39 US States plus

2.7 hour flight. Refueled.
First leg was a cross border that required clearing American customs. You are supposed to land within fifteen minutes of time you specified before leaving.
Since it is easier to slow down a lot than to speed up a lot, I padded the duration estimate. As it turned out I had a tailwind so I was going to arrive way too early. I cut power significantly so that airspeed was 20 knots less than otherwise. In the end I landed within 2 minutes of my specified time.

Clearing customs only took a few minutes. As always they ran a radiation detector around the aircraft. Good thing my plane is not fusion powered.

The pilot lounge in Cut Bank had the best facilities I have ever seen. Among other things it had a couple of rooms with made beds and towels, all complementary. There was even a fridge with beer.Leggi altro

Flight of 1.6 hours. Refueled. Time zone changed to DCT.

Finally got an early start, 7:30 local. The crappy forecast the previous evening did not materialize. This morning's briefer said there would be unpleasantness around Iowa and Illinois later in the day. So I got through there as fast as I could.

Most people I met on the trip were very friendly and frequently talkative. An exception was the refueler here. After I taxied to the gas pumps we had a memorable, laconic conversation...
He: Suppose you want some fuel?
Me: Yes blah blah mogas blah blah.
Later when I needed to use a phone to check the weather:
Me: Do you have a phone I could use?
He: Use this one
After we both failed to get the phone to function...
He: Guess you can't use this phone.

The first photo is a 360 degree panorama featuring refueling. Actually I take panoramas of every new place I land. I tend to avoid them in this blog because the reduced resolution of images stored here makes them very pixelated when zoomed in attempting a better look.
The second pic is of the airport cat. It spoke only a little less than the refueler.Leggi altro