The skies to the eastern side of TTA were clear. Lumberton seemed to be a good choice, no clouds between TTA and there, and a good route that took us over Fayetteville. I dialed in a new setting on the camera that morning in hopes of getting sharper images and thought Fayetteville would provide some good photo ops. I think it worked.
Our route
I planned the flight at the last minute. We did this one a couple of years ago so the flight plan itself was already done. I just had to get the weather and apply the winds to our flight plan. Interesting side note… while I was on the phone with the weather briefer he mentioned that the briefer next to him was talking about a large fire in New York City. I actually forgot about that until right now, but haven't heard anything so it must not have been a big deal.
It was morning and an AIRMET had been established, but was expiring at 10am local. To those of you who don't know what an AIRMET is, it stands for "Airmen's Meteorological Information". Basically, it's an advisory/description of the occurrence or expected occurrence of some sort of weather phenomena which may affect the safety of aircraft operations (yeah, I stole that from wikipedia). AIRMETs give info on instrument conditions (ceilings less than 1000' and/or visibility less than 3 miles), turbulence, or icing. All things for me to avoid.
We had the plane until noon, and had about 50 miles to go and back, so we were pushing it on time. We started up, taxied to runway 3, and off we went. We made left traffic, but continued climbing through pattern altitude of 1200' MSL. Upon reaching 1700' MSL (500' above pattern altitude) we turned south toward Fayetteville. Direct flight to Lumberton is not allowed because of the restricted areas above Fort Bragg. Our course took us towards the lesser known of the two air bases in Fayetteville, Simmons Army Airfield.
Simmons AFB in Fayetteville. If you look closely almost in the middle of the ramp
closest to the camera you can see a helicopter hovering about 50' off the ground.
closest to the camera you can see a helicopter hovering about 50' off the ground.
From here we turned slightly toward the west and pretty much followed I-95 all the way to Lumberton. In the distance we could see where it all began for me, the Laurinburg-Maxton Airport (MEB). It was about 20-25 miles away. It's always satisfying to me to see something that clearly from that far away.
From about 12 miles out we could easily make out LBT in front of us. Up until this point I had been on with Fayetteville Approach for traffic advisories. Once LBT was visible, I let them know and they cleared me to change to the airport's local radio frequency. We executed a standard pattern entry to runway 5 and had a nice landing on a really flat runway.
Short final to runway 5, LBT
Because of our lack of time we taxied straight back to the runway and took back off. I wanted some good pics of the airport, and the sun was to the southeast, so I turned east and then south after taking off so we could get a good view of the airport with the sun behind us before heading back home to the north. Emily takes great pictures.
Lumberton Municipal Airport - Runway 5 is the one on the far left with the big "5" on it.
I-95 is the highway on the other side of the airport. If you've ever driven down that way
you may recognize the big water tower painted like an American flag directly
above the wing out by the highway.
I-95 is the highway on the other side of the airport. If you've ever driven down that way
you may recognize the big water tower painted like an American flag directly
above the wing out by the highway.
We got back in touch with Fayetteville Approach for traffic advisories. The trip back was a lot like the trip down. The weather was fantastic for flying, clear and smooth air. On the way back over Fayetteville we got a good view of the Fayetteville Regional Airport (FAY) off the right wing.
Fayetteville Regional Airport
Minutes later we were flying over Fort Bragg with Pope AFB (POB) in the background. The controller said that the restricted airspace over Fort Bragg was inactive at my altitude, which I'm assuming means I could have flown right through. I stuck with the original plan and flew around, but I did get a little closer to Pope than I usually do. It was pretty cool.
Fort Bragg with Pope AFB
Coming back into TTA there was only one other plane on the radio who was doing an instrument approach to runway 3. He was in a faster plane than me so I gave way to him. To enter the pattern I had to overfly the field at 1700', then loop around and descend at the same time 1200' to enter the left downwind for runway 3. We landed at 11:56 (4 minutes to spare!). Great trip, it was fun.
