Originally, I was going to fly my eldest daughter and her boyfriend to Bowling Green, Ohio to see the totality.
That fell through as our maintenance officer grounded the Dakota yesterday after finding the left main landing gear had an issue and needed to be shimmed likely due to some of our flying club pilots being dumb and being on the brakes during landing. Drat.
So, I got invited to go along as co-pilot with Scott, who had the other plane checked out. Unfortunately, he had a guest, so I couldn't take the kids as we didn't have the seats available. He wanted me along to help handle the flight as he expected the airspace to be all sorts of busy.
Got to the airport this morning, and we got ready to go. Scott would fly down and I would handle the radio, and we would switch on the way back.
Scott had filed IFR ahead of time which was a good idea. I got our clearance and we then headed out. We planned a route from Pontiac to Adrian to Port Clinton to both keep out of what was going to be a busy Detroit Bravo airspace and to follow along the Lake Erie shoreline and not trying to cross the Lake.
It was a smooth flight out, I had fun handling a lot of radio traffic, and we were able to cut the corner of our route as Detroit Approach cleared us into the Bravo south of Ann Arbor, and then we bypassed Adrian and went direct to Port Clinton along the shoreline.
We passed by the
Arriving at the terminal area for Port Clinton it got all sorts of busy. Lots of IFR and VFR traffic all coming in to land and enjoy the eclipse festivities. We approached from the east and Toledo approach had us divert from the approach for spacing. We then got vectored back and then cancelled IFR and went VFR for a visual approach. We then got into the traffic pattern and had a nice landing.
We then headed to the terminal and got marshaled to a parking spot.
Lots of other planes were there and many more were arriving. They did a good job keeping the terminal parking area organized. We checked in, bought some fuel, paid a landing fee and then headed to the Liberty Aviation museum on the field to both tour the museum and enjoy the festivities.
Much more on the Liberty Aviation Museum shortly.
We had a good time, toured the museum, got lunch, and saw the eclipse.
There was a good layer of clouds so the totality while visible was not super sharp but it was still cool.
Birds stopped chirping, the temperature measurably fell, the airport runway and taxi lights came on automatically and it was an extremely cool experience. Well worth the trip.
After that, we packed up and got ready to head back. Pretty much everyone was leaving at the same time so we waited a bit to let the rush clear and then headed out.
I was flying this leg and did the departure from Port Clinton and climbed to 5,500 feet. We got flight following on the way back, and they first had us change course for traffic, and then let us into Detroit's Bravo having us descend to 3,500. We stayed in the Bravo all the way up to Ann Arbor where they kicked us out of the Bravo, and had us fly a bit west and then on to Pontiac.
On the way back, we could see traffic way backed up on the highways below us.
Got a little bumpy at 3,500 compared to how smooth it was at 5,500 but no worries.
Then Detroit Approach instructed me to descend to 3,000, and they handed us off to Pontiac Tower. I got to do an extended downwind and then follow other traffic in for landing on 27R.
I made a darn nice crosswind landing with winds right out of the south at 9 gusting 12 knots with no issues.
Both Detroit and Toledo Approach handled the throng of air traffic very well, and Detroit clearing aircraft into the Bravo really helped a lot with traffic flow.
That was my first trip out of state in the Flying Club's aircraft and it was a ton of fun. Need to do more of that.
It was a great trip to see the totality, and it was totally worth it.
That's 1.3, 1 landing, and one totality experienced.
1 comment:
What - no trip to the CMP Store? You need another Garand, don't you?
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