Mountain Flying

The wife and I have been on a nice and well deserved vacation for the last week. We visited some family and did some fun things on our own. I even managed to get in some flying, as I had hoped.

Before leaving Bradenton, I contacted Brandon at Knoxville Flight Training, and arranged a mountain flying lesson. It turned out to be just the ticket. Knoxville Flight Training had been recommended to me through the AOPA forums, a valuable resource from time to time. For a low-time flat lander like me, the training was very helpful. Some day I hope to be able to fly to my favorite vacation spots in the North Carolina mountains without endangering anyone (especially me).

We did about 45 minutes of ground instruction before heading out to the plane, and talked about topics like wind direction and speed over mountain ridges, updrafts and downdrafts, route planning, emergency landings and survival planning when flying over remote areas. After that it was out the plane and away we went.

My brother, Benny, went along and took the photos. Brandon did the navigating, which freed me to fly the plane and have fun. We took off from Knoxville Downtown Island Airport (DKX) and flew south to the Calderwood dam. The photo at top is downtown Knoxville. The University of Tennessee football stadium is at the top left of the photo. To the left is a photo of the dam where a scene in the movie "The Fugitive" with Harrison Ford was filmed. We followed the river along the southern border of the Smokey Mountain National Park to Sylva, N.C. and the Jackson County airport (24A), where I performed my first mountain landing.

Yep, that's the airport running down the top of that ridge. We had some pretty good winds aloft that day, and were getting bounce around during the flight, but when we flew over the field, the windsock was hanging limp. The landing was uneventful, and with calm winds on the field, we taxied to far end of the runway, spun the plane around, opened the throttle for full power, leaned the engine for altitude and took off opposite of how we landed. With no wind on the field we took advantage of the topography as best we could. Brandon explained that it's not a good idea to take off uphill or into a mountain if it can be avoided. The photo below is us departing Jackson County.

As I mentioned, it was kinda bumpy at altitude. After taking off my photographer started feeling a bit sick, so the picture taking came to a quick halt. We didn't have an on board emergency, but you won't see photos of most of the rest of the trip. We flew to Franklin, N.C. and the Macon County airport (1A5) for another landing, where we got out of the plane for a few minutes. Benny took my picture with the plane in Franklin. After that it was back to Knoxville.

I did have my GPS logger with me, so I have a good track of the flight. Just click on the link and it will open, but you will need google earth installed. Brandon was great, and I would highly recommend a bit of mountain training to any Florida pilots thinking about flying into the hills.