Today was a trip back down to Charleston, S. Carolina. It didn't go super smoothly, but the job got done. It took 7.2 hours total flight time and ran into about everything. The weather blew up once I headed that way, and I ended up going around and through some stuff. Icing, though it didn't last long, had to deviate really far away, using up my extra fuel, lightning and pretty bad turbulence going around the system. At one point I was crossfeeding my right engine off the left tank (have to when you put the extra fuel into the left main only) and the turbulence was so bad that the fuel kept unporting and my right engine kept cutting out. While you're in the midst of being tossed around and maneuvering around cells, such fun. Broke through the other side, had another rainy cell on approach, and then coming down final, the winds were so bad I actually ran into wind shear, and the plane was doing 115 kts, suddenly the airspeed dropped to 90 and the plane yelled, literally, "AIRSPEED" in my headset so loudly it made me jump. Never heard it do that before. I was on it, I landed fine, it was a nice one even. A King Air at the hold short line watched me land and then keyed up and said "Rodeo!" Lol It was a long 3 hour flight down for what should've been 2 hours and 35 minutes. I get there, top off, go inside and eat a sandwich they brought for me, and we go to head back out. By now the worst of the weather down there had moved further east, so it wasn't bad there, but the headwinds were really strong, and there were pop ups all across Indiana. We had to power way back and lean it out, and it took us 4 hours to get home. That's a long flight. And that made for 7.2 hours I sat on my butt in that plane. I brought water and Mt. Dew along so I could do a little hydrating and a little caffeinating that afternoon. We came down, dodged cells, and landed at Frankfort with only 32 knot winds, fairly close down the runway at least. Put the plane away and finally headed home. I stopped at the Milky Way and got a hot fudge shake and booked it home.
Kaylee was still here, she'd slept like a rock, all night solid, and slept until 2:30 in the afternoon. Stunned her, she said she never sleeps all night let alone that late, so I guess she must've needed it. I'm glad I didn't wake her up this morning--I almost did. to have her say goodbye to her grandma & grandpa who traveled a long way to see her. But she was worn down, so I'm glad she got a full night's sleep and then some in. She eventually left this evening to go to her new apartment and start setting up a few things. Steve and I are probably going over there tomorrow to help her clean and unload more of her stuff, set up her bed that we'll pick up tomorrow, etc. I had a student but it's supposed to be windy and rainy tomorrow, big shock, so will go do this instead. We're never going to have a real Spring. It's cold, windy and rainy. We're going to go from Winter Round 7 straight to hot and muggy summer. That's what happened last year...
You can see I had 100 knot winds up there at 19,000'. This was when they weren't right off my nose at least. You can also see the storms down there and that's before they blew up into something that gave me bigger problems.
Cell behind the wing that I just flew through
Pretty though
Deep greens and blues...
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