The last leg of the delivery and back home

The airplane delivery is complete and the buyers are happy with their purchase.  So ends 16 1/2 hours of me flying and 8 hours of travel on United Airlines over four days.  Again, I appreciate everyone praying for a safe and successful trip.

The Route from the morning of Friday, June 13

What it looks like inside a cloud.  Kinda white.
This is called IMC.

Friday morning I was off by 9, and since the weather looked sketchy beginning in New York, I decided to divide the final leg to Boston into two sections, deviating from my original plan to make one leap from Traverse City, MI to Boston.  The stop in Pen Yan, New York allowed me to take a look at the weather, rest a little, and refuel.  As it turned out, this stop was an excellent decision, which I'll talk about later. The route from Michigan to New York took me over a military operations area over Lake Huron. As it happened, this was an active area at that time, so ATC asked me to descend to 5000 feet and to deviate from my planned route somewhat, which left me in a layer of rather bumpy clouds for some time.  

Lake Huron

Eventually they allowed me to climb to my planned altitude of 7000 feet, and resume a direct route to Pen Yan. I had a nice view of Lake Huron at one point, and spent some time over Canada, talking to Canadian ATC (they're just as nice as US ATC people!).  Other than deviating a little for some small rainstorms near Buffalo, it was smooth sailing and I made a visual landing in Pen Yan, where I took on fuel. 

This is Canada

After about an hour at Pen Yan I was off again, on the final leg to Boston.  Originally I had wanted to go to Norwood Airport, which is where the buyers are based, but because of low clouds in Boston, I filed a flight plan to the Bedford, MA airport, which has a precision approach procedure (ILS) for low weather conditions.  If I had not been a hurry I would have read the notice that the ILS system at Bedford was out of service.  But I didn't find that out until later when I checked the weather at Bedford while en route. At that point I amended my plan back to the desired airport, Norwood. The only problem is that there is no precision approach at Norwood so you can't get as low.  But before I get to that let me tell you about the thunderstorms.  

The Route from the afternoon of Friday, June 13

Because they are full of nasty things like downdrafts, updrafts, turbulence, hail and lightning, thunderstorms (the yellow and red areas of the radar on the map) kill airplanes of all sizes.  No one flies through them, not even jumbo jets (so next time your flight is delayed because of them, don't get mad at the airline or the crew; they can't do anything about it).  Fortunately, most of the time you can just go around thunderstorms. ATC has pretty good weather radar that allows them to tell me which way to turn to avoid the thunderstorms, and the storm clouds are also pretty visible when you're near them.  Actually they are beautiful too. In any case, I got to thread my way through a group of storms in New York and began the approach to Boston.  

Thunderstorms over NY - Dangerous Beauty

Finally on the Ground in Manchester

As I mentioned earlier, as I approached Boston, I amended my destination to Norwood, and ATC cleared me to descend and begin my approach.  Unfortunately, the approach procedure did not allow me to get below the clouds and see the runway at Norwood.  However, that is not the end of the world; it's just a setback. You have to do what is called "execute the missed approach."  The approach is dead; it's time to start another.  So I climbed the airplane away from Norwood and asked ATC for a precision approach into another airport.  They gave me an approach into Lawrence, MA, but again, I was not able to see the runway. This is when the I realized that the decision to take on fuel in New York had been a good one!  Because of that fuel stop, I still had 2 hours of fuel left, so it never became a concern.  Once again, I asked for a precision approach, into a different airport, and to an airport that had better weather.  ATC obliged, and I made a precision approach (ILS) into Manchester airport in New Hampshire.  This time, I broke out of the clouds, the runway appeared, and I landed.  

By this time, it was late afternoon.  Since I was over 60 miles north of them, the buyers and I agreed that I would stay overnight in Manchester and fly the airplane to Norwood on Saturday morning when the weather cleared.  Just after noon on Saturday, I landed in Norwood.  After meeting the buyers, we all went for a ride in the airplane.  Then they took me to Boston Logan Airport, where I took a flight home. Karen picked me up in Spokane and we drove back to Pullman. 

Proud New Owners

It was a really great experience and enjoyable trip overall. I gained an enhanced appreciation for the great job that ATC does every day for so many aircraft.  It's really a good system that keeps people safe. Above all, I'm grateful for the Lord's guidance and protection.