I was getting all tuned up for Oshkosh and was set to go this morning (Saturday), overnight stops all guesstimated and otherwise arranged for the CallAir Cadet to make its grand appearance on Monday morning of the show ... then the weather conspired to put a low pressure area east of my route and a high pressure west of the route, creating a venturi that I'd have to slog through to get there. Flight-only time went from 7.5 hours to 13.5 hours and the first part over the mountains would have been rough. Nope. Uh-uh. Ain't gonna.
Trace a line from western NC to OSH and that's what I'd have been going through.
I've been there before. In 2001, I flew my Cub from Florida to Long Island NY in roughly the same conditions, minus the mountains. The first hundred miles took over 2 hours. The route was along an interstate highway and everything, I mean everything, on the road was passing me. The next hundred was little better and the end result was that it took me roughly the same time to go the first 400 miles than it would've had I been in a slow car - in traffic. Eventually, it took three days to get there.
It's a darned shame I didn't make it to Oshkosh. Earlier this month, Mark and Darwin and I teamed up to get some nice inflight pictures of the Cadet for General Aviation News and they used one of the shots on the cover of the magazine, which came out a couple of days before AirVenture. I was all set to show off the airplane and maybe have it judged. Maybe sell it.
What to do ... what to do ... what to do ... ?
Why not?
