March 26, 2019
On March 26, my brother was able to go fly with me. Many years ago — 17 years, in fact! — when we were both flying our own planes, we once did a circumnavigation of Houston. This isn’t a big deal for GA aircraft but for ultralights, it was kind of a cool thing to do. I have been wanting to replicate that trip in my gyroplane, but had not had the opportunity. Perhaps today is the day!
Jim is obviously excited to once again be aloft and taking aerial pictures. His opportunities to do this are few and far between due to a number of reasons, but he’s all geared up and and ready to go. The doors are still on the Cavalon, so he’ll have to shoot through plexiglass, but it still beats being on the ground.
On our trek in 2002, there was no way the tiny gas tanks in our ultralights could allow us to make the entire circle without landing for fuel. But today my Cavalon has the ability to fly around the city and back to my home airport, all without stopping for fuel. However, we weren’t 100% sure we were going to be able to execute our full circle — there were some time constraints we were dealing with — so we decided to head for Gulf Coast Regional (KLBX) airport, have lunch, and then decide whether we would continue the flight around Houston.
I’ve done this flight to KLBX many times, so there will be views that are familiar. But I also contend that there’s always something new to see, or at least a new angle on familiar sights, so let’s test that theory!
First, we flew south from Anahuac, following the eastern edge of Trinity and Galveston Bay’s. We hopped over East Bay starting at Smith Point and continued until we hit Bolivar Peninsula, just south of Goat Island. From there we turned SW and skimmed just north of the Galveston airport Class D airspace. Another few miles and we turned SSW and headed toward an overfly of Demijohn Island.
We circled Demijohn Island for some photos, then headed directly to our destination airport, which is now in a WNW direction. KLBX is sometimes busy but being a Tuesday, it wasn’t too bad. We overflew the runway and a tear-drop entry into the downwind, landed then taxied over to the diner. I had informed my friend, Chuck Noe — who hangars his Mooney there — that we might be there for lunch, so as we taxied, I send him a quick message that we had arrived.
Here are some photos I took during this leg of the trip:
We ordered lunch at the Runway Cafe and soon after Chuck showed up and the three of us sat and chatted for quite some time… it was very nice! (As is often the case, the cook came out and took pictures of my Cavalon.) Yet, we still had a decision to make about whether we should continue the circumnavigation or not. After furtively looking at our watches and flight plan software, we decided that today was not going to be day. Instead, though, we thought we’d make our return flight through the Corridor. Given our current location, this route would be a different way back…. directly north from KLBX, and then a sharp right turn into the Corridor.
Chuck thought he’d accompany us in his Mooney for a few miles, just for fun, so off we all went. He had trouble slowing down to match our speed, but he did manage to go by fairly slow so we could get a few shots of him.
After his slow pass, he waved off and headed back to KLBX airport, while we continued due north. You can see from our track that we were not being too subtle about our intentions… clear the Class Bravo airspace around Hobby airport, then turn east and head back to Anahuac.
This return route is what made this particular trip a bit different from other similar forays to KLBX. I can’t say that I haven’t been over this general area before, but more likely it would have been a track much wider, around Sugar Land, and further west. As we flew over the area, it certainly felt different. The angle from which I saw familiar landmarks seemed new. An enjoyable feeling.
Shortly after Chuck peeled off, we crossed near a skydiving airport. We could look far ahead and see the Medical Center and the building around the Galleria. We spotted the Astrodome and NRG Statdium. Then we flew along the west edge of Southside Place and West University. As we crossed Memorial Park, spotting the golf course below us, we starting turning east until we were just north of Interstate 10, then turned fully east and bisected the Corridor. (The cyan line below is our actual track… I added the red arrows to help identify that line.)
Being a Tuesday, in the middle of the day, there were no stadium TFRs, so we could fly through the southern parts of the Corridor. (If you look closely, you’ll see the faint outlines indicating where the stadium TFRs would be, if they were active. Also note, the red arrow in the bottom-left corner is more-or-less pointing also toward the NRG stadium (a magenta colored diamond labeled “stadium”) and to its east the Astrodome… oddly, spelled with a lowercase “A”.)
Up until we started the turn east, the views and landmarks were all considerably different than my usual trip around Houston. Very interesting and enjoyable.
The rest of the pictures — through the Corridor and beyond, to Anahuac — were fairly normal, but being a beautiful day, I did manage a great shot of downtown. Also, we passed near the area where there had been a huge fire a few weeks before, and I managed an extreme telephoto shot of the blackened tanks.
Overall, this turned out to be a great flight with new angles and new things to see despite covering some of the same ground. There will be a future opportunity, I’m sure, to properly do our full circumnavigation, but nevertheless today we did a grand tour, for sure!
Time in the air, about 3 hrs 32 minutes.
Distance covered, about 191.5 miles.
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