This morning I woke up feeling a little sluggish but otherwise fine. We had a run to Pennsylvania to do, in order to deliver one airplane for some maintenance, and I was the chase plane in the Aerostar. The weather was supposed to be pretty good, with occasional light snow showers, but marginal VFR there and otherwise fine. I thought that was a good thing since it had been a really long time since I'd shot an approach in Gumby. The clouds rise to meet me, and they have ice in them, so I have to keep climbing up to get out of them. I pick up enough ice I have to pop the boots doing that, but it's okay. As I'm flying along, I pull up the weather over there, and it says 1000' overcast. Well, that's not bad, that's still pattern altitude, I can work with that, but I start looking over the buttons again in the different avionics for approaches, and actively try to remember what to hit. Then I call up AWOS when I get close enough, and it says "400 overcast, visibility 1/2 mile". Well. That's a bit more serious. That wasn't supposed to be there at all. What's up? I don't have ADS-B hooked up, so no weather on my iPad, and the radio in there doesn't easily show weather far away, but zooming out gave me a look at some snow that was dumping on the airport right then. It was a couple of fingers of snow squalls. I pull up the approaches, and the lowest approach going into there is 300' and 3/4 mile, so right now the visibility is below minimums a bit. Then approach says "I just got a report from a Cheyenne that just landed a few minutes ago, that says braking action on the runway is poor." That made my eyebrows go up, and then I laughed, because the thought "Well, NOW it's a PARTY!" ran through my head. As I was descending, I got a fair amount more ice, and a text from Nathan that said "Plowing runway...slick too...be careful". As I called in, I heard the plow and the FBO guy talking about getting off the runway as I was coming in. All that build up, only to find that when I arrived, there was a break in the snow squall, and I was able to get in just fine. The snow plow had one run down the runway done, on the left side, not much wider than my gear, so I landed over there, and had plenty of room to stop. The ramp was slick, but differential power and moving slowly helps that. So all in all, it could have been a lot of adventure, but didn't end up being so much so.
I was up at the terminal about an hour, figured Nathan was talking to the mechanic and would come up. Meanwhile he was down there figuring I hadn't made it yet and would be coming down when I did. I sent a couple texts and tried to call, but reception down there is poor. So eventually I walked down, just in time for some good lunch, and then we headed back to Kokomo, uneventfully.
Steve and Kaylee were waiting at Kokomo, and after we got fuel, we headed south to Tennessee. It was a clear flight, blue skies, decent winds, no problems, and we made it to Maury airport. We usually go into John Tune, but last time they charged us $100 just to drop off Ann, so we're trying a different place. It's a farther drive for Lon and Cathy though. And they're not open 24 hours so that can pose an issue for odd times you may want to arrive/depart. But they put the plane in a hangar, free of charge. Their fuel is $2/gallon cheaper than Tune. And the people were nice. They locked the doors and left us in there alone, telling us the sneaky way out, and went home for the day at 5 pm. It's nice to find a cheaper place, but I do wish there was an airport closer to Franklin. :)
I got some photos, but they'll have to wait until I'm back home.
For now, we're here. Kaylee is working on a huge puzzle with her grandma and cousins. We're eating too much. Sitting, resting, talking. All good. It's the last day of 2016. Enjoy :)
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