Longhorns and Crosswinds…
Austin, Texas. The State Capitol of Texas. Home of the Longhorns. Cross-country friendly flight destination from San Antonio of 57.5 nautical miles.
On Sunday, February 13th, my brother-in-law David LaRocque and nephew Tanner LaRocque joined me for a quick hop to Austin Bergstrom International Airport. David was interested in running by the local REI store as he is a Boy Scout leader (and I almost never need an excuse to go to REI!). Tanner was along for the ride and was earning his Young Eagle wings on this voyage.
My nephew the Young Eagle
Tanner and David assisted me with the preflight with David holding the control wheel for me as we were occasionally buffeted by wind gusts. San Antonio ATIS was reporting a West wind at 14 knots.
I filed IFR for this flight hoping to get an ILS approach at KAUS and hoping to poke some holes through a scattered cloud deck that meandered above us. I quickly copied down the controller’s IFR clearance…
“Skyhawk 810SA is cleared to Austin-Bergstrom Intl Airport via Victor 550 then Centex direct. Fly runway heading. Maintain 5000. Departure on 127.10, squawk 4542.”
With IFR clearance obtained, we launched into the sky and quickly joined Victor 550. As forecast, the ride was bumpy with light turbulence (there was actually an Airmet for Moderate Turbulence below 8000 feet but we never encountered any).
We were soon receiving vectors from Austin Approach as I dialed in the ATIS for Austin-Bergstrom. What I heard provided a preview of the challenge I would soon face.
“Austin information Xray. Wind 260 at 11, Gusts to 19. Few 4500, Scattered 10,000, Altimeter 29.78″
The active runway there was Runway 17. I was looking at facing a direct crosswind of at least 11 knots with the potential of tackling a 19 knot crosswind.
As I turned final for Runway 17L, I noticed the airplanes nose quickly weathervaned to the right of the runway centerline. I added some left rudder to prepare the airplane for a side-slip crosswind approach. This helped but was not enough. It ended up taking a full left rudder deflection to keep our nose down the bumpy path to the runway. The gusty nature of the wind demanded constant control inputs (sometimes the wind would back off resulting in a need to relieve some left rudder pressure).
On short final I was doing about 75-80 knots at 20 degrees of flaps. As we got near the ground the crosswind abated some so I engaged full flaps to help slow us down. This was not the best move and was something I knew better than to do. The full-flap deployment decreased control effectiveness and lead to pitch adjustments that were necessary to keep our airspeed safely away from stall speeds.
It was a fight down to the pavement but a rewarding, relatively soft landing.
Soon we were taxiing to Trajen flight services where we topped off the fuel tanks and grabbed a courtesy car. A very nice one. A 2004 Mitsubishi Galante.
I found a few great deals on the clearance rack at REI and before long we were back at Trajet grabbing some snacks before heading back home.
The winds had died down some and with permission of Austin Approach, we circled the downtown area at 2,500 feet enjoying some great views of the city (including a rather large antenna farm west of the city that the controller warned us about. I was already well aware of them thanks to my eyes and my Garmin 296).
As we pointed our nose for home, I heard a request from the back seat. Tanner wanted to break my altitude record. Break it we did. We climbed to 6,600 feet and had a front row seat for an incredibly beautiful sunset.
Sunset over Canyon Lake at 3,000 feet MSL
The landing back at San Antonio was smooth and a welcome break from the high workload landing in Austin.
Tanner and David were awesome passengers. Tanner will soon appear in the “World’s Largest Logbook” as an official Young Eagle. It was a flight I won’t soon forget!
