The Breakfast Club
An Affiliate of the Arizona Pilots Assn
The Knife & Fork
The Breakfast Club Visits Tucson,
Clarion Hotel
By Warren McIlvoy
14 Dec 2002
With the impending holidays quickly approaching, the Breakfast Club event committee felt that a
moderately shot trip would be most appropriate for our December event. In
this case, a one hour flight down to the southeast over I-10, (or in our case,
over) to Tucson
would be just about right for the occasion.
One of the fun things about flying south from Scottsdale is that, unless you
wimp-out and fly under or around the Class B airspace, you get to work with the
approach controllers in order to traverse that most consecrated of all
airspaces, not withstanding the White House or other Presidential
retreats. Ordinarily, a call on 120.7 after the Scottsdale Tower cuts you
loose, will get you a response from that secotor's
guardian but today he was a little busy and I was informed that "all
VFR traffic, standby ". So, while waiting for that return call
from the controller, we were holding at 3500' and doing "wiffer-dills"just north of Squaw Peak.
After doing some sightseeing for a short while, I heard him respond to another
VFR aircraft but he did not respond to our initial call. About this time,
I felt that we had seen all of the north Phoenix
area that we cared-to and I gave him a "wake-up" call. This
time, we were given our "squawk code" and clearance through the Class
B via the "West Transition" at 3500'.
For those not familiar with the Phoenix Transition, the West Transition
is a north/south corridor that runs from about the approach end of runway 8,
and the 51 freeway. As you approach South
Mountain, a turn towards Firebird Lake will keep you in the good graces of
the "corridor gods". Somewhere between South
Mountain and Firebird Lake,
we were given an altitude clearance of "climb and maintain 5000".
We were about 10-15 miles north of Casa Grande before we were released from the
clutches of the Class B controller and we ascended to our cruise altitude of
5500'.
I called-in on our "group flight following" frequency of 123.45 to
see where some of the other Breakfast Club
folks were. From the responses that I heard, we were well back in the
pack but not the "tail end turtle". This portion of the state
between Phoenix and Tucson, is best described as a
"paradox". Situated, essentially in the heart of the Great Sonoran Desert, there are vast areas of nothing more
than desert scrub. On the other hand, this is a vast agricultural area
that is known World wide for its fine Pima Cotton. A few years
ago, I read somewhere that Maricopa County ranked fourth in the nation
if cotton production per acre. Another interesting little community is Eloy. An agricultural community at heart, it
is also the home of one of the most avid sky-diving enclaves on the face of the
planet. The Eloy airpost
is surrounded by mobile home units with the inhabitants apparently living for
nothing more than the thrill of sky-diving. Just the past week, a new
record for the Guinness Book of World Records was established for the
most participants in a single diving event. I believe that it was
somewhere in the area of 350 (more of less) divers.
The next piece of the State's geography of note is the pass between Neuman Peak (elev
4508') on the east side of I-10 and Picacho Peak
(elev 3370) on the west side of the freeway. Picacho Peak was the site of the only Arizona battle of the Civil War and
was the "westernmost" of any of the skirmishes between the warring
factions. Continuing along the Interstate, we soon come upon Pinal
County Airpark (one time called Marana Airpark), often referred
to as the "bone-yard". The real-estate west of the main
north/south runway, is literally littered with
mothballed and obsolete airliners. There is a facility on the field that
uses some of the aircraft for test beds for new engine technology and other
innovative ideas that may someday be incorporated into modern day
aircraft. They also will rehab an aircraft that has been purchased by an
upstart airline or a foreign entity that wants one in flyable condition.
The Rillito Cement Plant northwest
of Tucson is
the reporting point for Tucson Approach. From there, they will
"always" give you clearance to runway 11 left. I do not recall
how many times that I have landed at Tucson International with the
clearance to 11 left but I have never actually landed on 11L. I have
always been shifted over to 11R. Today was an historic event, the Tucson
Tower actually did clear me to land on 11L, should have bought a lottery ticket
that day.
The rendezvous point for the Breakfast Club
gang was the Executive Terminal and I had a front row parking spot well
ahead of the rest of the group aircraft. Since most had already arrived,
we walked into the terminal to meet with the rest of the group. The
shuttle van had previously been summoned so it was a short wait for our ride to
the Clarion Hotel. The restaurant also served as the happy hour
lounge though spacious, it was "comfy". An interesting item of
note regarding the food portions is that, in most cases, wherever the Breakfast Club has sat down for the morning
repast, the pancakes were of such dimensions, that the average person could not
possibly down more than two of these monsters. The Clarion's idea of
pancake dimensions were more saucer size and well within the abilities of
anyone in our group. All of the dishes were tasty though, just not overly
abundant as they have been at other locations.
The trip back to the valley was, more or less, a reverse course of the
morning arrival. The air was still quite smooth (a little bonus feature
of winter flying in the desert) and Phoenix
was still using the west transition. The only difference was that Scottsdale gave me a five
mile straight-in to runway 3 which is not normally in use at that time of the
day. Another item worth mentioning about the trip was that, with having
to traverse Class B airspace in the Phoenix area, and arriving and departing
Class C airspace in the Tucson area, we spent more time talking to ATC than we
did talking to each other while en route.
The Tucson Group
- Warren & Jeri-Ann McIlvoy in 4544X, BC-1
- Trent Heidtke and Tim Yoder in 4638W, BC-112
- Richard Spiegel and Dolly Petersen in 901KA, BC-3
- Allen & Pat Wallace and Jim Nelson in 9002V, BC-39, and 310
- Al & Adele Feldner in 6127Q, BC-33
- Mike and Jerry Fadely
- Gary & Judy Hedges in 1196L, BC-99
- Jerry & Debbie Spendley in 95625, BC-182
- Joe & Diane Stockwell in 843CD
- Asa & Cheryl Dean in 48803, BC-52
- Paul Fortune, BC-201
- Richard Azimov and Gerald Siegel in 6864Q, BC-2
What's Next?
January 2003 will kick-off the 10th year of Breakfast Club events and for momentous
occasion, we will be making and encore visit to Blythe, California
and the Union 76 Truck Stop. In February, we will be making a
short hop over to Wickenburg and taking a van ride into town for
breakfast. That's all for now but remember, fly safe.
Click on the Tucson
link to view photos of this fly-in event.