Florida III

6 am up, and I accidentally left my cup of coffee sitting under the coffee maker, so I missed that one. It is FRIGID up here. It's 19 degrees right now, and being outside is cruel.

I was worried this morning because the Meridian was low on oil and I didn't have any oil. I called Marion to see if they had any and they didn't really, but I didn't know what type of oil I needed yet, I had to find the logbooks which were left in the big hangar in a suitcase. I get there in the frigid wind and walk over to the big hangar, see the logbooks, look through and THINK I find the type of oil, it seems to make sense, but Google didn't help for once on what's normal. So I call Georgia (fuel stop) and ask if they have that type of oil and they don't have that brand but have the same number, so I ask the guy in there who is an experienced pilot and mechanic if it's okay to use that even though the POH says "Don't mix brands or types of oil", and he says yes, but I don't have many options because I don't have any anywhere else, either. He had two quarts of the same, so I added those before we left. Hands numb, fingers burning, icy winds, outside, but finally, I had oil. I picked up two more quarts in Georgia that they put aside for me. So now we need to order more, and I have to find out if we should order this type I've been using or go back to what the logbook says. Exxon vs whatever this is, but both "2380".  It was a little stressful start to the day because the oil was too low to go on this trip if I couldn't find some, but I hadn't had time to find or order any, and I didn't know it was as low as it was until I got there this morning. It definitely burns more oil than the Cheyenne or Conquest either one. Didn't expect that out of a turboprop. Now we know.

The rest of the day was less eventful. Morgan did the flying from the left seat while I sat there on the right and only helped out a couple of times. She's about halfway through her hours to be able to go solo, and she's picking it up fast. She'll be fine by the time it's time to cut her loose on her own. She doesn't want to go on her own, but these trips are each 9 hours in one day flight time, more like 12-14 hours door to door, and it's tiring, happens at least once a week and sometimes more often, and I need the back up.

We had one line of weather across N. Florida (of course), picked up a little ice but not much, a little turbulence but not much. Landed in Georgia for fuel (and oil), landed in Sarasota, dropped off the three boys and the dad, and she and I took a car into town and ate at a little place downtown. They had a warm octopus salad there. I did not try it. I'm pretty game for trying new foods, but, um...no. That sounds disgusting.

We were able to then fly home by ourselves, had to stop for fuel again, and all in all it was 8.9 hours in the air. It was blowing snow and frigid when we landed, so secured the plane in the snow, and drove home, the end of a long day. I stopped at Hydration Station to pick up a "traveling taco" and some hot chocolate, and I'd said "no onions", and I take my first big bite of it in the dark in my car and I get a mouth full of jalapenos.  I hate those things, and it lit me up. My mouth was burning, I'm drinking water and hot chocolate to try to damp it out, and then I dig through the taco in a box and try to pull out all the jalapenos. I pulled them out with my fingers and threw them in the bag. Ate my taco in a box. Still ended up with another couple of bites that had parts of pepper in them, but survived. Get home, take out my contacts. Guess who still had jalapeno juice on my finger?  So that wasn't good.  Frickin' jalapenos.

Our house lost power tonight. I got a text about it while I was out flying. Winds and ice, probably. Steve took some candles and a lantern over to Kaylee's. They had the power back up in like 2 hours, so it wasn't too bad. 

Tomorrow Kaylee wants us to come over to her house and have a holiday type brunch. So we'll do that around 10 am. I'll be off work, so will she and Steve, so hey...

Georgia fuel stop with a chicken for a tree topper

Sitting outside in warm Florida getting ready to eat

Sunsets

Came back and landed in this. It's lovely.

Thanksgiving

I expected to be woken up by kitties, but I was not! Dot and Dash are cute little menaces. Energy balls, super lanky like string beans, and they provide good entertainment. It was a really nice day, sleeping in, hanging out, watching football, eating good food, napping, watching kitties play, just being together. We had roast chicken, scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole, carrots, Hawaiian rolls, pumpkin pie, ice cream, good stuff! 

We didn't really feel like leaving, but I have to be up at 6 am for another trip, so after the sun went down, we reluctantly gathered our things and headed out for home.

