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Citabria delivery across the country in January!

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I was hired by my best customer to pick up a brand new American Champion Citabria High Country Explorer. I had to wait for nearly two and a half weeks for the weather to look even close to flyable from the factory in Rochester Wisconsin. On Sunday January 29th I finally saw what I thought was a window and grabbed an Amtrak train to get from New Jersey to Wisconsin to start the flight.

However upon arriving at the factory the weather decided it had other ideas. I was able to take the factory tour and eat lunch with the owner and his family before heading to a hotel for the night with the courtesy truck. The next morning after the snow storm had left the cloud base was high enough to get out legally. The winds were blowing but at least the visibility was really good. I finally left the factory just after 10:30 AM on my way to Iowa for the first fuel stop.

The clouds finally broke up almost two hours into the trip and I was finally able to stay more than 800' off the ground and keep a good distance between me and the overcast clouds. The factory wanted me to run the engine hard and hot to seat the rings and the first leg burned almost 14 gallons per hour with the 180 horse power Superior engine. I have to say this engine is one of the smoothest boxer aircraft engines I've ever flown. The plane overall is a joy to fly with the 29" bushwheels, VG's and other modifications. It lands in about 400 feet or less with just a light breeze and is off in around 300 with full fuel. So far I haven't taken off with less than full tanks of 36 gallons of fuel. I'm sure it would be even better without 75 pounds of baggage and lower on fuel.

After a pretty good push for the day and several fuel stops I made the last 45 minute leg from Kearney to North Platte Nebraska where I stayed the night. The sunset was amazing and I was only able to get to my Gopro camera since I hadn't unpacked my good Canon camera yet. So far this was the first thing really worth taking pictures of on the trip.

The next morning I woke up find that the I-80 corridor I was planning to follow (I almost always follow it when going north of the Rocky Mountains), had been fogged in with a very high wind advisory in effect. The forecast had changed drastically overnight from clear to this garbage. It also looked like it would be several days for the inversion to lift and the winds to calm down enough to fly that route. The owner was anxious enough to get his aircraft that he told me to see if there was another route south, which I had actually already figured. That route would take me down to at least Toas New Mexico to get around the Colorado Front Range and the weather system camped out there. It would also add at least 800 miles to a trip that was supposed to only be 1100 nautical miles to start with. Oh well, south I go!

The first fuel stop for the day was in a small town in Kansas called Scott City. The ASOS was calling 300' overcast and less than 3 miles visibility. However from 8 miles out I could see the airport and I was still at 800' AGL so I pressed on into the airport. Just as I entered the pattern another aircraft called saying they were departing runway 35. I informed them that the ceilings were less than 1,000 feet and they said I should have seen it 5 minutes earlier. They couldn't see half way down the runway and were waiting for an IFR clearance to head out. I guess my timing was perfect so that it blew out just as I got there.

After fueling I headed back out and found that less than 15 minutes south the clouds completely broke up and I was able to climb up to get over the 8,500' terrain ahead en-route to Raton New Mexico to take on fuel, get lunch and then head over the pass.

I lucked out that in Raton they cook those flying through a free burger along with chips and a soda. The temp had gone from 22 degrees in Scott City to around 68 here. What a huge change! In fact it was so warm that I ended up borrowing some tools to open up the ground adjustable cowling flap to cool the engine oil down a bit. It was running around 214 pretty steady, even up at 9,500. The temps up there were still in the 50's, which was warmer than anywhere I'd been on the trip.

Once I got heading towards the pass after the climb to 12,500' I started getting into the mountain wave turbulence. It was almost completely calm on the ground but the winds aloft were over 30 knots. Pretty soon I felt as though I was in a blender. It wasn't fun anymore! Luckily it only lasted about 10 minutes while I got over the pass, then settled down to have an enjoyable flight to overfly Farmington and land in Cortez New Mexico for the night.

One more day of flying to get most of the way to the owner. However since my family is in western Utah and I just learned that he was going out of town for four days I was to take the plane to their place and then deliver the aircraft next week.

After taking off on Thursday morning in Cortez I got close to Abajo peak when the blender started up again. This time it lasted around 15 minutes and then never really because smooth again flying across the top of Canyonlands National Park. If you haven't ever seen this area you are missing one of the most beautiful places in the country. At least in my opinion. My flight track to Hanksville Utah put me just south of the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. I had canoed the Green river quite a few times doing week long trips. However you always take out before the confluence due to the rapids involved in that area and the fact that Mineral Bottoms is accessible by truck to haul the gear and canoes back up to the town of Green River where we put in. This area is just stunning. I took around 150 photos and feel like I was pressing the button on my camera every few seconds the entire way across the park. I also was running the GoPro looking out the front window. Hopefully some of that turned out well.

After a short pit stop in Hanksville Utah I hoped back in for the last one hour flight to western Utah where my parents were going to pick me up. Again, I go close to the mountains, this time the Wasatch front and was back in the blender. This time on high speed. It was probably some of the roughest air I've ever flown in. At times I was full power going down at 1200 feet per minute. That was always short lived and the downdraft would stop, followed up an updraft of equal intensity. This is the lowest pass through the mountains for several hundred miles though so I just slowed down and plowed through it. This lasted for nearly 25 minutes before I was over the mountain. My ground speed had dropped from 106 knots to 72 for most of this trip due to the high winds. Luckily once I was through the pass again it smoothed out and the remaining 35 minutes was as smooth as you can every hope for. The stormy weather that was here in my home valley for the past three weeks had left the day before and made for a very enjoyable landing back at my home town airport.

I still have yet to deliver the aircraft to the new owner since he is out of town until Monday evening but I'm looking forward to the last hour and a half leg. This ferry job was probably the most challenging trip across the country that I have ever done, yet also very enjoyable in such a nice aircraft.

 

** If you'd like to purchase photos from my trip, please let me know. I reserve all rights to photography.

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Posted

Hey Kenneth,

Thanks for the great photo's and trip report.  That is quite an experience.  Thankfully I have never been in that severe mountain wave turbulence and hope I don't have to but I am sure it is hard to avoid on those long cross country trips.  Amazing country there too; I enjoyed some of those parks when I lived in Utah.

Randy

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Posted (edited)

Wow what a trip, Hope delivery all goes well. Maybe next time you can do it in the teenie two

Edited by TJay
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Posted

Kenneth, thanks for the pics. The AZ/UT state parks are so beautiful, very different from what I grew up with on the east coast.

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