August 2016

Route Planning

This is not a first time the weather played a significant role in choosing a route for a long flight. We initially planned to go the shortest route which would take us over Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma into Durango, Colorado where we would stop for the night. Next day, more or less direct to San Jose. When we woke up at 4:30 AM that Friday morning we saw an angry ghost of the weather popped up right over our route of flight. The route we planned landed in a waste basket and we needed a new plan. 

From the local forecasts it seemed that the southern route, along the border with Mexico, offered the most reasonable chance of avoiding thunderstorms, precipitation and turbulence. We looked at published TAFs (terminal area forecasts) and we saw generally clear weather, with some thunderstorm interference along the way but nothing major. We decided to take off and amend our route if necessary. The first stop would be Shreveport, Louisiana.

We packed the rental car with supplies (we carried a few six-packs of local Georgia beer to California) and headed to the airport. We arrived right at sunrise and took a nice picture of the plane at Lawrenceville.

Leg 9: Lawrenceville, Georgia to Shreveport, Louisiana

Paying for fuel, packing, pulling the airplane out of a hangar, preflight, returning the rental car took us about an hour. We called for taxi instructions but Gwinnett Tower told us they open at 7 AM. We taxied to runway 25 for departure to the west, completed a runup sequence, and took the runway for departure. As we were lifting off the runway the tower has opened. We continued to the west, climbing to 4,500, passing over Dobbins Air Reserve Base, above their class D but under Atlanta class B shelf. Continuing west, we climbed to 8,500. The weather was quiet, air was smooth and the engine was making purring noises. After an hour or so we reached a region of a low stratus, where airports below were reporting IFR due to low ceilings. A slight deviation to the south kept us in the clear.

ATC has informed us that Meridian 1 West MOA (Military Operations Area) is hot (active). We elected to transition through with traffic advisories. At one point we saw a fast moving jet about five miles from our position but no further contact with the military happened and MOA soon went cold. As we were getting closer to Louisiana, more and more patchy clouds started appearing. Arriving at Shreveport, the tower cleared us for landing in front of arriving Citation. I was still too high, and ill aligned with the runway so I elected to go around. On a go around, we observed a crop duster operating low in the airport space. I guess they were spraying anti-mosquito substances. After landing we took fuel (40.7 gallons) and ate some cookies provided by the FBO. We also learned that full service fueling at Shreveport was more than 20% more expensive than self fueling. Oh well.

Planning The Next Leg

The way onwards looked clear to some extent. We initially thought about going towards Albuquerque or even Santa Fe but there was a line of intense precipitation and thunderstorms right over north western Texas, blocking the way to northern New Mexico. We looked at the airports in south eastern New Mexico, considered Roswell, NM for a bit but ultimately decided to go to Cavern City Air Terminal near Carlsbad, New Mexico. We thought we should be able to reach the airport in time before the Carlbad Caverns National Park closed for the night.

Leg 10: Shreveport, Louisiana to Carlsbad, New Mexico

Winds were favoring runway 23 at Shreveport and it was open for departures so we asked for taxi to 23 and got the approval from the ground control. After an uneventful departure (a bit flat departure since it was hot and humid and I wanted to maintain CHTs in climb) we were switched to Shreveport Approach for flight following to Cavern City. After meandering a bit around the clouds we found an opening big enough to fit through and climbed to 6,500 feet. At this altitude we were still around the cumulus cloud tops so we climbed to 8,500. We deviated a little bit to the south to avoid Dallas – Fort Worth class B area but were squeezed a bit by a thunderstorm that popped right south of Dallas. ATC apparently noticed our struggle and asked us if we wanted direct to destination. We gladly took the new route and were cleared into Dallas class B at 8,500. At one point we were looking for a descending 737 but we never actually saw it.

Leaving Dallas we also left the area of unsettled weather. We climbed to 10,500 to avoid cumulus buildups below us and remained there until almost the end. Passing over west Texas we noticed a lot of square shaped spots with a dirt roads leading to them. Since we just passed a field of wind turbines we thought those were new wind turbines being constructed or replaced. Only after we landed we realized our mistake. Those were not wind turbine spots, those were small oil wells. There were literally thousands of those all around west Texas and eastern New Mexico. Descending for landing in Carlsbad we got under those cumulus clouds and the ride became quite bumpy. I really like I can go above at least some weather in my RV-10!

