After an overnight in El Paso and a full regular day of work, it was time for the final leg of the journey. El Paso turned out out to be a great place for an overnight stop. Thanks to both NASA and the military there was no shortage of noteworthy aircraft on the ramp. The coolest plane on the ramp had to be the NASA plane that the FBO staff refers to as ” Shamu”. You can see why in the pic below:
The flight from KELP to KPSP was totally uneventful.
But the landing into Palm Springs was a bit exciting. I was surprised to find that Palm Springs has no usable precision approaches. This is probably because it is in the desert and doesn’t really need them. They did have 3 RNAV RNP approaches, which I was not authorized to fly and a VOR GPS-B approach to runway 31L. I had never seen a VOR GPS-B before. So naturally, like any curious kid, I asked ATC for it specifically. For some reason, ATC didn’t want to grant my repeated descent requests until I was rather close to the Thermal VOR. This meant I had to descend @ ~ 1000-1200 FT/min all the way to the runway!
I used the Cloud Ahoy app again. Unfortunately, I didn’t remember to turn it on until I was climbing out of 12K ft. As such, only the partial flight recap is available on their server 🙁
I need to add it to my checklist for the trip home….
But for now, after the 2217 nautical mile trip, it’s time to enjoy Palm Springs and the AOPA Summit (registration and the parade of planes starts tomorrow)!
Cheers,
==T.J.==