Flying cross country in a 310!

mrivc211

Well-Known Member
Well, looks like the 310 is just about bought and we're gonna be ferrying it back to SNA from Florida pretty soon here. I don't have any 310 time so I asked another CFI who has about 100 hours in one to come with me. Now the best part will be planning on how to navigate the trip. Should we go VFR or IFR? Across colorado/oklahoma or Texas New Mexico? I'm using this as more of a ferry/chance of a life time flight. ANyone have any ideas or fun places along the way?

Anyone in Socal wanna come?
 
Heya,


Sounds great dude! Should be a lot of fun for ya. My personal preferences would be to do the trip IFR and I'd run south along Texas and New Mexico. The land is lower there and you'll have less of an issue should you loose an engine. It's my understanding the 310 has a somewhat anemic single engine climb rate, so you don't want to have to worry as much about slipping down into terrain if you loose one of your engines.

Cheers


John Herreshoff
 
Sounds like a lot of fun. I'd stay to the south if I were you. I'm not sure about the oxygen/altitude capabilites of the 310 but I would always try to avoid flying over the colorado front range if possible. Thunderstorms will probably be your biggest concern. We've been getting some monsters every afternoon here in central-south Texas, but the t storm problems don't get much better up north.

It's tough to say wether you should go VFR or IFR. A lot of your flying will be over sparsely populated areas, so traffic avoidance might not be a big issue. I generally prefer to fly IFR when flying over unfamiliar areas and long flights because it's such a hassle to do the pilotage checkpoints. VFR does give you more route fexibility though, and it might be good to stay in VMC so you can visually avoid t storm cells.

Have fun and good luck.
 
Hey,
I'd go south through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, etc.....Stop in Vegas if you haven't been there. I'd also go IFR.
 
If you're going to be doing this within the next three months - GO IFR!

The midwest in the summer is nothing but a gigantic IMC generator.

When we flew PHX - STL last 4th of July we went VFR and it was nothing but dodge a storm, land, check the WX, take off, dodge a storm, land, check the WX, so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

You'll probably still end up doing a lot of that anyway but at least with IFR you can punch through low scud and what not.

As far as the route I'd follow the coast (Pensacola, Mobile, Naw'leans) into TX then up/over to Midland, El Paso, PHX and finally Cali. Just make sure to get through Guadalupe (due east of El Paso in between ELP and MID) pass either early in the morning or late evening - mid day the turbulece gets pretty bad.

If you do stop in PHX let me know.

And remember out in the flatlands you'll probably not want to get to much higher than 5,500 - 7,500 as that's where most normally aspirated engines perform best. Now if you're turbo it's up to you!
 
I'd fly morning IFR....take an extra day and stay out of the afternoon IFR crap! You wouldn't believe the lightning in Florida! Being originally from the north it really is something to see!!!

Where in Florida are you picking it up?
 
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