We landed around 2 PM mountain time. After landing, we taxied to a fuel pump and took 36.9 gallons of fuel. We didn’t want a repeat of Shreveport full service vs. self service pricing so we self fueled. While I parked the airplane, Greg went into the FBO and got us a nice rental car so that we could get to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. When we asked for directions to the park, the person at FBO said, “oh, just take the first right turn off this highway here and you’ll be there”, and they were right. The park is very close to the airport (not close enough for walking though so plan on renting a car). We had enough time to walk down to the caverns, take the 2 km long walk through the main cave section, eat lunch and take the lift back to the surface.

Leg 11: Carlsbad, New Mexico to Blythe, California

We spent a night at a hotel that Hotwire picked for us. The hotel was quite decent but it was located at the opposite end of the town, about 20 minutes by car. Carlsbad seems to be very long and thin for some reason, so getting to the hotel took us longer than expected. Again, we decided to get up early, to beat the convection in the mountains as much as possible. Got up at 4 AM mountain time, we were at the airport at 5:30 AM and in the air at 6:20 AM. The air was smooth. We picked up a destination of Blythe, California as a good, mid-way stopping point during the journey. The weather radar was showing a cell of precipitation drifting towards Blythe, so we were ready to divert to some other airport in vicinity of Phoenix should that cell not dissipate before we got there. The cell indeed intensified and became a thunderstorm right over the airport about two hours before we were scheduled to land there. Fortunately, by the time we got there, the cell dissipated and we were greeted by a clear sky. Shortly before landing Albuquerque Center handed us to LA Center which terminated our flight following within a minute of the transfer. Landed uneventfully, took fuel (37.3 gallons) and purchased some pre-made frozen sandwiches at the FBO. They looked bad but actually tasted good.

Leg 12: Blythe, California to San Jose, California

The last leg of this coast to coast journey took us over vast expanses of State of California. We took off to the north west and dealt with low visibility on climbout. Most likely, the front which passed a few hours earlier was kicking up the dust as we climbed. We obtained VFR flight following to San Jose from LA center. Our direct path (to the north west) would take us through some restricted areas, so we chose a bit more westerly heading initially. By the time we got to vicinity of Apple Valley, California, ATC cleared us through restricted area R-2515 which covers Edwards Air Force Base at 10,500 feet. We saw the long runway used by the Space Shuttle and noticed the runway extended into the dry lake bed. So if the Space Shuttle overran the runway, it still had several miles of the dry lake to stop.

By the time Joshua Approach handed us back to Bakersfield Approach the visibility started to deteriorate a bit. It was quite clear over the Central Valley but by the time we got into vicinity of Panoche VORTAC it was definitely 10 miles or less. Once we got over the Diablo Range, the visibility became so bad that I elected to control the airplane via the instruments because I couldn’t see the horizon clearly. Norcal told us to go to Pruneyard (a visual reporting point over San Jose) so I followed Santa Clara Valley north and then turned north-west towards Pruneyard. Only over San Jose the horizon became visible again. We were handed off to San Jose tower which cleared us to land on 30L without actually going to Pruneyard. On the ground we found out that the poor visibility was due to ongoing Soberanes fire which started the day we departed for Oshkosh and was only 15% contained by the time we got there.

Some Interesting Statistics

Total Flight Hours: 36.7 hours

Fuel Burned: 360.4 gallons, 1364 liters

Total Flight Distance: 5615.52 nautical miles, 10,400 kilometers

Fuel Efficiency: 17.93 mpg, 13.12 liters/100 km

Cost in Fuel and Oil: $1,900

Experience and Sights: Priceless

Would I do it again? Yes, in an instant.

​Other sections of this story:

• A True Cross Country, part one (California to Wisconsin)
• EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2016
• A True Cross Country, part three (Georgia to California)

Leg 6: Oshkosh, Wisconsin to Columbus, Indiana

Original plan called for staying at Oshkosh until Thursday morning. Weather is known to throw monkey wrenches into even the most carefully crafted plans. Come Wednesday morning, a weather system was moving in, that was supposed to bring in heavy precipitation and low ceilings. The low ceilings were slated to persist at Oshkosh until Thursday afternoon. And Oshkosh has airshows during the afternoons, so that the airport is closed for departures and arrivals during the airshow. The airshow ends around 6 PM which leaves a window of only about 2 hours until the airport closes for the night.

