One of the great things about having an RV is the travel flexibility that comes into your life. Fast and with excellent range, these airplanes open up the entire continent to those of us lucky to have them in our hangars. Spur of the moment travel is not confined to the local area, or the state in which we live ? in 6 hours, you can be almost a thousand nautical miles away from where you started!
For instance - Louise and I looked at the weather last week and decided, ?what the heck, let?s go surprise the family in Minnesota for Easter Sunday!? We had the weekend free, and both of us could spare Monday from work with little trouble and probably get enough work done on-line should our return be delayed until Tuesday. (It?s always important to look at the back end of a trip like this ? the last thing you want to do is force yourself into launching in bad weather due to ?terrestrial? concerns?.) The forecast for the flight from Houston to Minnesota for Saturday was superb to the point of boring ? Louise is always looking for a chance to use her still-fairly-new Instrument ticket with me along, but alas ? clear skies, visibility unlimited, little wind ? what rotten luck!
The return looked to be a bit more problematic, with a low pressure area spinning up over the Four Corners area on Saturday, deepening into a storm center on Sunday, and moving out on to the planes Sunday afternoon. The PROG charts looked like the center of the worst stuff would have moved to the east of our direct course by late Monday morning, with Precip still extending out across Kansas and Oklahoma at Mid-day. The early evening charts showed the western edge of the Precip to have moved east of those states by sunset on Monday. I figured that with the accuracy of a 48-hour forecast, we?d have a 50/50 chance of flying home on Monday, and a 100% chance of making the trip VFR on Tuesday. Monday might give some valuable IFR time if the temps stayed high enough to preclude icing forecasts.
The trip up on Saturday? What?s to tell ? it was just as expected. It was the -6?s turn for a long cross-country, so the Valkyrie stayed in the hangar as we launched for a two-leg trip to the Twin Cities. We dialed in fort Scott, Kansas, climbed to a comfortable cruise at 8,500?, and flew in smooth air listening to Car Talk on the XM. It was Louise?s leg to fly, so I just enjoyed the geology of the Ouachita hills and dozed. The stop at Fort Scott for fuel and to change seats was quick and efficient after about 3 hours aloft, and was followed by an equally beautiful and unexciting leg to Anoka County airport on the north side of the Cities. I?m guessing this was the first nice weekend day for awhile, as the tower operator was busier than the proverbial one-armed paper hanger, with everyone from jets practicing ILS?s to Cubs roaming around without transponders to fill his dance card. Nice trip, and I even managed a passable landing in the -6, despite a lack of much recent time in the bird.
Sunday was full of family, food, and chocolate Easter candy. I still remember the bad old days (just a few years ago) when I?d have to sit and watch the Weather Channel for chunks of time to get an idea of what the weather was doing. Now, we just take a quick glance at Weathermeister or the ADDS site on the Blackberry every once in awhile, and I can instantly se if the atmosphere is following the predictions or not. In this case, the weather-guessers seemed to be doing remarkably well. The storm center was spinning up as predicted, and the TAF?s were looking like they had the timing about right. Minnesota looked to stay good, as did Houston, but the plains in between are looking to have a wet Monday. While the ceilings and visibilities looked to be reasonable for IFR, the Airmets for icing in the clouds didn?t ? it is, after all, still April, and a big low pressure area pulls plenty of cold air down from Canada.
So how to handle weather that doesn?t meet minimums? Have a plan for a delay! Weather can change quite a bit overnight, so the plan is to take a look at the TAF?s in the morning and see if the storm has accelerated eastward. No need to get up early ? later is clearly better, and we could leave as late as early afternoon and still be home before sunset with the speed of the RV. We?ll take a look at the new forecast, and sped the morning doing odds and ends for the parents, then spend another night if we don?t have both legal AND smart weather for the trip. A swing westward into Kansas only adds about 50 miles to the trip overall, and that stays in the hopper as well. As usual, the old saying ?It?s better to be down here, wishing you were up there, rather than to be up there, wishing you were down there? holds true. ?Mikey? is equipped for light IFR, but the lack of an IFR GS is really beginning to be a limitation when you start to look through the catalog of available approaches. So we?ll enjoy the day tomorrow ? either in the beautiful north, or with reasonably good weather on the return. In any case, it will be without the stress of flying in bad weather with doubt about the outcome?..
