A Good Flight To See Mr. B.

The weather was forecast to be rather nice today, and a plane was available.

So I gave Mr. B. a call and we arranged to meet.

I got N914P all pre-flighted and ready to go and after a weather brief filed IFR to see him in nothern Indiana. 

Got my clearance, got the run up done,and took off flying runway heading climbing to 3,000 feet.

Pontiac was MVFR with a layer at 2500.

 So I climbed up into it and Detroit Approach soon gave me a clearance to climb to my filed 6,000 feet.

I let them know the cloud tops was 4,400 feet over Pontiac as I made it through the layer. 

Above the layer all was calm and serene.

 Nice and smooth above the layer it was rather perfect flying weather.  The layer started breaking up and you could see the ground beneath.

I got a nice overhead shot of Three Rivers Airport:

I got passed of to Great Lakes Approach and went through all their sectors through Kalamazoo until I got passed off to South Bend.

South Bend was busy.  So much so they told did a broadcast to everyone who was VFR to not call them and stay out of their airspace until they had things under control.

Luckily I was IFR, so I went right over their airport at 6,000 feet. 

South Bend then started getting me lower as I got close to Mr. B's Airport.

 Back in the layer I went, until I then got permission to go lower, and got vectored to his airport for a visual approach.

Got on the CTAF to announce my arrival and two dingbats were having a long, involved, conversation about airplane radio wiring on the frequency  while people were trying to coordinate in the pattern, not helpful.

I did a decent if somewhat long landing as I hadn't quite been lowered enough altitude-wise in time, but all was well.

Met up with Mr. B., and we headed to his local Mexican restaurant which was very tasty. After that we got some local ice cream.  We had a good time catching up, and then we headed back to the airport.

I got a weather brief, did the preflight and filed IFR home. 

Mr. B. got a good shot of my takeoff.

 

It was a pretty uneventful ride home, more turbulent than the way outbound, and I was in a layer quite a bit as I was at 5,000 feet and the clouds decided they wanted to be there too.

I got out of the layer as Detroit Approach descended me to 4,000 feet, and I overflew Brighton Airport and the shooting range I go to is right near it.

Landing at Pontiac was fun with variable winds gusting to 20 typically from 300 degrees.  I landed on 27L and did a good landing, with a lot of crosswind control, and then headed to the hangar.  

I cleaned and refueled the plane and that was that.

It was the proverbial $200 Mexican and Ice Cream Flight (as opposed to the standard $100 Hamburger flight), and totally worth it to get to spend some time catching up with a friend.

That's 1.8 there with 1 good landing, and 1.9 back with another good landing and a smattering of actual IFR time.