Another factor in the decision to depart early was my 30+ year old tent. Ada has warned me it leaks from the floor up and I did not have high levels of confidence about protection from the top either. The system was supposed to arrive around 2 PM so by 10 AM I decided to cut short my Oshkosh time and depart. I packed the tent (a mistake), said good bye to Lisa who was going to return back to California with another co-worker of ours and started a pre-flight inspection. During the pre-flight a couple of volunteers showed up and asked me if I am departing and if I needed help. I sure needed help to get the airplane out of its place on the grass so I gladly accepted their help. The NOTAM said I need to pull the airplane out to the row and only start the engine with a permission. Got the permission from the volunteers and taxied to taxiway P1. Followed the taxiway down and got directed to runway 36L for departure. Since nobody was following me I did the runup sequence while taxiing, and after a short wait I was off the ground, with my transponder off until clear of Oshkosh class D and going south.

Original plan called for going direct to Atlanta. Since I now had one more day that I could use to fly, I decided to try to reach the Atlantic Ocean in a bid to make this trip a true cross country flight – from Pacific to Atlantic and back. Yes, we took off from San Jose over San Francisco Bay so the airplane definitely flew over Pacific. Now it just needs to fly over Atlantic to complete the feat.

I decided to go around Chicago class B airspace to the west. Initially I thought to stop at Rockford, Illinois to get fuel but decided against it due to incoming weather from the west. I wasn’t yet clear of it and a delay of an hour could get me trapped on the ground and behind the fast moving front. I had plenty of fuel so continued down to the south east through Illinois. Cumulus clouds started popping up but the ADS-B weather reported clear down in Indiana. Decided to land to stretch the legs and refuel in Columbus, Ohio. Yes, I saw “Columbus” and immediately thought, “oh, Columbus, Ohio, sweet”. It wasn’t until I landed, got fuel (34.0 gallons), used a restroom and sat down to plan the following route, that I realized I was actually in Columbus, Indiana. Columbus, Ohio wasn’t that far away but I was in Indiana, not Ohio.

Leg 7: Columbus, Indiana to Hilton Head, South Carolina

Departure from Columbus, Indiana and climb to 6,500 feet was uneventful but soon I would need to deal with a low pressure system that was triggering some precipitation over Kentucky and Tennessee. Indeed, the clouds became a bit more developed and thunderstorms and other areas of intense precipitation started appearing on the weather radar. ADS-B is a blessing when going on long cross country flights. See for yourself, how angry some of those clouds looked.

Kentucky greeted me with the clouds you can see above. I climbed to 8,500 feet then to 10,500 feet. Indy Center stopped me from climbing and kept me at 10,000 feet for about 10 minutes, not allowing further climb so I had to scramble to stay clear of clouds. Finally, I was allowed to climb higher and go over some smaller buildups. While some of the tall clouds looked nice, I was sure I wouldn’t want to be near them.  The ride was surprisingly smooth at 10,500, no turbulence at all, even with all those buildups around me. That probably meant I kept healthy distance from the bigger ones.

I initially asked for flight following to Greenville, North Carolina, as I wasn’t sure I would be able to go through the front with all the activity popping up around me. Near Greenville it became clear that I will be able to reach Hilton Head without any issues (neither fuel nor weather) so I asked to change flight following to Hilton Head. Arrived at Hilton Head late in the afternoon (around 6 PM) and flew my airplane over Atlantic Ocean to get there (Hilton Head is an island). The views were great, see for yourself below. The FBO arranged a hotel for me and dropped me off there. When I asked about southern eatery, the FBO line attendant recommended “Street Meet” cafe in a nearby shopping center. It was great, I had a barbecue wrap, sweet tea and some local beer. Good stuff, although don’t tell that to my dietitian!

Leg 8: Hilton Head, South Carolina to Lawrenceville, Georgia

The previous day was quite tiring, I went to sleep around 9 PM and woke up 6 AM.  I was not in a great hurry to depart but since I woke up at 6, I packed up and walked to the airport (about 2 kilometers from the hotel). The temperature was still manageable at that hour at 27 degrees C. The FBO at Hilton Head filled up the airplane (took 34.6 gallons) and I was ready to go.

This flight was supposed to be a homecoming for me. I planned to go and land at Washington, Wilkes County, Georgia and Winder, Barrow County, Georgia before I arrived at Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, Georgia. Why? Oh, Washington was my first solo cross country destination when I was doing my private pilot license. Winder was the airport my instructor and I (ab)used for landing practice. And, of course, Lawrenceville was the closest airport to home so that’s where the flight school was.

