Monday 7/11/2011 departure day
0700 breakfast at the hotel -- we shared a table with two couples one from Denver flying a home built RV(#?) and another couple from Mississippi flying a larger RV10.
0745 to the airport to take care of the rental car, gate key, and preflight the plane. We are ready ahead of schedule and take little time to check out the other planes getting ready.
0900 briefing starts right on time. Weather looks good for the flight. We are instructed that we will be flying @ an altitude of 1200 feet to Skagit airport for lunch. Once again they go over how the group will fly together as a flight. Our number for this first leg is seven (out of eleven).
1000 departure from Olympia.
the engines start and one by one each plane announces "ready for taxi" on the flight's radio frequency. Once all eleven planes check in the flight leader calls ground control for clearance to taxi to the runway for the flight. The flight leader starts to taxi and two falls in behind, followed by three etc. At the runway each plane does their run up, once complete the planes announce to the leader "seven ready", "three ready", etc. When all check in the leader calls tower and request clearance for all eleven plane to take off as a flight. When cleared the planes conga onto the runway the leader moves off to the left and two moves to the right, three moves to the left behind one (leader), and four moves in behind two. The leader starts to go as his wheels leave the ground two starts to go. As the planes on the runway take off--the next planes have room to start moving into the line up on the runway. Within a few minutes all eleven planes are in the air and quite spaced out. As plane number seven we should have plane six front of us off to our right at a 45 degree angle about 1/4 mile away. Plane number five should be almost directly in front of us about 1/2 mile. Five is 1/4 mile at a 45 degree angle to the left of six. If this sounds confusing... It surely was. We started out spaced about a mile apart and had to tighten up into this formation. It never felt dangerous. But having eleven planes that fly at different speeds try to slow/speed up to the same speed took a lot of work. It was one of the busiest flights I have ever been on. It took all of our concentration to focus on the planes around us, watch for speed changes, and altitude. I did sneak a peak at some of the sights we passed.
1115 landing at Skagit, Wa.
By the time we arrived at our destination we in pretty good form for our first time flying together. We had detailed instructions for landing too. We took off on the left side of the runway and we were to land on the left side. Just as six would land on the right. Out of our eleven planes only one did a go around and he ended up landing right behind ten. We did the taxi conga line over to the tie downs in front of the restaurant. As we got out of the plane I asked Kevin if he saw downtown Seattle? Or the aircraft carrier we flew over? I new what his answer would be before asking. All he saw were the planes in front of him for the whole flight. He was concentrating so hard there was no scenery between the two airports. I was concentrating almost as hard but the Space Needle just caught my eye...a few more minutes and I would have missed it too. We flew right over the aircraft carrier, the lead plane pointed it out about four minutes before we passed over--so I was looking--big ship hard to miss.
1140 lunch
Our lunch was preordered most of us forgot what we ordered two months ago. While we were waiting for the food we started our debrief about the flight. Some pilots were thinking others should have done better when in fact all could have been better. Everyone was very professional and handled the discussion very well. The leader thought the flight went very well for never flying together before. He said on previous trips some pilots had yelling exchanges after the first flight as group. On our first departure we had left when the plane in front of us had left the ground...this time we were to count to ten once the plane in front started to roll. This would tighten the group up sooner.
1230 pre flight briefing.
Our flying order has been changed due to the fact that one of our group forgot to file with TSA before leaving and we were planning on crossing the border at 1300. As this the leader was explaining this -- another pilot spoke up -- he too missed that part of the instructions. After a heated one sided discussion that pilot had to scramble to file just as the other did. They would have to cross the border on their own later--It takes a few hours for the electronic filing to go through. We continued with the briefing now in the eight spot.
1245 engine start.
Everyone checked in ready for taxi. Then again ready for departure. We taxied into place and one by one each plane counted to ten then gave full power. All nine planes were off and scrambling to get into their assigned place. We climbed to our assigned altitude of 1200 feet. The plane in front of us (number 7) had some difficulty with his flaps and did retract them for sometime which slowed us and the trail plane up quite a bit.
1300 border crossing
Once the flap issue was figured out we proceeded across the Canadian border at about 1300. Not long after the crossing we turned up a canyon and basically followed Fraser River all of the way to Prince George. The first three quarters of the flight we stayed well below the canyon walls which did take some getting used to for most everyone. Getting used to flying this way was the intention for this leg of the trip. Once again flying as a group was very difficult for some pilots. The plane in front of us never quite figured it out and there was no way for us to stay in the correct position behind him. The trail plane behind us even tried calling "Number Seven" on the radio to suggest joining the group, but there was no response. About halfway we finally gave up on staying in position behind Number Seven and focused on a position behind Number Six. We still stayed behind Number Seven but in a position as if Seven was where he was supposed to be. So we let Seven roam from one side of the canyon to the other and from one altitude to the next, all the while staying focused on a position behind Six. Once we focused more on Six things smoothed out for us and Trail.
Closer to Prince George we climbed to above the sides of the canyon and there were a few less heading changes (except for number Seven). We went through one good rain shower about twenty miles from Prince George which cleaned some of the bugs off the planes.
1500 landing at Prince George.
Once Prince George was in site were reminded of our landing instructions. The runway at Prince George is about 13000 feet long making it very easy for our flight to land as a group. We kept our eye on Number Seven and landed behind and to his right, he looked ok during this landing. The whole flight looked good, there were no "go arounds" for this landing. As we taxied off the runway we were following Number Seven, to his right, with the group conga line when his engine stopped. There was a call on the radio, "I think we ran out of gas." ...
See Kevins blog for the rest of the story.
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