1st Annual Cirrus Migration, June 2003 Last updated
The "Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association," COPA and Cirrus Design Corporation cooperated in operating the 1st Annual Cirrus Migration, a fly-in at the factory in Duluth, MN, June 13-15, 2003.   It would be heck of a good educational event and party. About 90 Cirri aircraft would attend with over 200 of their people.
My intent was to depart at about 10:00 AM on Friday the 13th of June. But there was the weather... The ceilings at my home airport, and for a few hundred miles westward along my route to and including Chicago, were 200 to 400 feet. Although legal, I would not launch into such low weather. Was time to wait, and wait, and wait... The weather gradually cleared and we launched at about 2:00 PM.	Image courtesy www.airnav.com
I said "we." That's because I used the COPA Ride Share Board (for COPA members only) to find a passenger, Jack P. He's from the Akron area and was easily able to drive up to my airport. Jack is working toward his Private Pilot Certificate and has a contract with Cirrus for the purchase of an SR20 in September. He was great company for the trip.	Jack on the left and Me on the right
Once we launched (on an instrument flight plan!) it was reasonably smooth sailing at 6000' over an undercast or in IMC (in the clouds) until near Chicago. Smooth sailing aside, I was still concentrating :-) The Chicago controllers seem to be pushing East-West traffic to the south of their airspace even further south. Today that would have pushed us into a stormy area. After a bit of negotiations, I was able to continue more or less on course and we just had to endure a few bumps.	Image by Jack P.
On the previous day another Cirrus owner had passed Chicago and took a photo representative of the ongoing crappy weather. Strange image of the Sears Tower...	Image of Chicago by Bill Dobson
After passing Chicago and turning Northwest, the weather improved. Some of the cloud formations were very intriguing (read Rorschach Test :-)	Image by Jack P.
We landed as planned at Madison, WI for fuel and a chance to de-kink. The folks at Wisconsin Aviation were very professional, very accommodating, and also had a nice clean and modern facility.	Image courtesy Wisconsin Aviation
The next leg, to Duluth, was uneventful and mostly in clear skies. This portion of the leg, from Madison to the Dells VOR (a radio beacon), was rather peaceful. The big multifunction display is showing the course. The top GPS system is showing some text information and the bottom GPS is showing a 12nm ring and would show any "threat" aircraft within that ring.	Image by Jack P.
Around 6:45 PM Duluth approach gave us the option of straight in to runway 3 (more aligned with the wind) or runway 27 (much closer to parking). The winds were not that bad, the cross-wind component for 27 was about 10-15 kts. So that's what I picked. There was a Cirrus ahead of us and one behind. They both opted for straight in on runway 3 which gave all of us plenty of room to maneuver. Approach vectored us over downtown and into a left base for runway 27. The landing was uneventful and the roll-out left me right near the designated aircraft parking area.	Image by Jack P.
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