The plan for the last few weeks was to fly to Cape Cod early Saturday morning (today), spend the night, with a return on Sunday afternoon. Well, the old saying best made plans......and you know the rest. Mary and I reserved a harbor view room at the Anchor-In in hopes of strolling around and taking in the local attractions. Needless to say that plan has changed. I have posted in the past about flight planning, and the all important go, no-go decisions to fly. Although I'm just about ready to take my instrument check ride, I don't think I would have made this flight even with the instrument ticket in hand. All our flight decisions are based on the fact that we do this for fun and to cut the travel time to our place of interest. Safety is always the top priority and a comfortable low stress trip makes life easy.
Today would NOT be our day to fly. Here is a sneak peek at the flight plan, notice the blue, green and red bars. The color coded bars or boxes designate various warnings such as turbulence, ice and IFR conditions. In the second picture you will see the actual weather overlay with the planned route of flight. The third picture is the 7 am local time flight rules, notice the red "IFR" conditions. The instrument flight rules (IFR) conditions is an automatic no go for the visual flight rules (VFR) only pilot. Last but not least is the local radar picture and if this one alone doesn't make you want to stay in bed, nothing will.
All is not lost, the trip is rescheduled for December 6th. This change will actually provide us a chance to take part in the Nantucket Christmas Stroll. The North East Flyers group is scheduled to fly in to Nantucket and spend the day. We moved our reservation from today to the Dec. 6th date in order to enjoy both locations. The new plan is to fly in early to Cape Cod (KHYA -Hyannis, MA), check in the hotel and either take the high speed ferry, Nantucket Air or fly ourselves to Nantucket. Take a commercial flight you ask? Well Mary really wants to fly in a twin engine and since I won't be getting any multi time soon I figure why not, we're on vacation!
That's it for today, a tiny glimpse of what helps pilots make the most important go/no-go decision for our flight. For me it's back to the study guide for more reading in hopes of really wowing the examiner during the oral test. I may even shoot some approaches online for practice. Although my first real order of business will be to wake the princess and head out to breakfast!
Fly safe!
2 comments:
Hey Gary,
Sorry your plans didn't pan out. I can't wait til the days when I can take those pleasure flights with my wife. You don't own your own plane do you?
Brandon,
No, it's a flying club. The owner doesn't really fly much and there are three more including me. So one plane and four people. 2 of the four flew less then 5 hours this year, 1 averages maybe 2-4 a month and I fly it every chance I get maybe 8-10 hours a month.
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