The Heat is On

I had to be awake at 4:30 a.m. for a flight to Virginia--so of course I woke up at 2:45 a.m.  Groan.  I could not get back to sleep, so I finally just got up at 4.  The first thing I saw was that the area in Virginia I was going to was fogged over for about 50 miles.  I sent a text to the fellow I was taking down, and told him to push back by an hour.  It was supposed to clear off by 8, by the time we were to get there, but I know how that goes.  We were supposed to leave at 6:30, so instead we met at the airport at 7:30, when it had started lifting.  I do one last check of the weather, and guess what--it had naturally gone back downhill.  Out in the mountains down there it just kept going up and down.  So I dragged my feet a little bit, powered back and slowed down the trip down to give it more time to burn off. Now it was supposed to be cleared off by 9, and I was set up to get there by 9:30.  Again, yeah, right.  I warned him we may have to go to another airport that had a lower approach, because this one was in the hills and I may not be able to go as low as I needed to be able to get in, but I'd give it a go and see what we got when we got there.

All the way down I kept an eye on the weather there, and it lifted to 600' and 4 miles, which is just dandy, and I thought finally we were headed for that severe clear that was forecasted.  Nope.  About 30 minutes out, the weather went right back down to minimums.  So I ended up shooting a nice LPV GPS approach into there.  Once again the airplane yelled "MINIMUMS!" at me right as I broke out. That's happened a lot this last year, not 100' higher, but right then.  I came in and landed, and my passenger asked me "Are we at the right airport?"  He knew I might have to go somewhere else, and was glad when I said we were where we wanted to be.  He said "It was all gray out there and suddenly we were landing."  Yep.  Kinda cool how that works, really.

About 20 minutes after I landed, another airplane was trying to get in.  He called in over Unicom and asked if anyone else had made it in, and the FBO guy said "Yes, a 340 just landed a few minutes ago, says it was right at minimums."  So we stand by the window and watch, and soon we see this Saratoga or Cherokee Six come diving down out of the clouds, not on any kind of glideslope I can imagine, aiming for the runway.  He then levels off, floats halfway down the runway, then decides he needs to get it down because he can't really do a go-around at that point, so he forces his nose down and drives the airplane onto the runway, at which point he dribbles and porpoises the rest of the way down the runway, finally coming to a halt at the other end.  He slowly taxiied up to the ramp, where he sat in his airplane for a good 15 minutes before finally coming inside.  I'm not sure if he was trying to calm his nerves back down, was embarrassed, or had a really, really long post-flight checklist to accomplish, but it took him awhile to come in.  After all that, he said he was an Angel Flight, supposed to meet up with another airplane there who was dropping off the patient, only to find out the other flight hadn't even left yet.  You know why he probably hadn't left yet?  Because the airport was up and down below minimums, maybe?  The guy that did get in finally just left after all that, because the other half of the deal wasn't going to be coming in while the weather was that low, which is not really a bad plan as far as I'm concerned.

I left out of there alone, and made it back home right at noon, came home and took a nap; I was exhausted from my lack of sleep followed by some decent concentration early in the morning. 

On the way down I ended up with a squawk code of 0000, which is the first time I've ever had that.  I thought that was different.

Later, Mom & Ernie made it up, about an hour after I woke back up.  We had a nice easy dinner, and hung out.  Mom had made Kaylee a Warrior Cats quilt, which is pretty cool!  It has a lot of the various characters from the book series, and lots of applique features, cat paw quilting pattern, little birds and critters.  It's very colorful and pretty.  I'll have to get a picture later.  :)