K
Ken Stallings
Guest
Today I heard ATC direct me to do something I have never been directed to do before. I was on a Grace Flight mission from Roswell to Santa Fe. Approaching Santa Fe, ATC asked me to slow down 20 knots for arrival sequencing!
Having flown a Skyhawk, those were words I never heard before!
So, at 10,000 feet, I pulled back the manifold pressure and went from 165 KIAS to 145 KIAS.
And the best part is it was a Beechjet I had to throttle back to give space for him to sequence in ahead of me! Oh man! Talk about uncharted territory!
The other nice thing was the weather around Portales had rapidly deteriorated, with a line of thunderstorms developing south of the airport on my final return leg hom from Santa Fe. Well, with NEXRAD datalink radar on the 530W, I was able to see it shortly after takeoff from KSAF. So, I immediately fired up the Bendix-King Color Radar and the L3 Stormscope.
About 60 miles out the stormscope showed a few lightning strikes and the NEXRAD and color radar was showing level 3 thunderstorms about 5nm south of KPRZ. However, it was fine because I had real-time backup to know precisely where it was and it was VFR. The radar presentation precisely matched the NEXRAD display on the 530W.
This is precisely why I got this plane, and it's paid off already! PRZ to ROW to SAF to PRZ in just 3.2 hours total engine start to shut down! Plus, 100% situational awareness on the weather.
Ken
Having flown a Skyhawk, those were words I never heard before!
So, at 10,000 feet, I pulled back the manifold pressure and went from 165 KIAS to 145 KIAS.
And the best part is it was a Beechjet I had to throttle back to give space for him to sequence in ahead of me! Oh man! Talk about uncharted territory!
The other nice thing was the weather around Portales had rapidly deteriorated, with a line of thunderstorms developing south of the airport on my final return leg hom from Santa Fe. Well, with NEXRAD datalink radar on the 530W, I was able to see it shortly after takeoff from KSAF. So, I immediately fired up the Bendix-King Color Radar and the L3 Stormscope.
About 60 miles out the stormscope showed a few lightning strikes and the NEXRAD and color radar was showing level 3 thunderstorms about 5nm south of KPRZ. However, it was fine because I had real-time backup to know precisely where it was and it was VFR. The radar presentation precisely matched the NEXRAD display on the 530W.
This is precisely why I got this plane, and it's paid off already! PRZ to ROW to SAF to PRZ in just 3.2 hours total engine start to shut down! Plus, 100% situational awareness on the weather.
Ken
