Ken Ibold
Final Approach
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2005
- Messages
- 5,888
- Location
- Jacksonville, Florida
- Display Name
Display name:
Ken Ibold
Yesterday I had to go from Orlando to Jacksonville to look at a house we're thinking of buying. It's 105 nm from ORL to CRG, so that's an hour and a few minutes by Citabria. Including preflight and routing around Sanford and other airplane fudge time, figure 1:30. Drive time is 2:00. I had a hard need-to-be-back time of 2:30 p.m.
I called for weather and CRG was reporting 1000 broken and 4000 broken with a slow-moving cold front to the northwest. For the whole route, there was the usual summertime forecast of 20 percent chance of isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon. As I was talking to the briefer, he interrupted and said, "Oh, Jax just issued a special report. 700 and a half mile." End of story, as the Citabria is not IFR equipped. I called to have the airplane put away, and I just kept driving. When I got to Jax, it was cloudless and beautiful. I was second-guessing myself for not flying, since the ceiling had been forecast to lift right around the time I expected to get there.
So I looked at the house (we'll put an offer in today) and got in the car to drive home. All the time I was thinking about what a beautiful day it was for flying. Then I hit a line of storms that quickly killed any regret that I was on the ground instead of the air. Turns out, the storms extended 75 miles directly across the path I would have been flying and included hail, high winds that overturned airplanes on the ground, and one report of a tornado.
Ah, the summertime flying season is here. Time to put a stormscope in the Citabria ...
I called for weather and CRG was reporting 1000 broken and 4000 broken with a slow-moving cold front to the northwest. For the whole route, there was the usual summertime forecast of 20 percent chance of isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon. As I was talking to the briefer, he interrupted and said, "Oh, Jax just issued a special report. 700 and a half mile." End of story, as the Citabria is not IFR equipped. I called to have the airplane put away, and I just kept driving. When I got to Jax, it was cloudless and beautiful. I was second-guessing myself for not flying, since the ceiling had been forecast to lift right around the time I expected to get there.
So I looked at the house (we'll put an offer in today) and got in the car to drive home. All the time I was thinking about what a beautiful day it was for flying. Then I hit a line of storms that quickly killed any regret that I was on the ground instead of the air. Turns out, the storms extended 75 miles directly across the path I would have been flying and included hail, high winds that overturned airplanes on the ground, and one report of a tornado.
Ah, the summertime flying season is here. Time to put a stormscope in the Citabria ...