by jknight8907 » Sun Dec 05, 2004 9:33 pm
Anyone been watching the weather channel? If so you just might have noticed the small storm over the south-east. The same storm I had the pleasure misfortune of flying through today. We depart 14M in rain and low clouds, climbing IMC to 8000. Can't go over, because the tops are WAY up there. So here we are, with 'George' out on vacation, hand flying for 1:15 in solid IMC with moderate rain (good for getting the bugs off the windshield). Mmm, that'll sharpen the skills. Then we hit the front. Since the storm system was/is moving north-east, the winds were in our favor. According to the Loran, there was a 52 knot wind (I forget the heading) at one point, which gave us a max ground speed of 232 knots. After that it slowed down to 'only' 220 knots.
As we get closer to 42A, we start our descent a little late, but not too bad. Then it really hits the fan. At 3100, we're still solid cloud. 42A has no kind of approach, so we let down a little more, making two attempts to see the runway. Nope. "Memphis Center, Navajo *****" etc etc.
Off we head to West Memphis (AWM), since they're the only ones with a approach that goes low enough to get under this weather. And we have a car there, which is always a bonus. The controller routes us out to a 20-mile final to give a King Air some room to breathe. After intercepting the localizer (I'm still flying at this point; thats coming up on 2 hours of hands-on IMC if you're counting), we get to fly for an hour (or so it seemed) to the glideslope intercept. Gear down, elevator down. I managed to keep the needles crossed all the way down, which was followed by a nice landing, and a not-so-nice 3 hour drive home.
It is better to remain silent and be considered a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
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