Navigation nowadays, with GPS is so easy. 16 years ago, when I was completing my first solo cross country, I completely missed the Washington airport. From dead reckoning I was able to tell I overshot it so came back using pilotage and found it. Paper charts, no GPS and being unfamiliar with VOR navigation made it so much harder. Kids these days have it easy.

Landed at each airport uneventfully, Winder had a good deal of training traffic already (someone shooting an approach to 31, someone practicing landings on 23). I landed, taxied back and waited for a 172 to complete a touch and go. He seemed so slow compared to my RV-10! Finally, arrived at Lawrenceville, landed and parked for the night at Gwinnett Aero. They filled my fuel tanks (took 25.8 gallons) and my oxygen tank since we planned to go through Colorado, Utah and Nevada on our way back. Of course, weather would change our plans, but for the better!

Planning for the Arrival

Oshkosh, Wisconsin becomes the largest airport in the world by aircraft operations during yearly EAA Airventure event. In 2016, they had close to 15,000 operations during the Airventure week. It is a lot of planes, a lot of approaches, landings, takeoffs and departures. It takes planning and preparation and then execution to get there safely. Yearly, pilots are reminded to read the notam. NOTAM, or “notice to airmen”, describes to arrival and departure procedures for both VFR (visual) and IFR (instrument) pilots. It is critical for everyone’s safety to read, understand and conform to what’s there.

The gist of a VFR arrival is that by the time you arrive at the town of Ripon, Wisconsin, you’ve listened to the arrival ATIS, you maintain 1,800 feet MSL and 90 knots. You find railroad tracks, find a plane to follow and follow them 1/2 mile in trail directly over railroad tracks. By the time you get to the town of Fisk, you get asked to rock your wings and you get assigned a runway. You are not supposed to talk on the frequency.

Actual Arrival or Leg 5: Baraboo to Oshkosh

Of course, the weather threw a wrench into our carefully crafted plans. The Sunday morning was misty, light rain was falling and the Baraboo – Wisconsin Dells airport was IFR. Instead of departing at 6:30 AM we woke up at 7:30 AM, ate breakfast, packed up and headed to the airport. By the time we arrived, the airport was marginal VFR with low ceiling of 1,100 feet AGL. We had the plane refueled (took 20.8 gallons of fuel) and waited a bit. There were quite a bit of other pilots waiting, trying to discern the situation at Oshkosh. I remembered that I have LiveATC application installed on my phone, fired it up and heard Fisk Approach asking people to rock their wings. That meant the field was open and accepting arrivals!

We boarded the plane and took off. The ceilings were really marginal, at 1,800 feet MSL we were maybe 600 feet below the clouds. The signs of Oshkosh craziness showed early. We dialed in Arrival ATIS frequency and heard people chatting on it (wat??). Someone was complaining that people are turning off their transponders (NOTAM clearly says to turn off your transponder 30 miles from Ripon, unless you are ADS-B out equipped). ATIS said Oshkosh is landing runways 27 and 18R. 

Arrival at Ripon was unique. For the first time in my life I saw at least 5 planes converging at one point, while another 20 or so were approaching, according to my ADS-B display. Of course, the display only showed planes with transponders on, so there must have been even more planes coming in and converging. We found the railroad tracks and got behind at least 4 planes trying to form a conga line. I believe all 5 planes (including us) were converged on a one mile length and slowing down because someone felt it is appropriate to fly 70 knots instead of prescribed 90. After about a minute of this craziness I made the decision to bail out and return to Ripon for another try at sequencing.

Another try was a bit more successful. We got behind a V-tail Bonanza and started following the railroad tracks. Well, that didn’t last — Bonanza slowed down significantly and dropped at least 500 feet below, and was one mile off course. Additionally, runway 27 closed because someone landed their Mooney gear up there. Fisk Approach was asking for 1 mile spacing, then they switched to 2 mile spacing to give the tower breathing room. Finally, the exasperated controller said that he sees people in parallel, deviating away from the railroad tracks and at different speeds. He started sending people back, especially those who were not following the railroad tracks. At this time, Bonanza was about a mile to the north west of the tracks, doing 70 knots and veering off course even more. We stopped trying to follow it, maintained 90 knots, 1,800 feet and over the railroad tracks. Arriving at Fisk, we were greeted with “white and red RV, rock your wings”, “good rock! follow Fisk Avenue for runway 18R”.

There was no one ahead of us in sight (2 mile separation), so we approached and turned downwind then base. On base we were instructed to touch down on the blue dot, which I did. Ground controllers directed us to HBC (Homebuilt Camping). All in all, only 1.1 hours but soooo intense.

