February 14, 2020
Flying along the beach is always fun. I have several Texas-Flyer posts in the 2002-2003 time frame, relating stories of flying along (and sometimes landing on) the beach, southwest of Galveston. “Through the fog; to Matagorda“, Apr 13, 2002; “Pierce Field, Matagorda“, Apr 28, 2002; “Calhoun County (Port Lavaca)“, June 7, 2002; “The Sandbar Landing“, Jan 19, 2003; “Mustang Beach“, Sept 6, 2003. Yet I haven’t made a trip down there for quite some time.
For those 2002-2003 trips, I was in a slower ultralight but my home airport then was Bailes (7R9) which is much closer to the destinations along the Texas coastline. For example, for me to fly to Rockport (KRKP) now it’s 167 nm; from Bailes it’s only 113 nm. Time in the air, though, is likely about the same as my airspeeds were much slower in the ultralights. Either way, it’s a long way down there and back!
For the trip today there were a couple of objectives: 1) I had recently installed a fuel flow meter and I needed a long flight to “dial it in” with a proper K-factor; and 2) it was Valentine’s Day so it felt like a good day to fly someplace to eat. It was nice, too, that the weather was spectacular plus we’d have a tailwind for the trip to Rockport. (Of course, that means a headwind on the way back but, hey!, we’re flying along the beach so it’s all good!) There were a few other smaller objectives as well: check the calibration marks I made on my fuel gauge, verify my radio was static-free after re-routing some cables, and determine how far off my compass was when in-flight. My other, usual objectives are always there: take a lot of photos and enjoy the freedom of flying!
We called ahead to the airport to make sure they had a courtesy car (they did) then saddled up and headed out. The first airspace we had to be concerned about was Scholes Field at Galveston (GLS). Just before we got there, we saw this beautiful (almost spooky looking) view of the ships traversing the ship channel where it meets the Gulf… the cloud layer casting shadows on the water gives it all a mottled look:
Since most of the fun of flying along the beach is to see people and things, we eventually ducked under this scattered cloud layer. Here is the little bump-around-GLS airspace (the blue-dashed line encircling the blue airport symbol) that we did (our track is the light blue line):
As we crossed West Bay, we descended below the cloud layer, ending up about 100 feet off-shore at an altitude of 500 feet. For the rest of the trip to Rockport, that is more or less where we stayed. In some of the very isolated spots, we got down as low at 100 feet, but any time we saw cars, people, houses or other structures, we’d go back up to 500 feet.
At the southern tip of Galveston Island is San Luis Pass. There is a narrow toll bridge for crossing over, and a very wide beach. In the past, I’ve landed on that beach. Also, when the water got very low, some of the sand bars reveal themselves and I’ve landed on those, too. (See “The Sandbar Landing“.) I’ve also witnessed powered-parachute pilots take off and land on that wide beach. It’s a fun area.
Being a Friday morning, there isn’t a lot of activity, but we do see the occasional car, truck, RV, Jeep, etc. Coming up in just a few miles is Surfside TX and the large port of Freeport.
Five miles further on and we approach the mouth of the Brazos River… Just a mile inland from this point is the Bryan Mound Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It consists of 20 caverns with a storage capacity of 254 million barrels (40,400,000 m3) with a drawdown capacity of 1.5 million barrels (240,000 m3) per day. You’d never realize that just by looking!
We’re now abreast of two wildlife areas (Justin Hurst Wildlife Management Area and the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge) which are valuable animal sanctuaries. They provide quality habitats for wintering migratory waterfowl and are a vital complex of coastal wetlands harboring more than 300 bird species. Viewing the rippling marshes and ponds of the refuge gives an image of Southeast Texas as it was before human settlement.
The next (and last large settlement for a while) is Sargent, Texas. Sargent is a fishing, boating, and water sports community with a variable population, as most of its inhabitants are weekend commuters from larger cities such as Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. You can see that they are quite exposed when big storms roll in, but living on the water is so attractive that many people accept the risk. The inland waterway that you see paralleling the coast is the ever-present Intracoastal Waterway, which extends all the way to Brownsville on the Mexican border.
I don’t have any facts to back it up, but my impression is that traffic on the waterway is only occasional from this point on south. At Sargent, to get over to the barrier island they’ve used a swing bridge for decades. This swing bridge is the last of its kind in Texas. The first bridge was built in 1943 as a 96- by 18-foot floating wooden pontoon. In 1975 the old wooden bridge was replaced with a larger metal pontoon span. As we approach we can see they are working on replacing it with a concrete overpass! I looks like it will have a spiral ramp on both sides, making it more compact.