It started off nicer on the way home, but somewhere along the way, the clouds rose up to meet us, and we started picking up ice. I climbed up enough to get back on top of it when it started accumulating a bit, and we stayed there until it was time to shoot the ILS back into Kokomo. Picked up a fair amount of ice coming back down. I detest this time of year for SO many reasons, and that's sure one of them.  I took photos so I can share them as a "Tis the season to be careful fa la la la la"

Home, unpacking, Kaylee texted that Molly isn't mad at her and is cuddling up to her and happy to see her and just fine, and she was super happy to see her too.  I'm getting ready for tomorrow's flights, and uploading photos before trying to get to bed for a long day tomorrow.

Dash, I think

Dash, Boba, Dot

Dot cuddled up

Three-generations

The rest of these are ice photos on parts of the plane. It's kinda pretty

Wednesday's Runs

Another early morning. I drove to Frankfort in the pitch black (SO DEPRESSING), added a quart of oil to each engine, pulled the plane out of the hangar, and Nick and I went to Sparta, Illinois. I thought I'd been there before, but I'd been to Sparta, KY instead. I wonder how many Sparta's there are out there!

I was supposed to be there about 5 hours, originally. I walked to a nearby diner, only walked about 1/2 a mile total. lol Had breakfast, walked back, and was trying to catch up on everything I'm behind on because I haven't been on the ground much lately. Instead, Nick came back early, and we were back on the ground at Frankfort by 12:30 pm! Wasn't expecting that, I was expecting 4-5 pm. But that was great, because I could come home, run a load of clothes, pack an overnight bag, then catch up on billing, logbook, aircraft spreadsheet, scheduling, and then sit down and look at the weather for tonight, tomorrow night, and Friday's trip back to (guess) Florida.  So I needed those hours, am glad to have gotten them!

Little grass strip right there, too. I was walking back from the diner here

Little 340 panel shot in the rain.

We waited for Kaylee to get off work, and watched as the weather got a little more unpleasant, but it was still good enough to go at least. SHe came home, said goodbye to Molly the Cat, we piled in and headed to Missouri.

It was raining pretty hard most of the way there. The temps were cold enough I had to stay down at 4000' in order to avoid the worst of the ice, which we did just fine. It was raining, it was snowing at one point, and we had to shoot an approach into Cape. We were coming from the NW, and the winds were down Runway 10, so to shoot that approach we'd have to fly over the field, go 10 miles out, turn around, come back in, all of which takes awhile. So instead I did the RNAV 28 approach, circle to land 10. Minimums for circling were 538', and we did have the runway in sight, but there was a layer of scuddy clouds that were a little lower than that, and open spaces. You have to be careful with night circle to land approaches, which I was telling Kaylee. You're low, slower, tight turns because you have to keep it close to the runway so as to not lose sight of it, you're in a faster twin, so you just have to be...careful. I landed, and then the trouble actually started. I couldn’t see the tie-down T’s in the dark and rain, so I aimed for what looked about right and ended up right in the middle of two of them. I said I couldn’t leave it like that so I circled back tightly so I could keep an eye on it but the Aerostar’s turning radius sucks so I missed it and was off again. Can’t leave it like that, so I tried a third time, circling wider to make the turn, but then lost sight of the T again. They’re not painted brightly. lol I thought I was close and I aimed, and finally caught sight of it and made it. Forget the flying, I need help with the PARKing. So when Steve grabbed our rental car, he headed to the airplane and then did three 360s on the ramp before pulling up to unload the plane. Smart ass… 

We hadn't really eaten in a long time, so we ran through Chick Fil A, and then got to Mom's house, where she had REAL food waiting for us that we were too full to eat. Fail on our part.

We were able to sit up and catch up until after 1 am at least our time, and headed to bed, having made it!

I took a bunch of photos out the window trying to capture the rain or snow that was visible in the lights. You can kinda see it.

