April 27, 2019
The weather finally cooperated and aligned with a fly-in that we had been thinking about attending. I’ll admit, I had not heard of the Critters Lodge Fly-in, nor the airport it is held at: Dillard Ranch (TE01). Ten miles ENE from Centerville, Texas, Dillard Ranch has a mostly east-west turf runway and mowed areas that provide a lot of aircraft parking.
From my home airport, TE01 is right at the range where I felt comfortable flying there and back without have to refuel (90 minutes, one-way), and have some cushion left over. As it turned out, I needed that cushion!
Near the time we were to leave Anahuac, the temperature was a very nice 68ºF, with light winds. Yet the forecast predicted 10 to 15 mph winds from the south for later on in the day. Further investigation revealed that at higher elevations, the wind would be calmer. For the flight to TE01 we were likely to have a tailwind, but on the way back we might have a pretty good headwind. Flying high on the way back was a definite possibility. Given all these factors, I decided to leave the doors on, as it can get pretty chilly above 5,000 feet!
Our flight plan was more-or-less straight from Anahauc to Dillard Ranch, but we did make a very minor detour. We wanted to overfly Waverly Acres subdivision, an aviation community just east of New Waverly. Flight planning showed it would only add a few minutes to the overall flight time. And since we were flying low, we could under-fly the Class Bravo airspace around Intercontinental Airport, and head straight there.
After grabbing a few shots of the community, we then did a bee-line for Dillard Ranch. As is my usual, I grabbed shots of various landmarks as we went. Amy was happy to be flying in to a fly-in, rather than driving to one. I let her take the stick for a little while and she was smiling about that!
Ten miles out, I took back control and started setting up for landing.
Having studied the sectional and satellite maps the night before, I knew that the location the FAA data had was wrong, and that the actual primary runway was just a few hundred yards off to the NE. Completely surrounded by tall pine trees, I expected it to be a bit hard to see, and I was certainly right about that. Several miles out, I was listening in on 122.9 (not their official frequency, but one they decided to temporarily use for the fly-in) and heard one pilot who was “circling down for landing on two-four”. That implied that he stayed high until he could see it, and then circled down to enter the pattern and land.
As luck always seems to have it, other than that one plane, I didn’t hear any other planes until I was about 7 miles out. Suddenly, there were three other planes heading also to TE01. All three of them were faster than I, but I was very close and decided to press on. We searched and searched for the airport, but approaching it from the south as we were, it was just very hard to find. Less than 2 miles out, I was also dealing with radio calls, knowing that I should be entering the pattern (we gyros fly the pattern “close in”). Suddenly I saw it and we were at the western end! I executed an immediate turn to the east, paralleling the runway.
The red arrow in the picture above points to the old runway which the FAA data says is the airport. It’s not. The yellow arrow points to the actual runway. Coming in from the south (“1” in the image above), I was still searching for the runway. At point “2”, I thought maybe if I turned a bit I could see better. Moments later, I spotted it and was quite surprised at how close I was, so at “3” immediately executed a right turn (where the line turns yellow).
All of this happened while the other three planes were swiftly closing. Luckily, number two had spotted me and called it out. He was on his downwind which meant I had plenty of time to get down. I did an abbreviated downwind/base/final and found myself on the ground only about two minutes after I originally saw the runway.
The ground crew was not expecting me to land so short, so I was well away from any place I could get off the runway. It took longer for me to get off the runway that it did for me to land! I taxied to where I saw one of the ground crew, then waited. He was speaking too close to his radio so his words were impossible to make out. Eventually he came over and talked to me directly. Meanwhile, the other planes were landing.
For some reason, he was intent on me being in the area they had set aside for helicopters. That area was on the other side of the runway and there was quite a bit of back-taxiing required to get there. Eventually, though, the other planes had landed so I back-taxied, found the area (next to the windsock) and settled in. Later, I chatted with that particular ground crewman and let him know that I was not a helicopter, and that I couldn’t land or take-off vertically. He smiled and admitted total ignorance about gyroplanes, but was happy to get the info.
Finally settled in, we wandered around to get our bearings. It was a warm but very pleasant 83ºF. The airport did not appear to have an FBO building, but there was a large metal, open-air building which appeared to be where lunch would be offered.
Eventually, we ended up in a long line of people to get a BBQ lunch they were serving up. The BBQ was pretty good and, satisfied, we ventured out to look at the planes.
After our long walk around the area, looking at aircraft and chatting with people, we went back to the Cavalon and grabbed our ultralight-chairs, found some shade and watched all the planes coming and going.
As the early afternoon wore on, I realized that we really ought to be heading back. With a headwind, it could take us a while to fly home. While I didn’t think we’d have to stop for fuel, there was that possibility, so we decided to fold up our chairs and start getting ready to go.
Before I begin describing our take-off, let me point out the conditions at field level. In the image below I show the runway and the red arrow indicates the direction of the wind. But note that with the tall pine trees, that southerly wind is only coming from that direction where there are no trees, and above the trees. From the ground it appeared as if the wind was coming straight down the runway, from the west (dashed arrow).
