We spent or last afternoon/night in the north 40 eating boudan with Jerry from Dallas and then celebrating Pete's birthday at his and Beth's 172. I obtained a 9am STMP slot for an IFR departure and had the Basler guys fill the Mooney with Avgas.
We went to bed around 10pm and prior to doing so obtained a duats briefing on the laptop which said that OSH would be vfr until mid morning and then would gradually go IFR due to an approaching low pressure system with a warm front associated with it. Everything looked good across the route of flight so we went to bed expecting to get up at sunrise strike camp, say our good byes, and fly away from the bad weather through nice and towards unsettled.
We'd then have to deal with the remnants of another frontal system which should have been moving off the Maine coast while we were sleeping.
Still another low pressure system with an east west stationary front was impacting the lower mid atlantic back through Pennsylvania Southern Ohio into Kentucky with a cold front extending south westerly through the blue ridge and smoky mountains.
Anyway we go to sleep and wake at 4am CDT to the sound of light rain hitting the tent and airplanes outside. Judy heard it too so we sort of waited while waking up about 10 minutes till she said 'You know it'll suck to put this stuff away in the rain'. Clearly the forecasts were wrong and the system to the northwest of Oshkosh had moved quicker than anticipated. We got out of bed deflated the air mattress and put on the clothes we had left out for the trip.
Pete and Daryll helped me pull the plane out of the divots it had created sitting in the grass. We wished everyone well started the engine at 6:30AM and were taking off runway 27 at 6:45. We followed the vfr departure procedure and our amended plan was to make for Rockford then land and get some coffee in us and formulate a plan.
Our departure was in 2000 overcast and 5 miles with light rain falling. We followed the outbound procedure and then made our way towards RFD picking our way down there using the XM's NexRad to keep us clear of the yellow and red returns between us and the airport. We called Rockford approach from 20 miles out and set up for the right base entry to Runway 27.
The FBO staff were barely awake when we got there and seeing we were drinking their coffee and using their restrooms I had them top the Mooney. We filed for Cleveland Burke Lakefront and departed southeast bound towards Peotone to make the turn east. It’s interesting to note that the Chicago controllers are as intolerant as their New York associates and I wonder whether it’s like that all year or just during Oshkosh. We took 7000 and were blessed with a nice tailwind bringing the groundspeeds into the 175kt range.
After a while we started running into a broken to overcast layer at 7000 so we asked for 9000 and got even more of a push.
We were cleared direct Waterloo and then to the airport. I never like descending over water but they cleared us down to 2000 and then started vectoring us away from Hopkins bringing us lower and farther away from the shore. Finally I called the field in sight and was told to enter the right downwind and call the tower. We landed and taxiied in to the delight of all the friends we had made at the FBO a week earlier.
We took on more gas, ate some sandwiches and filed for Danbury. Pennsylvania was IFR low in places with convective activity across the state and points south. I planned to dxr taking a northeasterly routing to ERI DKK ULM ITH DYY and then the NOBBI3 arrival into DXR. We blasted off from Lakefront and at 5000 we were in the broken to overcast layer for the first hour of the trip. It cleared out around Ithica and we climbed to 9000 again to get on top. When we made the turn south east they descended us to 5000 where we stayed until about a mile past IGN. Boston center handed us off to New York Approach on 126.4. We called and were cleared down to 2500 and then cleared direct to DXR.
We landed and unloaded the plane into the car then drove home. We flew about 7 hours on three legs and made it back home in time to fire up the grill and cook dinner. We used our airplane as transportation waking up in Wisconsin and in a day’s work landed in Danbury where after a 15 minute drive were at our house. It wasn’t the trip I had planned the day before but the desired outcome was achieved. That’s what you own an airplane for.
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