AHHHH...THAT FEELS GOOD

Arriving at the airport, Mercury had our plane fueled and pulled up near the entrance.  Until this trip, I did not appreciate how much I loved Mercury Air Centers and other name brand FBOs. We flew up the coast from Charleston, South Carolina to Kitty Hawk.

Along the coast of South and North Carolina, we saw the inter-coastal waterway, a saltwater channel that you can pilot a boat along from Florida to Maryland. Hotels and beach houses covered almost the entire coastline of the Atlantic ocean. "Going to the beach" had a much deeper meaning here than in Northern California - where the coastline is mostly cliffs, the water is cold and full of sharks. When we reached the Outer Banks off the coast of North Carolina, they looked like bits of land that had been scraped across the ocean. Some were islands and some peninsulas. Some islands were only accessed by boat, ferry or plane.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

In the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we landed at Kitty Hawk's airport, First Flight. First Flight was near Kill Devil Hill, which was a sand dune anchored by grass. On the flats near the Wright brothers' rebuilt workshop sat the location of the first powered airplane flights.  A steel rail fixed into the ground showed the original plane's "launching gear". The plane had no wheels.  Stones de marked the sequence and length of each test flight. Kitty Hawk was a windy and cold place amidst sand dunes. Bus loads of pre-teen and teenaged school kids swarmed over the sights and monuments.

The Wright brothers chose Kitty Hawk as their testing place because it had a constant 10 to 15 miles per hour wind and sand. They needed the wind for lift to get the plane in the air. They needed the sand to cushion their planned crash landings. The Postmaster at Kitty Hawk had written to the Wrights to confirm the wind and sand before they moved their experiments here.  They worked at the site off and on for several years. I was miserably cold and wind-blown here, but the Wright brothers found this location "invigorating."

We toured the historical center and the 100th Anniversary of Flight pavilion. Cirrus had a display in the pavilion. What made the Wright brothers so unique was the engineering methods and resulting data they used to develop their planes. They used a small wind tunnel to test their designs and as a result developed the shape of the prop. They were the first to use a wind tunnel.  This was huge. In their many experiments using the wind tunnel, kites and gliders, they found that most existing data collected by other inventors was wrong. Their first powered flight in December, 1903 was the result of many years of research. With their background work, others around the world developed and improved airplanes at a very fast pace.  Current prop designs have changed little since the ones designed by the Wright brothers.

ENJOYING PIG COUNTRY

On our flight back to Charleston, we took an inland route. We stopped at the Duplin County airport for fuel. Amazingly nice airport: 6,000 foot runway, hanger space for jets, fresh pavement, newly built terminal, and surrounded by farmland--no cities in sight. According to the one person there, a young "airport rat" pumping gas at the self-serve pumps, Duplin County saw regular business jet traffic like Citations and a Gulf Streams twice per day. The traffic supported local industry: a paper mill, chicken ranches and a lot of small to medium sized pig farms denoted by ponds of effluence--pig shit in water. As we flew over the effluence ponds, I was glad to be out of smell shot.

BEYOND GRITS AND DEEP FRIED OCRA

Back in Charleston, we found a new restaurant called FIG. They advertised organic, locally grown produce and had an attractive and clever, modern interior. The original art along the main wall was a series of canvases tacked at each corner so they buckled a bit, painted with black chalkboard paint and contained custom chalk drawings by a local artist.  Low cost - yet clever.  The drawings were French country in theme: produce, chickens, etc. We had the locally caught sushi-grade tuna: crispy on the outside, rare in the middle, with a nicoise olive puree drizzled around the plate. The food was excellent.

Pilot Notes for Leg 4 :: KCHS to KFFA