I’m writing this from 35,000’ with 2 hours to go before I get to Delphi to drop off a family, then back to Kokomo Airport, put away the Cheyenne, then go home. The day started at 6:30 am wake-up, 7:30 am departure for the airport, 8:30 am wheels up for Kissimmee, Florida with three ladies headed to Disney. There were supposed to be storms at 2 pm. The timeline moved up, and by the time I arrived at 11:00 am, I had been dodging weather for awhile, and not good weather. Storms all over the place, ALL over the place, and headed for my airport, too. I got around and above everything, but the ones moving into Kissimmee were a legit problem. I got close, and they let us know the field just went below minimums on visibility for heavy rain. The plane in front of me went into a hold on the missed approach waypoint, and they asked me what I wanted to do. I looked at it, and thought if I could get 15 minutes, the worst of it would move through. So I powered way back, slowed way down, and told them I wanted to shoot the approach. Worked like a charm—I got in #1 ahead of the other guy, and the worst of the storm/rain moved out so that I could get in. Still a legit approach in the rain and clouds and wind, just not less than 1/2 mile and fog with storms. ;)
I landed in the rain, and nobody was there to marshall me in, so I just parked. Get out in the rain, go in and say I need a quick turn top off that I had arranged the day before, and they said there was lightning within 5 miles of the airport so their ramp was closed and they weren’t fueling anyone until the lightning moved 5 miles away, and there was another guy in front of me to be fueled up who was waiting to depart. Meanwhile, there is a whole line of storms aimed for Kissimmee, and it’s going to be there for hours and hours. I need to get out of there and get to Pueblo to gas up and then over to Gunnison to pick up the other family. I can’t sit here very long. So I start looking, based on the fuel I had left, where could I get to get out of the weather, get gas, which needed to be CAA, and get going. I ended up going to Tallahassee, FL, which got me out of most of Florida, but there were still some cells that popped up after I filed for there, too, of course. I landed with warnings about wind shear of 20 knots on final from the nearby cells. Fine. Landed fine, they topped me off fast, and I took right back off and headed for Pueblo. I’m going to Pueblo, even though I could make it non-stop, because they are CAA fuel, and it saves like $900 per top off to go there instead of fueling at Gunnison. Gunnison charges us $285 fee for not getting fuel and it’s cheaper to pay the fee than buy the fuel, by a lot. It makes for a long day, though, all this.
Landed at Pueblo, and I was Hungry, hadn’t eaten all day, was non-stop. So Pueblo has free hot dogs and chips and cookies and water, and I had one of each of those, which definitely helped. They got me topped off fast, as always, and I launched asap VFR for Gunnison. 30 minutes later over very rough mountains with 28 knot surface winds, I landed there, spun the props, went to the bathroom, grabbed a water, and got back in the plane with the family, and we are now winging our way home. Have one more line of storms to get around before landing back at Delphi. So I took off at 8:30, went to Florida, got right back in, went to Tallahassee, got right back in, went to Pueblo, got right back in, went to Gunnison, got right back in, going to Delphi, will get right back in and go to Kokomo. I’ll be back at Kokomo airport around 10-10:15 pm, so home around 10:45 probably. And that, ladies and gents, is a long day!
Me flying into Kissimmee, see all the pretty red?
Colorado in between Pueblo and Gunnison
A little black and white action
More Mountain Action
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