(First, Kaylee's password for camp photos and email this week is phoccamper. She looks happy, and it was good to see her smiling face again. I'm sure she's having fun, but I don't have any stories for you since she can't really tell us anything yet. ) The rest is flying stuff, in case you'd like to pass. :)
So upon review, I do sort of remember my day yesterday. First thing Monday morning I was up and out at the airport to do a Mavrx flight, except the airplane I was going to use had a big oil streak down the cowl in an interesting and unusual place, and upon further review it needed to be taken down for maintenance. So the guys had to take the camera equipment off of it and put it on another plane, get gas, and finally I was on my way. I had to fly to the south end of the state and hit three fields that were clouded over the last time I was down there. This day there was not a single cloud in the sky, but the haze layer was so thick and so...BIG...that it was really, truly IFR out there above about 4000'. I was up at 7600'. It was so bad I took pictures out the window to prove how bad it was. I actually got a little disoriented trying to fly the photo mission grids, with no horizon, no ground reference...I was flying solely by reference to 32L's non-standard instruments with my head down in my lap looking at an iPad, no peripheral assistance, and more than once I found myself in an uncommanded bank, which also happens because the camera on the strut makes you fly along with a bit of right rudder all the time, or it yaws. Too much rudder or not enough rudder and you turn, so if you're concentrating on something else, you wander. It was really tiring, actually, and after about 4 hours of that, and not having remembered to bring food, either, my head and stomach were deciding they didn't like it that much either. But by George I got it done. When I sent off the photo cards and iPad data to the company, I sent along a note saying "There was not a cloud in the sky, but the haze was BAD, and I hope you can still get what you need out of this."
This was the view off the nose, the front of the airplane.
This was looking out the front left window
And looking right out the left window. I didn't Photoshop this at all. You can see the sunshine on the front of the strut, but it looks like I'm in a cloud.
I finished that flight at 1 p.m., which gave me exactly enough time to run to UPS and ship the cards off to them next day air as they requested, hit a McDonalds and grab a burger finally, and make it to Glenndale only 2 minutes late for my flight in the Champ with someone. We went up and did our thing, and then I was supposed to have two more students after that, but they canceled, which gave me exactly enough time to run home, run an errand for Steve, type up and print out the minutes for the school board meeting, and get out the door to the meeting. The school board meeting went extra long because of some legal stuff we're working on, so when I got home I needed to get ready for today's flight to Alabama, and I had weather problems and timing issues to figure out and work on. I finally had to take a Tylenol PM to help me go to sleep so that I could wake back up at...are you ready for this... 2:45 a.m.
I had to get up so early because these guys needed to get back to Kokomo early enough to be able to drive some equipment back down to Alabama today, and there was weather moving into Kokomo anytime after 8 a.m. Well, not just Kokomo, there was a line of storms that covered the entire United States, into Canada, into Texas and Mexico. It had spawned tornadoes in Kansas City last night when I was looking at it before going to bed. I had to beat the worst of it back to Kokomo, and after a lot of planning and figuring and hoping for a little luck, I thought if I made it back by 9 a.m. I should be okay, that my percentage of storms was only 60% instead of the 95% it was after that, that hopefully I could work around whatever was there and get in. So to be back in Kokomo by 9 a.m., I had to leave Kokomo by 4 a.m., which meant leaving the house by 3:30 a.m., which meant getting up at 2:45 a.m., which is pretty much still the night before as far as I'm concerned. And so that's what I did. I had it planned, my place down in Alabama would be closed, but they had self-serve fuel 24 hours. Perfect. I'd arrive around 6:15 a.m., get 30 minutes to top off, the guys would arrive at 6:45, we'd arrive by 9. Except when I landed there, the self serve pump was broken. Nobody answered the after hours phone number. So I had to get back in the plane, last minute find a nearby airport with self serve fuel (go iPad and Garmin Pilot!), and go there, top off, and come back to the first airport to pick up the guys. Now I'm running late, which just ate into my window to get home. From the time I left Kokomo I could see that line of storms moving in, and I stared at it all the way to Alabama. The other problem...neither airport FBO was open, which I knew ahead of time, but a lot of places have a code you can punch into the door to access the lobby, the restroom, etc. Neither of these places did. So I had no bathroom from the time I left the house at 3:40 a.m. until I got back to Kokomo. I could have used one, as it ended up being 5 and a half hours before I got back to a bathroom. Just sayin'.
