Two Pilots & an LSW: Oklahoma Still

The last few days have just been busy instructing days, until today. The family needed picked up in Oklahoma City, and originally they talked about being picked up around 4 pm. Fortunately for me, I had the plane topped off yesterday, and had myself blocked off for the whole day, because they decided last night that they wanted to be back in Kokomo by 2 pm. Going backwards, that means it's a 3.5 hour flight from there, which means leaving OK City by 10:30 a.m. I need 30-40 minutes on the ground to gas back up. That's 10 a.m. It's an over 3.5 hour flight out there. That means leaving Kokomo at 6:30 a.m. That means leaving the house no later than 6 am. And that's if I leave in no wiggle room, which I always do. So it was an early morning.

The sun wasn't up yet when I took off, but it was brightening the sky. Having been out of Kokomo before Grissom opens before, I'm familiar that Chicago takes over, and that they are swamped at that time of the morning, and that they don't really want to deal with little puddle jumpers like me out of Kokomo on the ground. So it was still VFR, even though some ground fog was rolling in, and I departed on my own and started climbing on course. That way, rather than sit on the ground for 20 minutes or more, which Dustin and I have done several times, I can at least be heading in the right direction while I wait for them to have a second to get to me. I think they appreciate it more too, actually. It took them about 15 minutes to get to me.

On the way out, I was alone, and tired, and the music doesn't work in there, so it was a very sleepy, quiet flight. About halfway out, I started noticing the sky being a different color ahead, and when I zoomed out I saw a big wad of weather that started off a small wad and had already grown. I ended up having to deviate a little to the south to get away from it, so I knew the trip home was going to be more interesting, because of course it was moving towards my flight path, not away.

I landed in Oklahoma City on time, got fueled up, paid up, and they walked in the door. Timing is everything, and this was working out like clockwork. We launch, and I have to actually track VOR radials this time all the way to Tulsa. Last time they gave me a wonky clearance, but I didn't really have to follow it. This time I had to intercept the 053 degree radial off one, track towards the other, switch VORs and track to the next one, etc. Totally old school, man. :)

And then came the sky, and I had to work for awhile. The sky has a lot of colors, shades of blue. It started off the light baby blue of a clear summer morning. In the heat it turns into that washed out blue that's almost white. In the Fall you get that dark, vibrant, rich, warm blue. As the sun goes down, you get the navy blue, turning midnight blue. But there's another blue. When you see this blue, even if you don't know what's behind it, you know it's not good. It's a blue that looks like the paintbrush got mixed with dark steel, that something inside the cloud became...diseased. Mother Nature is pretty clear about things you should avoid. Snakes with slitted eyes and rattling tails, bears with paws bigger than your head, and sky that looks like that.

I had to deviate a good distance out of the way, but fortunately I had the gas I needed to be able to do it. Just. At one point, the main mass of it was off to my left (north). Then there were large cells, individual ones, off to the right, with a few gaps. In theory I was going to go way out of my way to the right, because going in between cells that are obviously still building is a bad idea. But looking out the window, I could see the gap in front of me with blue sky on the other side, and to the right, as far as I could see, it looked dark. I did one of those stare back and forth at my radar and my window, and as always, the window won. I aimed for the gap, with a plan to turn around if it looked like it was closing. It didn't, we went through fine, and about 30 minutes later you could hear all the airliners and corporate guys asking "Where'd the last guy get through here?" and "Which way do you suggest?" and there were long pauses and "Well, the line goes for a couple hundred miles, now." I heard one guy just give up and land, and others who went hundreds of miles out of the way. Timing was everything.

One weird thing though, was before I got to it, the controller told me "there's a gap to the north of you". I'm looking and looking, and there might be a small gap in between two cells to the north, but the whole mass of weather was over there, and turning that way would have been a terrible idea. So I requested and got south, the opposite of his recommendation. Yikes. Hopefully he didn't recommend that path to anyone else who didn't have onboard weather, or who didn't think for themselves outside of ATC.

Kaylee says she's a little sad and misses being home a little bit, but is otherwise doing all right. I sent her some cards, envelopes and stamps today. It'll be a week before it gets there (I hate that) but at least it's a little something more in the mail.

I have a bunch of T-6 checkout stuff coming up. Tomorrow the Harvard is coming back for us to do stalls and air work. Monday I've got a guy on a brand new checkout, for twice a day, three days coming up. Another guy is supposed to call in a couple days to set up a time to come out for his initial checkout. Busy!

Photos from today.

The closer up version of the weather on my iPad. You can see where I am deviating to. I did go in between that finger and the next blob to the right.

The storms were filling in across multiple states.

This is "Angry Kitty". His ear is permanently bent like that and he always looks, well, angry. He's survived brutal winter temps though, so he must be tough, and maybe have a home.