April 2019 - Sun n Fun, or "The Best Laid Plans...etc"

Lemme see now .. I'll be gone for maybe 5 days. Aside from the usual basics (things to wear, toiletries, enough cash to get by and a half roll of toilet paper [you never know]), there are the accouterments of modern life: flight bag with handheld radio, charging cables, spare battery and booster battery, iPad Mini with current charts, paper charts of a certain vintage (they haven't moved Lakeland lately), more battery packs for reserve juice, more charging cables, 110v plug adapters, iPhone for backup of the iPad with current charts, SPOT flight tracking gizmo, more spare batteries, more charging stuff (why don't they make all these charging cables one kind?), etc etc etc. When the weight of all the stuff is added up it doesn't really amount to much but it does take up some room, which is in short supply in the CallAir Cadet.

The route down was pretty simple: point South and go. Lakeland lies 179 degrees from Hendersonville which means, were I to fly high enough off the ground to use the hemispheric rule, my midair collision would occur at a relative angle of less than 180 degrees. A nod to Richard Bach for that observation. The shot of my route as actually flown is on the left, above. I had a choice: play with Shaw AFB's F-16s down to 500AGL or take a bypass to the west. I decided to skip that particular midair collision and took the western route.

The day was getting to be a bit long after taking a couple of weather delays enroute so I stopped at one of my several former cities of residence, Ocala FL. The FBO there is really nice and they were able to get me a hotel room at a great rate at the last minute. Rewarded with a steak dinner and a good night's rest I was off at first light to beat the rush into Lakeland. Sandwiched between two Stinsons on the Lake Parker arrival, I felt right at home.

Once at Lakeland and tied down in possibly the most remote spot among the Antique and Classic Airplane crowd, I hopped over to a well-kept secret: the 9/27 Club tent. A full breakfast awaited and the nicest crowd of people you'd want to meet, among them Captain John, my son. The 9/27 is a great option if you're tired of slogging around among the vendors or airplanes all day, in the sun and with every fried food imaginable. Give me comforts with my fly-ins, thank you. It's worth every cent of the premium to be able to sit down in conditioned air on a soft seat with good food, concierge service and a chilled glass at your elbow. The airshow jets aren't quite as loud, either. We watched the air shows outside in shade and, again, with great service until the loud stuff showed off their loudness. I sent the CEO a snapshot and She observed that not only did we have a tent with chandeliers, we had tablecloths, too.

Three days at Sun n Fun was all the Sun and Fun we needed. Son John escorted me to the CallAir Cadet (which had been moved in front of the Antique and Classic registration building on Day 2) and gave the prop a spin before he had to leave for home and laundry in preparation for his return to his jet job.

Then came the trip home. 

My first leg was back to Ocala for fuel and breakfast at their popular restaurant in the terminal building, then to Waycross GA. The folks at KAYS laid out a table full of barbecue and fixings for the pilots heading home. There were maybe 20 of us on the patio, all looking at a blob of weather that was drifting across the northerly flight paths, and more blobs in trail. Some of us went east of it (they probably made it home that day); some of us followed traditional thinking and went west, behind the first blob, and ran into  deteriorating conditions: Broken, then layered, then solid cloud all the way to the ground. 

My first escape was McRae GA where I found a Cub and its young pilot nosed up to the self-service pump.

 Don't let the picture fool you. The straight line wasn't straight between Waycross and McRae - there were numerous diversions as clouds opened and closed. Take a look at the picture on the right .. after the next leg to Dublin we were less than 40 miles to VFR .. so near and yet so far.

Nobody else around but a deputy Sheriff who was probably wondering what the heck anybody would be doing flying in weather like that. Young Pilot turned out to be a great guy named Michael - on his way home in a Cub that had been owned by his grandfather and his father. We took turns looking up and out and knitting our brows before the weather teased us into flying another leg that ended in Dublin GA, where we found a brand new FBO building, nice people, coffee, a courtesy car and a couple of training rooms with couches that suited us just fine for an overnight stay. 

Not long after we arrived, one of those airport memorable moments: A young family came into the terminal with their little boy who was excited to have seen airplanes flying over. Michael took them out to the ramp to show them his plane and I marveled that this kid's first exposure to airplanes was to a Piper Cub. Not only that, it happened that my first airplane ride that I can remember took place at this very airport, many, many years ago. Michael is 21, working toward his A&P license, and a terrific ambassador for our community. We need to bring along more like him.

 The next morning dawned with more cloud cover all the way to the ground. The ASOS called it a 500 foot ceiling, but Michael ventured that a bug must be sitting on the transmissiometer. Eventually the bug flew off and we had a pretty nice scattered to broken clouds kind of a day. The overall track home was a little ziggety-zaggety with all the weather avoidance, but still pretty close to the straight-line route.

The next morning, Michael and I availed ourselves of the airport courtesy car to catch breakfast and pick up a dozen donuts for anyone who might wander in for a flying lesson with Jeff, the flight instructor who arrived early. Michael in his Cub and I in the Cadet left Dublin within minutes of each other, he on his way north and me on my way northeast to an insurance fuel stop at Anderson SC and then home. Once at my home field I was elated to have flown the trip and very glad to be on the ground. Flight time for the trip down was 5.6 hours; for the trip home was 6.2 hours. Not bad at all.

Give me a few days to mow the lawn, attend to that pesky plumbing problem and wind down a little and I'll be ready to go again.