My placement of the large red arrow shows not just wind direction, but it points to a spot on the runway where there is a significant gap in the pine trees. So, when an aircraft gets to that point, the wind dramatically changes direction, and then as you progress it changes back! The word “funky” comes to mind when trying to describe it. While walking around, I could get a sense of this so I knew it was going to be an, ahem, interesting take off.
From the moment I pushed the throttle forward to the moment when I cleared the trees at the end of the runway was likely about 35-40 seconds. It was a wild 40 seconds, that’s for sure! I wish someone had a video of it because I’m sure it looked at least a little odd to a ground observer. Inside the Cavalon, it was nerve wracking.
The ground roll from 0 to about 40 mph went well, and I got the front wheel off the ground as per plan. Another 5-10 mph and I was totally off the ground. At this point, I push the stick forward just a little to level off and let the gyro gain some speed. It was at this point where I passed the gap.
I expected a little push to the right from the wind, and I was mostly correct about that, and appropriately compensated for it. I hadn’t thought about losing some lift because the wind coming down the runway disappeared as I flew past the gap. As I was passing the gap, the loss of lift and the resulting drop was unexpected. This sudden change affecting my lift made me think, for a moment or two, that I was going to hit the ground. I was making a bunch of changes to the stick, trying to maintain stability, maintain our direction and also somehow keep us from hitting (and likely bouncing). It was likely the most difficult take off I’ve experienced.
We did manage to stay off the turf, and I kept our directional stability, and now I was just hoping the density altitude wasn’t too bad and we’d gain the lift we’d need to clear the trees. We were much further down the runway than I had planned before finally rising above the tops of the trees. We weren’t so far down the runway, though, that I was worried about it. We easily cleared the trees and made a nice curve to the south. But I was definitely rattled from that take off, and it took me a few minutes to settle down. (The thin yellow line, below, shows our departure track.)
No better word has been invented but: “WHEW!”
Yet, we now had another issue to deal with… headwinds. Indeed, we quickly discovered a 15+ knot headwind. For faster aircraft, that’s a small component, but for us it was significant. Soon enough I decided to ascend and try to find an altitude where there was little or even no headwind. But ascent speed — particularly at MTOW (maximum take off weight) — is the Achilles heel of the gyroplane. It took a long time but eventually we got to about 6500 feet where there was no headwind.
Our forward speed during ascent was much slower than if we had just stayed at, say, 1500 feet so it was a trade off. In the final analysis, we actually didn’t gain any time at all. If we had stayed at 1500 feet, we would have flown slower overall but we wouldn’t have had to ascend or go around the Class Bravo airspace either. To get to 6500 feet took so much time that when we leveled off, we were way behind where we would have been.
Yet, being at 6500 feet had three other benefits… it was silky smooth, it was much cooler, and it’s always fun to fly above the clouds! That’s balanced against not being able to see much detail on the ground, of course. That may sound trivial but that is one of the things I enjoy so much about flying low: seeing what’s what on the ground. Today, though, we opted to fly high, so we sat back and enjoyed it. (Later I determined there was a fourth benefit: better fuel use!)
I was also constantly doing fuel calculations in my head. We had used more fuel on our flight to TE01 than I had thought we would, and with a headwind we would definitely need more fuel going home. And with the higher engine RPMs required to ascend, that was even more fuel used. I did have a big cushion and I predicted we’d land with 3 gallons left (about 40 minutes of fuel; well above the FAA required 20 minutes). Checking it when we landed revealed exactly that: 3 gallons left. Still…. that’s about as close as I’d like to ever be. I typically like about 1 hour of fuel left.
Here are a few shots we took on the way back.
We were glad that the doors were still on… at 6500 feet the outside air temp was about 60 degrees. That’s not that cold, but we were in t-shirts and with the wind whipping around in the cockpit, it would have felt much colder.
As we approached the Class Bravo airspace, to maintain a direct line to Anahuac I would have had to descend into the headwind, something I didn’t want to do. That altitude was hard-earned and I wanted to keep it for as long as possible. The deviation needed was actually pretty small, so we stayed up at 6500 until we were 20 miles out. You can see how I tracked around the airspace in this depiction, the red arrows showing where I skimmed just outside the airspace. The lower red arrow shows about where I started my descent.
Overall, this was a longer return flight which all started with a nerve wracking take off, so we were pretty tired by the time we got back. Still, a nice day to fly and a fun fly-in!
Distance to the fly-in: 133 sm and 1:47 in the air. On the way back, it was 128.8 sm and 2:10 in the air.
Overall: 261.8 miles and 3:57 in the air. I averaged 5.6 gph on the way there but, interestingly, only 5.04 gph on the way back. That certainly has the strong implication that flying high definitely lets the engine run at optimal fuel usage despite spending long periods at high RPM in order to gain altitude. I am quite surprised at this! Yes, it likely helped that we were a bit lighter, having burned 42% of our fuel by the time we headed back, but I also think the altitude was at least half of the contributing factor.
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