Flying to the island
Today my wife and I made a 1.8 hour cross-country flight that we have been thinking about for over a year: we went the 50 NM to Tangier Island in the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay.
This island is an isolated place, home to about 600 souls, and is only accessible via a few (2?) boat ferries and the small airport. The people on the island live a life focused on crabbing and commercial fishing, both of which are demanding professions. It was first settled in the early 1600's by John Smith. Shortly thereafter, supposedly, John Crockett and his 8 sons came to the island to setup permanent residence. I have read that almost 1/3 of the modern day residents have that last name, but I didn't check. :)
The 3 most popular modes of transportation on the island are, in order: golf cart, moped, and bicycle. But Krista and I didn't use any of those; we had other means at our disposal today.
Preflight
I had been watching the weather since yesterday, as any pilot with an airplane scheduled does. The TAFs had been predicting medium cloud bases (~5000') and medium to strong winds so I wasn't sure that it would be all that great a day to take the wife on a cross-country trip, even if it was just 50 NM away. This was for two reasons: 1) I didn't want her to be uncomfortable if the thermals and wind shifts would be knocking us around a lot and 2) I wanted to be able to climb to 6000' for the crossing of the Chesapeake Bay, to give us a decent shot of gliding to land if the engine decided the take a break mid-way over the water.
As our flight time grew closer however, the winds were only around 7-8kts (and straight down the JGG runway) and the clouds over the bay were lifting up. So I started to realize that this might be a perfect day for a flight like we planned. So off to the airport we went. The airplane was waiting for us when we arrived at 2pm.
The flight out
30 gallons of gas, a preflight, and a few checklists later we were climbing out to 4500' feet and turning NE toward the destination. We headed off to a point (WP1) that I picked out where our bay crossing time could be minimized. We had clouds at 5500' during this leg so I only climbed to 4500'. We reached WP1 within about 10 minutes and started inbound toward the CCV VOR on the 290 radial. I also started a climb to 5500 to give us an extra margin of safety. Once we were within gliding distance of land on the other side I cut the corner a bit to save a few seconds of flight time.
We flew over the western shore of the eastern VA peninsula watching tugboats and other ships in the bay. At one point I looked down to see what I thought was a boat that caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It turned out to be another high-wing aircraft down low over the water, perpendicular to our flight path.
After about 40 minutes of flight time we were heading NE to come into Tangier from the SE (we needed to avoid some military training airspace). As we approached Wallop's Island, I announced my position and intentions to land on runway 02. Another aircraft was in the same general area and announced his presence. I never did spot that airplane until we were on the ground but I kept giving position reports to hopefully help him find me.
We made a right-hand pattern into runway 2. The traffic pattern is almost entirely over water. I was surprised by how much that affected my approach. It turned out just fine, but I had this subconscious feeling that I was low the entire time. When on final I was getting the normal visual cues and the feeling went away:
Touchdown
We touched down a little bit earlier than I expected because the seat was raised up a little high (the crank to lower the seat was locked up for some reason). Thankfully I was just beginning the flare and we actually touched down softly with the stall horn going. The runway pavement was hideous. I had read about it before today's flight, but now we were experiencing it. The airplane immediately started wandering from the centerline and the main gear started bouncing around like mad on all the unevenness of the pavement. It was a little disconcerting, but I just kept the yoke back and the brakes lightly engaged. The sound of the main gear moving over the poor pavement sounded really bad, but the gear is very tough and came out of it with no problems.
We taxied to the ramp using the only taxiway and the other end of the runway. Another plane had to actually taxi onto the runway to give us room to get by. This while a third plane was landing behind me.
I pointed the plane into the wind and shut it down.
Walking around the island
We hopped out, walked around the ramp for a bit and asked a local about where we could walk to enjoy the water view. He pointed us down a road that led to a garbage dump pier. Not only was it a bit nasty, it was locked up, so we couldn't go out on the dock. From here we walked back toward the airport and watched a Beech Debonair depart:
My throat was bothering me a little bit so it was decided that we'd walk into town to find a drug store or grocer. After a 7-8 minute walk we found a small grocery store and I picked up some cough drops. We walked on down to a nearby church and realized it was time to head back to the airplane (we needed to be back by 5pm).
We paid the airport manager our $5 landing fee (I sure hope that one day it helps buy new pavement) and started a quick preflight. We cranked up shortly after another airplane and followed them out to the runway. We did a little run-up check while they back-taxied for runway 2. After they departed another plane was landing so we waited for them to exit the runway.
Departure
We then did our back-taxi and spun around to get on the centerline for runway 2. I was wondering what takeoff would be like, since the pavement made landing so "exciting". I decided I would do a little modified soft and short field takeoff. I put in 10 degrees of flaps, held the brakes, firewalled the throttle, and let us start rolling. I kept in a decent bit of back pressure on the yoke to get the load on the tires lightened up a little. In no time at all we were at 50kts and bouncing up and down. We got a nice little bounce off of a bump in the pavement just as the airplane was ready to fly. We hopped up about 3 inches, settled down to barely touch the ground again, and then we were airborne. The takeoff was no where near as interesting as the landing was, even with the steady crosswind.
We departed back toward Wallop's Island. We basically backtracked our route, but I did cut a corner near the CCV VOR to shorten the return trip by a few minutes. We also had a nice tailwind at one point that added 15 kts to our groundspeed.
We went direct to KJGG and had an uneventful trip back over the bay and the various rivers that were between us and home.