The Show

I will not go into details of the show, there are so many other good posts about it. It was simply awesome and I wished Ada could be with me then. Please enjoy some pictures from it.

The Departure

I have planned to be at the show until Thursday morning. That day I planned to depart for Atlanta, where I would pick up my friend Greg and come back with him to California. As usual, the weather dictated a change in plans…

​When you go by the FARs, logging cross-country time requires a point of landing that is more than 50 nm straight-line distance from the original point of departure [as a reminder it is in 14 CFR 61.1(b)(3)(ii)]. But the traditional meaning of “cross country” would be to cross the country from coast to coast. So, on a beautiful July Friday, I set off for my first true cross country flight.

An additional goal (OK, primary goal, fine!) was to attend EAA Airventure 2016 at Oshkosh. Ada and I were there in 2013 but we have flown commercial then and camped in Camp Scholler. This time I was prepared to camp with my airplane! Too bad an RV-10 is a low wing, so you cannot really camp under the wing.

Preparations

As with all my longer flights, I started checking the weather two weeks in advance. The weather was forecast clear and hot. The desert might have some afternoon thunderstorms, so I planned to take off as early as possible from San Jose so that I am out of the mountains or on the ground by mid-afternoon. I also requested a 50 hour inspection and an oil change from my friendly mechanic (as I wouldn’t have time to do it myself). Oil change was performed, oil analysis done, no anomalies were detected. The airplane was filled up and ready to go.

The plan was to get to Oshkosh over three days. On Friday we would take off from San Jose and get to Rawlins, Wyoming (KRWL), which is about half way through from San Jose to Oshkosh. The next day, Saturday, we would get from Rawlins to Baraboo – Wisconsin Dells airport (KDLL). I had two goals with this airport. First, it would be the last night in a real bed with a real bath before camping for four nights at Oshkosh. Second, KDLL is only 60 nautical miles away from Oshkosh. Spending the night there would enable us to be at RIPON a few minutes past 7 AM (the time at which Oshkosh opens for landing traffic). The internets agree that this is the best time to go land at Oshkosh since there is little traffic at that time. Read on to see what actually happened!

At almost the last minute, a coworker of mine, Lisa, who is a pilot and a CFI, volunteered to go with me. I welcomed another pair of eyes and an ability to hand off the airplane for some period of time, even if George The Autopilot was flying most of the time.

Camping stuff got packed, oxygen bottle got hydro tested and filled, route loaded into the tablet, phones charged, GPS trackers charged, food and drink prepared, including 4 gallon water tank taken just in case we had to land somewhere in the desert, far from civilization. We were ready to go.

Leg 1: San Jose, California to Wendover, Utah

We could probably make it to Rawlins with no intermediate landing but we deferred the decision until we get a better sense of the fuel burn. On departure, San Jose tower directed us to course 020, which was more or less on course considering that we planned to follow Interstate 80 most of the time. Climbed to 13,500, turned the oxygen on and enjoyed 25 knot tailwind with true airspeed around 150 knots. Passed Blue Canyon, Truckee and Reno uneventfully. Between Reno and Elko, ATC advised us that there is a Cirrus trying to pass us. It took him a lot of time to catch up and we were on a converging course so I throttled back, slowed down and got out of the way of the “faster” airplane. I just wasn’t comfortable with that converging course and the fact that we couldn’t pick him up visually. 

Coming over eastern Nevada, our ADS-B loaded a string of thunderstorms over Wasatch Range, east of Salf Lake CIty. The passage north of Salt Lake City looked clear but we decided to land in Wendover and take fuel since we were not sure what kind of maneuvering we will need to do to get around the popping thunderstorms. At Wendover, we picked 33.1 gallons of fuel, confirming cruise fuel burn of around 10.5-11 gallons per hour.

Leg 2: Wendover, Utah to … Logan, Utah (with a slight Wyoming diversion)

Well, not everything goes as planned, and this leg is a solid proof. 

