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October 18, 2005
Flight down to Port Aransas
Sunday I flew down to Mustang Beach Airport in Port Aransas (http://airnav.com/airport/KRAS) . I flew in the 152 I got checked out on the other day, N49785. The plane really doesn't make me happy. It reads about 200rpm high on the tach and is missing a knob on the VOR receiver. For more general griping against the club's 152s, they only have 1 radio and no DME (or, heaven forbid, RNAV). I'm spoiled by 172s with nice radios that let you hot swap frequencies, have two radios, and occasionally even have GPS :)
It was 2 hours there, and 2 hours back. I flew KCLL..IDU..VCT..KRAS, which can pretty much be summed up as due south of Easterwood. The Victoria VOR is annoying, with a fairly short range.
I left KRAS later than I wanted (about 9pm, and I really wanted to be up by 7pm) so I was treated to an... interesting night flight. My night cross country before this was in a 172 with GPS. Thankfully there was a full moon, but the lack of DME meant that for distances I was estimating (real hard to tell which city is which at 4500' at night). I called into Houston Center for flight following, and got an earful for telling them I was about 30 miles from where I really was (understand, I was on course, I just thought I was further than I was). The landing at KCLL was a bit bumpy, I think I flared a bit soon (shouldn't have set the runway lights on high intensity, I think).
Anyway, all in all a fun flight. KRAS is really worth going to if you want to hang out and go to the beach from College Station.
Posted by jeff at October 18, 2005 12:06 PM