And so, we begin the tale of summer x-c flying, and the value of good weather briefers.....
Left 1C5 on Friday, June 15 about 11 am. We planned to get out earlier that morning, but having been up until close to 1 am the night before with flight planning etc, I needed the sleep.
We guessed the flight would take about 6 hours total, and while the trusty 182 could make it that far in one shot, we opted to break it into two legs, and stop at Rockwood municipal airport (RKW) in Tennessee, refuel and continue. In speaking with the briefer on the ground (got a good one this trip - courteous, knowledgeable too!), it would also give us an opportunity to check the weather en route, as many of the tafs indicated a potential for afternon thunderstorms around 19Z.
It was getting kinda warm on the tarmac at 1C5, and while we were able to depart OK, getting to our assigned altitude of 7K feet took a bit of time. Made me think, 'getting off the ground at a higher altitude will be interesting...'
It's VFR most of the way, and we make it down to Indianapolis pretty much per our flight plan, when Indy approach had to vector us east to make room for departing traffic. Its also starting to get a bit hazy at 7, so we request 9K as our altitude. It's close to time for us to be handed off to another controler, so he recommends that we repeat our request there. The next controller does give us the new altitude, but.. in our initial call, I forget to indicate that we've been temporarily diverted. Takes him a while to ask, 'what's your oncourse heading?" which, of course, is far from the one we're on. We weren't quite in Dayton's airspace, but we were certainly well on our way...
We get cleared to resume our on-course heading, and turn south/southwest - to see a rather impressive line of thunderstorms starting to pop up in that direction. Doesn't look very promising, but they're far out enough that we have time to think of our options. Seems like the storms are heading southeast; doesnt look like there's anything building up farther west, but we weren't sure if more were to come. Get the Hiwas, learn those cells are up around 40K feet +, and they were moving about 25 kts towards our intended destination. They may be slow, but they were ahead of us - most likely we'd be trying to land along with them.
So, time for diversion #1; pick an airport farther out to the southeast, keeps us in the general direction, but we have a better chance of making it down before things get hairy. And that cell line was getting closer. All of the appropriate references (runway length, field conditions, instrument approaches, restaurant availability) were consulted, and we opted for London-Corbin airport in London, KY as our diversion point. We get clearance, and begin to head southeast... but it doesn't look like we're going to clear that TS line on its east side on that heading. Convective sigmets are now on the move, and London ain't lookin so pretty...
So, we consult again, and it's time for diversion #2, this time for something closer to east. As we move into the light chop turbulence and small cumulus clouds that are starting to slightly build up below our altitude, with the taller cumulus and CB ahead, We decide on Big Sandy Airport(K22) in Prestonburg, KY. Heading 096, getting away from those storms.
We come in to make the GPS approach for runway 3. I'm under the hood, Grant's looking outside. At the MDA, he says, 'yeah, you really don't want to descend anymore.' I look up, and here in coal country, I can see the runway ahead - right after a hill that's between us and it. Did I stick at that MDA until we cleared it? - you betcha! then dropped the barn doors afterwards when we were in the clear.
After 3.5 hrs in flight so far, we landed on a well maintained runway, and went to the restaurant a short walk (maybe a hundred feet or so) behind the FBO for a rest and some eats. (There was a medical helicopter team based there as well, and they and the FBO owner said it was a good thing we landed when we did, that there was some bad news weather to the south.) The Cloud 9 cafe is run by the FBO owner's daughter, and the food was excellent. The ribs were only available after 4 pm, and while we had to wait a few minutes, it was well worth it - literally falling off the bone....
Interesting thing; from the ground, a hazy, lazy afternoon sky looks so deceiving as to what's actually happening up there. Going in to check weather at the FBO, we get the story... thunderstorms going up to 42,000 feet and up, popping up like popcorn all over TN, Southern KY, and into Georgia
. both of our previously considered airports (original interim destination and the first diversion) had some heavy cells around them at the time we would have landed. Considered going east to the coast, then down to FL but the cells were moving southeast, and there was a cluster of actvity in Savannah that would block us.
In speaking with the briefer (for quite a long time; and he was good too), it seemed that some of the cells were starting to die down (or, better put, not fire up any new cells) in the northwest corner of the storm block, and what was out there was moving to the south and southeast. If we were to proceed, our best bet would be to head out, go west from our current position, start heading south and east by picking our way around some cells, then head south after the storms start to dissipate (it's getting close to 6 pm eastern at this point).
We thank the briefer, head to the trusty 182. Looking to the southeast, we see one of the domed thunderstorm cells that Grant took a photo of, said, 'let's not go that way'
, then departed rwy 3 to turn west. We filed for 11K, and began our climb out. Good thing we had some altitude, as the sky went from few to scattered to broken pretty quickly below us; if we were lower, we wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate what else was out there...
(part 2 in next post)
. I don’t have his name, but this guy was amazing in helping to give us an idea of the weather ahead, where cells were moving, how they’d affect our route, and suggestions for how to alter our route to pick around and behind these cells to get to DAB. Not being extremely familiar with the terrain, his information and advice was invaluable. When we had to leave to go back to approach or center, he’d say “okay, we’ve got a good picture through Dublin. Call me again when you get there, and we’ll see how the rest of the route looks.”
