I did not make much progress last year on my quest to visit the lower 48 with our plane. I only added one new state. I was ambitious this year and had planned to grab a few out West in February but scrubbed that trip in due to terrible weather and our Yosemite being closed for a few weeks. So it was good to be back in the air and going new places.
We were headed up to Dayton Ohio. It’s 588 miles and with the headwinds it was going to be 3:40 in the air. That was a bit long so we decided to add a fuel stop. London Kentucky was 2:30 which was a good first hop. Going to bed, it looked like an easy flight with no real weather.
Sunday morning it looked much worse. London was 400 overcast and there was a large area of rain headed towards the field. Undeterred, I planned some alternates but felt the rain would miss to the South and that the weather would clear. We still got to experience the clouds on our way.
Our flight through Georgia and over the corner of South Carolina was smooth with the expected headwinds. Crossing the mountains we ran into some building clouds. ATC was generous with deviations which helped a great deal. The clouds looked dark ahead and my radar was painting some light rain. XM and ATC had nothing. I thought it might be ground clutter from the terrain but tilting up did not clear it.
We zipped through some light green and sure enough they were wet clouds. As we worked our way North, a darker cloud appeared and it looked pretty mean. We dodged around but again neither ATC or XM detected it. Another reason to make sure you don’t blast through blindly.
The ride over the mountains was bumpy but North of Knoxville things smoothed out. Indianapolis center got us set up on the GPS 6. We were solid turning final but just after the FAF (final approach fix) we popped out and made a smooth touchdown.
Lately gas has been higher than advertised as prices are updated with a delay. Today I was pleasantly surprised, it was 25 cents lower than expected. After a quick turn we were back on our way with just over an hour to Dayton. We slid just East of Cincinnati and I was expecting to be vectored out farther like they do around Charlotte or Orlando. Surprisingly, we got direct.
Arriving at Dayton, we were parked up front and our car was pulled right to the plane. We placed our fuel order and headed to our hotel. With the late sunset, we had time to visit a local park and hike by the Miami river.
Our real reason for choosing Dayton was to visit the National Museum of the United States Air Force. We had two reasons to visit the museum. The obvious one is that it’s an amazing collection. Less obvious is that Cecilia’s father donated some artifacts from the first Operation Deep Freeze (flights to Antarctica). He had flown as a navigator on the first one. He also provided other material from the Berlin Airlift and other missions which he had participated. We were going to see if they were curating these artifacts correctly.
Monday morning we headed over and arrived as the museum opened. It is huge with 4 large hangars. When I say large, I mean a B-52 or B36 looks small inside. It’s also free or really just pre paid by our taxes. They have halls devoted to early flight, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, X planes, Presidential transport and much much more.
We knew we did not have time to read everything so we mostly strolled and looked at the planes and went education lite. We did ask about operation deep freeze and a helpful docent told us where we might look. In the back of the last hall there was a small exhibit on Air Force peacetime efforts. And there we found an informative sign. Maybe not a complete record of her dad's service but close enough for government work.
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