There were plenty of landing places in the event of an engine failure everywhere on the trip, except for a 40 mile stretch near the PA/NY border… and all of NH and VT.Flight Time: 13.8 hours ... Total Engine Time: 342.5 hours
Build Time: 0.0 hours ... Analysis Time: 0.0 hours
Left NH at around 6:45am.
There were plenty of landing places in the event of an engine failure everywhere on the trip, except for a 40 mile stretch near the PA/NY border… and all of NH and VT.
Just a few clouds in the Connecticut River valley. NH is on the left, VT on the right.
By the time I got to NY though there was no shortage of landing sites.
This is Albany.
I skipped Wellsville with its $2.80 gas and instead landed at Corning, NY (7N1) for gas. It was high time for a grass landing, anyways.
The Allegany Reservoir on the NY/PA border.
A nice view of Lake Erie. Flew over it for a while at 10500 ft to avoid the
Cleveland class C airspace.
Speaking of Cleveland, here it is. That is Burke Lakefront airport on the coast.
17 boats playing follow the leader???
Stopped in Napoleon, OH (7W5) again to buy fuel. Flew past Rochester, Indiana, where I had spent the night on the way out. Was pretty lucky with easterly winds pretty much the entire trip back. That plus gaining two hours from time changes put me quite a bit ahead of schedule, so I kept going.
Here you can see how Illinois has made up interesting road layouts to compensate for their dull terrain.
This is Burlington, Iowa. That is the Mississippi River behind the airport. Luckily no thunderstorms in Iowa today, and still an easterly wind.
Next scheduled stop was Hastings, NE (HIS). Along the way however I became paranoid that something was wrong with the plane. It seemed like the plane was 'lurching' for no apparent reason. So I decided to make a precautionary landing at Limona, IA. As I shut off the engine I could see a puff of blue smoke and smell burning rubber. Great, I thought, now I'm in the middle of nowhere and the engine or redrive belt has given out. I
took off the cowling and inspected everything but could only find that the oil filter was about 1/4 turn loose and dripping oil onto the muffler. Inspected the rest of the plane and didn't find anything wrong. Decided the smoke/smell was from the oil on the muffler and the lurching must have just been wind, so resumed the flight. There were a couple cloud layers for a little while between Limona and Hastings, so I had to keep flying lower and lower.
Landed at Hasting, Nebraska about 5 minutes after sunset. Spent the night at a motel.