW is legit, just be mindful of t-6 traffic in area 1.

 

[KODAK]

Baseops.net has a link to airports with contract fuel.

And that's the problem with KTHA, no contract gas.. We do take the DoD Air Card (although almost everyone does..) and we get a decent amount of mil air traffic from Redstone and several other sources. I have never fully understood the difference between contract gas and the Air Card: apparently you have to buy ~$15k of sampling gear for the Jet tanks to get a contract, but several DoD aircraft use our gas literally every week.

Anyway, just in the last two years we have had a USN MH-53E and even an SH-60B headed to the bone yard stop in for a quick tour of JD before continuing on their way. As one of the aircrew said "we can make it happen if we really want to" but our field is not that well known.

Good luck with the trip out west, sounds like great XC!