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Overview
You have likely heard of the “$100 Hamburger”, a wonderful way to utilize your pilot license for some pure fun with friends by flying to a destination to grab a quick bite to eat. Sometimes, though, you just aren’t in the mood for a sloppy airport burger. So that’s where we come in hot with a gas station steak run. Trust us on this one. Hang in there.
The Flight
This flight started in our very own backyard. Yep – you read that right! We live in a very unique home where our aircraft is only a few steps away in a hangar attached to our home.
Our neighborhood consists of about 20 homes all surrounding a serene, 3,000-foot, private grass strip. Everyone in our neighborhood has access to use the grass strip whenever they would like, as long as it’s during daylight hours. Not only is our strip surrounded by tall trees, but it does not have lights, so it is not available for night landings – nor would you really want to anyways. So, the only rule is that you have to be back before it gets dark (did someone say, foreshadowing?).
Our airplane is a 1957 vintage Cessna 182A model. People think we are crazy for flying an “old” plane, but this plane is something special. We bought this plane in November of 2021 and named her “MoJo”. After some TLC, MoJo was a shining star, polished up, checked over in detail with our mechanic, and ready to take on adventures with us. Take a tour of our airplane by visiting our YouTube video here.
Flight to Perry, Georgia
What I love most about this airplane is how much we both crave to sit in the left seat. We don’t argue over who gets to fly, but we definitely have to go back to kindergarten rules and learn to share and play nice. So, for today, Kevin earned his place in the left seat on our flight from our home strip to Perry, Georgia.
The drive to Perry, Georgia from our home is 1.5 hours. The flight only took us a little over 20 minutes! Now this is the part where aviation is just plain cool to get somewhere so much faster. We back-taxied our grass strip, went through our run up checklists, and a fist full of throttle later we were flying.
We like to take off with flaps at 10° in our 182. A normal take off in our aircraft is technically with no flaps, but I have found that flaps at 10° really just pops the airplane off of the ground instead of having to pull it off of the ground (and is permitted per our operating handbook).
The flight there was easy peasy! Light winds, a clear & a million blue bird day, and not a lot of traffic out. We tracked a heading down to Perry and used Garmin Pilot paired with a GDL 52 to help us stay on track.
The GDL 52 is my secret weapon. I use this thing all the time. It looks like a little wifi router that you place on your dashboard of the plane. It’s an aviation satellite receiver that pairs to my iPad on my Garmin Pilot app, where I can then access subscription-free ADS-B traffic and weather. In addition, it also shows you highly accurate aircraft position. This is all very important to me as MoJo is awaiting her panel upgrade. As of today, MoJo is 100% steam gauges – no fancy GPS or anything like that.
Typically, navigating the old-fashioned way is fun! But this route took us over just a forest of trees. No lakes, no cities, nothing! It’s pretty difficult to navigate without landmarks, so I was happy to have the help from our Garmin Pilot/GDL 52 duo.
We entered the traffic pattern by overflying the field and joining up into the downwind. A few moments later and we were turning onto final for runway 18. The only thing that stood between us and the pavement was a big ole puff of smoke! A farmer was performing a controlled burn right on short final for the runway and before we could close up our air vents, we had a smoke smell filling the cockpit.
Now, obviously we knew where the smoke smell was coming from. But there is such a huge discomfort smelling smoke in the cockpit even knowing there was a ground fire happening below us. Just one of those pilot-isms that gives you the heebie jeebies.
We had a smooth landing (go, Kevin!) and shut down on the airport FBO ramp to head after our gas station steaks.
Perry-Houston Airport Authority FBO
This airport FBO is exactly what you would imagine from a small town USA uncontrolled field. We were the only signs of life on the ramp but were greeted by a wonderful gentleman with a smile walking up towards the FBO building.
He asked us what we needed – car? fuel? coffee? We were easy customers and all we needed was a courtesy car so we could pick up our dinner.
Stripling’s General Store
Nine minutes later and we were in a gas station parking lot. A vibrant, lively place with lots of people in and out. We knew we had arrived!
Most people in Georgia have heard of Stripling’s General Store but we were sold on it after our neighbor in our airpark community had flown down his Stinson to pick up steaks one night. We were so intrigued that we just HAD to do this for ourselves!
The store is super clean and reminds you of a lot of Georgia boutique shops full of southern decor, handmade pastries and jellies, and also sports a small grocery section. But for us, we headed straight to the butcher to pick out our steaks we would grill later that night.
Kevin is a huge ribeye fan, so there is no surprise to me that he picked out a huge cut of that. For me, I prefer a filet (who doesn’t?). We also picked up some smoked jalapeño cheddar sausage and a pound of original smoked sausage for our Stinson-owner neighbor that gave us this great idea.
Leaving the butcher was a huge selection of fresh made cakes that I couldn’t just walk by. There were so many flavors to choose from and the coolest part to me was that they offered full size or half sized cakes. Since it is just myself & Kevin at home, a half sized cake is just the perfect portion. I chose a shadow cake. I have no idea what a shadow cake is, I had never heard of it, but I can confirm that it is absolutely delicious!
Flight Home
You guessed it! Since Kevin flew us there, it was my turn to fly us home! I eagerly hopped in the left seat after we checked over the plane once more, loaded up our groceries in the cooler, and secured it all in the baggage area.
The sun was setting faster than expected. I suppose we spent a little more time in the store than we had planned on, so when I checked the time before takeoff I realized we only had about 35 more minutes until sunset and had a 25 minute flight in front of us. Remember earlier when I told you we had to land before it got dark? Yep.
We took off as quickly and safely as possible and headed north towards Atlanta. Again, using our iPad to help navigate the sea of trees and use as our backup to our own flight planning. Luckily, although the route lacks landmarks, it is a straight shot to our airport. We didn’t have to navigate around any airspaces, so it made it fairly easy to track a heading and direction until we found ourselves in familiar territory by our home strip.
About 15 minutes into our flight and I could feel it getting darker. The sun was slipping away faster than I have ever witnessed, almost like it was intentionally trying to stress me out. Also to be noted, if we happened to get back after dark, we did have an alternate plan which was to land at our neighboring public airport that has lights and uber back home. That would be a fine option but just wasn’t part of the plan. Landing back home and tucking away our plane in our own hangar is always the preference, of course.
After a few more minutes, I could see our strip! We were home and the sun hadn’t quite set yet. Now all I have to do is nail the landing and have no animals run out on the runway (it happens) so that we don’t have to waste any more minutes with a go-around. No pressure, right?
Everything went as hoped. No traffic to maneuver around. No deer on the runway. A stable approach. And topped it off with a smooth landing. You can’t ask for more, folks!
We even had time to shut down and push the plane back into the hangar before nightfall. Turns out, our timing was perfect! We just had a worry wart on-board….yes…me…
Dinner
After unloading the cooler with all our goodies, we headed upstairs to get cleaned up and start cooking up our hard earned, but very rewarding, dinner!
Want to see what we had cookin’? Click on the video below to watch the full episode and see just how this trip ended.
Want to flight plan like me? Check out Garmin Pilot, available for iPad & iPhones.
Want the aviation headsets we use? Check out Bose Aviation’s A20s and other noise cancelling headsets.