This might be the clearest

Rainy panel

This was the cool little tornado of water on the corner of my heated windshield plate

Gumby on the Ramp

The cats waiting for Kaylee in the bathroom

Dot, Dash, Jangles and Boba

Florida Round Two

I'm going to be going to Florida a LOT so I don't know if I'll continue to count the 'rounds' for the fun of it or if it'll just be annoying and I'll quit. ;)

It was a 5 am wake-up call. I took Nick in the 340 down to Columbus, Indiana for a meeting in the 340 first. They were supposed to top off the plane and put it in front so I could pull it out myself at butt-crack of dawn. I get there, and they had not topped it off. I had 62 gallons of gas. Fortunately for us, Columbus is a 20 minute flight, so I had exactly what I needed to get there and still have an hour's reserve. That worked. And I let the airport know if it had been anywhere else I needed to go, or if I'd had 5-10 gallons less fuel, I would have had to self-serve fuel before we left, putting me at least 30 min behind, which would have snowballed into the rest of the day, as you'll see. We all got lucky.

There's a restaurant on field, and I ate breakfast there, topped off the tip tanks so I'd be able to actually get home, and Nick was done in an hour and a half, then took another chunk of time to get food and gas.  I flew us back, dropped him off, hopped in my car and drove an hour and 17 minutes over to Marion Airport. I was behind a semi truck the entire way. Different ones, but I couldn't pass them, so I couldn't even make up any time. Bleh.

I met Morgan at Marion, and we jumped in the Meridian, and we headed south for Florida at 11:30, which is a good hour later than I wanted to, but still doable. We were *barely* able to make it non-stop, with a crosswind most of the way. We didn't have a full hour reserve of fuel left, more like 45 min, but it was severe clear down there, so I let it go. 30 min is "legal" to plan on for VFR conditions, but I don't play that game except in the Champs doing laps at an airport, and even then, not usually. I want gas in my tanks. I would feel So Stupid if I ever had to put something down because I ran out of gas. Just...no.  Anyway. This plane is a problem for that with this trip. It's always right on the edge unless you have a great tailwind, and so far I haven't had a great tailwind in 4 out of 4 legs. :sigh:

We made it down there by 3 pm. This is where we got stuck. It's Florida at the start of Thanksgiving travel, and the airport was swamped, the FBO was swamped. It was an hour and 15 minutes before we could get gas and start getting out of there. That put us behind even more. Then, we had headwinds, even though I mostly had crosswinds on the way there, somehow, so we had to stop for gas in Georgia. They got us turned around in 30 minutes, but still, that delays you. We finally landed at 9 pm back at Marion. Secured the airplane, and then Morgan and I, who were tired after 8.3 hours of flight time, went home. Weather was otherwise good and uneventful. Minimal icing, one little line of build-ups down there, nothing exciting.

On the way home, I saw my gas tank is low. I can make it home, but then I have to be back up at 6 am for the next round of flights, and would I rather get gas after a long day at 9:30 pm, or would I rather get gas early the next day at 7 am? Neither. I chose night though.

I made it home at 10 pm, and then had to try to catch up from the day, and get ready for the next day, which had four legs. Onward.

Tired us at the end of the day

The Meridian

Looks like Florida

Sun on the water

Sunset over Florida

Line of precip in front of the wing down below us

On the way to Columbus in the 340 that morning at sunrise

Morgan flying us over Florida water

Doc

Kaylee's doctor appointment was all right today. They did a physical exam, exterior and interior of the posterior (I amuse myself) which is pretty awful for a young lady (and to me), and determined that there wasn't anything obvious there, like fissures, hemorrhoids, etc that would be an obvious cause of bleeding. They drew more blood for additional labs, did an x-ray (I don't even know what they'd look for on an x-ray), and set up an appointment for a gastroenterologist out of Indy next. 

So in conclusion, she has stomach pain, bloating, bleeding from the rectum, extreme fatigue and dizziness, weakness, super high heart rates just standing up, and no idea what's wrong.  So far the thyroid has checked out fine, her iron levels were good, and the gluten she's sensitive to but it's not Celiac. So one at a time they're eliminating things. We'll pretend like "Colon Cancer" didn't pop into anyone's heads, but she sure is young for that with no family history of it that I'm aware of.  Next up is probably "Ulcerative Colitis" or "Crohns" as possibilities, but we are outside of my medical knowledge area on this one. She's in apparent good spirits for having been violated today. 

I don't have anything new on my end. Tomorrow's flights will be long and starting early, but the weather should be decent and I hope it'll all be uneventful.

