Tossed

I woke up at 5:50 a.m. to be out at the airport by 6:45 or so. I took off with two folks in the RG and flew VFR over to Cleveland, OH, back to the same place I've been about four times in a row now in the last month when I hadn't been over there in ages prior to this.

The iPad had a map of data plots on it, GPS coordinates to power stations that one of the business owners wanted to have photographed. The photographer was in the back seat, and the plan was for me to slow way down, open the window, and circle the stacks until he got his shots. The first one wasn't very far from Lost Nation, where we spent last weekend. It was under the Cleveland Class B airspace, so we couldn't go above 1900' without busting the airspace, but we couldn't go below 1900' either without being less than 1000' over the city. So we were *at* 1900'. Circling over the power station I started wondering how that looked, and how it was really going to look considering I was going to be spending hours circling over various power plants/stations at low altitudes in very busy airspace. I made the comment that if I don't hear from the TSA or Homeland Security over it, somebody probably wasn't doing their job.

Every one of the first 6 plots we went to were a little challenging. The airspace out there is very cluttered, and I wasn't talking to them because it wouldn't have worked out well at all. So we're going under various layers of several Class B's, under a TRSA, around several Class D's, and sometimes threading a needle between altitudes, airspaces and obstacles. At one point there was a line of very tall towers on one side, a group of downtown buildings in Pittsburgh another direction, and the stacks on the river, with the surface Class B area in which I could Not go, only 5 miles from the main airport, right there on the remaining side. So you take your time and you figure it out. A good airspeed to hold, where to turn, avoiding the towers and their wires, while marking where the airspace is that you can't intrude on, all low to the ground and slow and turning around a power plant with a photographer wanting you to lift a wing and fly here and get to the other side, etc. Another was down in a valley by the foothills out east, and we were circling around below the "mountains" right there on either side, with towers too. A good time to be very careful, especially as the day progressed and it got hot and bumpy. The last two points we hit were clear of airspace at least, and seemed easy after some of those others. I have two things that kind of give me the heebie geebies in flying: large bodies of open water in a single-engine airplane and towers. I got to do both of those today-I don't know how many towers I went around that were higher than I was, but I do know they were around almost every power plant, were prolific in the big cities out there, and that I stared at them malevolently every time I went by.

Unfortunately the photographer did not have an easy day of it. I told him up front that if at any time he didn't feel well to let me know, as I had sick sacks he could use. We were joking about it at that point. About an hour and a half into the 7.2 hour flight he asked for the first sick sack. He got sick maybe four times in the first 4 hours of the flight. He'd be back there heaving, then straighten up and shoot his photos of the next point, then close his eyes until we got close to the next one. Rinse and repeat. We landed for fuel, and he ate a sandwich, which of course just provided more fuel for the next three hour leg we had to do. That poor guy threw up at least seven times that I know of. We had to bomb around low, over the hills, in the heat, in the turbulence, turning around stuff. It was...less than ideal, and I felt so bad for him. He sure hung in there better than I would have if I'd have felt like that. I was so glad I had more than one bag on board, too. Being in a small enclosed space while someone else is repeatedly getting ill while everything is nice and hot and getting bounced around yourself for over 7 hours straight, and, well, I'm all caught up on that.

I landed with those guys at 3:30 after 7.2 hours of flight time, fueled back up, and was back in the air by 3:45 headed to Muncie. I picked up a guy there who was working on Instrument Approaches, cut him a little short and only flew with him for an hour, flew back home, put the plane away, ran home and changed so as to not smell like fuel, airplane and throw-up, and met Steve, Tre and Nathan at a restaurant for a nice birthday dinner. So 9.2 hours total flight time, with not much more than an hour on the ground total from 7:20 a.m. through to 6 p.m. *yawn*

We had a nice time out at dinner. Kaylee's gone visiting cousins of course, Jamie's at camp and Gwenie had a babysitter, so it was a rare adults-only night out. I ate too much, but it was worth it, and by george I earned it today, too.

I also earned the sleep I'm about to get, even though I did not get a thing else done today that I needed to. That's what tomorrows are for...