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Location: Texas

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Office Shuttle

I've been running an office shuttle in the C340 fairly frequently. It's about a 20 minute flight in the 340 but a 2 hour drive by car from the corporate offices to plant 3.

Plant 3 is new. It has only been in operation since the middle of May and has had multiple personnel problems so it is not only the "suits" but also the office personnel that are flying back and forth. It makes for a long day. Even though it is a short flight arrivals are scheduled for before 0730 local and departures are after 1730.

I've been running this primarily as a VFR trip because it is short and it would take as much time to get a clearance as to make the flight. Yesterday it was borderline whether I might need a clearance or not. Everybody was reporting 3-4 miles in haze and that was just about right. Not many are out and about at 0700 so I wasn't too worried but I checked in with Polk AAF approach control ASAP just the same. When I was about 20 miles out he advised an inbound Jetlink flight that Polk had 1 3/4 miles in haze. I crossed my fingers hoping that the 4 miles of flight visibility I had would hold across town at the municiple airport. There are GPS and NDB approaches available. The 340 no longer has an ADF so the NDB approach is not an option. The KLN-90B works well however so I got the chart out in case I had to obtain an impromptu clearance and started down from my cruising altitude of 3000'. At 2000' the vis improved to about 5 miles and not long after that I got the airport in sight (4.7 mi. on the KLN-90B) and cancelled flight following.

I have some pics of Toledo Bend Reservoir on the afternoon return flight which illustrate the haze well that I'll post soon.

I'm scheduled to do the "office shuttle" again tomorrow.

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