Nothing

Kaylee has bleeding, a decent amount of it, when she uses the restroom, and no, it’s not “that”. Of course it was a Sunday afternoon, no doc office open, and it’s not a thing to go to “doc in a box” for. So I told her to monitor it and let me know if things got worse. She ended up with stomach pain and another round of it, so I told her to call the after hours number for her doctor. She had to call the hospital who put her on the phone with the doctor, who asked her questions, and told her not to go to the ER tonight, but to call at 8 am tomorrow to set up an appointment for that day, and they’d take a look, run some tests, etc. So we’ll see what ends up happening, what they say, etc.

I had kind of an icky last few days and I’ve been sitting at home on my couch feeling icky and being unproductive. Tomorrow I don’t have anything on the schedule, and then Tuesday I have to get up at 5 am, fly to S. Indiana, back by 10 am, then over to Marion, fly down to Florida to pick up Caleb, and back. Wednesday I’m flying Nick somewhere, and then Wednesday evening after Kaylee gets home from work at 7:30, we’re planning on heading to Cape. We won’t get in until a little later, but then at least we’ll be there Thanksgiving morning/day. I”m looking forward to it. Thursday evening we’ll have to head home, both for the cat, and because I have a flight on Friday back down to Florida. I’m nervous about the weather coming up, and dealing with Florida over the holiday. They’re already warning that air travel is going to be a major cluster, and where there’s a major cluster, Florida is almost always involved.  So…one day at a time. First up is Tuesday, and the weather looks fine, so long day but shouldn’t be too bad, I hope.

Here Comes Winter

I saw my first snow action last night coming home from Marion after my trip. I'll post a separate post below this one about yesterday and that trip, but in my car on the way home I texted Kaylee and warned her to give herself some extra time to get to work in the morning because the roads were wet, the temps were below freezing, and the snow was already coming down. Fortunately she said today that getting to work wasn't too bad. I'm hoping getting home also isn't too bad, because we've gotten several inches of snow, now, on top of it. *sigh*

I was dead after yesterday. I woke up at 4:14 am, took a drink of water, said "Hell no", and went back to sleep until about 8 am. Which lately for me is sleeping in. I was still dragging all morning. Took my vitamins, drank a water, had some coffee, took a shower, barely got ready for lunch in time. lol Felt a little better after some food, came home to get to work on a bunch of stuff I need to catch up on.

Wrote up a list of Meridian Squawks, planned a flight in it for weight and balance, wrote to the trainer guy to get insurance certificates done, finally got back to most of my emails, a few to go, downloaded a bunch of pics, finishing up some laundry and putting it away so when the house is cleaned tomorrow I won't have laundry sitting out, combining the last of two conditioners into one bottle so they don't rip me off on not being able to use the last 2" of conditioner in the bottom of the bottle, you know, stuff.

And then I went and did it. It's been snowing like crazy out here, so Steve left the trash can out in the alley, was going to get it later. I was home and he wasn't, so when the snowing slowed down a little bit,  I slipped on his big shoes and ran out to pull the trash can in. Got that done, and started jogging back to the house. Right foot caught on a rock, since the shoe is so big on my foot the shoe stopped but my foot didn’t, and I couldn’t move the foot under me, so I went down pretty hard, because I was jogging. This is why exercise is bad for you.

I hurt the wound on my right hand worse, (I'll talk about the wound on my right hand in yesterday's post), opened one up a new wound on my left hand and another chunk out of my right knee, but the actual uncool part is that my head hit a rock, right on my right temple.  I don’t have a concussion, it didn’t hit THAT hard that my brain rattled, but it hit hard enough that my temple is sore to a very light touch, and if I open my mouth more than about an inch, the right side of my jaw and up into my head hurts. Gave me an instant headache too, but Advil took care of that.  I don’t THINK I cracked anything, but I’m not 100% sure. I figured I’d give it some time to see if the soreness goes down. If it gets worse instead of the same or better, then I’ll call the doc tomorrow, just to make sure, since the temple is kind of a thin area of the skull. Of all the places you don't want to land on a small sharp rock with your head, if it's not where your skull meets your spine, it's right there on your temple. What a dork.

Oh yay.

Evening snowage

Meridian Round One

Man, I'm not sure I have the energy for this! 

