Quick One

Yesterday was a rather long one. Up at 5:45 am, wheels up out of Frankfort by 7:40 am, up to northern Michigan. Alpene, MI to be precise, which happens to be where I diverted to after I was loaded up with ice when the forecast was way wrong and the airplane had a mechanical failure with the vacuum pump that sucks the boot back to the wing, and I ended up with so much ice I almost didn't make it out. As in...really. Probably came closer to dying that day than any other. Sustained trying to climb back out of moderate to severe icing with boots stuck out on the wing, controllers declared for me, and when I did break out it was almost a miracle because I broke out 1000' below where I went in and I didn't have another 1000' of climb available. The airplane was shaking and trying to stall and climbing at 50 feet per minute and I knew I was going to have to just keep control of it, fly it all the way down, come back down through it all and break out of the low-ish clouds and be unable to maintain altitude and just have to land in the hills and trees below, which wasn't going to end well. And right when the plane isn't climbing any more with me still maintaining control, I break out.  I mean RIGHT then. I had decided this was it and I was about to head back down, and it was probably over.  I break out, I'm able to hold altitude, and I tell controllers, who know I'm in an emergency, that I need to divert to another airport, anywhere, that I have plenty of gas, but that I cannot pick up any more ice on the descent back in to that airport. They find a place for me, I go there, go back into the clouds, pick up no more ice, drive it onto the runway no flaps, the line guy is gaping at me because the plane is covered, I joke that you guys grow ice thick up here in MI, and I go inside where my legs shake for 2 hours from adrenaline.  The plane is pulled inside a heated hangar so that the ice could be melted off before we have to leave again, and it leaves a lake on the floor. That airport was Alpene, MI, where I went back yesterday, and recognized everything including the tiny room with the concrete walls and florescent lighting where I paced around and tried to regulate my system again.   That system, by the way, took out a TBM out east. Same system, only this time they KNEW it was ugly. When I was in it, the reports weren't for anything that exciting.  The TBM knew it was calling for moderate to severe icing but flew through it anyway to get on top, only he lost control when he iced over and came down in pieces on a NJ interstate with six people including children and a dog on board. It gave me the willies because I knew the entire process he went through, icing over, climbing up, trying to reach the top of it. Only I didn't lose control of it when it was trying to stall, and he did, and it made me feel sick to my stomach, being able to rather vividly imagine those last moments, having lived through most of them except that ending, myself, the day before.  So that was a little PTSD inducing.  :o

Anyway. Got back from that place after a MUCH less interesting trip there, landed at Frankfort, dropped off Nick, gassed up the plane, and Andy arrived, and we took off for St. Louis around 4 pm. I got a courtesy car and went into town and ate at "Eleven Eleven", a fancy restaurant in a factory type setting all done up. Good food, hard to find restaurant on purpose. The name is the address, I discovered. I had sea bass and butter cake and it was all quite tasty.  No wine though I'd have loved some. ;) 

We left there at like 9 pm, I had to put the 340 away in the hangar with the tug I don't know how to use well, and then I got home around midnight and tried to get ready for today's trips.

Today I head to Pueblo to top off, then Vegas for the weekend with Steve and Andy. It's going to be like 105 degrees out there. :o 

I'll have to post photos from today later, I didn't download them yet.  Meantime, gotta get going!