Icy Lakes

I saw another sign of winter today on a flight between Neenah and Reedsburg: the lakes and rivers are freezing over. My timing was perfect for these photos. Usually each year I see the lakes wide open one day, and frozen over another. This time I caught the process in the act.

Closer to Reedsburg, we flew over Wisconsin Dells and saw the dried-up lakebed of Lake Delton. During this summer's flooding, the lake breached its banks and emptied into the Wisconsin River. It was all over the news. The lake is in the center of the picture below.

First Taste of Winter

A freak mini-blizzard moved through yesterday and left a dusting of snow. The snow remained this morning when I flew from Clintonville to Brennand Airport. This is the first snow I've seen this season.

It was colder than normal today with temperatures in the 20s. The pressure was very high (30.53"Hg this morning). In the dense air I got great climb rates out of the 172 (1,000-1,300 feet per minute). Ahh, winter flying. Today was the first time the engine has seen a blanket or an extension cord in months.

I worked with my student Tony to start reviewing for his private pilot checkride. We flew 2.4 hours with stops in Green Bay and Shawano. Tonight we had our EAA Ultralight Chapter 41 meeting with yummy German food for dinner. I ducked out early in order to go work on my instrument flying skills. My former student Chris was my safety pilot while I was under the Foggles. I did three approaches at Appleton and a holding pattern, and reset my night currency by doing three landings.

Lotsa Clouds

Earth disappeared for most of Thursday and Friday during a trip in the Navajo. I was in or above the clouds for the majority of a flight to North Carolina, Minnesota, Missouri, and back November 13th and 14th. The gloomy weather didn't stop the trip from being interesting.

Thursday we flew from Oshkosh to Madison to pick up a patient and dropped him off in New Bern, NC. The trip started in the afternoon and went into the night. I flew the quick hop to Madison. Then I was copilot to North Carolina, and most of that was at night. Starting around West Virginia or so, the ground was completely shrouded in fog, so badly that airports in Virginia were having trouble letting people in. There was a full moon, so for a while we could see mountains sticking up out of the fog as if it were daytime. That was very cool and I wish a camera could have captured it. I'd never seen anything like that. When we landed in North Carolina it was 65 degrees and very humid, unlike home which was in the 40s. We were supposed to come home that night but due to a snafu with arranging refueling as well as the bad weather, we stayed the night.

Friday was a very long day flying back to the Midwest to pick up a patient in Rochester, MN and take her to Springfield, MO. I flew the chunk between NC and MN, and was copilot for the rest.

Leaving New Bern we had to divert quite a bit off course to stay out of thunderstorms. Virginia and West Virginia were still clouded over, and this time we got to see the tops of the mountains in the daylight. (And my camera was in the back of the plane.) We stopped at Dayton Wright Brothers Airport for fuel and flew through a lot of rain west of that. Then we flew through a cold front, battled some ice, and finally came out on top of a seemingly endless cloud deck. Near Rochester we were in the icy clouds once again. During descent, I heard something that sounded like stones hitting the plane, and it dawned on me that was the ice shedding from the propellers. I've always noticed the protective plates on planes like this, and now I know why they're usually missing paint.

The leg from Rochester to Springfield was fine at first when we were above the clouds. The sunset was pretty. We dealt with more ice and some turbulence on this leg, which was mostly spent flying in clouds. Finally we broke out below them and could see the ground for the last bit of the leg. It was very windy on the ground in Springfield just like the last time we were there.

Homeward bound, on the final leg we had to experiment with different altitudes to try and stay out of the ice. Eventually we wound up at 11,000 feet looking down on the moonlit clouds for a while. And then we were back in them again. Hey I like flying, but c'mon, how about some scenery, huh? Oh well. I was dead tired and had surrendered all the flying duties. Somewhere along the way I started feeling symptoms of hypoxia. To steal a quote from the left-seater, it was "time to take a trip to the oxygen bar." I had never used supplemental oxygen before, and after a few hits from the mask I decided it's the best thing since sliced bread. I have a new respect for altitude.

Just as in my last two trips, I learned a lot on this one, especially more about ice and weather in general. I have a pretty good feel for the plane now and even managed to grease a couple landings. All the instrument flight time is good practice. These trips are becoming addicting.

I flew the red legs:

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Wisconsin - Texas - New York Trip

Wednesday through early Saturday morning (Nov. 5-8) I flew my second trip in the Piper Navajo Chieftain. We flew all over the eastern half of the country and logged lots of flight time. Wednesday night we flew to Springfield, Missouri for an overnight. Thursday we flew to Houston TX, Tupelo MS, and to Morristown TN for another overnight. Friday, we flew to the Pittsburgh PA area and then to New York City (JFK!) which was really neat. Finally late that night we flew back to Oshkosh with a stop in Elmira, NY. The picture above shows our airplane at Elmira with the big hill in the background.

On the Pittsburgh to JFK leg I had déjà vu when we flew right past Johnstown, PA with about the same amount of daylight left as when I landed there on August 9th. I thought "Hey, I know those mountains!"

Landing at JFK was crazy. We had to do an instrument approach down through the clouds. Air traffic control vectored us around in such a way that left us high on final approach. But we made it in, and on final I saw jet after jet backed up on the taxiway. I have never seen so many airliners lined up in one place like that. Taxiing to the general aviation terminal was very confusing -- it didn't help that it was nighttime and the air traffic controller was barking commands at us like an auctioneer. But we made it! Leaving was not as difficult since we were able to use a different runway.

I enjoyed the trip and liked seeing so many new places I'd never been to.

Here are some more pictures from my crummy cell phone camera:

I flew the legs in red on the map below.

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