First cross-country leg: Zephyrhills, Florida (near Tampa) to Meridian, Mississippi

This morning I showed up at the airport and gave Amy Unspecifiedlastname, the person who did the graphics on my plane, a quick Inkscape tutorial. Then Rand met up with me to wrap up some logbook details while I packed the plane.

My plane has two seats and a luggage space behind them, part of which is occupied by the parachute rocket tube and the emergency locator radio. Into those spaces I endeavored to put:

• myself,
• my clothes bag,
• my snack bag,
• my flight bag,
• a little bag of cleaning tools for the plane,
• the plane's documentation pouch,
• the plane's toolkit,
• my computer backpack,
• and the tie-down kit.

I rearranged things several times. I placed the flight bag in the passenger seat, but I couldn't put much there, because the stick needs to be able to move freely. Finally, I had just about everything squeezed in, and Rand pointed out that I hadn't yet packed the short wingtips.

I ended up leaving out an empty hard-sided suitcase, the covers for the long tips, and a pair of Crocs; Rand is going to mail those home for me.

I did some last-minute planning to find a destination and alternate airport with hangar space. Rand topped off the oil, and I'm on my way!

I climbed up above the cloud layer into calm air, and trimmed out at 112 kts. Unfortunately, I ended up battling a 20-25 kt headwind the whole way; my choice was 112 minus headwind above the clouds, or 76 kts in the bumps below.

I made a speedy stop in Cross City, Florida (KCTY) for fluid exchange.

Airports around Tallahassee were showing "marginal IFR" conditions, which was disconcerting, but once I got to that area, it was clear that there were plenty of safe options on my route.

On this route, I was flying 131 mph through the air, getting 44 miles per gallon. It didn't really work out that well over the ground; with the headwinds, I was getting a mere 108 mph and 33 mpg. Still quite a bit better performance than my pickup truck.

I overflew just a corner of Georgia and then Alabama to land in Meridian, Mississippi. Look at the cool planes I shared the ramp with!

The hangar at Meridian turned out to be enormous. The doors weren't even all the way open, and I was able to drag my plane right in with the long wingtips still attached.

Thunderstorms still forecast west of here tomorrow, so Wednesday will be a rest and work day. NOAA willing, I'll be back in the saddle on Thursday!