Logbook: A Brand New Airplane

10.6.2004 – N65343 (2004 Cessna 182)

KIDP – KGTU – KAUS

4.0 hours, 2 instrument approaches, 1 landing, 0.8 night.

On October 5, 2004, Bryan Bogle and I shared one of my life’s coolest experiences.  We arrived at the Cessna factory in Independence, Kansas to take delivery of N65343, a brand new Cessna 182.  The weather was perfect.  No wind.  Not a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was probably in the mid 50’s – a little chilly for a Central Texan.  Bryan flew the delivery flight and I sat in the back seat, documenting the whole thing with pictures and videos.

We spent the balance of the day in training to learn the all new Garmin G1000 avionics suite.  Garmin revolutionized avionics with this system, and everything we knew about reading instruments in the cockpit was completely new and out of place.  However, some pre-study time, and excellent instruction had us well prepared for the flying portion of the training the following day.

On October 6, we met our instructor at the airport and spent several hours that day getting familiar with the new 182 and the G1000 in the real world.  Having owned a 182 for the past 18 months, I expected to feel right at home.  Oddly, the G1000 came easy, but I couldn’t land that airplane smoothly to save my life that morning.  Still not sure why.  Bryan showed me up with squeakers in the early afternoon after my 3.6 hours of bouncing around in the morning.

After the training was complete, we had a decision to make.  Go home, or spend another night.  A quick check of weather said it was a 4 hour flight (39 knot headwinds).  There were thunderstorms in the DFW area that were forecast to clear to the east of our flight path, and the forecast at Austin and Gray (Ft. Hood) was for a clear calm night.  Perfect.  Let’s go.

We fueled up to the gills – 89 usable gallons.  (That’s about 6 hours of flying time).  Once airborne and enroute, we began playing with all the buttons and dials on the G1000 while the autopilot dutifully followed the magenta line painted on the massive multi-function display (MFD).  The headwinds had our groundspeed below 100 knots occasionally, but we had plenty to do.  The excitement of a brand new plane, and the new technology Garmin had created kept us awake and alert, regardless of the fact that we’d been in this plane for over 4 hours already that day.

As we approached the DFW area, the Stormscope revealed that the storms around DFW were not moving eastward, but had stalled out over the metro area.  (The satellite XM weather radar had not yet become available.)  Easy enough.  We took a look at the BIG picture on the MFD and figured we could go west of the storms to the Milsap VOR and then down to Georgetown, our home base.  However, after we made it parallel with Waco, we began to notice a new problem.  Ground fog was developing all over the region below us.  We checked weather in Georgetown and Austin, both of which were still fine.  We soldiered on.

Once we reached the Ft. Hood area, Gray approach advised that Georgetown was 300/2.  (300 foot ceiling and 2 miles visibility).  That was below the GPS approach minimums.  Oh boy.  This just got interesting.  We set up the approach to give it a try.  Then we watched as the magical new G1000 system and KAP140 autopilot worked us through the approach and drove us right over the top of the airport at decision height.  We saw one faint pass of the airport beacon.  We would not be landing there that night.

The missed approach was equally as easy as everything else up to that point.  Full power, push a button, and ride.  “Wow.  This stuff used to be really hard,” I said to Bryan.  We called Austin and took the ILS to 17L.  10 minutes later, we were at the outer marker with the airport in sight.  We let the system fly us down to about 100 feet and touched down with 3 tiny squeaks.  I think we still debate who made that landing.  We taxied up to the FBO there, shut down, got out and gave each other a very emphatic high-five!  Twenty minutes later, Austin was down to ILS minimums.

We had just taken our new airplane on an adventure with tough, changing weather, and conquered it all without really breaking a sweat.  Some would advise against hard IFR flying with so little experience with a new system.  I would not disagree.  But, we checked the forecast, and it was benign, so we went.  And when things got tough, that new technology worked hard for us.  It was a great testament to the power that we had just invested in.

The what-ifs are still a part of my learning experience though.  Now, when I see fog developing over a large area, I get much more proactive about a backup plan.  When we landed, we still had over 2 hours of fuel, so the decision to try it was well justified.  If we had not had the fuel onboard, I would definitely have stopped short and spent another night on the road.

What a great day!  Over 8 hours of flying in a brand new airplane.  That’s a red letter day in any logbook.