Dfc90

I flew today from Centennial, CO to Oakland, CA after a week of skiing with my family. In the days before the flight, headwinds had been forecast at 20-30 knots, which would make a fuel stop mandatory. By this morning, the wind forecasts had improved a little. Forecast headwinds were around 15 knots. It still wasnt a sure thing that we could do the... ~830nm flight without stopping for fuel, but it was worth a shot. The worst case was that wed divert to Modesto if things were looking tight. Id asked the FBO to top the airplane off the night before. Knowing how hard it is to have line guys get the plane truly full if you arent there to babysit, I asked them to top it off again right before we arrived this morning. That got us about 50lbs shy of full fuel (1125 lbs showing on the gauges). I picked up and programmed our clearance before starting the engine, so that once the turbine started up, we could immediately start taxiing. Luckily, there were no delays in taxiing or departure, so I only burned 10lbs of fuel on the ground. I had to prompt the departure and center controllers to keep the climb going after departure, but our climb to FL280 was essentially unrestricted. Upon reaching FL280, the headwind was 20-30 knots stronger than forecast. When I looked down the road, the headwind was supposed to turn from a headwind to a crosswind and then to a tailwind. I kept the plane at high speed cruise until the wind started to shift to a crosswind. As the wind shifted, I slowly started pulling power out to maintain the same ground speed with lower fuel consumption. After 2 hours, the winds had spun completely around and I was doing 260kts with a tailwind while burning 220 pounds per hour. Fuel at destination, which had started at negative 200 lbs after reaching top of climb and accelerating to cruise speed, was now showing 250 lbs of fuel at Oakland. After the hand off to Oakland Center, I got the typical push down out of FL280 200nm from Oakland. I negotiated with the Center controllers to delay our descent, which ...Read More