Day 5 - Truth or Consequences to Midland

Tony Cacciarelli • June 19, 2020

T or C, NM (KTCS) to
Midland, TX (KMDO) - June 19, 2019

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Sharing the hangar at KTCS with a real classic

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Dodging around White Sands Missle Range

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Cool decor at Michael's Charcoal Grill

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A few more planes hanging around

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Original Instagram Post

This was definitely another Meat and Potatoes day.

I have to admit that this part of the journey is less of an adventure and more of a transition.

When I got to the T or C airport around 8am this morning, the wind was already picking up. The A5 had spent the night in the hangar with some interesting company.

I followed the Rio Grande to the south and then headed east at El Paso. The White Sands Missile Range is a huge restricted area just north of El Paso and east of T or C. I couldn't fly through it, so I had to go down and around.

I'd originally planned to go to Midland in one flight, but after checking my fuel it seemed better to make a stop at Winkler airport (KINK 😁), fuel up there and fly the last 45 minutes or so to Midland. I've heard too many stories of people running out of fuel because they didn't want to make the extra stop, so I'm not gonna become one of them.

It was 110 degrees in Midland when I arrived and I lost motivation pretty quickly for exploring. The Midland International Air and Space Port had originally caught my attention, but it turns out it was just named that to allow the now defunct XCOR Aerospace to test their spaceship designs. 🙁

I ended up grabbing dinner at @michaelscharcoalgrill. It's got an aviation theme, so it seemed appropriate enough.

Tomorrow it's over to Dallas to meet up with some friends there and do some laundry.

Oh, also, I've posted a short video on my YouTube channel with a summary of the first five days. Link is in my profile.

😀👍🏼

Coming out of T or C and down into El Paso was more of that desert beauty with the mountains and cliffs rising up out of basically flat land. It's always impressive to see from the air.

The area to the west of Midland, however, wins the record for worst scenery of the entire trip - and I mean the WHOLE trip, not just up to this point.

It was nothing but flat, gray/brown land with oil derricks, miles of pipes and vertical vents burning off excess gas. And it was another scorching hot day. It's a real contrast from the previous few days. With no water in sight for miles, the A5 felt a little out of its element, but it was still doing fine getting from A to B. I was pleased with my decision-making skills and not pushing to try and get all the way to Midland without making a fuel stop. It may seem like a simple thing, but there's an aviation disease called "get-there-itis" which causes pilots to make bad decisions. The closer you get to your destination, the stronger the pull of get-there-itis. This can lead to running out of gas or flying into bad weather all in the name of trying to make it to the final destination.

As the saying goes;

It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than the other way around.

Winkler was a perfect example of a small airport that allowed me to fuel up and get on my way. If those were gone I would've had to completely change my plan for today and might've had to divert to an alternate airport instead.

I can't stress enough how important the entire system of local airports is. Not only are they helpful for small aircraft to navigate across the country, they're critical for infrastructure in rural areas and disaster response.

My motel in Midland was kinda rough, but the room was clean and it was within walking distance of food. As I was walking to dinner I went through a section of sidewalk that was completely overrun with huge ants. Everything's bigger in Texas, right? I actually crossed the street rather than walk through them. They probably could've carried me off if they wanted to.

I spent some time after dinner cutting together the video about the first 5 days of the trip. The GoPros seemed to be hanging in there, but I had to abandon my plan of running the cockpit camera for the entire flight. I'd hope to be able to capture the front view and cockpit/radio audio so I would at least have that to cut together, but the wing camera continued to have problems connecting to my phone and the cockpit camera wasn't recharging off my external battery pack. It was tough to troubleshoot because I was busy flying the airplane all the time, but I was able to try a few things and came up with a system that let me run the cameras when something interesting was happening. The wing cam was still hit or miss, but giving it a hard reboot every morning seemed to help. Still wasn't thrilled with the GoPro experience.

On a completely separate note, I should point out that I'm writing this recap as the entire world is several months into the Coronavirus pandemic. It was incredibly fortunate that everything aligned last year and allowed me to do this trip. If I'd put it off one more year I would've most likely had to cancel. Timing really is everything.