On the ground, we hid in the air conditioned hut. It was hot, weather reported 37 degrees C. The density altitude was 7,300 (field elevation is 4,237). By the time I taxied to runway and performed a run-up, my oil temperature was already 198 F. Then I made a mistake of … leaning the airplane for max power. Yes. You read that right. It was a mistake. Let me tell you a story because clearly, you are curious. All the books tell you that you need to lean for maximum power at high density altitude situations. This is generally true but max power can be achieved in a quite wide range of rich-to-lean mixtures at any given elevation and density altitude. My mistake was to lean too much, I still got the max power but cooling to the cylinder heads was diminished. That, combined with hot engine, hot outside air and limited airflow during takeoff and initial climb caused overheat warnings to appear for cylinder heads and oil temps at about 300 AGL. Those temperatures skyrocketed due to mixture being too lean. I enriched the mixture managing not to kill the engine and the temperatures started coming down. Meanwhile we came back to the airport but by the time I aligned with a runway to land the CHTs were already in the green and oil temperature, while still in the red, was coming down quickly. We circled the airport, came back over I-80 and commenced the slow climb with rich mixture. Oil temperature came back to normal and we flew on.

Coming over Great Salt Lake, a thunderstorm cell developed right over the Salt Lake City. We diverted to the north, around class B and around the cell. We flew on to the north east, over the lake and then over the Cache Valley. We finally entered Wyoming but the radar was showing a developing north-south line of thunderstorms ahead of us, basically between Kemmerer and Fort Bridger, WY. We could deviate to the north, around 200 miles north was clear. South was blocked by a solid line of precipitation over the Wasatch range. After much deliberation we diverted back to Logan, Utah and decided to call it a day. At Logan we picked up 23 gallons of fuel. We got two rooms at Days Inn and Suites in Logan, rented a car to get there and after a short rest walked to Angie’s Diner for dinner. The food was plentiful and good, after the excitement of the first day of the trip.

We ate the dinner at Angie’s and we got sleepy. I was asleep by 9 PM, with an alarm clock set to 4:30 AM. We got to the airport at the first light, pre-flighted and loaded our new route. The car rental keys were dropped into the maintenance hangar since the FBO at LGU wasn’t yet open when we departed. Decided to climb to 13,500, plug in the oxygen and go as far east as possible. There was a weather system blocking the direct way to Wisconsin, with an opening to the north so we decided to head to the north east to get to that opening between the fronts.

Getting up very early to avoid most of the weather will be the prevailing theme at this trip. At 13,500 over western Wyoming we tried to pick up flight following but neither Salt Lake Center nor Casper Radio was able to hear us. We were too low over the unpopulated terrain to be picked up by them. Continued to east-north-east, in direction of Rapid City, South Dakota (airport identifier KRAP, no comments). The weather opening was around Fargo, North Dakota so we continued in that general direction. Further weather reports showed that most of the weather over Wisconsin is moving to the north east but the weather over North Dakota was moving almost directly east. That had two major implications: first, the gap we were seeing would rapidly close up, and second, even if we manage to get through the gap, we would be heading down towards the other system, which was undesirable. 

Thus, we decided to divert around the Wisconsin system to the south. Changed the heading to east-south-east and went towards Pierre, South Dakota. When there, we had enough fuel to continue a little bit further towards the escaping weather so we decided to go further out, to Mitchell, South Dakota. We landed at Mitchell, and took 41.2 gallons of fuel. We also ate lunch which Lisa prepared before leaving San Jose. At the Mitchell airport, there was a Young Eagles event, where pilots took kids for airplane rides. By the time we came over 50 kids were flown, with more waiting in the line.

Leg 4: Mitchell, South Dakota to Baraboo – Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin

On any cross country flight, the weather is important. It becomes very important on a long cross country flights, where you might be diverting a long way around the weather. Better be prepared for it.  Sitting at the air conditioned FBO in Mitchell we looked at the huge system pummeling mid-western states and wondering how we could get around it. See for yourself below. 

Instead of going direct (d’oh), we went south, towards Ames, Iowa and swinging to the north towards Dubuque, Iowa. At the time of our projected passage, Dubuque was forecasting clear skies and calm winds. Wisconsin Dells was forecasting good visibility, ceiling of 9,000 and light rain for our arrival.

We still had to contend with the line of precipitation before arriving at KAMW (Ames, Iowa). Going there, we did not feel comfortable negotiating around some of the cells that were growing bigger, so we diverted even more to the south, towards Des Moines, Iowa. This is how Des Moines looked like from our plane.

​We got some light precipitation on the windshield but nothing alarming. Continuing south east for a bit we evaluated the weather reports from the Dubuque and Wisconsin Dells area. For awhile we contemplated skipping Wisconsin Dells and going straight to Oshkosh, as it seemed the way near Lake Michigan, over Milwaukee, was open. This quickly proved infeasible due to intense thunderstorms that popped up in Milwaukee area. We decided to continue up to the original destination of Baraboo – Wisconsin Dells.