Blowing Iowa

Goooood Grief. Today was Freaking Windy, everywhere. I flew the Conquest from Frankfort over to Muscatine, Iowa, where the winds were 31 knots at a 40 degree crosswind. Landed, parked into the wind on the ramp, picked up a guy, and departed for Iowa Falls, Iowa. Where the winds were 37 knots, direct crosswind. That's a lot, man. Low level wind shear, turbulence, I made everybody tighten up their seat belts and hang on. Greased the landings on, too, impressed the guys, which was nice. ;) Left there and went back to Muscatine, 35 knots 40 degrees off, dropped the guy back off, flew back to Frankfort, 36 knots and 50 degrees off. It was windy and rough, man, all bloody day long! I earned my paycheck today.

On the way to the first stop, we were close, and I heard a familiar voice. I was pretty sure it was Doug R., Rozy. So the next time he talked, I listened for his N#. When I heard it, I went looking on my iPad with the traffic on it for his N#, and found it, and I was low enough I had internet, so I looked it up, and sure enough, it's Mr. Mulligan, his airshow plane. I took a screenshot of our planes passing within 4 miles of each other, and sent him a text that said "I bet I recognized your voice better than you did mine ;)" He texted back later that I should have said hi, but I wasn't going to do that on approach, my 'hi' was the text that he got later. ;) It's a small world, though. He's from Iowa, I'm from Indiana, we both end up 4 miles from each other talking on the same frequency. He and Kim are on their way down to Sun-n-Fun, probably beating the weather in, unlike what I'm likely going to be able to do.

When I got back to Frankfort, it was in perfect time. I drove straight to Harvey Hinklemeyer, and met up with Morgan, Cameron, AE, Chuck and Steve for dinner. They'd ordered for me, and my food got there 45 seconds after I sat down. Now THAT is timing. ;) It was a good evening. Now Steve's on the deck with the guys and I'm inside trying to catch up, as usual. Paperwork, and I have/had 15 legs of flights in my flight planning tab to start working on. I had four of them today. Tomorrow I have to go to Ohio and back to drop off the 340. That one should be fine. Maybe fly BOB again now that Jon tweaked some things. Oh, and they found oil lines were kinked almost completely shut on the oil cooler on the right engine. In other words, I was likely to have had a right engine failure at some point and probably not long, so that was a good little save right there. Ernie was right--it's better to be lucky than good. I'd still prefer to be both, but I couldn't see that on a preflight, it's under the cowl. So...while I would hopefully handle it appropriately, it would have trashed the engine and been an emergency. But now they found it on the ground, and "excitement" averted.  Sunday gets interesting. The weather isn't great, we have a huge line of bad weather moving through, and I need to get down to Panama City so that I can be there to leave first thing Monday morning so I can get back to get BOB down to Lakeland, FL. Except Monday's weather looks IFR, which I can't do in the Beech, and the airport closes, and...and and and. *sigh* This is not relaxing.

Tonight Glenn wants to talk to me about the Air Power Tour schedule, and I don't feel like it, I feel like trying to relax after I catch up. I have to pack for Sun-n-Fun too. And my overnight in Panama City. Yep. This is relaxing. ;)

A little rainbow that's hard to see

I'm the big blue plane, Doug is the little aqua triangle up there off my right wing. :)

The courtesy car, in the background is the Conquest, and behind that, hard to see, is one windsock stuck Straight Out