Arrival home
The landing went OK, though the air was a little squirrely. The windsock showed no wind but up around 100' there was some activity. Krista videoed my wrangling of the controls on the way in:
This island is an isolated place, home to about 600 souls, and is only accessible via a few (2?) boat ferries and the small airport. The people on the island live a life focused on crabbing and commercial fishing, both of which are demanding professions. It was first settled in the early 1600's by John Smith. Shortly thereafter, supposedly, John Crockett and his 8 sons came to the island to setup permanent residence. I have read that almost 1/3 of the modern day residents have that last name, but I didn't check. :)
The 3 most popular modes of transportation on the island are, in order: golf cart, moped, and bicycle. But Krista and I didn't use any of those; we had other means at our disposal today.
Preflight
I had been watching the weather since yesterday, as any pilot with an airplane scheduled does. The TAFs had been predicting medium cloud bases (~5000') and medium to strong winds so I wasn't sure that it would be all that great a day to take the wife on a cross-country trip, even if it was just 50 NM away. This was for two reasons: 1) I didn't want her to be uncomfortable if the thermals and wind shifts would be knocking us around a lot and 2) I wanted to be able to climb to 6000' for the crossing of the Chesapeake Bay, to give us a decent shot of gliding to land if the engine decided the take a break mid-way over the water.
As our flight time grew closer however, the winds were only around 7-8kts (and straight down the JGG runway) and the clouds over the bay were lifting up. So I started to realize that this might be a perfect day for a flight like we planned. So off to the airport we went. The airplane was waiting for us when we arrived at 2pm.
The flight out
30 gallons of gas, a preflight, and a few checklists later we were climbing out to 4500' feet and turning NE toward the destination. We headed off to a point (WP1) that I picked out where our bay crossing time could be minimized. We had clouds at 5500' during this leg so I only climbed to 4500'. We reached WP1 within about 10 minutes and started inbound toward the CCV VOR on the 290 radial. I also started a climb to 5500 to give us an extra margin of safety. Once we were within gliding distance of land on the other side I cut the corner a bit to save a few seconds of flight time.
We flew over the western shore of the eastern VA peninsula watching tugboats and other ships in the bay. At one point I looked down to see what I thought was a boat that caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. It turned out to be another high-wing aircraft down low over the water, perpendicular to our flight path.
After about 40 minutes of flight time we were heading NE to come into Tangier from the SE (we needed to avoid some military training airspace). As we approached Wallop's Island, I announced my position and intentions to land on runway 02. Another aircraft was in the same general area and announced his presence. I never did spot that airplane until we were on the ground but I kept giving position reports to hopefully help him find me.
We made a right-hand pattern into runway 2. The traffic pattern is almost entirely over water. I was surprised by how much that affected my approach. It turned out just fine, but I had this subconscious feeling that I was low the entire time. When on final I was getting the normal visual cues and the feeling went away:
Touchdown
We touched down a little bit earlier than I expected because the seat was raised up a little high (the crank to lower the seat was locked up for some reason). Thankfully I was just beginning the flare and we actually touched down softly with the stall horn going. The runway pavement was hideous. I had read about it before today's flight, but now we were experiencing it. The airplane immediately started wandering from the centerline and the main gear started bouncing around like mad on all the unevenness of the pavement. It was a little disconcerting, but I just kept the yoke back and the brakes lightly engaged. The sound of the main gear moving over the poor pavement sounded really bad, but the gear is very tough and came out of it with no problems.
We taxied to the ramp using the only taxiway and the other end of the runway. Another plane had to actually taxi onto the runway to give us room to get by. This while a third plane was landing behind me.
I pointed the plane into the wind and shut it down.
Walking around the island
We hopped out, walked around the ramp for a bit and asked a local about where we could walk to enjoy the water view. He pointed us down a road that led to a garbage dump pier. Not only was it a bit nasty, it was locked up, so we couldn't go out on the dock. From here we walked back toward the airport and watched a Beech Debonair depart:
My throat was bothering me a little bit so it was decided that we'd walk into town to find a drug store or grocer. After a 7-8 minute walk we found a small grocery store and I picked up some cough drops. We walked on down to a nearby church and realized it was time to head back to the airplane (we needed to be back by 5pm).
We paid the airport manager our $5 landing fee (I sure hope that one day it helps buy new pavement) and started a quick preflight. We cranked up shortly after another airplane and followed them out to the runway. We did a little run-up check while they back-taxied for runway 2. After they departed another plane was landing so we waited for them to exit the runway.
Departure
We then did our back-taxi and spun around to get on the centerline for runway 2. I was wondering what takeoff would be like, since the pavement made landing so "exciting". I decided I would do a little modified soft and short field takeoff. I put in 10 degrees of flaps, held the brakes, firewalled the throttle, and let us start rolling. I kept in a decent bit of back pressure on the yoke to get the load on the tires lightened up a little. In no time at all we were at 50kts and bouncing up and down. We got a nice little bounce off of a bump in the pavement just as the airplane was ready to fly. We hopped up about 3 inches, settled down to barely touch the ground again, and then we were airborne. The takeoff was no where near as interesting as the landing was, even with the steady crosswind.
We departed back toward Wallop's Island. We basically backtracked our route, but I did cut a corner near the CCV VOR to shorten the return trip by a few minutes. We also had a nice tailwind at one point that added 15 kts to our groundspeed.
We went direct to KJGG and had an uneventful trip back over the bay and the various rivers that were between us and home.
Arrival home
The landing went OK, though the air was a little squirrely. The windsock showed no wind but up around 100' there was some activity. Krista videoed my wrangling of the controls on the way in:
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