My Dad and I flew to Kerrville, Texas, home of Mooney Aircraft and they host an annual homecoming event that draws people from all over the world — 2 guys actually flew their Mooney in from Switzerland!
We made 1 fuel stop in Show Low, AZ, which is a wonderful regional airport with cheep fuel ($3.20). Total flight time was <8 hours — we had a solid 30 kt tail wind for almost half the flight.
Kerrville is located in the “hill country” of Texas. There’s the old adage that, “everything is bigger in Texas,” and I’d have to agree in most cases. Take, for example, their convenience stores: they are drive through. And not like McDonalds with a small window. No, you actually drive inside the building because it is, after all, so terribly inconvenient having to walk into the store for a beer run. Much easier to look sober just sitting in your idling car while your beer is brought to you and placed on the passenger seat for easy access during the drive home. But I digress. They missed the mark in their slogan the moment they called the area “hill country”. I don’t care what you call this area, the state is FLAT.*[1] Hills or not, the hospitality here is fantastic. People are just friendly and I actually find “Y’all” to be rather endearing — it’s that southern blood in me, what can I say?
The convention was quite interesting. Got all the gouge about why the Mooney CEO, Gretchen Jahn, “left” expectantly. Hmmm, promised delivery of the new Acclaim at AirVenture in Osh Kosh by the end of Sept, 2006 — oops — missed that one. The flight tests are not done. The engine certification isn’t ready and rumor says several months away. And on top of all of that, they built about a dozen airframes that are all just sitting around waiting for the above to be finished, tying up all thier capital resources. Yes folks, she indeed was fired.
The other highlight of the convention was meeting Brian Shul — photographer, author, ohh, and he used to fly the SR-71. It’s only the fastest air breathing jet in the world, even to this day. Not shabby for being designed and built with slide-rule technology in the early 60′s over a period of 18 months! During its 35 years of service, over 4000 missiles have tried and failed to inflict damage upon it. The plane generated a double sonic boom, one from the nose and one from the engine spikes. Ronald Reagan used this feature as a political tool to remind his enemies that we were watching them. He once order the Blackbird to do figure 8′s over a communist summit in North Korea, rattling their windows every 13 minutes of the meeting! I could go on. Brian was truly a delightful guest speaker that had as much to say about living life to its fullest as he did about all things flying.
The flight back was interesting. Dad’s Garmin 496 saved the day and we were able to pick our way through the build-ups without any major excitement. The XM weather down link is the only reason we made it home in one day. A head wind the entire way made for a long day — 9.5 hours of flight time with a stop at Ryan Field, in Tuscon. We did, however, get clearance through Edwards AFB restricted area and flew directly over the top of the base. I should have snapped some photos, but, I was too busy looking.
*[1] On the return trip back, just east of El Paso, I did note some peaks that fully qualified as hills and even a few features that could be called mountains. I now affirm that the VAST MAJORITY of state is flat.
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