This was a tiring day. The weather was supposed to be low IFR but doable, but it kept being worse than it was supposed to be. It makes it pretty hard to plan things if your available information is "okay" but reality isn't and you can't tell what it's going to do.
I had NB (16 year old job shadowing me) wait an extra half hour as I wasn't sure if we were getting into the Chicago area airport or not. It kept dipping at to below minimums, and the available forecast wasn't helping. Finally I decided we could get there, but I wasn't so sure about Michigan, where we were dropping her off, but it LOOKED like it should be doable. So we launched, in 500' overcast and mist. The forecast at Chicago was for 300' and 2 miles. Halfway there it was reporting 200' and 1 mile, then 2400' and 2 miles. When we actually landed, it was 300' and a mile or so. Just up and down all over the place. We get there early enough to get gas and pay the bill, and Tanya, the cancer patient, was there within about 45 minutes. I spent that whole time trying to figure out what we were doing. The original airport we were supposed to go into went down to 0 miles visibility with "vertical visibility" ceiling of 0'. Zero Zero, well, that's not happening. I had a back up airport, JXN. I watched everything around it go below minimums while it stayed at 300'. Then 200' and 1/2, or...minimums. It stayed there for 45 min, it stayed there while we got in the plane, it stayed there 2/3rds of the way there, but everything, and I mean everything else was below minimums, so my plan was to go to Lansing if I had to, which would have been extra hours of time and decent money to get her home by Uber. But my choices were limited.
Right as I'm starting vectors for the approach in, I'm told it's now 1/4 mile and 200'. That's below minimums. But I decided to go ahead and shoot the approach and look, because sometimes what you see at the end of the runway is different than what the thing reports. And I was already there. When I got switched to tower they told me they couldn't see the runway so just to let them know if I landed or if I went missed. I said I'd advise them. I told NB that her job was to stare out the front of the window, and if she sees the same white "rabbit" lights we had at Chicago, to call out just "LIGHTS". I programmed in Lansing with the assumption I was going to go missed. Called out altitudes. 1000 to go. 500 to go. 200 to go, 100 to go, Minimums, right when I saw and NB called out LIGHTS. I didn't have the runway but I had the lights, so I came down to 100' above the ground, and there was the runway. So we landed. The two ladies on board were impressed. I was just glad to have found it. I told tower I was on the runway taxiing off at "Alpha", having landed at minimums. He had me taxi to the FBO "under the tower", but I couldn't see the tower. lol I just used the map like normal, man.
We dropped off the lady, who was very nice, got some gas to waive the fees, and took off again in the murk headed for home, Frankfort, which was a respectable 1700' overcast.
Landed, and I had her help me wipe the plane down, we went over paperwork, the logbook, plane's logs, receipts, etc., and then I was like...we're done for the day, I got nothing else. So she's coming back to Kokomo tomorrow at 9 am. I told her to bring homework or something to entertain herself with, because I don't have anything for her to do tomorrow. She got to do a lot of things...some that other people wish they could have done, so it'll have to do.
I went to Culvers when I got back, and sat in the restaurant and ate my first meal of the day at 4 pm. The glamorous life. ;)
Me, Nia, Tanya
Lining up for takeoff again out of JXN
And back on top, in the sunshine
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