Steve and Nathan flew us there, while Jesse and I hung out in the back. It took about an hour and 45 minutes or so, and we arrived uneventfully. Nathan and I gave them a little bit of a head start, as the plan was to then meet up at Muncie for a late lunch, and we were going to cream them on time.
After we took off, we got up to 26,000', and just settling in, and the controller came on and said we were off course. We were, a little, but nothing big. Then we were off course in the other direction. Nathan is left seat and working to get back on track, but the autopilot isn't tracking properly, and now the heading bug doesn't seem to be doing much. Nathan realizes that the DG is actually frozen. The autopilot isn't tracking. A loud high pitched alarm is going off that he can't hear until I point it out, because it's so high pitched, and it's coming from behind the panel, with no lights going off. He tries switching screens, slaving and unslaving the DG, recycling, none of it is working, and now the attitude indicator is flashing and freaking out, the DG is frozen, and the autopilot isn't working. I ask if he'd like me to fly while he does more button pushing and troubleshooting, so that's what we do. We never did get it working properly, but I got the high pitched noise to go away by hitting the autopilot switch off again. We descended out of the Flight Levels, down to 10,000', and hand flew the rest of the way, and we landed at Muncie. There's an avionics shop there, so we left the plane there, and Nathan and I went into the restaurant on field to wait for Steve and Jesse to catch up to us.
While we waited, a little boy at the table behind us was super stoked about airplanes. He was maybe 10 years old at most. He had a camera with him, and he was there with his mom just to "stan" as Kaylee's age group would say, on airplanes. He went outside and took pictures of every single airplane that came in or out of the ramp. So I took him and his mom out to the Cheyenne and let them climb up in it, sit in the cockpit, etc. He asked some good questions, and said he also wants to be an air traffic controller when he grows up. He said he didn't think he could learn to fly all the buttons and stuff in the airplane. I told him I bet he could, that you start out in something smaller and easier, and he should think about it. The whole time we were walking out to the plane and back, he'd stop and take pictures of every airplane. It was fun, he got a kick out of it, his mom took pictures of him in the cockpit, and hopefully it's something he remembers. They were inside waiting on airplanes for hours.
Steve and Jesse finally made it, like 90 minutes later, slogging their way westward against a tough headwind in the RG. We all ate lunch at like 3 pm, and then because we decided to leave the Cheyenne there for avionics work, we all jumped back in the RG for the flight home again. Nathan and I up front this time.
On the way to PA, the guys up front had their coats on and the sun in their faces. They were hot. Those of us in the back seat were in the shade, did not have our coats on and had icy air blowing in on us from bad seals around the door and window. We were not hot. Steve put the heat on a little bit an hour into it or more, but they were dying up front and we were freezing in the back. So on the way home from Muncie, I didn't put the heat on, they HAD their coats on back there, and Steve was like "Wow, it's cold back here, can you turn the heat on?" and I'm going "I'm hot up here, forget it." It was a 20 minute flight at most they had to deal with being cold. And I did turn the heat on for them, and get sweaty up front. I was almost 2 hours dealing with cold on the way out. I'd say I'm nicer than they are, except I'm complaining about it, so I'm not really nicer. ;)
When we got back to Kokomo, Kaylee had driven home because her car window in the back wouldn't go back up after her friends rolled it down. So we're taking her car in for maintenance, which meant tonight we drove her back to school. Tomorrow she wanted to go to church, but none of her friends go to the church she likes to go to, so without someone else to drive, she couldn't go. So I'm going to pick her up in Marion tomorrow morning and take her to church.
So that was our day. One note about the situation in the Cheyenne. When we were first having trouble and trying to figure out what was going on, it was confusing, a situation I hadn't really seen. Usually if your gyros fail, the DG wanders, or is obvious. This was frozen and looked like it was working but wasn't. And the Attitude Indicator freaking out was distracting to say the least, as was the high pitched whine we couldn't find and the autopilot not working, so you're suddenly hand flying while trying to figure out what is going on, can't see the info right in front of you and trying to verify the info off on the other side actually IS accurate, or not. We notified ATC that we'd had the failure, and wanted to descend. He asked me if we needed any other services or help, basically asking if we needed to declare an emergency, and I said no, that we were VMC and we were fine. I was really glad that this happened on a VFR day. If it had happened right after takeoff in IMC, it would have been a legit serious situation. As it was, it was nothing at all. Look out the window and follow the pink line on the GPS even if other stuff wasn't working. We have picked up the plane from annual on IFR days before, and we're never thrilled about that, as you want a nice day when something is right out of maintenance. Today was severe clear and beautiful, and I was glad. We'd have handled it, but I'm still glad we didn't have to even break much of a sweat. I appreciated that. :)
On the way home, you can see where the Cheyenne passed the RG. We're 23,700' higher than they are. :)
And this was our ground track on the way home for awhile as we dealt with the problem. A bit squiggly! We're descending here, coming down through 15,500
Here are Nathan and Steve up front in the RG together.
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