AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2020 - 100

P&E

NEVER AGAIN

Sputtering
into Vegas
The temptation of 'almost there'
B Y D AV E H O U G H TO N

We stowed our bags and were soon on
our way up and over western Colorado. Once
past the Cones VOR, the terrain falls away to
the sculpted canyon country of the Navajo
nation. I could tell from our GPS ground
speed that we had a headwind-not unusual
for that flight direction. I headed for Page,
Arizona, where Glen Canyon Dam marks
the start of the Grand Canyon. We skirted
just north of the special-use airspace that
covers the most noise-sensitive parts of the
national park. For about 20 minutes, we
tracked along the north rim of the canyon,
making sweeping turns to take in the amazing scenery. Eventually the canyon opened
out toward Lake Mead and we resumed our
direct course to Henderson.

My pal August
couldn't help noticing
the situation and said,
"Um, do you see this?
Is that OK?"

100 | AOPA PILOT January 2020

to Henderson Executive (HND), but figured
that we might wander a bit to get a good view
of the Grand Canyon, only a dozen or so miles
off-route to the south.
Our standard preflight included fuel to
the "bottom of the necks" by the FBO line
crew, which gave us about 75 gallons usable
based on our paint-stirrer dipstick. Flight
planning in those pre-iPad days involved
the plotter, sectionals, tape, and calculator.
The direct route added up to about 425 nautical miles, which would require 2 hours 45
minutes at 155 knots, and some 47 gallons of
avgas. (Although the pilot's operating handbook said the airplane should cruise at about
15 gph, a few years of fill-ups had taught me
that it actually burned more than 17.) This all
added up to nearly two hours of extra fuel,
plenty to handle some scenic diversion and
a bit of wind on the nose.

SARAH HANSON

FALL IS A WONDERFUL TIME to fly in the Rocky
Mountains. The summer thunderstorms have
moved on, the air is clear and cool, and aspen
trees splash electric gold across the landscape.
My business partner August and I were scheduled to attend an engineering conference in
Las Vegas, so we planned on flying there from
our town of Gunnison, Colorado, in my Cessna
182 RG Turbo.
Sierra Fox was a stock 182-a strong
and steady bird. At the time of this flight in
September 2007, it had conventional analog
steam gauges, and the pride of the nav/com
stack was a King 89B GPS with a tiny orange
dot-matrix screen. I had more than 400 hours
total time, and although I was VFR-only, I had
more than 300 hours of flying in and around
the mountains and canyons of Colorado, Utah,
and Nevada, so this trip was well within my
comfort zone. I plotted a straight-line course

This is about when I started to wonder
about our fuel situation. The headwind had
been persistent and our groundspeed had
stayed around 140 knots, sometimes lower.
The fuel gauges on the 182 are notoriously
inaccurate, and we had no fuel flow meter, so
it was all about doing the math. I knew that
we would cash in altitude for airspeed on the
descent into Vegas, but we were already past
three hours of flight time and still some 70
nm from our destination. As we began our
descent, our speed picked up, but the fuel
needles were both hovering close to the little
red stripe that indicates zero. My pal August
had flown with me several times before and
was reasonably confident in me as a pilot, but
he couldn't help noticing the situation and
said, "Um, do you see this? Is that OK?" My
response was a quick, "Those gauges don't
really tell the story-we should have plenty
of gas." With my limited information, all I
could do was project confidence, but I was
a bit worried.
Our descent path actually did give us
another option. Boulder City airport, 13 nm
east of Henderson, was about 5 minutes
closer, but a bit off line. I weighed the option
AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2020

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