We were heading out on vacation, our first stop was Cheyenne Wyoming and then on to Colorado. We just had one small problem. There was a line of weather stretching from the Great Lakes to Oklahoma. It had some holes but as we were loading up it was hard to tell what the best plan would be because we were still five hours away from penetrating the line.
A lot can happen in five hours. I had read all the forecasts but they seemed to be missing it and in retrospect they were pretty far off. I decided to go direct for our first hop and then decide once we were closer. Worst case, we would have a bigger detour.
Our first leg took us direct to KFYE, Fayette TN, just East of Memphis. The flight went perfectly until we were handed to approach. We could not raise them. We eventually made contact, found the airport and were cleared for the visual. I tried to cancel IFR and again could not hear ATC. I took a chance and flipped back to center and explained my issue and he was nice and took my cancellation, problem solved.
It was a good stop. Super friendly, they pumped the gas, and nice facilities. This let me study the weather a bit. The line had gotten worse but there looked like we had an opening a bit North. I filed KFYE MAP KUKL. Once airborne departure tried to give me direct destination but that would have put into the thunderstorms. I politely declined.
Near MAP I asked for deviations and was given wide latitude. The ground based radars showed a soft spot and the active radar in the nose showed a good size hole with just light rain. Usually you can see soft spots but this line went from blue sky to dark wall.
The onboard radar kept looking good and I found a softer spot with only light rain and only 5 miles thick. I am getting better managing tilt and even though I had XM and NEXRAD to look further out, I worked the tilt to make sure I was not getting attenuation. It takes faith in your equipment to go from blue to dark gray with no forward visibility. The equipment worked, we went from nice skies to a slight drizzle and then just as quick as it came, we were back in blue skies.
Our stop in Kansas was also quick and other than having to shoot the GPS approach to get in we had no issues. It had been clearing as we arrived and outbound we able to get our clearance in the air and head off to Cheyenne.
We had had a smooth ride until we got to Colorado. After that it was a constant chop with lots of ups and downs. Our arrival in Cheyenne was uneventful and we soon had our car by the plane.
The direct trip is 1303 miles. Our as flown was about 1330 miles which was pretty good considering the weather. The Baron saved us 45 minutes over the Bonanza assuming the same route but without the onboard radar I would have taken a much larger detour. The second engine equates to a 60% higher fuel use per mile but I am enjoying the added safety and speed.
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