I was a little stressed out about the first Meridian flight. Woke up at 4 am and never got back to sleep, so I pulled up the weather to find moderate to severe icing around here, low IFR in Georgia, and storms in FL. That was great. I delayed everyone by 2 hours, until the worst of the ice was past and we just got some light, the storms were gone, and the fog was just nice regular IFR. So a two hour delay eliminated the worst of our issues, at least.

It was still exhausting. I don't know the plane, we had headwinds strong enough to slow us down, going into Atlanta and Florida areas both is busy and can be tricky, and this is the first time I've ever even met the new owner or his girlfriend, and I'm up to bat on this flight. Originally he was going to sit up front with me, but instead he let Morgan, so she could start logging her time, and that was good because she helped me a couple of times on something he wouldn't have been able to; she was a good co-pilot. :) 

I'd decided to stop in Georgia instead of trying to make it all the way, because the winds were so strong it would have taken us 5.5 hours (it said) to go non-stop. So instead we went all in and went as fast as we could to Georgia, 2 hours there, topped off and headed back out, another 1 hr 45 min to Sarasota. It was relatively smooth and uneventful for them, which is great. They were pleased with how we did, and after we dropped them off, Morgan and I went to a grill on the water and I had a grilled grouper sandwich and stared at the weather on my iPad. Snow and rain and clouds moving into home base, of course. Took off and tried to make it non-stop home, but couldn't. I had a head wind no matter what altitude I went to going BOTH directions, to and from Indiana/Florida. How is that possible?? I don't know, but it was real. I tried powering back to extend our range, and...no good. I was so slow up there, at approach speed, and still couldn't get an hour reserve of fuel for home, which was going to require an instrument approach and some bad weather likely. So that was an easy call. Fifteen minutes into that set up I said "Nope. We're landing and topping off. I'm not coming into Marion at night in the snow with icing and IFR in a plane I've now flown three times running on fumes on gas at minimum gas. Just NO."  So we stopped again in Georgia, and we were in and out of there in 30 minutes flat, which is marvelous, and they are CAA so we got a great price on the fuel. And no stressing over the remaining fuel getting home. Win/win/win.

Getting into the plane in Georgia, I'd opened the door and held it by a little handle with a wire, to let it drop slowly. Except that's not how you do that, and the whole thing went ripping through my hand, and tore a big flap of skin really pretty deep in the meaty part of my right hand. It was bleeding heavily, but Morgan happens to carry band-aids with her, so I stuffed a tissue over it to stop the bleeding as best I could and then put a bandaid over it. It then hurt a little bit to manipulate the throttle and stuff, but I carried on. But after I dropped them off, it's like I ran out of juice. My brain would NOT let me talk properly. I couldn't say the N# for the airplane to save my life, and in the dark I couldn't see it on the panel, so I kept goofing up that radio call. Morgan was highly amused because I'm usually the one that doesn't do things wrong and gets to tell her all the things she's doing wrong. Tonight it was my night in the barrel and I flubbed a BUNCH. So the last leg I had her do it. I was doing it because I need the practice, but so does she, and I was obviously sub-par at that point, so she took over and did a nice job. We got into some snow and clouds, but the landing back at Marion was uneventful, which is great. We secured the airplane, I remote started my car so the steering wheel and seat would be warm, and drove home and absolutely crashed. Steve hadn't seen or talked to me all day so he's trying to talk to me and I'm so stinking tired I mostly hear buzzing in my ears. Poor guy. lol 

That was 9.2 hours in the Air, or 14.5 hours door to door from my house to my house, after about 4 hours of sleep. That was a long day. But we successfully got the mission completed, we mitigated the risks, everything went smoothly except for my radio calls after I'd already dropped them off, lol, and the actual flight was uneventful, thankfully. We all lived, I learned some things, got some practice in, got some experience in on the airplane, and saw some very pretty sights, too.

Sarasota

Pink sky at night...

Sunset Series. So pretty

Meridian Cockpit

Atlanta Area

Tried to get the snow/rain streaming in the lights but can't quite capture it

This is what the runway looked like through my windshield. From the heat maybe. Morgan was flying and she said "Let me get back on the centerline before you take the photo" but it was too late. lol