RBD
Well Known Member
I started to respond to Paul Dye's "The trip that wasn't" thread, but then got carried away on the keyboard, and thought I should just create a new thread to share this:
Fast forward to last week, and my annual company party in Key West. I had the option of a commercial flight, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to fly the RV down, so that's what we did. When everyone was departing (commercial) on Sunday, I was staring at the weather apps on my phone, realizing that we weren't flying home. Well shoot, what to do. We ended up flying over to Marathon to stay with my aunt and uncle for the night. I was pretty sure that we would make it out Monday morning and get to work just an hour or so late. We were enjoying our unplanned extra day in the Keys, but the weather was never far from my thoughts.
I must have checked the metars, TAF's, and other wx info every hour, hoping it would change - it didn't. Monday morning, I increased my wx-checking scan to what seemed like once every 15 minutes, but as you've indicated, Paul, staring at the reports won't change them. Unfortunately, I learned that while staring at the wx reports long enough may not change them, staring at them long enough can begin to affect what you're seeing, IF YOU LET IT. I began to selectively see only the parts of the wx reports that worked for me. "We should be able to fly through these layers" and "even if it is MVFR at XXX airport, we aren't landing there, just flying over," I thought. The pressure of getting home began to mount, and I decided that we'd launch to "at least see what it was like."
It wasn't nice. I quickly got on top of a scattered/broken layer at 1,000 and flew between it and a similar layer at 4,000. We flew till I hit the Florida mainland (I saw only a glimpse of it, but the GPS assured me it's where we were) and the layers began to converge. Things began to change physiologically, and I wasn't comfortable. This wasn't the fun RV flying I signed up for, and in fact, I was miserable. Finally, the little bit of smarts I know I have in me made a stand, and "Baby, you're not making it to work today - we're going back to Marathon" crackled through the intercom. She was happy to hear it. We got below the lower layer and ran back to MTH at 700ft over the water. An hour or so later and we were on our way to Tampa in a one-way rental car.
I'll be the first to admit I should have never taken off. There's no sense in me pointing out all of the exact places where I made bad choices, as they're pretty evident. Let me also say that at no point did my wife ever pressure me into making any decision - she is (literally) firmly behind me when it comes to flying decisions. It's a blind trust that I feel I violated, and we've talked about it. I guess it's naive to say that "get-there-itis" will never strike again, but I certainly learned something from this short flight, and have hopefully added a few more "smarts" to my dwindling supply as a result of it.
The wx tomorrow evening sure looks perfect for one of those fun RV flights I'm used to. Can't wait to go get her.
Timely post, Paul. Having only made a few overnight trips in this first year of owning my first airplane, I haven't had to deal with wx to any great extent. Most of my flying has been local 30 minute after work stress relievers, weekend fly-ins, and breakast/lunch runs with others. Simply put, if I didn't like the wx at the time, I didn't fly.
Fast forward to last week, and my annual company party in Key West. I had the option of a commercial flight, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to fly the RV down, so that's what we did. When everyone was departing (commercial) on Sunday, I was staring at the weather apps on my phone, realizing that we weren't flying home. Well shoot, what to do. We ended up flying over to Marathon to stay with my aunt and uncle for the night. I was pretty sure that we would make it out Monday morning and get to work just an hour or so late. We were enjoying our unplanned extra day in the Keys, but the weather was never far from my thoughts.
I must have checked the metars, TAF's, and other wx info every hour, hoping it would change - it didn't. Monday morning, I increased my wx-checking scan to what seemed like once every 15 minutes, but as you've indicated, Paul, staring at the reports won't change them. Unfortunately, I learned that while staring at the wx reports long enough may not change them, staring at them long enough can begin to affect what you're seeing, IF YOU LET IT. I began to selectively see only the parts of the wx reports that worked for me. "We should be able to fly through these layers" and "even if it is MVFR at XXX airport, we aren't landing there, just flying over," I thought. The pressure of getting home began to mount, and I decided that we'd launch to "at least see what it was like."
It wasn't nice. I quickly got on top of a scattered/broken layer at 1,000 and flew between it and a similar layer at 4,000. We flew till I hit the Florida mainland (I saw only a glimpse of it, but the GPS assured me it's where we were) and the layers began to converge. Things began to change physiologically, and I wasn't comfortable. This wasn't the fun RV flying I signed up for, and in fact, I was miserable. Finally, the little bit of smarts I know I have in me made a stand, and "Baby, you're not making it to work today - we're going back to Marathon" crackled through the intercom. She was happy to hear it. We got below the lower layer and ran back to MTH at 700ft over the water. An hour or so later and we were on our way to Tampa in a one-way rental car.
I'll be the first to admit I should have never taken off. There's no sense in me pointing out all of the exact places where I made bad choices, as they're pretty evident. Let me also say that at no point did my wife ever pressure me into making any decision - she is (literally) firmly behind me when it comes to flying decisions. It's a blind trust that I feel I violated, and we've talked about it. I guess it's naive to say that "get-there-itis" will never strike again, but I certainly learned something from this short flight, and have hopefully added a few more "smarts" to my dwindling supply as a result of it.
The wx tomorrow evening sure looks perfect for one of those fun RV flights I'm used to. Can't wait to go get her.
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