AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - May 2013 - 16

WAYPOINTS

Logging asterisks

BY THOMAS B. HAINES
Editor in Chief

Views worth remembering

Having flown
everything from
LSAs to business
jets from below
sea level to 51,000
feet, Editor in Chief
TOM HAINES prefers
a quiet Saturday
morning flight in
a familiar airplane,
low and slow over
the Appalachian
Mountains.

16 | AOPA PILOT May 2013

THIS SUMMER marks the thirty-sixth year since I first
soloed an airplane. Twenty more months would pass
before I would stumble through a checkride with an
FAA designated examiner squeezed next to me in a
snug Cessna 150. In the end, he recommended I get
more experience flying at a towered airport (a story
you may have read here before), but passed me anyhow—and I was set free to move about the country, as
those Southwest Airlines ads say.
Those first few years of college life (and the related
finances) kept me close to that little airport in northwestern Pennsylvania, not straying far in the mighty
Skyhawk I had immediately checked out in after the
checkride. Marriage and a couple of jobs later found
me working here at AOPA, and the opportunities to
fly increased dramatically as I moved up the editorial
ranks at this magazine. Since then I’ve flown thousands of hours in more than 100 models of airplanes
in 46 states and nearly a dozen countries. And of those
thousands of flights, not one has been pedestrian;
boring; or same old, same old. On every flight I have
discovered something new about the airplane, myself,
or the world around me. I’ve traipsed around Maryland
and Pennsylvania more than anyplace—I’ve worn out
the airspace around here, yet I can still look out the
window and see some geographic nuance I’ve missed
before, an unnoticed tower, a rock-exposed ridgeline
I’ve not spied earlier, a winding mountain road I need
to note and go explore from ground level.
A handful of those many flights have been coastto-coast or near coast-to-coast trips across the United
States in light airplanes—down at an altitude where
you can see the nation unfold; where you can watch
on that life-size moving map out the window how the
country was settled from east to west. The flight for
this month’s story about the new Generation 5 Cirrus
SR22T was one of those truly long cross-country
flights (“More of a Good Thing,” page 44). Departing
from Frederick, Maryland, at about 10:40 a.m. Eastern
Daylight Time, we traversed much of the continent
in one day, touching down in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
at about 8:15 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time, the backlit mountains to the west a reminder about how long
the day had been.
After some local flying the next day in Santa Fe
for the photos and video to accompany the article,
the following day at about 9:30 a.m. MDT, we headed

northwest to Salt Lake City’s South Valley Regional
Airport. The VFR flight low over that remarkable
desert southwest landscape warrants an asterisk in the
margin of my logbook, a marker used only a couple of
dozen times in all of my flights.
Sliding past Los Alamos at 10,500 feet, only a
breath of wind burbled over the ridges to our west.
A smooth ride, clear blue skies overhead, not a cloud
around. Cresting a few larger hills, we descended to
just 8,500 feet near Farmington, New Mexico, for an
even better view of the tens of thousands of square
miles of remote high desert. The brown vastness covered with scrubby brush reminded me of a trip over
Botswana last April in a Cessna 182. Only a lonely ag
plane occupied the ramp at Monticello, Utah, as we
continued our trek northwest and across Canyonlands
National Park, a spectacular geologic buffet!
Meeting the not-so-mighty-looking Colorado
River, we turned a bit more northerly until intersecting
the Green River, which led us toward Price, Utah. We
climbed with rising terrain to 10,500 feet as the snowcapped ridges reached up at us. Sliding through Spanish
Fork Canyon, we spilled out into the valley that is home
to Utah Lake and Provo. Staying close to the ridges on
the east side of the valley to avoid the Salt Lake Class
Bravo airspace, we descended into South Valley Regional
Airport, which most of us know as Salt Lake Municipal 2.
Despite being a low-wing, the SR22T proved to
be a remarkably good perch from which to view the
world. The big windows give the cabin a bright, airy
feel and provide plenty of visibility down and forward. Although the three of us on board had jabbered
nearly all the 10 hours two days earlier, this leg we sat
in mostly awed silence, soaking in the scenery and simply enjoying the visual overload.
As the 2013 flying season moves into high gear, I
hope you will find an opportunity to make a few asteriskwarranted flights. They needn’t involve cross-continent
excursions. Trust me, there’s plenty new to discover in
your corner of the world. Some quiet morning or a calm
evening, climb to the lowest safe altitude you can, throttle back, and look out. A new—and renewed—general
aviation experience awaits you.
AOPA
EMAIL thomas.haines@aopa.org

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AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - May 2013

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