Where I went on Christmas vacation…

K and I just got back from a 5 day aerial tour of VA, NC, SC, and GA. After delaying the trip for a few days to wait out some rain clouds - we wanted to go VFR - we were able to take off early Sunday morning (after clearing the wings of a little frost). We couldn’t have had better weather for the 3 hour flight. It was severe clear with just a slight headwind down at 4,500 feet. The iPod was playing Bjork and Zero 7.

Norfolk approach started us off with the flight following that had us talking to Raleigh, Washington Center, Greensboro, and finally Charlotte. Being Christmas Eve, many well wishes were, well, “wished” to the controllers by the various pilots, including us.

A decent number of airline captains were earning their pay with just a few small general aviation craft on frequency. The lady controller in Charlotte was in such a festive mood she cleared us to transition their Bravo airspace without even being asked – that saved us a few minutes.

Krista was left seat on this trip and did some serious showing off with a perfect touchdown at our destination, Rock Hill, SC (KUZA).


Later that day my Dad and I went up in 35388 for a photo session of a house in Ridgeway, SC. On the way back we flew over the reason Great Falls, SC is named as such – a few nice-sized waterfalls on some pretty river ways.

After a few days visiting in Rock Hill we were off to spend the day with more family in GA. We flew out to 18A (Franklin County, GA) by way of our Alma Mater, Clemson University.


Here’s a video of that flight, starting at Clemson:



K’s Dad met us at 18A shortly after landing and we took him for a local flight. We flew by his house and the Hartwell Dam, which holds back ~56,000 acres of water. Here’s the video K filmed from the back seat:



After a few hours with family we were back in the airplane for the straight shot up to Rock Hill. This Google Earth shot shows the paths we made in the sky. The white is the initial trip out to 18A (where we dodged GSP airspace), the yellow is the local tour of the lake, and the red is the trip back to KUZA just before sunset. You can see the Charlotte and Greenville airspace thanks to this Google Earth file.



The next morning we took the 9:30 AM Cessna flight back to home. The weather was once again perfect – calm, cool air with a 12 knot tailwind at 5,500’. The flight home was 30 minutes shorter than the opposite flight early in the week.

Krista has some more notes on the trip including shots of our dog, Lynk, hanging out in the backseat with his “mutt muffs” on during the flights.

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