A coast to coast excursion - conclusion

Not being “mountain” pilots, Wednesday afternoon, Graham and I elected to follow airways south from Pine Mountain Lake to Bakersfield, California, through Tehachapi Pass, south of Flagstaff and into Santa Fe, arriving about four hours after leaving Wayne Handley’s. It was an uneventful flight, which is always good. 

Santa Fe is an “artsy” town, for lack of a better description. We visited the plaza downtown for dinner and marveled at all the shops and the pleasant dry, cool weather. After a good night’s rest, we departed Santa Fe flying east to Wichita Fall’s Kickapoo Airport, about a two-hour flight. Roberto Rodriguez and Anthonie York of Transland (www.translandllc.com) met us at the airport to take us to Transland’s relatively new facility, but not before we had an authentic Mexican lunch (the sixth Mexican meal on this trip!). 

About 50 years ago, in Southern California, Conrad Barlow founded Transland, a leader in the manufacture of ag-aviation dispersal equipment. Five years ago, James Frank bought Transland and moved the company to Wichita Falls. Last year, the company moved to its present facility where it continues to manufacture dispersal equipment and develop new components for the industry. 

Our excursion plan was to finish with Transland Thursday, then Friday fly about 50 miles west to George’s Aircraft to meet with Kansas operator Bill Warner. Bill is a new owner of an AT-401 that has had the Trace Engine (www.traceengines.com) conversion done by George’s Aircraft. George’s Aircraft is the exclusive installation facility for the Trace Engine. 

However, as all well-laid plans are subject to, Mother Nature decided she would move a cold front through the area Thursday night and the forecast winds for Thursday were to be 16-20 knots gusting to 28 knots. As any ag-pilot can tell you, that is not the kind of weather you want to be test flying a loaded aircraft with no prior experience flying it. 

I called Bill and explained I felt we should cancel the evaluation flight and schedule it for next month. He agreed wholeheartedly. Next, I contacted Andy Biery of Trace Engines. He told me he had just delivered a Trace Engine AT-302 (used to be a factory built AT-301 with a Lycoming turbo prop engine) to Lane Aviation (www.laneav.com) in Rosenberg, Texas to be outfitted with a spray system and Hemisphere GPS system. 

As it turned out, Andy was at Hobby Airport in Houston to catch a flight home to Midland, Texas. When he found out I had cancelled the Trace Engine AT-401 evaluation flight, he insisted I come to Lane Aviation’s to fly the Trace AT-302 and that’d he would cancel his flight to meet me there on Friday morning. 

OK, that would work for me. Instead of spending Thursday night in Wichita Falls, we made the 1.5 hour flight southeast bound to Lane Aviation. 

Friday morning was perfect for an evaluation flight. I won’t go into the details of the flights in this blog, except for me it was one of the highlights of this weeklong excursion. I made four flights in the aircraft that included flying it filled to the max. I was not disappointed. You should be reading a full report in the May editions of AgAir Update. 

Later Friday morning, after the evaluation flights, Graham and I boarded our aircraft and headed eastward for home. It was about a 3.5 hour flight. After landing at our office at the Perry, Georgia airport, we had completed 25.8 hours of flying in seven days, burning nearly 700 gallons of fuel. It was a great trip, traveling coast to coast and back. Unbelievably, the weather was good for the entire trip. There were a few bumps crossing the mountains and a few more passing through a couple of cold fronts. Otherwise, all was perfect. God looks after fools, drunks and Bill Lavender!