When I got the guys in the plane and took off, I went up to 21,000', and had two areas of weather to work around. The first was easy, a piece of cake. You could hear everybody on every frequency today working around that weather, which went up to 46,000', so most of us had to work around it, not just get over the top of it. Round one was just a little deviating, with plenty of clear spaces to go if need be, and a fairly smooth ride. The whole time I'm staring at Round Two, the main line, and watching it close in on Kokomo. Everything I was looking at now put me at Kokomo slightly after the storms arrived. I planned on diverting to Marion and landing in the clear there and waiting for a window to get back to Kokomo, if I had to, or hitting a small break in the line I saw and coming in behind the bad line, which would require slowing way down, but in the meantime I kept my speed up and kept aiming for Kokomo. About an hour out, I hit a tailwind. This tailwind started making it look like a closer race. When center started me down, I left my power up, and I pointed the airplane down and dove at Kokomo at full speed, and now the race looked like a tie. Grissom came on and told me that they were in fog and heavy to extreme precip. Kokomo, however, was still reporting 2500', 8 miles and no rain, so I told him I was going to try for a visual. The winds were down Runway 23, and he let me know that the rain was now about a mile to the west of Kokomo and there was more heavy to extreme precip right at the fix for the RNAV for 23. I could see that on my own screen, of course. In other words, if I couldn't get in visually, I had a problem. I told him I'd try visually, and if I couldn't, I'd hit the fix for 32 and do a crosswind approach and landing to stay out of the weather to the north, while hopefully beating in the weather to the west moving in. He got me down to 2500', and I didn't break out of the clouds. I was only 3 miles from the airport, and no luck, and I called in and said "I'm going to have to take the fix for RNAV 32". He gives me a heading, and I know I'm probably hosed, but I'm going to try it, and then poof, right then I break out of the clouds, and the airport is right there, clear as a bell, underneath me. I could see the weather on the other side of the airport in both directions, but I was totally clear. I told him I had the airport in sight after all, that I was taking the visual, and then I pulled back the power, hit the spoilers, started a tight descending turn, gear horn starts going off, the passengers are a little bothered, and I circled down right into short final for 32. When I taxied up to the hangar, I got the airplane door popped open, and the rains came. It started with a sprinkle for about one minute, and then boom, the visibilities dropped so that you couldn't see the other side of the airport, and it was pouring so hard that we got completely soaked just going from the car to the hangar. After putting away the airplane, running them to the terminal for the bathroom and then their truck in the parking lot, and putting away the hangar key, I was soaked all the way through, socks, underclothes, my head was dripping, everything was dripping. I went into the maintenance hangar and got a rag and dried my hair, face and arms off, and then shook with cold all the way home. When I got in the house I had to completely change clothes, and I put on a sweatshirt and huddled under a blanket and tried to nap, but I was too wired up to sleep. Tired but wired. So I got up and went to lunch, then came back and tried to nap again, no luck. Oh well, hopefully that means I'll sleep well when I finally crash tonight. ;)
My day was mostly done by 9:30 a.m., at least as far as being productive, but I'll tell you what, I needed to not be very productive for awhile after that. It's been a very busy time, there's been no down time, not even the usual Sunday, as I've been doing Mavrx flights and other things even on my day "off". I'd like a day to do nothing, but Steve's swamped with airshow and Oshkosh prep, I'm swamped with students and flights, and mostly that's all a good thing.
Richard is doing well, he's being monitored for a couple of conditions and medications, has another small procedure that may need to be done next week, we'll see...
The sun was just starting to come up as I got to Alabama.
The sun, even when it came up, was muted so much by haze and mist that it looked like it was under water. This was taken on Final for the runway at Cullman, Alabama.
I didn't take any pictures of the storms or radar. I was busy calculating things in my head. ;)
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