I’m awake…it’s 4:10am. The alarm is set for 4:30. I try to sleep a few more minutes since I fell asleep about 1:00am, but no use—too excited, too many things start rushing through my mind…oh well, might as well get an early start. It’s all dark and quiet in the house….our cat Mary Ann is startled and confused to see me stumble into the kitchen for a quick piece of toast and a Coke Zero. While eating I check the weather again….forecast when I went to sleep was perfect, zero percent chance of rain or clouds here in the STL area and almost as perfect in Pittsburg, KS—my destination for a breakfast flight with my Dad and almost 90 year old grandfather…but…but when I check the radar, first thing I notice are magenta dots at the local airports—LOW IFR!! What the $#@*? I click on the dots….just fog at low lying airports near the rivers…ok, that will lift soon enough probably…then I pan out…NOOOOO!! A big, severe storm bearing down on Kansas City and headed southeast to intercept my flight path. Of course. I was banking on a relaxing easy flight. Well, now I was going to have to work harder…starting with the go/no go decision. Well, I figured, hoped that surely this time of year that storm will fade away before it makes it far enough south to cause me trouble…and forecast along the route was not calling for storms…so I went ahead and brushed teeth, shaved, got dressed and grabbed my good luck pieces.
I arrived at the Festus Airport about 5:15…still pitch dark, with just the slightest hint of light in the east and sure enough, the field was covered with thin layer of fog…about 5 feet high…beautiful really…but I knew it was going to delay my planned departure of 6 am. Oh well, nice to have some time alone at the airport to fuel the plane, pre-flight, organize my charts, iPad and turn on my trusted Garmin handheld GPS —that I call Yellowjacket. While I watched the fog gradually lift, I thought about the tough school year ahead…lots of changes this year and only a few days left in which to brace myself…hopefully it wasn’t just being tired or the optimism of watching a sunrise by myself before an adventure, but soon I felt much more confident to handle the school year that is quickly approaching. 62 degrees, a bit chilly for us for early August, so I hopped back in the plane to warm up a bit. Nothing quite like the smell of a cockpit and having grown up around airplanes, it is a familiar and comforting smell to me. Old Pipers seem to have a unique smell compared to Cessna’s for example…I like them both, most probably don’t like the smell… OK, enough nostalgia, meditation and tempering the steel...I notice the fog lifting. I check the weather once more…maybe I will get stranded in Kansas, but I am confident…sort of…that I can get there ok at least, so I activated my flight plan on my iPad, buckled up, took a deep breath, took out the check list.
“Clear!”
The peaceful silence is broken by the noise of the engine firing up and vibration all around. The wash off the prop slowly dries the dew off the windshield enough for me to taxi out to runway 1-8. 6:30…I am wheels off….the Piper Warrior climbs quickly in the cool morning air with only one passenger that is me…the pilot I should say.
Air is calm, but visibility is terrible and hazy…but just good enough, barely, I can’t remember if this is even legal for me as a VFR pilot…but I keep climbing to the West. I flip the radio over to St. Louis Approach to ask for Flight Following. A really, friendly, sexy female voice is happy to help me and soon gives me a squawk code for my transponder. I enjoy listening to her and the airline pilots that I hear talking to her all are enjoying her company for sure on a quiet Sunday morning, but too soon, she advises me that she is passing me along to Kansas City Center and wishes me a good morning and a good flight.
I am really straining to see the horizon or any landmarks up ahead…but I usually can find some glimmer of sunlight sparking off of a pond and use that to cue in on, while continuously checking and rechecking my GPS’s, my iPad, the gyro compass, the attitude indicator and the turn coordinator. Hard work this is at my level of experience, but good experience for sure…the stress makes time slow down to a snail’s pace but, eventually I see the the little sombrero radar hat of the Vichy VOR and I change course slightly to the southwest. A good time to switch fuel tanks, adjust the mixture again, run the carb heat for minute…check all the gauges…everything is in order.
