Flying Far For Four Magical Minutes
Winging our way into the path of totality was absolutely worth the trip.
Did y’all hear there was a total eclipse last week?
For two years, I’d been hatching and modifying plans to fly the Mooney to go see it, and I even bid my primary week of vacation this year to see it—I wanted to be certain that work wouldn’t get in the way of fun.
My initial plan had been a trip to upstate New York, where my buddy Tim Walker lived, to see the eclipse pass over his house and airstrip. In the meantime, he’d moved to Long Island. Plan B involved another airstrip at his friend’s place, also near Rochester, but that also fell flat after Amy changed jobs and didn’t have a whole lot of time off to spare—our trip which would have continued up to Maine got trimmed down considerably.
Then someone from work suggested Sikeston, Missouri, where in addition to the celestial event, we could get a great meal at Lambert’s Café. If you’re unfamiliar with Lambert’s Café, here’s the short version. Meals are served family-style, including all the great southern staples, and the dinner rolls are tossed across the room at you. “Home of the throwed rolls,” is their catchphrase. It’s an experience, and mere mortals often stand in line for hours for the dining experience. Old man Lambert, it seems, had a soft spot for pilots, as he was one himself. He’s passed on, but the VIP treatment continues. As you approach Sikeston, tell the folks on Unicom that you’re headed to Lambert’s and they’ll call the van for you. The restaurant will drive you over, and escort you in through the exit—and to the next available table, bypassing the long line. The café is worth a trip of its own, eclipse or not.
But as the big day appeared, the weather began to conspire against us. Fred Ogden, a friend I’ve met via Mooneyspace, was plotting a similar trip in his Mooney from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He’d been eyeballing Melbourne, Arkansas as a possibility. It was centered in the four-minute swath of totality, and as the clock ticked down, it kept looking better and better.
But the forecasts varied a little and I held out until the night before, as I considered a few other airports within the path. The FAA had issued guidance that pilots should expect ATC services to be overloaded and that flight following or IFR clearances near the eclipse’s path shouldn’t be expected.
Amy and I loaded up the Mooney, then hopped over to Carrollton, Georgia, to pick up my mother for her first trip in the Mooney. Then, all loaded up, we launched out to Oxford, Mississippi, where we landed and let that line of weather roll over the top of us overnight.
Traveling with Mom was a new experience—she hadn’t been in an airplane with me in almost 20 years, since shortly after I’d gotten my private ticket. She seemed to enjoy the ride.
As a side note—at many of the smaller airports, getting “the last miles” from the airport to town are often a struggle. Trying to wrangle a rental car for a quick overnight is often next to impossible—the Enterprise location in Oxford is closed on Sundays, for example. But Oxford is home to Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. Where there’s a division I university, there are college students needing a ride home from the bar. And where there’s drunk college students, there are rideshare services like Uber and Lyft. It was a $6 ride to the hotel. Lesson learned: College towns make great single-night layovers.
The morning dawned as the last of the weather cleared, but by the time we got breakfast and headed to the airport, a low broken cloud layer had set in. I hate the term “Marginal VFR,” but the phrase fit this instance. We preflighted the airplane, climbed aboard, and stayed low over the farm fields of northern Mississippi as we headed northeast and the skies opened up in short order.
One of my “alternate” airports had already declared itself out of parking space before we left Oxford. I switched between the Unicom frequencies of the other fields as we flew, and heard several pilots asking whether there were still parking spaces available. Some airports had filled in, others still had a few spots.
Fred and I both had agreed on Melbourne based on the forecast, and two other factors. The runway at Melbourne is only 4,003 feet long, and its identifier, 42A, isn’t an ICAO standard one (there’s no K in it). Both the short runway and lack of an ICAO identifier, we figured, would keep most of the traffic away. Private jets use up a lot of ramp space and runway; we figured the turnout in Melbourne would be a smaller crowd.
I landed about 90 minutes ahead of totality. We parked, and broke out the party supplies—we’d brought a lawn chair for Mom, and an inflatable lounger that Amy and I could share, as well as a cooler of drinks and some leftover hotdogs from home for a picnic lunch.
As we set up our party, a golf cart rolled up. Chris Emerson introduced himself as owner of Emerson Air Service, the field’s maintenance shop. “We fired up the grill. There’s hamburgers and hotdogs ready to eat, and there are drinks in the fridge. Come help yourself.” Indeed, the hangar was set up with folding tables and chairs, stacked with food and drink. Gunny, the shop pup, accepted ear scritches as payment for the meal, and it was a fun mix of aviators from all over who had all converged on this spot to experience four minutes of magic.
