denverpilot
Tied Down
... if anyone needed any more coaxing...
My co-owner, and our friend Doug, and myself camped in the North 40 at Oshkosh from Saturday night through Thursday morning.
We wanted to get my co-owner home to cover running his retail business on Friday so they wouldn't be short-staffed.
Wednesday afternoon I start looking at weather and KOSH TAF says it'll be 800 Overcast until 10:00 local on Thursday.
I whip out the Oshkosh NOTAM, look up the IFR Departure procedures, get a login for eSTMP, look up when an earlier available slot time is, see that it's full after 07:00, but there's a 06:45 slot, book it, get the confirmation number and then call the gang for a pow-wow...
"We can leave when it's cool and be on our way back early, IFR... Or we can join the conga line to the runway at 10:00 for a VFR departure. I'm cool with either one, I'll cancel the slot time if we don't want to break camp at sunrise."
Take a closer look at it. Not convective that early unless you got further south, and just the morning midwestern clag. Easily flyable.
We decided to do it.
Up at 05:15, broke camp, call Clearance Delivery, get an engine start okay, and off we taxi with an "IFR" sign in the window.
When we got in the airplane, METAR said 400 Overcast and it was looking low but not thick. Wet though. Very wet.
Skew-T said tops were probably around 6000, so I filed for that so we could play a bit. Destination was Waterloo, IA and it was forecast VFR.
During the taxi, it was early enough the little VW bug with the checkered flag was still dropping flag men off at their posts in front of us. Looked like a clown car.
It would race ahead of us to the next taxiway intersection and drop out a guy with paddles, he'd turn around and look at our sign and then wave us the direction the car just went. Next intersection, same thing. Three times. Haha.
Quick runup at the IFR Hold line for 27 (we were by ourselves, a jet had left a few seconds before, and the Aeroshell team) and a look at the sky and realized a hole had moved over the field. VMC. Okay, fine by me. Whatever.
Cleared for takeoff, as filed, up to 3000' and we wagged the wings goodbye at the North 40 hangover sufferers.
Haha. See ya next year!
An 11 hour "duty day" swapping seats KOSH-KALO-KSUX-KLBF-KAPA with a pause for what they called "chicken salad sandwiches" at KLBF's terminal building and restaraunt, and we had 79M put away in the hangar.
On the leg from KSUX-KLBF I filed IFR and we ended up right at the bases of the barely beginning puffies and Doug was playing autopilot. When they dropped into our path I got to say, "I'll stay on the controls with ya, but feel free to fly through them. It's fun." Three or four of those is all, not even worth logging, but I think he enjoyed it. After the second one I said, "make sure it's trimmed right and it'll fly through without much need for help".
The last one was a combo of a few building puffies, and lasted about 30-60 seconds which got a "wow, that was a long one" out of Doug from the right seat. (He's about to go take his Instrument written soon.) I joked, "Do it for an hour or two!"
One way to have the Oshkosh skies all to yourself! Depart IFR!
My co-owner, and our friend Doug, and myself camped in the North 40 at Oshkosh from Saturday night through Thursday morning.
We wanted to get my co-owner home to cover running his retail business on Friday so they wouldn't be short-staffed.
Wednesday afternoon I start looking at weather and KOSH TAF says it'll be 800 Overcast until 10:00 local on Thursday.
I whip out the Oshkosh NOTAM, look up the IFR Departure procedures, get a login for eSTMP, look up when an earlier available slot time is, see that it's full after 07:00, but there's a 06:45 slot, book it, get the confirmation number and then call the gang for a pow-wow...
"We can leave when it's cool and be on our way back early, IFR... Or we can join the conga line to the runway at 10:00 for a VFR departure. I'm cool with either one, I'll cancel the slot time if we don't want to break camp at sunrise."
Take a closer look at it. Not convective that early unless you got further south, and just the morning midwestern clag. Easily flyable.
We decided to do it.
Up at 05:15, broke camp, call Clearance Delivery, get an engine start okay, and off we taxi with an "IFR" sign in the window.
When we got in the airplane, METAR said 400 Overcast and it was looking low but not thick. Wet though. Very wet.
Skew-T said tops were probably around 6000, so I filed for that so we could play a bit. Destination was Waterloo, IA and it was forecast VFR.
During the taxi, it was early enough the little VW bug with the checkered flag was still dropping flag men off at their posts in front of us. Looked like a clown car.
It would race ahead of us to the next taxiway intersection and drop out a guy with paddles, he'd turn around and look at our sign and then wave us the direction the car just went. Next intersection, same thing. Three times. Haha.
Quick runup at the IFR Hold line for 27 (we were by ourselves, a jet had left a few seconds before, and the Aeroshell team) and a look at the sky and realized a hole had moved over the field. VMC. Okay, fine by me. Whatever.
Cleared for takeoff, as filed, up to 3000' and we wagged the wings goodbye at the North 40 hangover sufferers.
Haha. See ya next year!
An 11 hour "duty day" swapping seats KOSH-KALO-KSUX-KLBF-KAPA with a pause for what they called "chicken salad sandwiches" at KLBF's terminal building and restaraunt, and we had 79M put away in the hangar.
On the leg from KSUX-KLBF I filed IFR and we ended up right at the bases of the barely beginning puffies and Doug was playing autopilot. When they dropped into our path I got to say, "I'll stay on the controls with ya, but feel free to fly through them. It's fun." Three or four of those is all, not even worth logging, but I think he enjoyed it. After the second one I said, "make sure it's trimmed right and it'll fly through without much need for help".
The last one was a combo of a few building puffies, and lasted about 30-60 seconds which got a "wow, that was a long one" out of Doug from the right seat. (He's about to go take his Instrument written soon.) I joked, "Do it for an hour or two!"
One way to have the Oshkosh skies all to yourself! Depart IFR!
