A Week in Syracuse, via Trenton and Kalamazoo
Candy and I took our first long cross country in the Arrow last week. Click the thumbnail to the right to see a larger map of where we flew. The trip went great, although the flying weather was pretty cloudy most of the time. I logged 3.1 hours in the clouds and 3 instrument approaches. We did not get a leg with nice sunshine, blue sky and smooth air until the very last day, from Kalamazoo home to St. Charles.
One of the rationalizations for buying a plane was that it would allow me to travel with Candy on some of her business trips and would allow both of us to see our family more often. This trip proved that, even in bad weather, we could see family, travel together, and get our jobs done while "on the road."
Sunday: St. Charles to Trenton via Parkersburg
We left St. Charles at about 9:00 in nice weather but with clouds and freezing temperatures in front of us. Trenton was farther than either the plane or we could reach without a stop so we planned a lunch and fuel stop in Parkersburg, WV. The Garmin GPSmap 396 immediately demonstrated its value by providing a constant update on the weather. I flew with the confidence that the weather at Parkersburg was marginal but well within my personal minimums and that I had numerous alternates with fine weather available.
I flew the RNAV (GPS) Y 21 into Parkersburg in moderate turbulence between layers of clouds; very dramatic when I had time to peek out the windshield. Once on the ground, I commented that that approach had been "challenging." Candy thought that "hair raising" fit the situation better because she could see how hard I was working.
The folks at Parkersburg were very friendly and lunch at Mary’s Plane View restaurant was great. We will certainly be back, hopefully in better weather.
We left Parkersburg in conditions that were poor enough that I figured we were likely to have to return and wait until the cold front passed through, even though we had gotten no significant ice on the way down and there were no pireps of icing. For reasons which escape me, but for which I am grateful, we encountered no icing whatsoever on the departure and kept climbing until we were on top at 9,000. In the last 400 feet, we picked up about 1/16" of rime but then were on top in sunshine.
The tops of the clouds kept rising so, for about half an hour, we climbed up to 11,000 to stay in clear air. At about the same time that we ran out of clouds, ATC brought us down to 3,000 over eastern Pennsylvania and on into New Jersey.
Monday: Trenton to Syracuse
Knowing nothing of the preferred IFR routing in the Trenton/Philadelphia area, I filed "direct" to Syracuse, figuring that ATC would fix my routing. They did, indeed, again impressing Candy with the complexities of IFR flight. Her first wake-up came when I could not raise McGuire clearance delivery on the radio and had to get a phone number for them, whereupon I received a full-route clearance by cell-phone which included the wonderous opportunity to fly east to the McGuire VOR and then west to a point NW of Philly before finally getting turned northwest-ish toward our destination.
I had pointed our relatives at FlightAware.com, so they could track our progress. I learned a valuable lesson about jumped-to conclusions and failure to communicate when I called from Syracuse to let folks know we had arrived safely. They had noted, with great alarm, our unscheduled stop in Binghamton. Having taken on too much coffee at breakfast, Candy and I stopped at Binghamton (shooting the ILS 34 approach) to swap the coffee for fuel and it never occurred to me to call anyone during the 15 minutes that we are inside the FBO; big mistake, my relatives had assumed the worst.
The leg into Syracuse was only 29 minutes long and ended with the third IFR approach, the ILS 28.
Friday: Syracuse to Kalamazoo via Youngstown
We were being very flexible on the departure schedule from Syracuse due to a snow and ice storm on Thursday night. Friday morning, about 1/2" of ice coated the rental car, topped with about six inches of snow. Thankfully, I had had Exec Air put the plane inside a hangar on Thursday night.
The weather forecasts called for the warm front to drag northeast of the area by noon, taking the freezing rain and snow along with it. Sure enough, by 10:00 the snow stopped almost as suddenly as if someone had turned off a switch. After lunch, we headed for the airport and taxied over a snowy airport to depart into the clouds at 1:00.