A thin whisp of cirrus clouds had passed as we landed; as the big moment approached the skies were perfectly clear. Circumstances, concentration and coincidence had lined up a perfect viewing for the eclipse. I set up my GoPro Hero 3 to record the experience, and hit record about 20 minutes ahead of totality. I’d debated bringing my Canon DSLR and a big lens with a solar filter, but had left it at the last minute—I decided that I’d rather experience the thing than sweat out documenting it. The pros would have better material on Instagram and YouTube before we got home anyway.
As the partial eclipse progressed, the light and shadows got wonky. I’d experienced a partial eclipse at my crash pad in New York in 2017, and I can now say this: No amount of a partial eclipse can even approach the experience of totality. It was like being in a theater when the house lights dim for the show.
We didn’t get raptured. America wasn’t overthrown by a group of insurrectionists, and none of the other conspiracies came to fruition either. For four minutes, we all looked up at the sky in wonder, some of us seeing such an event for the first time, others almost certainly enjoying the last such event that would fall within their lifetime. It was surreal and spectacular.
Fred had brought his camera, properly filtered, and set up to capture the event. His photos were better than I could have managed, and I share them here with his permission.
Exiting totality was like being in a dark stadium when someone throws the switch to the floodlights—the color of the light was all wonky as the brightness dialed back up, and then after a few minutes, we were back to normal.
When we landed, a helicopter had been parked at the fuel pumps, and I didn’t want to be in his rotor wash when he departed. So I waited—and after the eclipse, everyone wanted to fuel up and go. I finally pulled the Mooney into the line for the self-serve pump once a spot opened up, and then someone in a Bonanza pulled right into the opening everyone was using to leave the area, and shut down to wait for fuel. Self-awareness: Failed.
Another Mooney, having just fueled and preparing to leave, was now parked nose-to-nose with the doctor killer, and as the Mooney’s pilot and his girlfriend just about pitched a fit, I walked over with my Mooney towbar, gave a less-than-enthused gaze at the Bonanza guy, and pushed the trapped Mooney back, and gave him a 180-degree turnout, allowing him to leave the logjam.
Once we fueled up and made a quick restroom stop, I hit refresh on my flight plan and gave the weather a quick look. The line of weather that had leapfrogged us in Mississippi was now over Alabama, ruling out a straight-line flight home. I laid some lines on the map – we’d head direct to Nashville, initially, and as we got closer, we’d make a right turn toward Chattanooga, and then make a run south, just ahead of the weather. It was the long way home, but we’d get there with time and fuel to spare.
We launched and with a close eye on ADS-B traffic, I tuned up Memphis and monitored their frequencies for the first few sectors we crossed. “Unable your VFR request,” they told many inquiries, and it was clear they were struggling to handle the IFR traffic requesting clearances – some filed hours ahead of time, and others asking for pop-up clearances despite the FAA’s memos asking us to avoid that if possible. Finally, about 125 miles into our flight, I heard others getting VFR flight following, and I joined the party. We started at 5,500 feet heading east, then climbed to 7,500 as a lower layer of clouds settled in around 5,500. Then, the clouds started reaching up toward us.
“Hey Memphis, if you can spare another of those pop-up clearances, N5746Q would really love one of those.”
They took down the route I wanted to follow over Chattanooga for the weather, and we descended to 7,000 where we got jostled lightly by a few of the clouds, but with a few minor deviations, we missed the worst of things. As we turned south just shy of Chattanooga, we clipped a little rain here and there, just enough to clean the pollen off and soften up some dead bugs on the leading edges. We landed at Carrollton, where Mom headed to her car. I threw some gas on board and we hopped the last 12 miles to the hangar, still ahead of the weather and with a little daylight to spare.
It was a lot of flying for four minutes of magic. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
Nice.
Well done.
I lucked into a Swiss businessman that wanted to stop and see the eclipse on his way to a week of business meetings in LA. So we took him on the sky hotrod (a Citation X) From Boston to Sherbrooke, Quebec and then on to LAX. It was a good eclipse with alot of locals, GA flyins, and groupies. I enjoyed the 2017 eclipse totality better because of being with family rather than at work, but this was easy work.