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Off on my final leg of the trip. I originally planned to go to Buffalo, NY today. I could of made it there, but the weather forecast to make it home the following day looked grim. In fact, today's weather was going to present some unique challenges to make it home. Time to see how far I can make it!  Downtown Detroit.  Detroit River.  Detroit Metro (KDTW) off my right wing.  And here's the weather between me and home. And it was encroaching on my home airport......  As I rounded the MI/OH border and stared to head east, the ceiling and visibility slightly dropped.  I decided it was foolish to attempt to find a hole though this large system over the mountains of PA, so around it was!  North of Akron, OH I passed near the Goodyear Blimp.  I kept at a good arms length away from this system as I tried to scoot around it.  My flight path coincidentally took me over the Dew Drop campgrounds in the Allegheny National Forest. I did a couple of circles around to let my favorite camp managers, Ray and Von, know I was nearby and thinking of them. They've nicknamed me "Crazy Man".  It was pretty dicey in Northern PA. Lots of rain and low vis.    Great, just when I needed you the most, FIS-B radar dropped out on Garmin Pilot. Originally I thought it was due to being too low to pick up ADS-B.  Luckily, a restart of the app fixed it.  Things started to look better the further east I went.  Rounded the corner of the system moving across PA! Hopefully smooth sailing from here!   Looked great to the east.  100 miles to go, or so, and I was racing weather moving in on KDMW.  Nearing Harrisburg, PA, a low layer of clouds popped up. Luckily I was already past all of the mountainous terrain of PA, and could easily maintain VFR under them.  The race is on! If I couldn't beat the rain to KDMW, my backup plan was to put down in York, PA (KTHV) and wait out the weather or have someone come get me.  BOOM! Made it back with no issue. What a flight. 4.2 hours from Detroit - should of been about 2..but there was a lot of extra flying to get around the weather. It was an exhausting flight.  No sooner did I pull the plane into the hangar did it start down-pouring. I probably beat the rain by 10-15 minutes. Considering how much flying I did today, that was extremely lucky. What a GREAT TRIP! So many places visited and friends seen. It was an extremely challenging flight with regards to all of the weather I encountered. I stayed VFR the whole time, but it pushed my limits to the extreme multiple times. This is the trip that finally convinced me to get my instrument rating. the IR would of made this trip so much easier and safer.  My Osh18 trip report made the VansAirForce.com front page on 8/29/18. It took me a solid month to get all of the pictures in order, edited and write up the story. So much work for media passes!! 
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Last Modified: August 13, 2023 |