In theory we could have flown to Kalamazoo north of Lake Erie, through Canadian airspace. In practice, though, this would have been a bad idea since we lacked much of the paperwork required to land in Canada (passports, restricted radiotelephone operators permit, etc.). Had the flight gone as expected, we would have flown through Canada and back into the US without landing and without a problem. Had we encountered any sort of situation which required a landing, we would have been in violation of all sorts of laws and regulations that I just did not want to wrangle with. (AOPA members can find the requirements nicely summarized on the Canada International Flight Quick Briefing and Flight Bulletin.)
Flying south of Lake Erie added about 30 minutes to the trip and made a non-stop flight to Kalamazoo beyond what I felt comfortable undertaking. It would have meant arriving in Kalamazoo in uncertain weather with only 60 minutes of fuel in the tanks and a saddle-sore pilot who would have been sitting in a plane for four hours. I opted for a stop in Youngstown, OH to refill the gas tanks, empty our biological tanks, and stretch our legs.
The leg proved occasionally scenic at 6,000′ in clear air with clouds appearing and vanishing below us. Eventually, the clouds formed up into a persistent presence and the tops rose through our altitude, threatening us with ice, bumps, and flying-inside-a-milk-bottle boredom. Just to be different, I opted to try descending below the clouds rather than climbing above them as I had on the previous four legs. Dropping down to 4,000′ put us in bumpy air but overflying the Pennsylvania hills, marvelling at the snow-covered country side and zipping in and out of the bottoms of the clouds. Bumps eventually overcame beauty and we climbed to clear smoother air at 8,000′.
Other than incredibly friendly people in the tower and at ReadyAir, the stop-over in Youngstown was uneventful. We will certainly stop here again and highly recommend it to anyone else. The guys at ReadyAir almost forced us to take their crew car out for food, even though we were not hungry. Somehow we all settled for an apple, a muffin, and some conversation.
The snow gods decided to squall all over us just as we were ready to depart. With visibility dropping to 1/4 mile, the GPSmap 396 came to the rescue again with an almost-live nexrad radar image of the cell. Patience is much easier when you can see the cell moving toward, and past, the airport and know that the snow will be gone within 10 or 15 minutes.
Flying to Kalamazoo at 6,000′ would have been anticlimactic had it not been for a breathtaking moonrise. Moments like this make me thankful that I have eyes and end up the the right places to use them.
We got more than our share of excitement, though, when ATC told us of multiple pilot reports of moderate icing on descent into Kalamazoo from 5,000′ down to 3,000′. Since I had enough fuel to fly to Kalamazoo and then all the way back to Youngstown, I decided to continue for a closer look. The bottoms of the clouds were at about 2,800′, well above the ground and above ATC’s minimum vectoring altitude. I figured that I could come down through the clouds rapidly enough to minimize the exposure to icing conditions and, if ice became a problem, would be able to climb back on top if absolutely necessary.
ATC vectored us into position for a visual approach to the airport and then cleared us for a descent all the way from 6,000′ down to 2,500′. Being a sensitive, new millenium man, I had forewarned Candy to expect a rapid descent. I extended the landing gear and full flaps, pulled the power back to idle, and our Arrow with the "Hershey bar" wings came down like a rock, between 1,500 and 2,000 feet per minute. We popped out of the bottoms of the clouds without picking up any ice at all other than a stray crystal or two in the corners of the windshield.
Saturday: Kalamazoo to St. Charles
Saturday morning brought lake effect clouds to southwest Michigan but clear smooth skies for the rest of the flight home. After a week of being bounced around in and above clouds and constant awareness of contingencies for icing conditions, we had an uneventful trip home over Illinois.
In seven days, we covered 1,685 nautical miles (1,938 statute miles), visited family in two cities, and spent four full workdays in a third city. The weather never delayed us, though it certainly threatened to. All in all, this was a highly satisfactory trip and one which I look forward to repeating.
k3wl