Half Day

I didn't much feel like getting up this morning, but getting to take the T-6 down to Kentucky and do a recommendation ride and fly with five Yaks, an RV and maybe a B-17 that was going to be there was an excellent reason to go ahead and get moving.  The weather looked fine here, fine there, and there was one area in between that was marginal VFR, but it was still good enough VFR, and forecasting to just get better, so I went out to the airport, pulled the prop through, pulled out the plane and preflighted it, loaded it up with what I needed, and pulled out my poor beat-up flight suit, and here let me pause for a moment.  I had two flight suit sizes.  One was way too big and puffy and long and huge.  The size right under that was so tight on me at the Warbird Expo last month that I couldn't zip it all the way and sit down (or breathe) at the same time, so I had to wear it unzipped to the waist, and I just wore a green shirt the same green as the flight suit so that from a distance it all blended in, like for the photo shoot I had that morning in the PT-26.  I pulled that flightsuit on today, and I've lost enough weight that the top of it is a little baggy and the rest of it fits just fine.  I can sit down in it fully zipped and everything.  That was lovely.  ;)  Anyway, where was I.  Oh yes, I pulled on the flightsuit, bent down and touched my toes, grinned at myself that it fit, and then fired up the T-6 and headed to Kentucky.  I got about halfway there, and the ceilings kept coming down, and I figured no big deal, this is the marginal area that I saw.  Except it kept getting worse.  Pretty soon I was down to 1000' above the ground, which is about the area I start looking for towers, but the visibility was still just fine.  Ten minutes later I had to come down lower than that, at the minimum altitude I was going to go, and I was waiting for it to break up and be the good weather that was supposed to be on the other side, but instead, pretty quickly the visibility went down sharply too.  I saw ahead of me the clouds dipped lower yet, would have required me to come down another couple hundred feet, but the drop in visibility was enough for me to call the game asap regardless. When you're below possible tower heights, you don't mess around if you can't see what's out there.  I pulled a 180 right then and there, sent a text to the guys in Kentucky that I wasn't going to make it in because of weather, and headed back.  I was kind of wondering if everybody else would make it in (some of them can be pretty...adventurous), wondered if it was a narrow or fluke band of weather, since it wasn't supposed to be IFR in the first place, but later I found out that nobody did, that weather that wasn't supposed to be that bad for that far WAS that bad for that wide of a distance, and killed off the whole day for them down there, which was a bit of a bummer.  I also spent about $150 in gas money to go nowhere and accomplish nothing.  Well, except I got to fly the T-6 halfway to Kentucky and back, I suppose.  ;)

It did make it easier for the next part of my day.  I was supposed to go to Hannibal, MO this afternoon, and I was going to be cutting it very close coming back from Kentucky.  Well, now there was no cutting.  I had a leisurely morning out at the airport after I got back.  Once I got in.  Rob Holland was out practicing in the aerobatic box, I was VFR and nobody was talking to me on the Unicom frequency, and Grissom, who was supposed to warn them on the ground about traffic, didn't, so that was a little clusterish, but after circling for awhile, I finally came on in as quietly as I could so I could quit burning gas at 30 gph, and we didn't run into each other, so that was a successful ending. 

The trip to Missouri went fine.  It was VFR on top, VFR down there, and this time I stayed IFR going out which had Grissom calling the aerobatic guys to make it "cold" to let me out, and to let me back in when I got home.  A local photographer was out taking photos and videos of Rob, and he took a few shots of me landing in the 340 too, which is kind of funny.

We had a nice evening the rest of the day out at the airport.  Steve and AE got the trailer packed for Oshkosh, and I don't know what all the boys did today.  We all ended up going to dinner tonight (the Mahi Mahi and grilled asparagus was tasty and healthy both), and it was good to be home and relaxing.  Tomorrow I have another MBros flight, but it's not until afternoon, so I'm glad to have a morning where I don't have to get up and do anything.  :)

These two photos are on the trip to Missouri, while alone and enjoying the view out the window.  One photo of the clouds, one selfie because...I don't know why.  Because the sun was shining and I was pleased, even if I forgot to grin.  lol