LONG cross country planning advice?
Posted: Thu Jul 01, 2010 8:03 am
It's been a while since I've planned and flown a truly LONG cross-country (beyond a few hundred miles), but I'm going to be flying a 2001 model 172R from Sanford, Maine to west Texas over about 3 days next weekend.
The plane is IFR day/night in good condition but the pitot/static is expired so it's effectively VFR at this time, with panel GPS and 2-axis autopilot. My basic idea was to come out of Maine and go more or less west by southwest, staying well south of the Canadian border and headed towards Cleveland/Indy area, to stay out of the mountainous territory to the south and east, then head more southward after crossing the Mississippi.
I've done all the obvious stuff, like having a good competent A&P do the prebuy, checked the airplane out thoroughly, got all the charts, reviewing the airspace and high traffic areas etc. but I guess what I'm asking is if anyone has any other thoughts about the basic route? I won't have XM weather on board for this flight, which means we will only be making about 2-hour legs to be able to keep an eye on developing weather and plan the next leg. If everything goes perfect and no issues pop up, this would be a solid 2-day flight, so I'm giving myself 4 days to get it done. Two pilots, VFR rated, and we'll use flight following for the entire trip (assuming ATC has time for us).
The length of the total flight gives us quite a bit of freedom for route deviations for weather, so I'm not terribly concerned about that, we can pick our way through just about anything other than a major multi-state storm system. Preplanning a point-to-point route is obviously a useless exercise in futility without knowing what the weather is going to throw at us, I'm figuring we'll have to plan the entire trip leg-by-leg while looking at a weather depiction, and generally trying to keep heading "that-a-way" with some deviations.
Any thoughts?
The plane is IFR day/night in good condition but the pitot/static is expired so it's effectively VFR at this time, with panel GPS and 2-axis autopilot. My basic idea was to come out of Maine and go more or less west by southwest, staying well south of the Canadian border and headed towards Cleveland/Indy area, to stay out of the mountainous territory to the south and east, then head more southward after crossing the Mississippi.
I've done all the obvious stuff, like having a good competent A&P do the prebuy, checked the airplane out thoroughly, got all the charts, reviewing the airspace and high traffic areas etc. but I guess what I'm asking is if anyone has any other thoughts about the basic route? I won't have XM weather on board for this flight, which means we will only be making about 2-hour legs to be able to keep an eye on developing weather and plan the next leg. If everything goes perfect and no issues pop up, this would be a solid 2-day flight, so I'm giving myself 4 days to get it done. Two pilots, VFR rated, and we'll use flight following for the entire trip (assuming ATC has time for us).
The length of the total flight gives us quite a bit of freedom for route deviations for weather, so I'm not terribly concerned about that, we can pick our way through just about anything other than a major multi-state storm system. Preplanning a point-to-point route is obviously a useless exercise in futility without knowing what the weather is going to throw at us, I'm figuring we'll have to plan the entire trip leg-by-leg while looking at a weather depiction, and generally trying to keep heading "that-a-way" with some deviations.
Any thoughts?
CJ