2003: Post Annual Last updated
My SR22's annual at G-Force (at KCAK) was finished on Wednesday May 7th. But the Cleveland weather continued to be awful. Not wanting to launch from an annual right into IMC, I waited. Thursday's weather was also awful. Now I was getting concerned... I intended to fly to Glens Falls, NY (KGFL) on Saturday or Sunday to attend the summer meeting of the American College of Medical Physics (the ACMP) at The Sagamore on Lake George. Finally, on Friday, the weather sort of cleared. Leaving work at 2:15, I hitched a ride to G-Force with Rob Logan in his Tweety Bird. My plane was indeed ready-to-go. now things got interesting... Rob needed to take Tweety to Lorain County airport (KLPR) so that it would be on hand Saturday morning when he was to give a talk to an Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) chapter meeting. But why leave tweety there? Because the saturday AM weather was expected to be low or impossible IFR and Rob intended to drive to the meeting. So, we both filed IFR and Rob took off first. After a very, very, extensive pre-flight, I followed. The trip was mostly VMC with some IMC here and there. On landing at LPR, and after looking at a private jet-fighter trainer (an L-39 Albatross) in the hangar, we launched for home (KCGF) in my plane. On getting home, I packed, planned, and got serious about agonizing over the weather. I really wanted to fly myself to Glenns Falls (and my plan B was a ten-hour drive)... The forecasts all implied VMC in Cleveland in the AM with thunderstorms in the PM. The forecasts for Glenns Falls were good VMC.
Come Saturday 6:00 AM, Cleveland was under a severe storm warning! So much for forecasts :-( But, the news was not all bad. The newest forecasts showed a "window" opening in the early afternoon. I launched for Glens Falls in VMC under an IFR flight plan at 2:40 PM.	Image courtesy of "Great Circle Mapper."
It was smooth sailing, so smooth that I took a few pictures along the way on this two-hour flight. (My TCAS was on just in case other planes came my way :-) First, a lake shore image about 20mi NE of Cleveland...
It was a pretty day with puffy clouds here and there...
Pretty clouds can be deceiving. I was approaching a line of clouds and didn't see any movement of the clouds. Thus it seemed reasonable to just fly through the "cotton candy."
This is the last image I took just before flying into the "cotton candy." Again, I had not seen any indication of air movement (e.g. upwelling). OK, live and learn... On flying into that cloud the plane suddenly fell down into an air pocket and I (and the loose stuff in the plane) didn't. My headset got up close and personal with the top of the cabin.
Fortunately my headset has thick padding between my head and the headband. So, it didn't hurt too much. Next time I'll fly around the cloud!
The rest of the flight was uneventful and I landed at GFL only 10 minutes past my original ETA - not bad. Larry R. and his wife Anne met me there and we got a photo of 2/3-rds of the part of the Medical Physicist Air Farce that came to the meeting (Larry's N2501N Trinidad TB-20 in the background and my Cirrus SR22 N464M in the foreground).	Photo by a line-boy at Empire East Aviation.
The other third of the Air Farce arrived a bit later. Joe B. is shown in front of his Cessna-182.
After wall-to-wall meetings, and giving a presentation, it was time to organize my departure for home on Wednesday the 14th. But the fun was not yet done. It would be an IFR departure for Cleveland. Would spend a day at work and then depart for Des Moines Iowa for recurrent training in my airplane...