We landed half an hour ago in Sault Ste Marie (but not the Canadian one), and now we’re getting organized. Coming out of Fond du Lac (FDL), there were scattered clouds at various levels and weather reports (and radar) showed 2″ hail along our intended route here. Needless to say, we diverted around it. After poking around in the big gaps between clouds and cloud layers, we settled on 10,500 feet as having the best view. We plugged along for half an hour, then as we reached the edge of where the storm should have been it looked passable. So at that point we finally made radio contact. We’d love to have done that earlier, but ATC didn’t want to hear from Oshkosh people like us so we’d waited until well away from the air show. First we checked with Flight Service to get the latest weather, and learned the storm had indeed abated but the vastly larger one predicted to follow it was bearing down on us as predicted. Good time to turn right as planned! Now we set course direct for Sault Ste Marie (pronounced Soo of course) and contacted Center for Flight Following. This is when Anne began to fully relax (she likes having extra eyes helping us watch out for other planes – even more than I like it).
Anyway, we’re now looking into transportation, hotel (ah to Shower!), and options for a hangar in case the hail reaches here (though it’s not expected to). I’m hoping to post again later with a few pix from our Oshkosh adventure. Today in particular was thrilling, because we left the show at 1pm to pack up for departure back at FDL and a P-51 has been parked there for two nights (did I already mention that?). Well this afternoon as we packed Tripp where she’s been parked on grass next to the taxiway, the P-51 was selling rides. It turns out the active runway today was a few yards from us, and the P-51 was doing low passes at high speed – sometimes over our taxiway. It’s pretty rare for one of those magnificent planes going that fast to be close enough that you could hit it with a whiffle ball! Ah the Glory!! As you’ve guessed, our packing took much longer than planned. And yes, I got photos.
As for this post’s title, flying in front of the storm we had smooth air and great ground speed. Flying relatively fast for Tripp, we were burning 8-9 gallons per hour, and covering 160 miles per hour. Wheee! 🙂
John & Anne Wiley 