As shown two photos above and the one below, Mitchell’s Cut is is the only pass from Freeport to the town of Matagorda and has obvious importance to East Matagorda Bay, Sargent, and the people who live in the general area. Also called Caney Creek Gulf Cut, it’s actually a continuation of Caney Creek, which is almost long enough to be a river and has often had brackish water, even a few miles inland. The body of water to the left in the photo below is East Matagorda Bay.
Looking SW along the beach, East Matagorda Bay is on the right. What you see isn’t an island, just a sand barrier that is attached to the mainland at Matagorda Beach, 22 miles further along.
There’s not a lot to see along this stretch, but it’s not totally devoid of interesting things:
We have now reached Matagorda Beach, 1 hour and 23 minutes and 120 miles into the flight. Below is a photo of the channel (the Colorado River) that leads to the town of Matagorda, 6 miles away.
What’s interesting is that in 1827 when the town of Matagorda was established, it was right at the mouth of the Colorado River. It emptied directly into Matagorda Bay. Now there is a lot of land between the town of Matagorda and the current mouth of the Colorado, shown below. That land was created by all the silt carried downriver and deposited in Matagorda Bay, which now separates the Bay into east and west.
About 8 miles along we encountered a house with a hard-surface (asphalt) runway… a nice one, too! On the sectionals it’s shown as “U” or “Unverified”. And that is all the information on the sectional or in the Chart Supplement (what has been known for decades as the A/FD — Airport and Facilities Directory). What’s curious is that there doesn’t seem to be a hangar (that I can make out). Perhaps they fly in for short periods of time and leave the plane out, then fly out.
A quick 13 minutes later, we encounter Pierce Field. In April 2002 I got permission to set down there, so my brother and I flew down the beach and landed. You can read that story here. This time it was just a fly by, but I diverted a little to get a shot of the area from the bay side. It hasn’t changed much at all since 2002.
Being busy taking pictures of Pierce Field, I missed getting a shot of the Matagorda Channel, the primary route for boat traffic from Port O’Conner. Just beyond that is the old Matagorda Island Lighthouse.
It looks pretty lonely in that shot above, but as we got closer we were able to make it look a little less isolated. (We also got a lot of photos of it on the way back.)
The lighthouse has definitely had a makeover since I saw it in 2003. Here is a comparison, showing the way it looked in 2003 (left) and the way it looked today (right).
It looks like it’s got a new top portion, repainted and the grounds look much better than before. There even seems to be a sign in front which perhaps gives some historical information. I know it was originally built in 1852, partially dynamited during the Civil War, officially retired in 1966 and now restored in 2004. For more information on the restoration and other info, click here.
Less than a mile away is the now decrepit Matagorda Peninsula Army Airfield, but this airport has an impressive history. Built in 1942 the airfield had Single-Engine Gunnery Squadrons assigned and controlled by the 79th Flying Training Wing. Aircraft from other training schools also used the airfield. It’s highly likely my father — a U.S. Navy flight trainer during WWII — landed at this airfield (and all the others up and down the coast). At one point they even used it as a base for launching rockets and, in the late 40s, was in the running to be a space center! Cape Canaveral eventually won that contest.
We are now nearing our waypoint that will turn us toward the west. I choose another old (and closed) airport as that waypoint…
This one is at the very southern tip of Matagorda Island. If you look at our track (the blue line) in the image below, you’ll see us turning (red arrow). We are also avoiding some military airspace called “Alert Area A-632B”. You can see it says “Concentrated Student Jet Training.” Our track takes us mostly around that corner of airspace. It’s not against the rules to fly into this kind of Alert Area, but — if it’s active (which this one was) — it’s also not a great idea if it can be avoided. And, in our case, we could avoid it and did.
We clipped that area just a bit so we could start our approach into Aransas County Airport (Rockport). This is our view as we started across Aransas Bay:
With the winds mostly from the NNE, I make a radio call to inform local traffic that I’ll be crossing over mid-field to enter the downwind leg for runway 36. I executed the new “teardrop” downwind entry maneuver then did a very nice landing. With GPS and modern flight mapping, it’s amazing the record it can make. If you make a mistake, everyone will know about it!
(Note: I captured this image off of my computer at home, 2 days after my flight. So the wind-barb you see (in the middle of the triangle) isn’t for when I made my landing but for when I captured the image off the computer.) I waited until I was about 80% of the way down runway 36 before I touched down… less time to get off the runway and on to the taxiway! As you can see, I taxied directly over to the FBO and stopped in front of the self-serve fuel pump.
I topped off the tank while Amy went into the FBO to see if we could get a courtesy car, and luckily they still had one available. For this leg of 175 nm and 2 hours 16 minutes in the air, I needed 11.5 gallons of fuel. That represents a fuel use rate of 4.31 gallons per hour. Pretty nice for an almost fully loaded gyroplane! Granted, I had an almost 20 knot tailwind which helped quite a lot!
