April solar eclipse

Well, once again super cool and well worth 3 hours in the car.

I forgot to look at flightaware... Did the feared air traffic materialize?
 
Racerx said:
Pretty much sums up my attitude. It's cool, but I'm not gonna go out of my way for it. I don't really get the hoopla
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You don’t feel that we’ve all been brought closer together over this? :biggrin: I flew in totality in 2017. It was cool but nothing like crazy like people today being moved to tears or anything.
 
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Absolutely incredible! In Burlington VT, high thin cirrus, with a few breaks. Son in law had a telescope with a sun filter. The pictures do not do justice to what could be seen thru the eyepiece. The solar flares and Baileys Beads were a sight to be seen!
 

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Lowflynjack said:
I've been dabbling in astrophotography. I'm using a couple of telescopes with built in cameras, I haven't started using my DSLRs yet. These telescopes have solar filters and will track the sun, so I'm going to attempt to get some pics. I won't be too disappointed if I don't! We're pretty close to the centerline, but will head a little further west to be closer. The problem around here is a lot of airports suddenly want to charge a fee to land there. Some of them are offering food and/or camping, but I know the fee at one is $250. No thanks.

Ground-to-Space photos I've taken recently.
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Wowzers!!
 
It was much more of a light show than I was expecting to see - not the eclipse but the ambient light changes that accompanied a very pronounced drop in temperature. It certainly lived up to my expectations, although I'm also happy that all I had to do was walk out the front door and sit down.
 
That was very cool. Landed at KSIV about an hour before totality. Half dozen planes there. Pretty chill. No biggie from an air traffic standpoint (no flight following). I was worried about having to do a flyover to check for full ramp or getting told on CTAF to stay away.
 
Had a great view through a cirrocumulus deck that developed minutes before and made the eclipse even more spectacular in Dallas.
 

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We ended up at Eagle Creek in Indy. The original plan was New Castle, IN then the next plan was Muncie, but ended up getting an invite to Eagle Creek. We were shorted about 20 seconds of totality by going to Eagle Creek vs New Castle. But hanging out with some friends and grilling out vs cold sandwiches was well worth the "sacrifice."

Skies were clear all day other than a high cirrus layer that you couldn't even really tell was there.

The air traffic was much less than 2017 or at least more dispersed as I think there were more places to fly to along the path relative to population centers.
 
Here at MVN the sky was pretty much clear. We got 80 planes in. The madness started at 9am when some guy started his engine and blew away a tent. a 9 yr old kid came out of the tent telling the pilot "you are a bad boy. a very bad boy".

Around 10 am I wanted the mini Oshkosh feel so I took my 150 up for an hr. Went out about 30 miles and the whole time I was dodging planes. everyone was transmitting at the same time. You couldn't understand any calls. Then I heard a highwing cutting off a low wing and guys on the ground said it was almost a mid air collision. Then someone had to go around because someone pulled up on the rwy with someone on short final.
I came to land my 150 and people were doing whatever they wanted. in the end it all worked out.

we got a total eclipse lasting about 5 mins. it was a really awesome experience. I sat by the hanger and had a beer. couldn't have asked for better.
 
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Well worth it. Managed to find an airport in VT that was notamed closed without a reservation this morning since the airport I was going to fly to forgot I called. NBD, still very cool to be under the path. First time I've seen it completely blocked out.

Now everyone scatter! :lol:
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The car traffic headed north on rt91 in VT was insane stop and go in the morning, and looked like insane stop in go heading south right afterwards.
My 172 might be slow, but I'm sure grateful to have it. What a cool day. Weather was perfect, headwind heading north but a great tailwind heading back home.

Anyone else notice the temperature dropped during the totality?
 
We had 89% on Cape Cod and the temp dropped a few degrees.
 
The dark was way more than I expected. I wasn’t very excited about seeing this eclipse, especially with the forecast we had, but the clouds parted and we had an amazing show. Then the storms hit and knocked out my internet, and now my power! So for now, a few photos from my telescope downloaded onto my phone!
 

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I listened to liveatc.net as I sat at our house on Lake Champlain just south of Burlington, Vermont. The frequency was busy and pilots were advised to remain clear of the Class C airspace and also told that Boston Center was not accepting VFR flight following nor IFR pop-ups.

I'd love to have had a long lens camera on the eclipse at about 50% when an aircraft flew right across the visible sun as seen through eclipse glasses. It would have been an unbelievable coincidence to have photographed it, but it was still a little surreal in real life.
 
Was playing in a charity golf event today which handed out eclipse viewing glasses as part of the check-in promo items. Our group took turns teeing off at a Par 3 while wearing the glasses. Hard to hit a golf ball off of the tee box when you can't see it, lol. We got 95% totality in Tulsa, so still a decent effect. Wind actually seemed to die down a good bit during the event.
 