The soup is getting thicker, but still just good enough and I can see the ground below me easily and I can still barely make out landmarks ahead on which I can focus. KC center then passes me along to Mizzour Approach and then 20 minutes later to Springfield approach. Springfield is busy, but I find a time in which they are not so busy and ask them about the weather and storm up north…the controller was good…he told me it was all fine along my route at the moment and that I should have no problems making Pittsburg…it is nice to have someone to talk to that has a real radar in front of them…wish I had the money for subscription to Nexrad radar…oh well…the controllers are helpful. Soon enough I am over Stockton Lake and the haze breaks up and I get a fairly nice view of the lake…not many boats out, a great view…but, I am working on this trip too…even though the weather is improving, I double check my triangulation from the Springfield VOR on head 2 to confirm that the needle is centered….perfect….VOR’s are yesterday’s technology for sure, but I really like to watch the needle swing to the center right on schedule to confirm that you are really on course. I used to watch the VOR’s as a kid up front riding along with my Dad…they were mysterious and looked WAY too complicated for me to ever really understand…so I felt very good about getting this right.
Once more I was passed along to Kansas City again and soon enough the VOR needle was swinging to the middle again and that meant Lamar…15 minutes to landing…and soon I would start my descent…time for pre-landing checklist—so switched fuel tank again, mixture rich, checked carb heat again, switched 2nd radio over to the Pittsburg AWOS for weather, then to Pittsburg Unicom to try to listen for local traffic and to tell what runway was in use. No local traffic, but winds favored runway 1-6. Kansas City Center called me for and told me to squawk for VOR and to have a good day. I was on my own now. Soon I swooped in over Pittsburg, it looked small, but familiar nonetheless and it should have, I grew up here until I was 13 and had flown over it as a kid many times…airport in sight and enter downwind for 1-6. …wow that is a big, wide runway compared to Festus…have to remember not to flare too early….but that is exactly what I do…but with 5500 feet I had all day to add a little power and float and ease the Warrior onto the 100 feet wide concrete…landing smooth, but nothing I am too proud of…oh well.
I taxi to the terminal that I grew up with where Dad had his FBO when I was a kid. Nobody there yet, but soon the fuel truck pulls up and tops off my tanks and a minute later Dad zooms up in his black Corvette.
“Son, looks like those storms are getting closer. Let’s skip Harry’s Cafe and just meet Papo (my 89 year old Grandfather) at MCDonald’s and get you back on your way before you get stuck here.”
I eat a quick breakfast with Dad and Papo. Papo asks if this is my longest cross country so far, I tell him that is right it is…Papo was a Flight Instructor also when I was a kid. I wish I had more time for a leisurely breakfast, but better to get going rather than getting stuck.
Soon enough after a few pictures and Papo loading some sweet corn and tomatoes in the back seat, I am airborne and headed back east. I climb to 5500 and notice the haze is even thicker than this morning and I can see thunderheads building to my north. I hope I can go quickly enough along my route before the storms intercept me so I don’t have to divert my route to the south. I call KC Center and set up flight following for my return trip. The haze is thick and over Stockton Lake the storm angles its closest point to me…looks like I am home free from here unless something new builds….a stressful flight watching what little horizon I have in this haze and hoping things don’t get worse….after Rolla I have clouds directly ahead at my 5500 altitude. I advise Center that I will need to descend to 3500 to stay under clouds…but wow, was it bumpy down there…I do a good job of staying at 3500 feet, but now it is harder to stay directly on course…going to be a bumpy brawl the rest of the way home to Festus. Soon enough I have the rock quarry behind Festus in sight…St. Louis approach advises me about skydivers waiting for me to clear the runway before they jump and releases me back to squawk VFR again…I am exhausted and struggling in the pattern to get things set up as normal…I finally approach the runway, but I float a good distance and finally touchdown, but I stop in plenty of time even on our short runway….but I wasn’t happy with the less than perfect landing….I struggled to put the airplane away by myself in the heat and humidity…thought I would have to ask for help, but finally I roll the Piper back into her hangar.
I did it, but I am completely spent. 4.5 hours in challenging haze with the storm threatening from the north, then the hour of fighting the turbulence at the end with 3 hours of sleep the night before…but I’m back. I grab a diet Mt. Dew from the office and head for home. Not at all the easy relaxing flight I had counted on, but I learned a lot. And just in case I had forgotten, I had a good lesson reminding me that this is still my Everest and that it is going to fight me every step of the way. Can't imagine a day where this will be routine or easy, but I had the privilege of another day up on top of my personal Everest.
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