As is usual, we were chocking the tires when someone drove up and wanted to take a look. So we chatted with the gentleman for a while but eventually got into our courtesy car (it was a very nice RAM truck) and headed into Fulton. Rockport is just a little further down the road but there were plenty of places to grab lunch that were closer so we decided on Moondog Seaside Eatery, only 7 minutes away.
Moondog was pretty good, but we both ordered something neither of us had eaten before: soft-shelled crab. It wasn’t what we expected. That’s no reflection on the restaurant. The service was great and I’d give it another chance, just with a different choice for the meal!
It should be noted that it is Valentine’s Day and while my wife abhors getting material gifts, that didn’t stop me from writing her a poem and putting it into a nice, hand-made card… So I gave that to her after lunch and was rewarded with brief tears of happiness, and a warm kiss! 🙂 Frankly, it’s just such a joy to be able to share these flights with her… that makes it like Valentines every time we fly!
After lunch it’s a quick 7 minutes back. We turned in the truck then got ready to taxi. While we were at lunch, the wind changed a bit, but it was now variable. I decided taking off from runway 36 was still okay (although others were using runway 14!). I had no issues at all and soon enough we had the Highway 35 bridge in our front window.
As before, we avoided the Alert Area and turned right before Goose Island State Park and the adjoining Bartell Pass (that straight structure to the right of the island).
We proceeded as before but in reverse, crossing Aransas Bay and directing the Cavalon toward the beach off Matagorda Island. Again, we set our altitude at between 100 and 500 feet depending on any traffic or structures. As we cruised up the beach again, Amy noticed what looked like large concentric circles on the island. We joked that they were crop circles, but in thinking about it, it made more sense that they were, perhaps, a target for bombers. If they were real bombs I’d expect to see craters, but there weren’t any. So, it may remain a mystery. I looked it up later with Google Maps and was able to find them and also noticed that they were surrounded by a triangle (see image below). In the image, I added faint yellow lines to make the pattern easier to see. I still don’t know what it’s for.
We cruised on up the coast, enjoying the flight and taking pictures. We were headed northeast, now, and were fighting a 10-20 knot headwind. Our pace was a lot more leisurely.
When approaching the Matagorda Lighthouse again, I deviated a bit inland so Amy could take some close-up shots. Maybe I’ll fly by it in another 17 years to see how it compares!
Our ground speed was slower but that was a good excuse to really kick back and enjoy the passing view. At one point, my GPS/Navigation/EFB sent a traffic alert that was hard to believe. Even the highest aircraft I “see” will be no more than 30,000 feet above me. And, for reference, even the extremely high-flying Lockheed U-2 spy plane will top out around 77,000 feet. So this had to be wrong:
Later I looked up the “Callsign” — N20TG — and it was a TF-51 (similar to a Mustang P-51) which has a service ceiling of about 30,000 feet. So there was no way it was at 101,769 feet! Later, I discussed this with the software people and they said it was a bug and told me how to resolve it on my end. Whew! Glad to know it wasn’t real! But it made for an interesting moment in the flight. After that little bit of excitement, we settled back to down watching the scenery:
The late afternoon sun was now much lower in the sky, and behind us, so it provided great, high-contrast lighting for some dramatic images:
We have passed over Galveston Bay and are over Smith Point, looking north toward the home airport. We spot a grass fire in the distance, pumping loads of smoke into the air.
A few more familiar landmarks as we approach the airport:
And one final, dramatic shot of palm trees lining a driveway:
Gauging the wind, we select runway 35 for our approach. It’s turf and very rough, but I land near the end of it and quickly taxi around to the hangars. One of the club members is there, so while we get out and stretch our legs he asks us about our flight and relates details of his turn around the area in his Gyrobee.
We put the Cavalon away into its comfy hangar and head home. It’s been a very long day, but a lot of fun!
Trip Statistics
T00 to Rockport
Time in the air: 2:16 (2.266)
Distance covered: 175.16 nm
Maximum ground speed: 100 knots
Average ground speed: 77.3 knots
Rockport to T00
Time in the air: 2:57 (2.95)
Distance covered: 171.4 nm
Maximum ground speed: 76.6 knots
Average ground speed: 58.1 knots
Totals
Time in the air: 5:13 (5.216)
Distance covered: 346.56 nm
Average ground speed: 66.4 knots
To Rockport: 11.5 gallons actual, so 4.31 gal/hour
To Anahuac: 16.25 gallons actual, so 5.50 gal/hour
Average fuel use: 4.9 gal/hour
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