I spent 9 hours today getting no further away than Frankfort and Muncie, Indiana. Had to get up at 6 am and drive to Frankfort, pick up the Conquest. It was suuuper cold and windy. I flew it over to Muncie, low and fast and under the clouds. I was taking it in to the avionics shop to replace the left side G600 in the panel, so it wouldn't blind me at night any more. I expected it to take a few hours, but I did not expect it to take 7.5 hours! I waited there in the pilot's lounge and did some work on my iPad. Around noon he came in and told me that they had to update the software on the old unit before they could replace it, and after they updated it, the unit seemed to be working. It took them from 8 am to noon to update the software, which is impressive! Anyway. He said that the manual didn't say anything about a software update having anything to do with that problem, and he didn't trust it. I told him that it was intermittent and I didn't trust it either, so they'd go ahead and replace the unit, the reason I was there. If they thought it worked now and I left like that and then take off at dark tomorrow and the unit blasts bright again, now I've lost a day of my life and have to go back and do it all again. No thank you. So he agreed with me, and they replaced it.
While they were working on it, I took the crew van over to town and got brunch. I'm sitting there and I suddenly see white pellets hitting the ground and bouncing off of it. I peeked around the window and it was some kind of tiny snow/sleet pellets. Winds were over 30 knots, this precip stuff was bouncing off of everything and blowing sideways. YUCK.
Finally when they were done, they asked me if I was going to leave, because the weather was even worse. And so it was, but it was still good enough. About then, the line guy at Frankfort texted me and asked if I was going to make it back, because the weather sucked. I was in the plane with it running and I laughed. He said "Never mind, I see you filed for home. Fly Safe!" The winds were now blowing to 35 knots, snow blowing sideways, low visibility, turbulence, a little ice, and as I found out on short final at Frankfort after I shot the RNAV in, pretty good wind shear. My airspeed went from 116 to 95 in a blink, and the airplane yelled "AIRSPEED" at me. I was already powered up by then and it was taking time to recover. It got slow a couple of times, I had to keep jockeying with it. Ended with a nice 70 degree crosswind at 35 knots, made a beautiful landing out of it, too. ;)
Nick topped off and put the plane away for me, and I headed out, had to stop for gas (should've done that this morning when it was warm!) and get home in time to eat dinner with Steve and prepare for tomorrow's trip to Mobile, Alabama.
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