Flying our DA40 from Roanoke VA to San Jose, CA
Posted: Thu Mar 03, 2011 9:17 pm
Tim and I just finished a cross-country trip, relocating our (well, now his) DA40 from Roanoke, Virginia to San Jose, California - a roughly 2300 nm journey. We followed a southern route to improve our chances of finding better weather in February, which worked well for us. We had planned to make the trip in 3 easy flying days, but ended up getting stuck in Midland, Texas for 36 hours, waiting for a storm to blow through from Phoenix. In the end, we completed the trip with just 2 days of flying, logging a total of 21.2 Hobbs hours.
We flew the entire trip under IFR, starting at 6000', and ending up at 14,000' on some of the western legs. We burned a total of 184.5 gallons, for an average fuel burn of 8.7 gph overall. The aircraft was flawless - not a single issue the entire trip! I can't say enough wonderful things about the DA40 - it is just a phenominal aircraft.
We ended up visiting the following airports:
KROA Roanoke, VA
KSMQ Smyrna, TN
KLIT Little Rock, AR
KDTO Denton, TX
KMAF Midland, TX
KDMN Deming, NM
KBLH Blythe, CA
KRVH San Jose, CA
The trip logs for all 7 legs are posted in the Reports section (330 - 336). Also, they are on FlightAware under N395JP in case anyone is interested: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N395JP
I plan to post lots of pictures from the trip in this thread, and I'm sure Tim will chime in with many more details. It was a wonderful experience - one I would definitely do again if I ever had the chance!
We flew the entire trip under IFR, starting at 6000', and ending up at 14,000' on some of the western legs. We burned a total of 184.5 gallons, for an average fuel burn of 8.7 gph overall. The aircraft was flawless - not a single issue the entire trip! I can't say enough wonderful things about the DA40 - it is just a phenominal aircraft.
We ended up visiting the following airports:
KROA Roanoke, VA
KSMQ Smyrna, TN
KLIT Little Rock, AR
KDTO Denton, TX
KMAF Midland, TX
KDMN Deming, NM
KBLH Blythe, CA
KRVH San Jose, CA
The trip logs for all 7 legs are posted in the Reports section (330 - 336). Also, they are on FlightAware under N395JP in case anyone is interested: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N395JP
I plan to post lots of pictures from the trip in this thread, and I'm sure Tim will chime in with many more details. It was a wonderful experience - one I would definitely do again if I ever had the chance!