Two pilots in the Carolinas—Chris
Hildreth of Durham, N.C., and Dan Douglas of Columbia, S.C., hatched a plan to
fly a long cross-country: from First Flight Airport in Kill Devil Hills, N.C.,
to Catalina Island off the California coast. “When we were trying to earn our
private [certificates], we joked that we were going to have to do these
‘cross-countries’ of 50 nm,” Hildreth said. “We wanted to do a real
cross-country. We thought flying from Kitty Hawk to Catalina would be the
penultimate cross-country.”
But a strong weather system off the
North Carolina coast kept them from visiting the airport where, in 1903,
Orville and Wilbur Wright conducted the first powered flights. So on Sunday,
September 28, they took off from Person County Airport in Roxboro, N.C., and
headed west. “Dan was a little skeptical—he didn’t think we’d get to
California,” Hildreth recalled. “He didn’t think we’d get over the Rockies. I
told him, let’s at least point the airplane west and see how far we get. Even
if we only get to Knoxville, Tennessee, at least we got out and went
somewhere.” The pair made decisions each day based on weather, the winds aloft,
and their desired destination.
Except for the low-pressure system
that prevented the excursion to the North Carolina coast, however, the weather
was cooperative all the way across the country for the VFR flight. “It couldn’t
have been better,” Hildreth said. “We had a slight tailwind while we were
flying west the whole time—and we had a slight push coming back, too.” They
averaged three legs per day, with most between 2.5 and 3 hours; the total trip
was 45.8 hours.
Most pilots have—or will—engage in
the aviation tradition of the “$100 hamburger,” flying to another airport for
something to eat. The hamburger may only cost $5, but the aircraft expense
pushes the cost of the meal to $100 or so. Hildreth and Douglas, who spent a
total of about $3,000 on their 4,361-nm odyssey, said the trip could be
characterized as “a $1,500 T-shirt.”
“When we got to Catalina, the first
phone calls we made were to our [flight] instructors. After all, they were the
guys who made the trip possible—the only reason we were able to do it was
because of our instructors.”
Hildreth, who mentored Douglas during
his flight training, had taken him on a trip to Key West, Fla., shortly before
Douglas’ checkride. “I told Dan that if you go out and do these trips, you
won’t believe what you’ll get out of it. At one point on the trip, he leaned
over to me and he said, ‘I was thinking about giving this up.’ I could see in his
eyes that that thought was gone.” Hildreth said Douglas is already planning for
a flight to the Bahamas.
Another memorable moment was when
they traversed the Rocky Mountains at Dos Cabezas, flying at 9,500 feet. “We
were struck by the realization that wow, we’re doing what we had talked about.”
The Spanish name translates to “two heads” in English. “That was funny, because
it was our two heads in the cockpit that got us there,” Hildreth said,
explaining that they had settled into a comfortable cockpit resource management
routine.
Douglas and Hildreth enjoyed the
camaraderie they experienced with aviators and airport personnel throughout the
trip. Controllers, and especially flight service briefers, were especially
helpful when they found out what the two pilots were doing, Hildreth said. They
also heard some interesting radio calls. “It's amazing what you hear when you
do 40 hours of flight following,” he commented. Turning base at Tucson
International they were told, “‘Cessna 21078, you are cleared to land 11 Left,
caution wake turbulence, and you have a coyote on the runway.’ I can't say I've
heard that before.”
As they were unloading the airplane
in North Carolina at the end of their trip, a local pilot who flies a twin
heard about their six-day trip to Catalina and back. “He popped his head into
the cockpit and was looking around and immediately asked where the autopilot
was,” Hildreth recalled. “We replied that there isn't one. His response was,
‘Holy cow, you guys hand-flew this plane all the way out and back?’”
Hildreth, a photographer, and Douglas
have created a Web site to share
their stories and experiences from the trip.
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