tommylewis
Well Known Member
Hi, I have read with interest everyone elses trip reports and now we made our first long cross conntry trip in our new RV7a. The purpose of this trip is to visit daughter's family and attend gran daughter's dance recitals this weekend. Our schedule premitted us to leave Monday morning, so we were up early watching the weather to determine if it was a go or nogo. When it was apparent our normal direct path was full of lot's of heavy weather, I started checking the options. Remembering Paul's recent post of stopping in northern Alabama for $3.25 fuel, KJFX, I checked weather for that route. It looked possible, so we loaded up and took off Monday morning. Going east added 50 miles to our total trip, not too bad to avoid flying through storms. We were able to climb up on top at 9500 and pickup a nice 20 mph tailwind for a smooth flight. However, it was still a 3.5 hour leg, a little long for our old butts. We ran at 60% power with a fuel burn of 7.5 gal and the GRT calculated 25.5-26.5 mpg. Thanks to XM weather on the GRT, we were able to pick our way through the rapidly building thunder heads in east TX. We borrowed the courtesy car and had a quick lunch before loading up for the next leg NE to Fairmount,West Va - 4G7. This leg was my wife's turn to fly. Our tailwind was less, but still made good time at 5500 feet through the thick haze. And again we were happy to have XM weather on the GRT to pick our way through the afternoon popup storms as with the haze you could not see the storms until you were in them. We arrived late afternoon after another 3.5 hour leg. There is a Comfort Inn and a diner on this airport and the TAFs for tuesday morning were promising so we spent the night. We borrowed the courtesy car for a drive into town to check it out.
Tuesday morning we woke to find a thick haze with vis of 2-3 miles and storms approaching from the west that suggested we needed to depart no later than noon. By mid morning, the vis was 4-5 miles in haze so we departed and climbed to 5500 feet because the forecasted winds we best at 6. We had another tailwind of 15 mph or so for our flight over to Nashua, NH. Again we had smooth flying.
The RV7a truely is a nice cross country machine. We were comfortable and the RV is fast enough to travel 1000 miles in a day. The RV now has 72 hours on it and flew very nicely. Everything worked. I consider XM weather essential and xm music a nice to have option. The GRT EFIS and TruTrak autopilot are really a nice combo. We are not quite ready for IFR legs behind the EFIS yet, but can see that it will be possible when we have a few more hours on our RV7a. We have made this trip before in a Grumman Tiger and the RV probably saved 30-40 gal of 100LL. But then we do not have 4 seats to give all the gran daughters airplane rides at the same time.
So we are enjoying the mild NE temperatures this week and will be watching the weather for next weeks return trip to Tx.
Tom & Bonnie Lewis
RV7a N967BT
Granbury, Tx
Tuesday morning we woke to find a thick haze with vis of 2-3 miles and storms approaching from the west that suggested we needed to depart no later than noon. By mid morning, the vis was 4-5 miles in haze so we departed and climbed to 5500 feet because the forecasted winds we best at 6. We had another tailwind of 15 mph or so for our flight over to Nashua, NH. Again we had smooth flying.
The RV7a truely is a nice cross country machine. We were comfortable and the RV is fast enough to travel 1000 miles in a day. The RV now has 72 hours on it and flew very nicely. Everything worked. I consider XM weather essential and xm music a nice to have option. The GRT EFIS and TruTrak autopilot are really a nice combo. We are not quite ready for IFR legs behind the EFIS yet, but can see that it will be possible when we have a few more hours on our RV7a. We have made this trip before in a Grumman Tiger and the RV probably saved 30-40 gal of 100LL. But then we do not have 4 seats to give all the gran daughters airplane rides at the same time.
So we are enjoying the mild NE temperatures this week and will be watching the weather for next weeks return trip to Tx.
Tom & Bonnie Lewis
RV7a N967BT
Granbury, Tx