Flying to LWV and paying the special event landing fee was completely worth it for the total eclipse. Several food trucks, live music before, with volunteers from EAA (I think) managing the parking situation.

It wasn't really the zoo I expected, and only a tiny conga line getting in and painless getting out. Got 82 planes in there, about 14 of them jets. From small citations to a couple big biz jets.

One of the guys told me this guy flew from Charlotte to there in an hour. Jealous!

Not going to bother posting my eclipse photos because it turns out I can't aim my phone for **** with those glasses on!
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Went to Shelbyville just outside of Indy…I was told they were expecting 100s of planes, last count I saw 12 on the ramp. Wind dropped away first, ambient light took on a yellowish tint, then the full eclipse and a big temp drop. I looked at the roadways on my way home and although some freeways had heavy traffic I saw no traffic jams.
 
I kinda feel bad for the folks posting the “who cares” memes as it tells me they’ve never seen a total eclipse in person. This was my first and it was as promised. The most stressful part of the who thing was figuring out where to go from VA…looking at everything from OH to Vermont. Pretty much everything in VT was pre-filled by the time I called this morning at 5:30am. Ended up going to Bucyrus OH (shout out to airport manager Kevin Detray, his crew was awesome!) and had just some high thin scattered cirrus not was a non-issue.my son just turned 9 and this was the best son-dad day trip.

The air traffic was amazing, particularly immediately after. The ATC pros were top notch working immense volumes of spam cans returning home after the big show. The ads-b traffic looked like OSH times 10.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
Flying to LWV and paying the special event landing fee was completely worth it for the total eclipse. Several food trucks, live music before, with volunteers from EAA (I think) managing the parking situation.

It wasn't really the zoo I expected, and only a tiny conga line getting in and painless getting out. Got 82 planes in there, about 14 of them jets. From small citations to a couple big biz jets.

One of the guys told me this guy flew from Charlotte to there in an hour. Jealous!

Not going to bother posting my eclipse photos because it turns out I can't aim my phone for **** with those glasses on!
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We live about a mile North of the airport and enjoyed watching flightaware to see where everybody was flying in from and watching everbody land. Farthest was San Francisco, the coolest was you and your plane.
 
kaiser said:
It’s going to be a zoo flying home tomorrow. I’m leaving right after the eclipse. I wonder if I’ll get an EDCT time…
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I hope you didn't get hit in the "presidential TFR". I called off the run to Eagle Creek.
Here at 2:15 PM the birds got very quiet (94%) and the light was truly wierd. And it got 5 degrees cooler and then rewarmed all in about 10 minutes.
 
Somehow braved multi-hour delayed fuel trucks and KMSN VIP TFRs and got down near Terre Haute. We didn't want to wait for long departure lines so watched from 10kft. Got flight following both ways (including in the line of totality) and the only issue was handoffs to Chicago approach which declines handoffs on a slow day. Heard people having trouble getting handoffs to get into the Chicago VIP TFR but it sounds like they got one eventually. Overall I'd say airspace congestion was far less than I was expecting.
 
The kids and I headed down to KAJG Mount Carmel, IL today. PERFECT weather, about 80 planes showed up but the crew at the airport was absolutely great and everyone had a blast! Its days like today that make me realize how fortunate we all are to have the ability to fly our own airplanes to do things like this!
 
My family and I drove out to Eaton, OH which I selected using windy.com; it predicted 5% cloud cover. We has clear skies.

This eclipse was very different from the one in 2017; that one looked like a hole in the universe, it was scary. This one occurred during solar max so the entire sun was surrounded by a corona extending about 1/3 of the sun’s diameter in all directions; the effect made it not scary at all.

The coolest thing was a prominence we watched at about the 7 o’clock position; it was bright red and I estimate it to be 1/50th of the sun’s diameter or 16,000 miles tall—the height of two earths stacked on top of each other. In my life I’ve been privileged to see a lot of natures wonders—surfaced at the North Pole and climbed many very high mountains— but nothing compared to this.
 
Jim K said:
Well, once again super cool and well worth 3 hours in the car.

I forgot to look at flightaware... Did the feared air traffic materialize?
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Definitely not around here. And it seems like none of the nearby airports in the path of totality got much more traffic than a normal day. Road traffic here was much less than a normal day.

I live under a cutout for the DFW Class B, and under flight path for DAL and ADS. There were zero aircraft visible during and for a few minutes before and after totality. I didn't know if that was planned.
 
This was absolutely spectacular! Well worth the three hour flight to clear skies and then another three hours back home. I will remember this trip for a very long time. On top of the eclipse, I also managed to bring the Comanche down so smoothly you couldn't tell we landed, TWICE IN A ROW. That probably is as rare as a solar eclipse.
 
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