Nothing makes me feel better than a couple of hours of cross country flying in benign weather. If there is a deck of clouds to climb and decend thru so much the better. Yesterday was one of those days.
We were on a mission to recover 3038N who's altenator had checked out on the way Parkersburg WV, the first leg of our ill fated Sun and Fun 08 trip.
The mechanics had the plane for a week. They went end to end with the electrical system of the plane and tightened things but didn't find anything defective. They even hired a flight instructor from the school to fly 1.5 hours with every piece of electrical gear on board powered on and were unable to duplicate the issue that had brounded us twice in as many days.
Armed with that knowledge we departed DXR VFR heading west to SAX to join the airway that would bring us to Harrisburg. Flying right seat in 58V I ran the radios and scanned for traffic. Danbury was clear and forever but we knew we were flying towards a low pressure system that was going to throw up some clouds as we approached southern Pennsylvania. We called New york and requested flight following at 4500 feet. A few minutes into our exchange with New York we hear Citation XXXSB on the frequency and it's Drew getting cleared to climb 10000. I request a ground speed read out as a way of saying Hello to him without being one of those rude guys who blurts shit out to their pals on the frequency (beside his boss rides right seat and expects a professional demeanor)
About 30 miles southwest of the Hudson we start picking up a scattered layer right at our altitude and considering the low level chop we request 6500. We're delayed in the climb because we are just below Newarks downwind and are confronted with a stream of right to left CRJ's about a thousand feet above us. Finally we get the climb and at 6500 we're on top of the clouds but not by much. Checking on the weather in Harrisburg the XM METAR says 5000 broken 4000 scattered so we ask Allentown approach for an IFR from present position to CXY.
He airfiles for us and we're climbed to 8000. At 8000 its smooth and close to the top of the haze layer so its crystal clear if you look up and brownish blue looking out and clouds below.
They decend us to 6000 which puts us in the tops of the clouds which was a bumpy wet ride. we ask for 4000 to get below it and after a short delay they clear us down there. Below the clouds is no smoother but we can see which side is up and take it into RWY 8 which has a 30 degree crosswind at 11KTS. We start to get blown downwind a bit but corrected in time to squeak out a decent arrival.
On the ground I call FSS and file an IFR at 9000 using the routing I thought I should get. I get out to the plane and its nothing like I filed but I didn't want to run in the bumps down low so I looked up the route, programmed the GPS and away we go.
The bases were about 5000 with the tops at 6000 so I was in the clouds on the way up to 9000. At 8500 I topped the haze and was given an unseeing tour of east central to north east PA and the Pocono mountains. I figured I would fly the route until the deck was gone cancel the IFR and then go GPS direct to DXR.
I stayed with the route to see if they would really run me past DXR down to HAARP or just cut me loose south of IGN.
I called the field was cleared direct and told to contact the tower. As I got on the frequency I hear 38N calling in 8 from the west. I slow down to let him in in front of me but he was cleared to follow so....
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