Flying over Stillwater, OK, the home of Oklahoma State University.
Just as the T &T crew was finishing up the August issue, I was making my way to Oshkosh for the 2024 AirVenture. My method of transportation this year? The Beechcraft F33A Bonanza. It always amazes me that an airplane born decades ago is still able to achieve book performance and provide a modern (I guess that’s arguable) mode of transport efficiently and safely.
Upon departing Addison Airport in Dallas, the whole central United States was under a comforting, cool blanket of high pressure. Cool is relative here. In Dallas in July, a high of 95 degrees F is pretty cool. This high pressure provided clear skies all the way to my ultimate destination, Timmerman Airport in Milwaukee, KMWC.
My club’s (the Rockwell Flying Club at Addison) F33A has air conditioning, and it blows cold and strong. Once that big, three-blade McCauley prop starts spinning, the pilot can reach down and fire up the A/C. And when the sweat stops dripping, you can leave the A/C on for the whole flight (with a little drag on performance, but typically not enough to limit operations).
This F33A has 74 usable gallons of fuel capacity. Typical rich-of-peak cruising with the big IO-520 will burn around 16 gallons per hour, so I added a stop at Wichita’s Stearman Field, 1K1. It just so happens that T &T’s advertising sales director lives out that way, so we planned for a pickup there on the way to Milwaukee. From Addison, the direct route to 1K1 is a breeze – no special use airspace in the way, and only a couple of Class D airports to talk to. VFR heaven.
Upon departing 1K1, it’s much the same all the way to KMWC, although Kansas City’s Class B airspace gets in the way. So, we picked up VFR flight following and were cleared directly through KC’s Bravo. Later, once handed off to Chicago and then Milwaukee approach control, there were only around 30 minutes left until Timmerman Field came into view.
Not only do our oldy-but-goody aircraft amaze me by still providing amazing performance, efficiency and safety to this day, but our U.S. airspace environment is equally amazing.
Enjoy these wonderful airplanes and our unique airspace system.
This is the way flying ought to work! When CAVU, using VFR Flight Following in preference to circuitous IFR routing is almost always more pleasing.
I made KeyWest from the Midsouthern US nonstop& many other trips to Maine & Canada border with a single fuelstop (an extra 30gal. in tips helped). By flying above 10K & filing Victor airways (versus “direct”) when nearing big class B’s I seemed to minimize rerouting by ATC.
Also, using smaller fields supports local airport economies.