The mission was to help ferry a friend’s airplane from the U.S. East Coast to their new home in Nevada. Their Skyhawk was a tried and true friend, with a number of mods that made the trip less of an ordeal than it might sound. To complete the mission, I had planned a three-day jaunt, most of it through the South and Southwest U.S.
Day One of our trek was uneventful and Day Two saw us motoring west from Arkansas, headed for a planned overnight in Albuquerque, N.M. Winds at normal Skyhawk cruising altitudes had picked up, producing a stiff headwind, but the low-level flow hadn’t gotten with the program. We hugged the Texas terrain closely, suffering only a very minor hit to groundspeed before arriving at ABQ pretty much on-schedule. We looked forward to completing the trip the next day.