Paul
For instance - Louise and I looked at the weather last week and decided, ?what the heck, let?s go surprise the family in Minnesota for Easter Sunday!? We had the weekend free, and both of us could spare Monday from work with little trouble and probably get enough work done on-line should our return be delayed until Tuesday. (It?s always important to look at the back end of a trip like this ? the last thing you want to do is force yourself into launching in bad weather due to ?terrestrial? concerns?.) The forecast for the flight from Houston to Minnesota for Saturday was superb to the point of boring ? Louise is always looking for a chance to use her still-fairly-new Instrument ticket with me along, but alas ? clear skies, visibility unlimited, little wind ? what rotten luck!
The return looked to be a bit more problematic, with a low pressure area spinning up over the Four Corners area on Saturday, deepening into a storm center on Sunday, and moving out on to the planes Sunday afternoon. The PROG charts looked like the center of the worst stuff would have moved to the east of our direct course by late Monday morning, with Precip still extending out across Kansas and Oklahoma at Mid-day. The early evening charts showed the western edge of the Precip to have moved east of those states by sunset on Monday. I figured that with the accuracy of a 48-hour forecast, we?d have a 50/50 chance of flying home on Monday, and a 100% chance of making the trip VFR on Tuesday. Monday might give some valuable IFR time if the temps stayed high enough to preclude icing forecasts.
The trip up on Saturday? What?s to tell ? it was just as expected. It was the -6?s turn for a long cross-country, so the Valkyrie stayed in the hangar as we launched for a two-leg trip to the Twin Cities. We dialed in fort Scott, Kansas, climbed to a comfortable cruise at 8,500?, and flew in smooth air listening to Car Talk on the XM. It was Louise?s leg to fly, so I just enjoyed the geology of the Ouachita hills and dozed. The stop at Fort Scott for fuel and to change seats was quick and efficient after about 3 hours aloft, and was followed by an equally beautiful and unexciting leg to Anoka County airport on the north side of the Cities. I?m guessing this was the first nice weekend day for awhile, as the tower operator was busier than the proverbial one-armed paper hanger, with everyone from jets practicing ILS?s to Cubs roaming around without transponders to fill his dance card. Nice trip, and I even managed a passable landing in the -6, despite a lack of much recent time in the bird.
Sunday was full of family, food, and chocolate Easter candy. I still remember the bad old days (just a few years ago) when I?d have to sit and watch the Weather Channel for chunks of time to get an idea of what the weather was doing. Now, we just take a quick glance at Weathermeister or the ADDS site on the Blackberry every once in awhile, and I can instantly se if the atmosphere is following the predictions or not. In this case, the weather-guessers seemed to be doing remarkably well. The storm center was spinning up as predicted, and the TAF?s were looking like they had the timing about right. Minnesota looked to stay good, as did Houston, but the plains in between are looking to have a wet Monday. While the ceilings and visibilities looked to be reasonable for IFR, the Airmets for icing in the clouds didn?t ? it is, after all, still April, and a big low pressure area pulls plenty of cold air down from Canada.
So how to handle weather that doesn?t meet minimums? Have a plan for a delay! Weather can change quite a bit overnight, so the plan is to take a look at the TAF?s in the morning and see if the storm has accelerated eastward. No need to get up early ? later is clearly better, and we could leave as late as early afternoon and still be home before sunset with the speed of the RV. We?ll take a look at the new forecast, and sped the morning doing odds and ends for the parents, then spend another night if we don?t have both legal AND smart weather for the trip. A swing westward into Kansas only adds about 50 miles to the trip overall, and that stays in the hopper as well. As usual, the old saying ?It?s better to be down here, wishing you were up there, rather than to be up there, wishing you were down there? holds true. ?Mikey? is equipped for light IFR, but the lack of an IFR GS is really beginning to be a limitation when you start to look through the catalog of available approaches. So we?ll enjoy the day tomorrow ? either in the beautiful north, or with reasonably good weather on the return. In any case, it will be without the stress of flying in bad weather with doubt about the outcome?..
Paul
