N395V
Well Known Member
Normally I like to fly in the winter. Tops are not too high, the air is smooth and visibility (compared to summer down here) is crystal clear.
I had planned to fly from Souther Mississippi to Rockford Illinois last Thursday to look at a plane then home Friday as the long range forecasts looked good for Wednesday through Sunday.
Well Thursday morning this is what I woke up to......
Now I am sure to many of you this is no big deal but here in Southern Mississippi we just DO NOT EVER get 3 inches of snow. Even if I could have flown it would be unsafe to drive to the airport because down here people do not know how to drive in the snow.
In any event I left early the next morning. The weather patterns were really screwy. There was an inversion and the winds decreased with altitude and the temps increased as you went up. Unfortunately for me I was flying an underpowered pig and didn't have the oomph to get through the layer without picking up a ton of ice. So VFR at 2500' I went all the way to Chicago into 35 knot headwinds. What should have been 4 and 1/2 hours in the air turned in to 9 hrs.
You do not often get to actually see the frontal system with your own two eyes but today was rare.
Below you can actually see the warm air mass sliding over the cold front.
The first leg to Cape Girardeau Missouri (CGI) was slow but uneventful. Had to run the heater the entire way and was seeing a stellar 70 to 90 knots over the ground. Leaving the Cape I saw some holes I thought I could get through so I filed and was going to try to get to the warm air and slower winds on top. Nothing ever goes as planned and today was no different. On departure, departure kept me low for traffic for 10 minutes and I was in and out of the clouds picking up tons of ice so I cancelled IFR and went back down to 2500. The ice sublimated off rather quickly but the engines started to act funny. For the first time in 30 years I had to use carb heat.
About 20 minutes later the props got out of sync and when I tried to adjust them the levers wouldn't budge, the cables were frozen so I had 4 more hours of unsynchronized thrumming. Thank God the throttles didn't freeze. Lesson learned (relearned ice gets inside as well as outside, and carb heat is useful)
Got to Rockford and it was gosh awful cold. did my flight planning home and you guessed it the front has moved far enough that I will have headwinds going home and similar met conditions so home I go at 2700 feet. The winds at 3000' were 56 knots just about off my nose. The resultant ground speed was
That was my best speed all the way back to CGI took 4:45, it can be driven quicker. Called it a day and spent the night at CGI.
cntd next post...............................................................
I had planned to fly from Souther Mississippi to Rockford Illinois last Thursday to look at a plane then home Friday as the long range forecasts looked good for Wednesday through Sunday.
Well Thursday morning this is what I woke up to......
Now I am sure to many of you this is no big deal but here in Southern Mississippi we just DO NOT EVER get 3 inches of snow. Even if I could have flown it would be unsafe to drive to the airport because down here people do not know how to drive in the snow.
In any event I left early the next morning. The weather patterns were really screwy. There was an inversion and the winds decreased with altitude and the temps increased as you went up. Unfortunately for me I was flying an underpowered pig and didn't have the oomph to get through the layer without picking up a ton of ice. So VFR at 2500' I went all the way to Chicago into 35 knot headwinds. What should have been 4 and 1/2 hours in the air turned in to 9 hrs.
You do not often get to actually see the frontal system with your own two eyes but today was rare.
Below you can actually see the warm air mass sliding over the cold front.
The first leg to Cape Girardeau Missouri (CGI) was slow but uneventful. Had to run the heater the entire way and was seeing a stellar 70 to 90 knots over the ground. Leaving the Cape I saw some holes I thought I could get through so I filed and was going to try to get to the warm air and slower winds on top. Nothing ever goes as planned and today was no different. On departure, departure kept me low for traffic for 10 minutes and I was in and out of the clouds picking up tons of ice so I cancelled IFR and went back down to 2500. The ice sublimated off rather quickly but the engines started to act funny. For the first time in 30 years I had to use carb heat.
About 20 minutes later the props got out of sync and when I tried to adjust them the levers wouldn't budge, the cables were frozen so I had 4 more hours of unsynchronized thrumming. Thank God the throttles didn't freeze. Lesson learned (relearned ice gets inside as well as outside, and carb heat is useful)
Got to Rockford and it was gosh awful cold. did my flight planning home and you guessed it the front has moved far enough that I will have headwinds going home and similar met conditions so home I go at 2700 feet. The winds at 3000' were 56 knots just about off my nose. The resultant ground speed was
That was my best speed all the way back to CGI took 4:45, it can be driven quicker. Called it a day and spent the night at CGI.
cntd next post...............................................................
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